Page 54 of An Immaculate Deception

She gets to her feet. “I noticed a funny thing earlier while getting dressed…” She pauses before the dresser and opens the small wooden box that sits atop it, next to the cylinder music box. It’s a rosewood trinket box with mother-of-pearl on the lid.

“What is this?” she asks.

“Don’t—”

Too late. She has already opened it and is now inspecting its contents: dozens of tiny folded notes. She opens one of them and it’s only about a quarter of a full sheet of paper. There is a child’s handwriting on it, a single sentence. She peers at it, head tilted to the side.

Dread curls up inside me. No one’s ever read these notes other than me and Mother. They’re not meant for anyone else.

Servants are such prying little things.

“It’s nothing,” I reply. “Just little notes I wrote for Mother as a child.”

Put it in the box, Mother would say when she caught me telling a lie. Even accidental lies and lies of omission. I would then write the lie on a little piece of paper, fold it, and tuck it into the box. Mother called it “the box,” but I call it “the little box of lies.”

Even a tearful apology didn’t feel quite complete until I had sealed it by putting the lie into the little box of lies. Only then did I feel a sense of atonement. It appeased Mother as well. The confession must be in writing, she would say, or else it doesn’t count.

I haven’t opened the little box of lies in years. I am an adult now, so I don’t lie to Mother anymore.

Joaquina squints at the little note.

“Dear Mama,” she recites in a mock-childish voice, “last night I wet my sheets. Please don’t punish me!” Her laugh echoes through the room, jarring and cruel. Then I remember that Joaquina is illiterate; she is only pretending to read it. Those are not the words in the note…She is inventing words just like she invents music when she pretends to play the broken piano. Like a child, always playing make-believe. She drops the note back into the box without bothering to refold it, face brimming with glee.

A hot, aching pressure digs into my skull. What kind of a man allows himself to be ridiculed by his own servants?

“Oh, don’t look so serious,” Joaquina says. “I’m only joking.”

“I think it’s best if you go.”

“What?”

I pause. But the words have a life of their own. “It’s time to end our photography sessions. And your employment here as well. There is no need to finish cleaning. I will post your final payment tomorrow.”

All traces of amusement vanish from her face.

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do.”

“Is this because of my joke just now?”

“No.”

“Is it because of yesterday?”

Yesterday…The kiss. I don’t answer.

“But I thought you liked it.”

“It does not matter if I liked it. What matters is that it is wrong for us to engage in such a way.”

“But you said I am Bea…”

“Beatrice.”

“That I shine so bright you can’t bear to look at me directly.”

“It wasn’t poetry. It was only lust.”