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The dress she’s wearing is a wedding dress. I’m sure of it.
I try to imagine him asking her to marry him. She seems so angelic and perfect.Gentle.
I look away and turn my attention to the rest of the room. It’s quite large. In the center is a black leather padded sofa. Over by the wall is a wide flat screen TV that takes up most of the wall. Then, next to the TV, there’s a row of shelves, glass cases, and cabinets. The glass cases have a museum feel to it. Like they're preserving the contents inside. Or… memories.
When I walk over to the closest one, I see pictures in elegant silver frames sitting on the rows of glass shelves.
They’re all pictures of her.
What happened to her?
They’re all her at various stages of her life leading up to one last one that looks like her in the portrait. She's wearing a wedding ring in that last picture and is smiling wide.
The next two cases have some collectable ornaments made of porcelain. They’re little jewelry boxes and trinkets. The next has figurines made of glass. It’s the last case that captures my attention completely.
The whole unit holds a display of ballerinas. Beautifully crafted porcelain ballerinas. Looking at them takes me to a time of happiness when I used to dance.
I was the dancer before I became the writer. Long before. Sometimes I wonder if it was real. I tend not to think back to my life before I was sixteen. That was when everything changed and I seemed to slip into some nightmare world where nothing quite seemed to fit, or feel real.
I was a dancer. Or at least that’s what I was going to be. Then the dream was stolen away from me along with everything else. I dare not think of dancing again. It reminds me too much of the past and my parents.
Looking at the display of ballerinas, though, is nice. The nostalgia takes me back, and I can’t resist opening the door to the case and picking up one with a little pink dress.
It reminds me of the dress I wore at my last performance. I’d just turned sixteen the day before. I didn’t know that everything I knew was about to change. I never knew that was the last time I’d experience true happiness.
Dancing in front of my parents at the Royal Opera House was possibly the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I’m so lost in the memory that I don’t hear the click of the door behind me. It’s already too late when heavy footsteps echo against the floorboards. In that moment, I know I’ve truly fucked up.Again.
I turn to face Vincent…
His eyes blaze and nostrils flare. He looks like he could breathe fire and incinerate me right here.
What do I do? What can I say?
I know I’m not supposed to be in here, and I directly disobeyed.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” he roars as he marches over to me. My soul shivers.
“I…” I try to rasp out a breath and some words, but I don’t know what to say, and I definitely don’t know what to say when he looks at the little ballerina in my hands.
He swipes it out of my hand, and I actually believe he’s going to hit me next, so I back away from him, bumping into the table. Something falls to the ground. It’s the TV remote.
I bend down to pick it up but freeze as the TV comes on, and so does she. The woman in the painting and the pictures.
She’s on the screen.
“Vinny, this is ridiculous,” she says with a hearty laugh, and we both fixate on the screen.
She’s walking up the path and carrying a baby.
“Sorcha, this will be one of those funny videos we show him when he’s older,” a male voice replies.
I recognize it. It’s his.
Vinny… that’s what she called him, like Marguerite does even though she tries to keep up the façade that she always calls him sir, or boss.
Sorcha… that’s the woman’s name.
