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“It’s all very coincidental the way this has happened. I don’t believe in coincidences. We think the answers lie in your past.”
“My past?” I scrunched my face up. “Why do you think that?”
“Are you Norse, by any chance?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“There is a connection. I can feel it,” Charlie mumbled.
Zaide whispered, “We would like to hear your story, if you would tell it to us.”
My story?My breath stuttered at the thought of telling them.
I glanced at Charlie’s curious brown eyes and Zaide’s kind purple orbs. Being vulnerable in front of them would be hard but not impossible. They’d shared parts of their stories with me. They had their own trauma and understood mine.
Daithi hearing anything he could use against me sent my heart racing with fear.
But if it helped them figure out how I fit into this mess …
I took a deep breath and traveled a hundred years into the past.
CHAPTER22
MARGARET CLAUDIA
FRIDAY 8THJULY 1921
My mother pulled a gown over my head, and my shoulder ached as she pulled my hands through. I didn’t have the strength to stop her, my voice raw from screaming and pleading. Nor did I have the strength to dress myself. My head swam every time I lifted it, and my body felt so heavy that I could drop through the cracks in my wooden floor.
She dragged a comb through my hair like she used to when I was a child. The reminder of our past relationship caused a pang of sorrow to hit the walls of numbness surrounding my heart. A tear slipped from my eye.
But just one. They hadn’t given me water for two days, so I couldn’t afford to waste what little I had on tears.
Ribbon wrapped around my hair, and Mother tied a bow. I was gift-wrapped. A prized mare. A pig, seasoned and cooked, placed in the middle of a banquet table with an apple in its mouth.
Yet I could do nothing.
“Is she ready?” my father asked from outside the room.
“She is,” my mother replied.
She fluffed my hair once more before my father pushed the door open and stomped inside. I didn’t look up. I stared at my lap, my head too pained, too fuzzy, and too heavy to lift.
He clapped his hands. With a joyous tone to his voice, he said, “Well, let’s get going, then. There’s a car outside waiting.” When I didn’t stand from the dressing table, he snapped, “Claudia, you will not disobey me today. Get up. Now.”
“I-I can’t.” My words were a stuttered, slurred whisper, which made me cringe.
“You can’t?” he asked, then screamed, “You can’t?”
If I could think clearly, I would have been terrified. Some small part of me was. But my mind was slow, and I couldn’t hear that small part. I could barely hold my eyes open.
“My love, perhaps we should give her something to eat and drink before the wedding,” I heard my mother implore.
“She hasn’t said ‘I do.’”
“She can barely walk or talk. She’s so weak. It will be humiliating for us if she isn’t able to go through with this.”
I whimpered, and my eyes blurred with tears that didn’t fall. I knew food and water would make me feel better, but I couldn’t feel the urge for either anymore. And if they delayed the wedding because I was too weak to stand, I would spend more time locked in this room, screaming, starving, slowly dying and praying for escape.
