I just want someone to hold me. To touch me and tell me it’s going to be okay. That I’m going to be okay. I want my brother, my daddy, my love—I’ll take anyone just to get some relief. So I sit here on the cold concrete and cry—alone.
Snow drifts down, weightlessly, falling over me as time passes. The whistling wind through the trees awakens me to the dropping temperatures, and I don’t even know how long I’ve been sitting here when I look up and through the gates. Wiping my tears, I stammer to my feet and try to get a better look at the property, but it’s hidden behind the trees. On the other side of the gate, the drive winds up a hill and through a mass of snow-covered trees, and beyond that is a mystery.
But I know.
He told me all about the house, the grounds, the flowers, the glass conservatory.
I look around to find a way in, but the gates and stone wall are nearly nine feet high, and there’s no way of climbing over.
What’s the point anyway? It’s not like anything’s waiting for me on the other side. I’m not even sure why I’m still here, and when I look down at my reddened, almost maroon hands, bloodied from the ice cuts, I know it’s time to go.
“DEAR, ARE YOU all right?”
“Just slipped on some ice while shopping,” I lie as Isla notices my dirty, wet slacks from where I spent most of the day sitting on the snowy ground. I know I look ghastly, and the part of me that’s trained itself well wants to poise up, but the weakness in me begs to slump its shoulders and take the embrace I know Isla would be willing to give. I don’t know which way to go.
“You’re a terrible liar, lassie,” she says as she takes my hand and leads me over to the dining room table and sits me down.
She rushes into the kitchen and quickly returns with the kettle as well as a cup and saucer. I watch as her frail hands pour the hot water and dunk in a tea bag before setting it down in front of me.
I don’t refute her accusation that I’m a liar. I’m too emotionally drained to play games, and then she remarks, “Your eyes look like they hurt.”
And they do.
I’ve cried more in these past few weeks than I have in my whole life. Pike taught me how to shut off my emotions, act like a machine so that no one could hurt me, and he taught me well. But the strength it takes to turn it all off is beyond what I feel I’m capable of at the moment.
My eyes are a constant shade of pink, and the salt from my tears has burned through the tender skin that surrounds them. Makeup only irritates it and stings, so I go easy with the powder in my feeble attempt to look as presentable as possible.
But I have to wonder why I’m even concerned about how I present myself. I’m thousands of miles away from America. I’m no longer pretending or fighting because I’ve already lost.
I don’t want to be Nina anymore. I don’t want the stupid life of Mrs. Vanderwal. It’s over. There’s nothing left of it because everyone is gone. Maybe, just maybe, I can stop fighting, stop the lies, stop fearing and hiding. For the first time since I was eight years old and left to decay in Posen, maybe now I can finally breathe. I just wish I knew how. It’s been almost twenty-one years of suffocating, and when I look over at Isla and see the years marked in the wrinkles of her face, I give her a little more truth.
“I went to the home he used to own.”
She reaches across the table and places her hand on my arm. “You said you lost him. What happened? Did he leave you?”
“Yes,” I choke out, trying to hold back my tears. “He died.”
“Bless you, dear. I’m so sorry.”
Swallowing hard, we both sit for a while before she breaks the silence and tells me, “I lost my husband eight years ago. Nothing can compare to the pain of losing the man you give your spirit to. When you put everything you have—everything you are—into the one who promises to take care of you, you become transparent and utterly vulnerable to that person. And when he’s taken away, so are you, and yet here you remain, left to continue living your life as if you have something to live for.”
“Then why go on living?”
“Well,” she starts, looking over to the fireplace mantel where a menagerie of picture frames line the wooden structure. “For me it was for my family. My children. It took a while, but eventually I found the strength to pull myself together and live for them.”
I scan the array of family portraits and candid snapshots, and when I turn back to Isla, she smiles, asking, “Do you have children?”
Her question hits me hard. I’m not sure how to answer because it wasn’t that long ago that I did have a child. A baby. A tiny baby growing in my womb, and now that womb is empty. So, I keep my answer simple, “I don’t have any family. It’s only me.”
“Your parents?”
Shaking my head, I repeat, “Just me.”