“I know,” I said, laying a tentative hand on his shoulder. Immediately, Luis grasped it and pulled me to him. I pulled away, and Luis stumbled, too drunk to keep hold of me. “Look, Luis, why don’t you go home and get some sleep, and I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll talk then, okay? But you need to get some rest.”
Luis hesitated. “You’ll call me tomorrow? You promise?” I nodded. This seemed to appease Luis. “You’ll come home then?” he asked.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said. It was neither a yes or a no, but Luis was too far gone to notice. With a final gentle push from me, he headed out the door, and I closed and locked it behind him.
With Luis safely on the other side of the door, I sagged against it, heart pounding. How much longer could I keep this up? Luis was never going to take no for an answer, and I was afraid of what he would do if I kept denying him. So far, my protests that my father needed me and that we would talk soon had satisfied Luis, but I knew that couldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, he would try to make me come home.
From the next room, my brothers shouted, startling me. My sisters’ shrill laughter pierced my head, and I felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on. I glanced out the peephole. Luis was gone, for now, but I knew he would be back. I could only hope that I wouldn’t be here when he arrived.
That thought prompted a memory, and I pulled out my cell. Sound and chaos swirled around me: my brothers jeering at the TV, my sisters bickering loudly, my father calling my mother’s name. It was too much. I needed a break. I deserved a break. I dialed Bonita’s number.
“I’m in,” I said, by way of greeting. “I’ll do the piece. When do I leave?”
3
Étienne
“Thank you, Bonita, you’ve been very helpful,” I said.
“You’re more than welcome,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Isabel is a talented young writer, and I have every confidence in her.”
Thanking Bonita again, I hung up the phone and turned to the window, heart pounding hard in my chest. This could work. It could really work.
Relax, I reminded myself. Don’t get too excited. Remember the last time.
I knew it was a mistake to get too hopeful, but still. My fingers tapped an anxious beat against my desk. It had been so long. So long since we’d had any kind of companionship, any contact with the outside world. I was starting to get desperate. We all were.
This girl, this journalist, could be the answer to our problem. Or she could cause even more, like the last one.
Bleakly, I recalled how hopeful we had all been when she’d shown up. Bridget. When we’d found her on that dating app, we should have known that she was too good to be true. She’d shown up, and immediately, things had started to fall apart. It was like she took some kind of perverse pleasure in setting us against each other. Instead of bringing us closer together, she wedged herself in between the seven of us, pushing us further and further apart. Towards the end, we could barely be in the same room as one another, and Jacques … Well, we’d almost lost Jacques.
This girl would be different, I was sure of it. Well, almost sure. I knew that Bernard had misgivings. Of the six of us, he had known Jacques the longest, and was the most protective. It wasn’t worth the risk, he would say. I understood his hesitance, but we had to try. The potential reward outweighed the risk. It wasn’t good for Jacques, being cooped up in this castle for so long. It wasn’t good for any of us.
We needed someone to help us release this tension.
But it had to be the right someone. Bridget had taught us that. She needed to be strong, kind, open-minded, and of course, adventurous. She needed to be able to handle all of us. Someone young who was looking for something fun, without getting too attached. And finally, she had to be sober. Jacques hadn’t allowed a drop of alcohol to pass through his doors in five years now. It was a sacrifice, to be sure, but that wasn’t the aspect of the outside world that those of us in the castle missed the most.
When the six of us entered the castle under Jacques’ employment, we agreed to stay confined to the castle grounds. At first, Jacques’ sobriety was simply too fragile to have constant comings and goings.
“I think it would be best for us to all stay on the grounds for the time being,” Bernard had told us. “If he leaves the castle, I don’t know what he’ll do. And it would be too hard for him to watch us come and go if he can’t.”