He’s distracted. This is my chance.
I hop onto the sofa arm, and as he’s turning around to spot me, I snatch the envelope from his hand. He swears under his breath as he lunges for me. The lamp crashes to the floor, but I’m already halfway up the stairs. Luca turned into my surrogate big brother for the year that I lived here—which means I’m fast on my feet. I bypass my own room, which does not have a lock on it, and race to the third floor.
The third floor, which I had always avoided before. Now I know exactly which room is Ivan’s, and I know it has a lock. I close myself in and turn the key.
Luca bangs on the door. “Let me in. Now.”
“How about no?” Okay, so maybe I’m taunting a little. It’s not very often I get to best him.
“This isn’t a game. Open the door.”
“Of course it’s not a game,” I call through the door. “I know why you don’t want me to open it. But it’s my letter, and I’m opening it.”
“I will tear down this fucking door,” he yells.
“Good luck with that,” I mutter. I have no doubt the lock is steel enforced or something equally ridiculous. Ivan would have insisted on that. Luca can probably bust inside, but not before I open this letter.
If it’s some creepy note from the person vandalizing the club—or from Leader Allen—I would have shown it to Luca and Ivan. It’s not like I want to protect the bastard sending it. But I want the chance to open it myself. I know they’d never let me. They’d open it for me, dissect every part of it, and only give me the information they want me to see. It’s what they did about the note on my mirror and the one in blood. I’m tired of being in the dark.
Besides, the letter was addressed to me. Candace Rosalie Toussaint. I have lived for years as Candy, just one name, a bastardization of the one my mother gave me. To hear my real name, to see it in typed letters…I can’t ignore the siren call even if it brings me to my death.
There’s a little tab meant to tear open the envelope. I do so and then take a deep breath. Inside is a single type-written sheet of paper and a smaller, regular-sized envelope.
I look at the typed paper first. It’s on some kind of stationery for a lawyer. It looks very official, but I’ve never heard of them. And then I begin to read…
…your mother’s lawyer and the executor of her estate…
…all funds donated to the Church of Harmony Hills…
…she entrusted me with this letter to her only child in the event of her death…
The room had seemed so big before, but it’s closing in on me. I can’t seem to get any air. My hands are trembling as I pick up the envelope.
This one also has the law firm’s name and address in the return label—as if she wrote the note in the office. My full name is scrawled across the front. Candace Rosalia Toussaint. I didn’t see her write that much. There wasn’t exactly a stash of paper and pens in our room. That was reserved for Leader Allen and the elders and the boys in school. I still recognize her handwriting, though. I could never forget. She drew the letters into the dirt when she first taught me to read—or tried. Without any books or practice it never went very far.
Only here, with Ivan, have I learned to understand.
Dear Candace,
If you’re reading this, it means my time as a sinner has come to an end. Don’t be sad for me, because it means I am at peace. I don’t know if this letter will find you or if you will want to read it. Of all the sins I committed in my life, what I did to you is the most unforgivable.
If it is any consolation, I brought you to Harmony Hills believing it was for your own good—that sunshine and grass would do for you what streetlamps and sidewalks had not done for me. I discovered too late that it’s not the bars that make a jail, but the jailor. And wherever the Good Lord sees fit to send me, I will be at peace because I know that you are free.
Her name is signed at the bottom: Rosalie Toussaint.
I slide to the floor, the letter half crumpling in my hand. I can’t take in a full breath, can’t do anything but shake in the middle of the floor, my knees pulled to my chest. Tears make the room blurry, and that’s a relief. I don’t want to see anything. Not even Ivan’s bed and his big sparse room—normally a comfort. Now it just reminds me of how much I’ve lost.
That’s how Luca finds me when he finally busts the door open. I hear wood splinter behind me, but I can’t move. I don’t care. At least he doesn’t try to touch me, either in comfort or anger.
It’s Ivan who does that, when he gets home a few minutes later. Ivan who rips the letter from my hand to read what I could never say aloud. Ivan who drops to his knees next to me to cradle me close.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I think I might black out for a few minutes. Or maybe longer than a few. The sun has set by the time I come awake in Ivan’s arms in the middle of the bed.
“I’ll leave tomorrow morning,” Ivan is telling Luca, who goes to make arrangements.
“Where?” I mumble. I shouldn’t need him. I can’t need him. After reading my mother’s letter, I know that I was right to try to leave here, leave him. But the thought of being away from him right now feels like knives in my skin.