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I don’t know what will become of us. I cannot have my family associated with the Miller family. Victor and I have worked too hard for too long.
Of course, when I asked Victor what to make of this, he hardly looked me in the eye. He cannot face realities the way I can. He’s always been weak.
In the journal, Maya read on with rapt horror. She read as her grandmother forced Bethany to stay home from school and never associate with her friends or classmates again. She read as Bethany grew more and more pregnant, lonely, and frightened. Diane forbade Veronica from speaking about Bethany’s pregnancy to anyone. She also kept Bethany away from the servants in the house to ensure that gossip didn’t whip its way through Hollygrove.
In essence, she locked Bethany away until she gave birth.
And then she forced Bethany to give the baby up for adoption.
November 8, 1971
Finally, the baby’s cries no longer echo through the Albright House. The only sound I hear is Bethany weeping into her pillow down the hall. I tried to tell her this is a good thing. Now that the baby is gone, she can return to her normal life. She can go back to school. (As soon as she loses the baby weight, of course.) And she can be a wonderful pillar of our family and our community, just as we planned.
December 19, 1971
I don’t know what’s gotten into Bethany. She walks around the mansion like a ghost. Although she lost the baby weight almost immediately, she refuses to see anyone, not even her dearest friends. Veronica says she’s “depressed.” I see no reason for that. Bethany made a mistake; I handled it. I made it go away.
Bethany’s clear descent into depression continued for the course of a year. In the diary, Diane wrote that Bethany refused school, that she hardly left her bedroom, and that she’d gotten tremendously thin.
September 22, 1971
Veronica is engaged to be married. Her fiancé is of good ilk. He’s handsome and wealthy, and he has wonderful plans for his future. Veronica seems pleased, as well. Tonight, we gathered to celebrate at the dining room table. I commented on Veronica’s fiancé’s brother, mentioning that Bethany would be eighteen next year. Maybe we could arrange a date? But a moment later, Bethany threw her glass of wine to the ground. Shards of glass went in all directions. She was gone in a flash, ripping up the staircase like a monster.
I don’t know what to do with that girl. I used to think she was the daughter who resembled me the most. Now, she’s like a stranger.
By March of the following year, Bethany was gone.
The only mention Diane made was on March 18, 1973:
Bethany left a note, but I’ve torn it up and burned it. Victor cried, and I called him a coward. We’ve lost a daughter— not in the traditional way, but in a way that shows just how weak she truly is. I hope wherever she is, she feels my disappointment. I hope she knows never to reach out for help. She won’t receive it.
Maya closed her eyes, imagining her mother at the age of eighteen, running away from home without a penny to her name. Bethany’s escape echoed Diane’s from the fifties when she’d left England. But without Bethany’s diaries, there was no way to know what Bethany had been thinking.
Maya tried to put the pieces together. Bethany had married Maya’s father at the age of twenty and given birth to Maya just a few months after the wedding. It stood to reason that Maya’s father had helped Bethany escape. That, or Bethany had met him shortly after.
Maya hoped her father had offered a sense of home for Bethany. She prayed she’d felt the love she never had with Diane.
Feeling resigned and broken-hearted, Maya flipped through the next several years of Diane’s diaries. She only ever referred to Veronica as her daughter and never once mentioned Bethany— not until 1981, the year Bethany died.
December 27, 1981
The hospital sent word of our darling Bethany.
As I walk through the haunted halls of the Albright House, I can still hear her laughter.
She will always be with me. I will always know her.
I pushed her away. And now, she’s gone forever.
I will always ache.
Maya’s eyes were heavy with tears. Abruptly, she closed the diary and stared at the hungry fire. This was the first “tender” diary entry Diane had made in decades. It was as though she’d finally recognized her own humanity, but it had been too late.
All Maya wanted in the world just then was to sit by the fire with Olivia beside her. She wanted to translate the horror of their family’s past. She wanted to find forgiveness somewhere in this mess.
But when she picked up her phone, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but call Brad. It was past eleven at night, far beyond Brad’s bedtime, and the phone rang and rang without answer. Maya ended the call and set the diaries to the side. She felt as though she’d exerted herself, as though she’d just run up an enormous hill and was peering out over a kingdom from the top. She’d discovered the truth of her life and explored her mother’s trauma. But now, what could she do about it? She was lost.
ChapterNineteen
