The cruel dark, p.17
The Cruel Dark, page 17
Before him, I hadn’t been untouched, my virginity lost at eighteen to a graduate student I’d met at a Christmas party. I’d hardly known him, but I’d wanted to get it over with, to remove a life mystery that loomed over the heads of all of my friends. It had been quick, uncomfortable, and passionless. Of course, my mother had never talked to me about sex, not even to shame me, and I’d often wondered if it was simply because it wasn’t anything special. My first experience corroborated my theory.
Callum had shattered that conception.
As we lay together, the dark growing longer, he pulled me close and slipped his fingers into mine.
“Tell me your secrets, Miss Foxboro,” he whispered into my ear.
My secrets. For some short blissful hours I’d forgotten I’d had any, but here they were to haunt me again in my happiest moment.
Shaking my head slowly and trying to battle the fresh guilt plaguing me, I replied, “Tell me yours.”
He was quiet.
“You asked me about opening the house again,” he said at last. “I’ve decided to. However, when the cold comes again, I’m going away.”
“Away?”
“I need separation from Willowfield. The winters here are too harsh. If the work still isn’t done, I’ll bring it, and if you would oblige, I’d like for you to come as well.”
I shifted, propping myself up to properly see his face. My addled brain wasn’t following his logic.
“As your assistant?”
Stunned, he stared at me for two agonizing beats, then began to laugh. It was the first time I’d heard the sound so unreserved, resonating, shaking his body, and he became beautiful in a new way.
“No, you little fool,” he managed when he’d finally caught his breath, eyes bright with mirth. He drew me back to him, and I tucked my head beneath his chin and listened to the thrum of his heartbeat in his throat, sheltered momentarily from my dark thoughts.
“I think it’s unsuitable, with the things I’ve done to you,” he said, running his fingers along my naked side, “for you to continue to refer to yourself as my assistant.”
“It’s true none of this was in the job description.”
“Do you have complaints?”
“None at the moment.”
“Hard to please,” he murmured. “I like it.”
I indulged in the daydream. “Where will we go?”
“Wherever we’ve any inclination to. Somewhere away from this place until it’s alive again.”
I silently observed the fire from over the swell of our tangled legs, enjoying the sweet speculation of a future with Callum while I was able.
“Now you, my dear. What are you thinking? What do you hide from me?”
His intentions were impish, playful, expecting I divulge some silly secret or romantic hope, pillow talk that would lead us to a satisfied sleep.
You stupid girl.
My mother’s voice was clear as a bell, and I jolted, breaking from Callum’s arms to sit straight up, clasping the blankets to my chest, cold with the knowledge of what I bore. I couldn’t bring my lies into a life with someone else.
“Millie?”
He rose slowly behind me, resting on his elbow and caressing my bare shoulder with a tender touch that was like a knife in my heart.
“I need to tell you something. It will change your mind about all of this, and I am afraid to say it.”
“Have you murdered someone?”
“Callum,” I snapped, turning to face him with a scowl, unable to hold back the tears slipping down my cheeks. When he saw my countenance, he sat fully, cupping my face in his hands and wiping the wet away with his thumbs. I savored it.
“Tell me.”
“Two years ago, I woke up in Our Lady of Grace.”
“The hospital.”
“Yes.” I paused, anxiety consuming me, turning me inside out with a slow pain. This would be the beginning of the end of my bliss. “In the psychiatric ward.”
The concern smoothed from Callum’s brow, his eyes becoming two dull pools, void of expression. He said nothing and I barreled on, holding on to his hands, still cradling my face as though touching him would keep me from drowning in my shame. “I don’t remember how I got there. They told me I’d suffered a hysterical breakdown from a traumatic event. They had no other information for me, and there still aren’t any answers. I was eventually released to a women’s program, which is how I got the job with Mr. Helm. I’ve lost years of my life, and I don’t know what I did, with whom, or where. I don’t know if I’ve committed crimes. I could’ve killed someone and I don’t recall it. I could’ve been a madam at a downtown brothel and I’ll never be the wiser.”
My tirade grew feverish, I was nearly yelling, but at the last and final word, I simply stopped and waited, expecting to be rebuffed, or at least to be buried in an avalanche of questions I couldn’t answer. I waited to be pushed away, for his sense of betrayal to crush me. Instead, he took my desperate, grasping hands and kissed my knuckles.
“I know,” he said.
“You what?”
I analyzed his expression, searching for a lie, a terrible joke, but his solemn face proved his sincerity.
“Of course I know.”
“What do you mean you know? How?”
“Don’t you think I’d make it my business to know everything about a stranger entering my home? Dr. Hannigan worked at that hospital. He recognized your name when he met you in Boston in the little bookshop.”
“He told me he hadn’t been there when I was!”
I felt lied to, unsure of how to proceed, my entire experience at Willowfield shifting, feeling foreign, as though the memories weren’t mine.
“You were a special case. Many of his old colleagues continue to share information with him concerning confounding illnesses, and it just so happened you were one of them.”
“You knew before hiring me and still accepted my application?”
“Who else has your qualifications? It was a damn miracle Dr. Hannigan even came across you. The fact your history is unfortunate had no bearing on the decision.”
“Why?”
“Millie, we can’t exclude people from life because of their struggles.”
The unspoken part struck me. His wife. His wife had been ill, fragile, and tormented. His genuine compassion had grown from his once loving a woman who had struggled. Why shouldn’t he be able to love another?
“I’m extremely angry with you, Callum,” I croaked, new tears welling up. “How dare you keep that from me? I was so afraid. I…”
With utmost gentleness, he gathered my body to his, shushing me.
“May we have a lifetime for me to beg your forgiveness.”
I cried against his bare shoulder, letting the anxiety and the sorrow of my worries rack my body. He held me as I shook, spilling my grief.
“You don’t really know anything about me,” I sobbed.
“Then tell me everything, my love.”
So I did.
***
My parents, Thomas and Laura, had been married in their teens, my grandparents on both sides hoping to consolidate their wealth with the union. My mother had grown up in a strict house and had high tempers, so people, including my father, tended to care for her at a distance. He showered her with as much luxury as he could afford but didn’t offer any true affection no matter how much she asked for it. When I was born, the little attention my father paid to her shifted to me, and I think that’s what made her hate me.
I was abandoned to nannies until I was five and the expense was considered unnecessary. Then, aside from required schooling by a spiritless private tutor, I was left to my own devices. I remained mostly in the kitchen with the only person in the house who loved me, the cook, Ms. Reeves.
It would’ve been best for me if my mother had forgotten I existed, but sometimes, she’d search me out and try to be a mother after all, but the encounters always ended poorly. I said the wrong thing, looked the wrong way, or had manners she disapproved of. I was slapped, pinched, and screamed at for minor trespasses, and the worst of all were the times she came to me already in a rage, already beyond mercy. It meant there’d be nothing I could do to please her, and inevitably she’d lock me in my wardrobe as punishment. Sometimes she’d leave me there for a full day until Ms. Reeves or my father knew she’d fallen asleep and could release me. I learned to be quiet. Crying and screaming only made me hoarse, and no one dared try to save me and provoke the wrath of Laura Foxboro.
When I turned thirteen, my troubles multiplied as her friends started wondering why I wasn’t at family dinners and parties. My presence was suddenly expected. To prevent my embarrassing her, she drilled me endlessly on etiquette, conversation topics, and politics. She hit me with a brush if I gave the wrong answer and pricked my fingers with pins if my hair wasn’t curled at night.
My saving grace, but also my greatest mortification, was when I began wandering the house at night, asleep and chasing dreams, opening doors and windows, rifling through drawers, pulling down plates from the kitchen and towels from the cupboards. I’d wake in the middle of the chaos I’d created not knowing how I’d gotten there. At first, my mother took it only as an opportunity to laugh at me and criticize my weak mind, but one night I made it to her room, rummaging through her makeup. When she woke to yell at me and I continued to only knock bottles and powders to the floor, my father told me she’d slapped my face, and in retaliation I’d attacked her, beating her about the head with the same brush she often used on me. It left her unfit to be seen for weeks. I don’t remember any of it, though I’m glad it happened. I’m happy I hurt her. When I asked my father later why he hadn’t stopped me, his only answer had been a hug. It was the last one he ever gave me.
Following this, Mother was scared of me, of what I might do at night, and my room was locked from the outside whenever the sun went down. She told her friends I was a lunatic and should be sent to a sanatorium for my safety. My father intervened and sent me to St. Mary’s boarding school instead. I was never welcomed home. I spent winter and summer holidays in the dormitories, and when I attended the ladies’ college in New York City, I stayed in a tenement with four other girls working as a telephone operator at night.
When at last I graduated, my mother decided I was enough of a success to be a boon to her and called me back. Her letter demanded I return so she could prepare me for life as an educated wife to a man she’d already chosen, a divorced older gentleman I knew from childhood with a bad temper and deep pockets. My father sent a separate letter begging me not to come and enclosed money enough for me to go anywhere to start my life on my own. But I wanted to go back, at least to look my mother in the eye and defy her by saying goodbye, to see her face when I spurned her plans, when I proved to her I couldn’t be bullied and beaten into submission. I’d lived years without her, but I burned with the need to serve her the rejection she’d always given me. It was all that filled my thoughts.
When I arrived, the house was empty. No staff anywhere. I learned later from Ms. Reeves that everyone had been fired, kicked onto the street with no sorry or severance pay. I wandered around, calling their names, searching for anyone. At last, I looked in my mother’s room, her vanity perfectly arranged, a dress pressed and hung on the changing screen, prepared for a party, and her white rug soaked in blood from the heap of her lifeless body, half of her face destroyed by a gunshot wound. My father lay nearby on the bed, pistol still in his hand. He’d shot himself as well.
In a haze, I covered him with a cashmere blanket from the foot of the bed, ignoring the shell of my mother, and walked downstairs to call the police. When they moved my parents’ bodies they found the tragedy’s catalyst: the letter declaring my return, tucked in my father’s pocket. It had been delayed, and was delivered only that morning mere hours before I arrived. As soon as their funeral was over, I sold the house, took the little money left over after my parents’ debts were paid, and bought a train ticket to California. I boarded that train with no plan, no more money, and woke up in Massachusetts four years laer.
***
Callum held me through the confession of my life, and when I was finished, having said out loud the most essential parts, it was fully night, leaving us in only the shadows of the firelight.
“I lost so many years,” I whispered. “I’ve got a terrible temper, and I’m haunted by my mother’s voice, and by nightmares of weeping women jumping out of windows.”
I couldn’t help the sardonic laugh, shaking my head at my own derangements, but he remained silent. At last, I spoke the fear I’d never revealed to another soul.
“I killed my parents, Callum. They’re dead because of me and my pride.”
“No,” he replied, his tone uncompromising. “Your father made his own decisions.”
“To protect me from myself.”
“To protect you from your mother. But he didn’t know you very well, Millicent Foxboro. You would have had the courage to leave just as you’d planned. His ignorance of his own daughter’s strength drove him to make his final mistakes. None of that is your fault.”
“Don’t be insincere,” I murmured, uninterested in counterfeit admiration even if it was given to soothe my pain.
“You must stop always thinking the worst of me.” He lifted my chin, his eyes wandering over my face as though memorizing every line, every hollow and dimple. “And yourself. You’re a force of nature, and despite your trials, you’ve survived with a spirit worthy of its own folklore. Up to now you’ve made your way through hell all alone, but you’re not on your own anymore, Millie. Never again.”
I began to weep anew, and he kissed my forehead, drawing me back to his body, whispering his sweet, comforting words. When all my tears were spent, we made love in the peaceful glow of the dying fire.
Chapter 18
In the early morning hours, I untangled myself from Callum. He’d insisted it didn’t matter if everyone knew I hadn’t slept in my room, but I thought we should enjoy the secret awhile longer. For the first time, I ran through the halls of Willowfield with a light step, unafraid of the gloom. There was a glow to the world, a new magic making the once-sinister corridors radiant and full of possibility.
The following days, at my request, were busy with attempts to keep the others from suspicion. It wasn’t too difficult a task as the professor had sought to renew the renovations on Willowfield, requiring him to often be out meeting with companies who’d contract the work. He hoped to have time to organize the spring fete, welcome the community back to the house, and, as he said, “Hopefully, put all the nonsense about haunts to rest.”
He involved me in everything he could, and I found myself working on accounting lists for repairs, flower orders, and payments for the workers who littered the gardens preparing the earth for its grand reveal. I was still having strange dreams, whispers tickling my ears even in the light of day, touches of fingers on my shoulders, in my hair, but with enough concentration and force, I could will them away, remind myself they were phantoms born of unnecessary fear. I was in control of myself, capable and calm, and I liked the business of the preparations, which gave me work to do at every moment of the day and relieved me from constantly thinking about Callum and the things we got up to when no one was looking.
I discovered I’d been right regarding Mrs. Hughes’s botany notebooks. Being familiar with the flowers growing on the estate was an essential aspect of managing things, and with only a drop of guilt remaining, I removed the journal from the bureau and began to read again from the beginning, studying it with a close eye and copying information for myself in a separate book of my own. I silently thanked the woman, rest her soul, for leaving behind her knowledge and the legacy of her love for Willowfield. One afternoon, I paused my transcriptions and sat back in the chair, gazing out of the window and into the gardens. Callum had insisted I take over this little office with all of its delicate furniture. I’d been uncomfortable for the first day or two, none of the things to my liking. I was an intruder in this space, though everything I needed was here.
Mrs. Hughes had once sat in this very chair and done her own work, possibly stopping as I did to survey the gardens. Though I still knew so little about her, I felt sorrow for the happiness stolen and resolved not to let the same happen to me. Callum enjoyed stopping by between errands to sit in the delicate chairs, humorously too dainty for him, and talk to me concerning things I had no experience with.
I laughed at him one morning. “I have no business savvy, and listening to all your talk on stocks and factory safety is like hearing someone speak another language.”
“You’ve got a mind like a steel trap. You’ll catch up. At any rate, these are all things you’ll need to learn, so might as well begin, but first…” He grinned and stayed long enough to throw me onto the chaise, wrap my thighs around his shoulders, and plunder me with his mouth. My want for him in all ways was unquenchable, and I was determined to become the mistress Willowfield needed, and Callum deserved.
When I’d transcribed enough of the plant notes into my own book, I brought it outside to map the growing spots of each flower. I wanted to be familiar with where to find them, so when the time came for bloom I could revisit and discover their individual beauties and scents for myself. It was a delightful scavenger hunt. As I took my leave of the topiary, I almost ran headlong into Rodney, covered in dirt but happy from head to toe.
“Miss Foxboro! Lovely to see you. What’ve you got there?”
I showed him the little book and told him what I was up to, and he gave me some directions for where to find the flowers I hadn’t yet documented. He beamed at me, then leaned on his shovel and scratched his forehead below his ever-present flat cap. “Willowfield is lucky. There hasn’t been a lady so keen on this place since we lost Mrs. Hughes.”
