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“When did this happen?” I don’t even realize I’ve reached out to brush the scars with my thumb until I feel her hot skin, and then she jolts her head back.
“A lot has happened in ten years, Finn.” She rips out of my arms and her boots clack across the floor to the exit. I feel each step like a lead ball landing in my stomach.
I chase after her and grab her wrist when I catch up to her in the parking lot. I spin her around and my throat ties into a knot when I see water misting her eyes.
“What the fuck was that about, Ef?”
She shoves me in the chest, and I drop her wrist, her voice strained with sudden emotion, “Don’t start acting like you care. Not now, Finn.”
I let her walk away. My armor is too tight for her words to cut.
I think.
1.Bottom of the River—Delta Rae |
Chapter 9
Plates, Picture Frames, and Paintings.
Effie
Tenyearsago
Sometimes when my father’s angry, I can see it coming from miles away. There’s a change in the air, a prickle at the nape of my neck. That eerie sense of knowing even without proof, like when you feel you’re being watched.
When this happens, I know to lock my door before he shows up. Let him pound and pound on the wood and be grateful it’s not my face.
But today, I didn’t see it coming.
My mother’s powder room is thick with the scent of her perfume and hairspray, but it has the best mirrors in the house. I want to try my hand at portrait painting rather than my usual landscapes. Figured self-portrait sketches would be a good place to start and this vanity table with three panels of mirrors would be excellent. The end two mirrors are on hinges to capture different angles. I unscrew half of the globe bulbs around the perimeter to dim the lighting—I’m not trying to draw every single pore.
I’m on my third sketch when the door slams open, ricocheting loudly off the wall. I catch my father’s red, twisted face in the mirror.
“Like mother like daughter, who are you in here whoring yourself up for, Euphemia?” Spittle hits my cheek as he yanks my head by a rough fistful of hair.
There’s no makeup on the table, only my pencils and paper. “I was draw—”
“And how in God’s name did you manage to break every other fucking bulb? You’re a spoiled brat, breaking everything you touch.” Before I can explain they aren’t broken, my head is flung forward and my nose smashes into the vanity.
My eyes instantly water, and I taste a trickle of copper down my throat. I try to shuffle my sketches out of the way so I don’t drip blood onto them. They aren’t great but I would like to keep them. Unfortunately, that only gets my father’s attention.
“Yourself. That’s all you fucking think about.” He holds up a sheet of paper and examines my work with a sneer. “Heavenly Father, tell me what I did to deserve such a self-conceited bitch of a daughter?” I wince at the ripping sound as he shreds my work into pieces.
I should have predicted this. He has a tendency to destroy whatever he sees when he’s like this. Plates. Picture frames.Paintings.
He snatches another off the table, and I use the few seconds it takes for him to tear it in half to stuff the only remaining one into my pocket.
“Clean this up.” He pulls a silk handkerchief from his jacket sleeve and throws it at me. “And don’t get fucking blood on my rug.”
I don’t watch him leave, just listen to his Italian loafers scuff against the carpet as he crosses the room and slams the door just as loudly leaving as he did entering. I dab at my nose, sniffing back and swallowing the rusty taste of my own blood that drips down the back of my throat.
My phone vibrates on the vanity, and I jump at the sudden sound in the now-quiet room.
I don’t look at the caller ID, quickly answering to end the shrill sound. “Hello?”
“Hey, Eff, I’m at the corner.” A soothing warmth sinks into my bones at the smile in Finn’s voice, and I picture the way his left eye crinkles in the corner when he smiles.1
“I lost track of time drawing, but I’ll be right there.”
