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Did she see what I did? Or is my quest for answers about Mom sending me completely loopy?
As if sensing my distress, Cora’s head rolls to the side until her gaze fixes on me. I expect her to stand and approach me and ask what’s wrong. Or to tell me to lie down again.
Instead, our eyes lock for the scantest second before she resumes looking upward. But not before I’ve seen the oddest thing.
A smug smile playing about her lips.
Chapter24
Cora
THEN
Ava hasn’t beenthe same since she got tattooed two months ago.
She’s tougher now and I observe her petty acts of rebellion without outright condoning them. Harlan’s keys go missing, shipping orders get messed up, and one of his prized apple trees won’t produce anymore. I suspect she’s sabotaged it somehow but cleverly, so suspicion isn’t thrown on any of the workers.
That’s another thing that’s changed. Harlan expects her to work now. He flatly refused my pleas for her to go to college, despite the many ways I presented logical arguments: like how a business degree could only benefit Arcania in the long run, how a marketing degree could help promote Arcania, how an economics degree would ensure she preserved the legacy he was creating.
Nothing worked, and a small part of me I daren’t acknowledge was actually relieved. If Ava left, I’d be all alone with a monster.
So Ava is doing a remote degree in business management from a local community college while working in the orchards. She appears oddly upbeat the last week and I’m assuming it has something to do with the young tradesmen who are renovating some of the rooms.
Harlan has a hare-brained idea to turn Arcania into a bed-and-breakfast some time in the future, when the last thing I want is a bunch of strangers traipsing through our house.
I know what’s behind his idea. With the huge turnover of orchard workers—thanks to their ‘leaving’—I suspect he wants to convince guests about the validity of sunken treasure and somehow get them invested.
It’s crazy, but I’ve learned not to voice my opinion these days. It never ends well. We sleep in separate rooms these days. Heck, we barely converse. I was a means to an end. He wanted to show his parents how he could be a stable family man to ensure he inherited Arcania, and once they were gone, he didn’t have to pretend any longer.
I don’t mind. I prefer it this way. Because technically, while I’m cheating on Harlan with Spencer, I wouldn’t have rekindled our relationship if my marriage was healthy. We’d been platonic for a year before Ava’s eight birthday, when I’d turned to Spencer for comfort because of Harlan’s callous indifference to his daughter and slept with him.
I know what I’m doing is wrong. I feel guilty at times, because Spencer gets nothing out of our arrangement. We can never parade our relationship in public. I can never acknowledge how much he means to me. But he’s reassured me many times that he’s content with the status quo and I choose to believe him because I’d be bereft without him. Selfish of me, but I need one ally in this place.
I’ve seen Ava conversing with one young tradesman in particular, an electrician who channels laid-back surfer vibes: dirty blonde hair spiked in all directions, bright blue eyes, amiable smile, tanned. I want to warn her that if her father sees her he won’t approve, but my heart is lighter when I see her genuinely smile for the first time in ages, so I remain silent. It’s healthy for her to talk to boys, to flirt, to have some sense of normality in her sheltered world.
I hate to think too far ahead—how will she meet a man to cherish her, who will she marry, will she bring children into this weird world we inhabit—so I don’t.
Which is why when she comes to me on this gloomy day while I’m waking on the beach, I know something is wrong. I feel it in my bones. The terror on her face, the wringing of her hands, the frequent glancing over her shoulder, means she has to tell me something and it can’t be good.
“Ava, what is it?” I grasp her upper arms, hoping to infuse her with strength. “You can tell me anything.”
She gnaws on her bottom lip, unable to meet my eyes. I give her arms a gentle squeeze and she finally drags her gaze upward.
When I see regret, fear and hope, I don’t know what to think.
“Ava?”
“I’m pregnant, Mom.”
Three little words that drop a bomb into our midst, a detonation I know will have far-reaching consequences.
Chapter25
Lucy
The rest of the meditation session is uneventful—Craig and Demi reappeared shortly after my bizarre vision—but the last thing I feel like doing is relaxing after what I saw and heard. As an isolated incident, I wouldn’t be worried, but seeing and hearing Mom everywhere I turn here is disconcerting.
Okay, it’s more than that, but I’m playing down my abject terror that this place has a weird hold over its inhabitants. Maybe it’s not Cora I have to worry about as much as what’s within the walls of Arcania itself?
