by Dawn Ius
I push the sunglasses up onto my forehead, and together we stare at the patch of popcorn ceiling Emma and I couldn’t scrape clear. It’s not a perfect renovation, but the after is so much better than the before.
“This place is charming,” Bridget says. “I think I’m going to love it here.”
I hope so.
Carefully, I lean in, craving more of her touch. “Still a lot of work to do.”
“I could help.” She sits up and flexes her arm. “You should see these pipes work a paintbrush.” She glances over her shoulder and her eyes are bright, like tiny stars dancing across her pale skin. “Seriously,” she says. “That’s how I earned my keep at most of the places I’ve stayed. Manual labor in exchange for room and board. Or bread and cheese, if you’re in Italy.”
“You’ve been to Italy?” My voice is low and breathy. I’m sure I sound like an idiot—starstruck, envious. Humiliating, sure, but hardly a shock. Father Buck says I give off that wholesome vibe. I can read between the lines, though: prude. I’m seventeen and never been kissed. I’m not even sure I’m allowed to date.
Bridget tugs at the corded drawstrings that hold her backpack together. “My ex-boyfriend and I lived there for three months. Want to see pictures?”
Inexplicable jealousy and disappointment pull my chest tight. As I sit up, Bridget flips the bag over and the contents spill onto the bed. A camera, a handful of loose change, two pairs of black lace underwear, and a sweatshirt rolled into a ball . . . I look away . . . then back. Bridget shoves everything aside except for a manila envelope, the corners weathered and darkened with grit. She dumps it upside down and a thick stack of prints falls into her lap, like the Polaroids in the travel scrapbooks I’ve borrowed from Father Buck. She grins. “I still print off my pictures like a total geek.”
I wind my finger through a strand of hair and twirl it round and round until it cuts off my circulation, snapping me back to reality. It’s so easy to get lost around Bridget, to let my mind and heart wonder: what if? My cross grows heavy and hot against my skin, like it might ignite at any moment. I swallow the fire burning at the back of my throat. “No, I—”
“Trust me, I’ve been called worse.”
I perch on the edge of the mattress, careful not to crowd her, wondering for one fleeting second if I imagined her hand on mine after all. She inches closer and passes me a picture. The casual brush of our fingers up against each other sends a spark of electricity through me. My hair stands on end.
“This was my view from the Tuscan villa I stayed—um—worked at,” Bridget says.
A sea of golden sunflowers covers every inch of an expansive field, their round faces tilted upward to the setting sun. Billowy clouds swirl in a sky so blue it looks fake.
I’ve wanted to go to Italy ever since Emeril Lagasse talked about it on one of his shows. “You took this?”
Bridget tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s not one of my better—”
“How did you do it?” My head swims with questions, emotions. “I feel as though I’m standing in the field.”
The tip of Bridget’s nose goes pink, making her freckles almost disappear. I want to reach out and touch her, coax them back somehow. “I was just tinkering with my new camera at that time,” she says. “I’ve had a lot more practice since then.”
Bridget flips through the photos until she lands on an image of a cathedral. A giant dome bubbles toward the heavens, disappearing under the glow of early dawn. “This is the Duomo in Florence,” she says with a touch of wistfulness that makes my stomach flutter. “It took two centuries to complete and it has, like, a million stairs.”
Just over two hundred, according to Father Buck, but I get how they can lend to exaggeration. I study the angle, trying to figure out where Bridget would have had to stand to get such an incredible shot. It’s postcard perfect.
“Everyone says, ‘If you’ve seen one church, you’ve seen them all,’ but that’s bullshit.” She tilts her head, looking up at me with shimmering eyes. “You ever been to Florence?”
I can barely admit the truth without blushing. “I’ve never left Fall River.”
Her face softens—if that’s even possible; she’s practically porcelain. “How sad.” She cups her hand over her mouth. “Shit. That was rude. I never even asked if you want to travel. I just assumed—”
“I absolutely do,” I gush. God, now who’s the geek? “I just can’t believe . . .” I exhale. “I mean, your parents let you travel alone?”
“They’re basically hippies,” Bridget says. She digs through the stack again and hands me a photograph of a man and woman—a guitar in his hand, daisy flowers in her strawberry hair. They’re obviously a couple, and strangely familiar. “This is Mom and Dad, just before they left Ireland in search of fame and fortune.”
I squint for a better look. “Musicians?”
“Mostly I think they just like to travel,” Bridget says, quickly tucking the picture to the bottom of the stack, effectively ending further conversation about them.
She moves on to castles and forests, pictures of sea creatures and endless beaches. “My parents gave me the travel bug when I was just a kid,” she says, as I’m transported to busy markets, antique shops, circuses, and museums. “Mom says I’m a free spirit. I started traveling on my own when I turned sixteen last year.”
Envy coats my esophagus, making it hard to speak. I can’t walk to the end of Second Street without a full-blown Inquisition, and until I’m eighteen—probably forever—my curfew has been firmly set for nine o’clock. It occurs to me that it’s well past midnight and though I’m trapped in this house, I have never felt more free. “The food must be amazing.”
Bridget’s eyes brighten and I’m practically blinded by the glow. “Incredible,” she says.
She finds a picture of an olive grove. “Can you imagine picking olives right from the tree?” I can’t. “It’s . . .” Her tone goes wistful. “Unparalleled.” She searches for another photograph. “Or how about eating a fresh croissant purchased from a street vendor in Paris?” Her voice picks up speed. “Pierogis in Ukraine! Fresh-roasted chestnuts in Italy!”
My mouth starts watering and my voice goes embarrassingly hushed. “How dreamy.”
Bridget thrusts her finger upward. “We’ll start in Italy, then.”
My pulse leaps. “Excuse me?”
Her cheeks are full-on pink now, her excitement creating an electric current between us that buzzes and hisses. “I mean, unless you’d rather travel with your boyfriend or whatever.” Bridget shakes her head before I can react. “Wow. That was super presumptuous of me too.”
“No, it . . .” My voice trails off, and a strange tingle ripples along my spine. It’s such a preposterous idea, the two of us, almost strangers, not yet even friends, traveling, exploring as . . . what? A couple? I can’t imagine she’s serious. Unless . . . My blood hums. Is it possible she’s trying to find out if I’m in a relationship? Whether I like girls? Goose bumps of excitement somersault across my flesh.
But then God’s voice whispers across the back of my neck, and confusion washes over me. A relationship with Bridget is frowned upon by the church, but I know that even if she were a young man, my father would not allow it. Not now. Maybe never.
Abigail’s words echo back at me: You can never be more than your father’s silly little girl.
Sadness pools like quicksand, threatening to pull me under. I take a deep breath and cling to hope like a lifeline, the ridiculous notion that maybe there’s a chance a relationship with Bridget, for travel, for me to break free from all this.
“LIZBETH!”
Abigail’s shrill voice lops off the tail end of that dream with the sharpness of an ax. My body stiffens, blood turning to ice. So caught up with Bridget, I’m shocked by the time. Where did they go after church? There’s a loud thunk, a string of curses. Tension spiderwebs across the base of my neck. “I have to go.”
Bridget’s face darkens. “Is that
your mom?”
“Stepmother,” I snap.
She recoils, and I’m immediately filled with shame. My tone was too abrasive, too harsh. But how can I control the anxiety, the tension, that takes over whenever Abigail is near? There is not enough Ativan in the world for that.
“Should I let her know I’m here?” Bridget says.
“I’ll tell her in the morning,” I say, though if I could hide Bridget forever, I would. I stand, brushing smooth the wrinkles in my skirt. It’s the same flouncy material as Bridget’s dress, but somehow her faint floral pattern looks stylish, while I’m more reminiscent of a grandmother. From the 1800s. “She’ll just make you start early.”
Bridget tilts her head, and the moon emerges through the glass window behind her, its round face glowing against her pale skin. “Even on Christmas morning?” she asks.
“Especially.”
A much more serious warning lingers on my tongue. I want to tell Bridget to run, to get out while she still can. My father, Abigail, they’re like giant clouds of impending doom, trapping you with the fear of what’s out there. But the words won’t—can’t—come out. I need Bridget to stay. Need—
Her.
My gut twists like a butter churn. I shouldn’t feel like this—not now, not so soon, but it’s so easy to talk to Bridget, to share what’s been trapped in my heart for so long.
Bridget smiles like there’s sunshine in her. I strain forward, lapping up her warmth and calmness before I’m forced to trudge through to the storm raging below.
“Tomorrow, then,” she says.
I tuck my hands behind my back and kick at a piece of fluff on the carpet. “Tomorrow.”
“LIZBETH!” I stiffen at the echo of my stepmother’s screech, leaden with the slur of too much whiskey. Only Abigail would chase God’s message with an after-Mass shot. “Get your ass down here. Now.”
“She sounds—”
“Drunk,” I confirm, my pitch rising as anxiety begins to take hold. “Which is only slightly less humiliating than period-bleeding on your leg.”
Bridget’s grin practically splits her face in half. “I needed a shower anyway.”
A tight knot in my chest begins to slide downward, creating a flutter around my heart, a strange hollowness in my stomach. I realize with alarm that I’m reluctant for my time with Bridget to end, desperate for just a few more seconds in her presence, to capture the sense of freedom she brings, no matter how fleeting or false.
“You should—”
“Go,” I say, nodding.
I stagger backward, but Bridget is like a magnet, pulling me forward. She stuffs the pictures into the envelope and sets them on the nightstand next to her bed. My feet swoosh along the carpet until finally I’m at the door. I blow out a deep breath. “Really beautiful, Bridget.”
She looks up. Smiles.
My chest expands so fast I worry it might pop.
“The pictures,” I add, slowly licking my lips.
Bridget giggles. “You’re so adorable.” She cocks her head. “I totally knew what you meant.”
I’m glad, because for some inexplicable reason, I’m not at all sure myself.
CHAPTER
5
I pause at the top of the staircase, paralyzed like a mouse beneath the claws of a descending hawk. Trapped. My heartbeat stutters.
A door creaks open behind me. I crane my neck and stare into Mr. Dent’s wide, white pupils. A shiver tremors down the back of my thin dress. I place my finger to my lips and whisper, “Shhh.” He blinks and retreats into his suite. Seconds later, water pipes groan as the shower turns on.
Hushed voices grind up the stairs.
Abigail: “This is exactly the kind of carelessness I’ve been afraid of. It’s dangerous, Andrew. She’s dangerous.”
I grip the banister and clench my teeth.
Father: “Not dangerous, depressed.”
My fingers tighten around the railing, and my heart begins to race.
Abigail: “That’s the diagnosis, yes, but there must be more to it.” Her breath comes out in an angry huff. “The medications don’t seem to be working. We should increase the dosage.”
Father: “I won’t have a zombie for a daughter—she’s already a bloody embarrassment.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises, like tiny soldiers standing at attention. My father’s voice does that, commands a kind of respect born out of fear one minute, squashes you like a bug the next.
More Abigail: “And I won’t spend my life babysitting her. Commit her to a hospital and be done with it.”
My throat goes raw as I wait for my father’s response. I imagine him pacing the lobby, the tips of his ears bright crimson beneath his top hat, trying to decide what will better serve his precious reputation—keep me here and run the risk of exposing his secret, or send me away, not once stopping to think about what is best for me.
The ensuing silence is a noose around my neck, pulling tighter with each passing second. No matter how trapped I feel in this house, the thought of imprisonment by strangers, always watching, judging, is far more terrifying.
Abigail again, clearly exasperated: “For Christ’s sake, Andrew.”
Her stilettos click, click, click across the floor. She bends down and looks up at the stairs where I hover, camouflaged in the shadows. “LIZBETH!” Her screech reverberates like a church organ, off-key. “For the last time . . .”
I step into the dim light and her voice catches. “Honestly, Lizbeth.” She presses her hand to her chest. “It’s creepy how you just show up like that.”
My father joins her at the bottom of the stairs, and they glare at me like they’re trying to coax a delinquent puppy out from a cardboard box. Dad points to some vague spot behind him. “Lizbeth, what is the meaning of this blood?”
I blink, and the spot is still there, even though I could swear Bridget cleaned it with her shoe.
Abigail rips off her gloves—my mother’s gloves—and slaps them together with a resounding thwack. My tongue drags across my teeth in disgust. I know all about the secret things in Abigail’s bedside table, her collection of my mother’s trinkets, jewels . . . memories.
No, she can never have those.
“On second thought, I don’t want to know,” Abigail says. “Just get it cleaned up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her face turns scarlet. She opens her mouth, clenches her jaw. Of all the names I could have called my stepmother, “ma’am” is the one that hurts her the most. A cruel thrill pulses through me.
But in my peripheral, I catch Jesus eyeing me from his framed visage in the hallway. Swipe. I try to blink away the hallucination, but He lifts an eyebrow and wags his finger at me in disapproval.
Swipe.
I blush, chastised, and begin my slow descent down the staircase, my fingernails carving grooves into the faded wood. Abigail turns away with a sharp tsk, but not Father. His eyes watch, warn. A familiar quiver of unease inches along my back.
My shoulders begin to sag. I let out a shaky breath, earlier bravado sinking beneath the creaky floorboards. My knees buckle.
Keeping my anxiety in check can be exhausting, even with my medications—the cocktail of pills prescribed for my “depression,” even though I’m not sure Dr. Driscoll’s diagnosis is quite right.
How can it be? He can only assess what Abigail has told him. And maybe it started that way—the blackouts from my menstrual condition becoming more frequent in the wake of grief after my mother’s passing and Emma’s leaving. But what Dr. Driscoll doesn’t know—can never know—is how the anxiety gets more and more trapped under my rib cage with every minute I must live in this house.
My father waits until we’re nose to nose—me on the third step, him towering over the lobby like a menacing Goliath—and half sneers. “There is blood—”
Don’t look away. Dang it! I always look away.
“—on the floor. The Christmas tree is on its side. Would you care to explain what h
appened here tonight?”
I push away the irrational urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, knowing whatever response I give will still end in discipline. But then his voice softens, so slightly I almost think it’s my imagination. “An episode?”
My stomach flips with hope. Glimpses like this, hints of the caring father I knew before Mom died, are what ground me. Make me believe that in time, everything will go back to normal. Him. Me.
Us.
God, I want that so bad.
“Yes,” I finally say.
Abigail’s breath releases in a loud whoosh. “I told you,” she hisses. “She’s not fit to be left alone, Andrew.”
His eyes harden, and again I shrink under his cruel gaze, suffocating under the weight of his displeasure. It’s overwhelming, crushing even, never being enough, knowing that I can never live up to his impossible standards. Can never be . . . normal.
Tears gather in the corners of my eyes. I blink them back and shove past my father, my shoulder knocking up against his solid chest. He is an unmoving wall of hard stone. “You’re one to talk,” I say to Abigail, under my breath. Not soft enough.
Dad grabs my wrist and wrenches me around. Pain shoots through my arm.
“Do not disrespect your mother,” he says, growling.
Step. Mother.
I drop my eyes and stare at the floor, which I know my father will accept as submission. Fresh guilt snakes under my skin. Honor thy father and thy mother.
“Sorry,” I mutter, without looking either of them in the eye, focusing instead on a blurry scuff mark of black on the tile. It does nothing to tamp back the rising anxiety building in my chest, the “madness” itching to sneak out. That’s the word my father uses to describe the scars on my thighs, a patchwork manifestation of my “weakness.”
I tuck my hand into the pocket of my dress and thread my fingers through the rosary hidden there, drawing strength. The cool beads soothe my skin, but my thoughts wander to Bridget and in an instant, my entire body feels like it’s on fire. I am burning up with fresh shame.
