Beauty in the Broken

“Good morning, Russell,” I say when I reach the bottom of the stairs.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hart.”

“Lina, please.”

“Mr. Hart will put a bullet in me if I call you by your first name, but thanks all the same.”

The sad thing is I believe him.

In the kitchen, I find breakfast waiting. There’s toast, boiled eggs, ham, and cheese. It’s too early for Jana to be in, and Zane would rather let me starve than serve me a morsel of bread, which leaves Damian. Is this his way of apologizing for last night? No. If he wanted to, he would’ve done so. I can’t fathom why he’d prepare me breakfast, but I’m not one to waste food. I eat until the waistband of my dress feels too tight before putting the leftovers in the fridge and tidying the kitchen. I slip two rolls into my pockets—hot cross buns, today—to dry on the windowsill.

Irony can be cruel. I’m one of the wealthiest women in the country, but I’ve been starving for most of my adult life. Jack found it the most effective way of keeping me in check. A hungry person will do almost anything for food. At first, withholding meals was punishment for mistakes. He made me go to bed without dinner or skip breakfast and lunch. Then it became a way of feeding his sickness, the pleasure he derived of watching me suffer. In the end, it became a bargaining chip, my body for bread. Zane was right. I am a whore. I whored myself out for food when the beatings and isolation didn’t break me, and that’s when Jack’s torturing truly started to bloom. I rub my hands over the sleeves of my dress, testing the pull of the scar tissue when I flex my muscles, but it’s not what I want to think about. I bury those memories deep down where they’re inaccessible to even myself.

I pass the morning reveling in the freedom of having the upstairs rooms to myself, a big deal for someone who’d been locked up, but there’s something even more tempting. The sun is shining outside. At first, I go hesitantly, but when Russell doesn’t stop me, I go down the front steps and into the garden with Russell on my heels. There’s enough work to warrant the garden service that, according to Russell, comes in weekly, but I spot an old man hunched over a spade by the rose bushes. He looks to be in his sixties, much too old for this kind of work. Maybe he came with the house, like Jana.

“Good morning.”

He looks up, a cigarette hanging askew in his mouth. “There’s nothing good about it.”

“I’m Lina.”

“Mrs. Hart,” Russell says.

The old man ignores him. “I know who you are.”

“Oh.”

“Zane told me.”

“Have you been working here for long?”

Folding his hands over the handle of the spade, he laughs softly, mockingly, as if he knows something I don’t. “As long as Damian owns this place.”

“Which is—”

“Six days.”

We look at each other, me feeling like I’m trespassing and him with his cigarette smoke curling in the air.

Finally, he mumbles, “Some of us has work to do,” before digging his spade into the soil, dismissing me.

I continue toward the blue water of a swimming pool, glancing back at the old man and finding his eyes on me. It’s not a friendly stare.

“Who is that?” I ask Russell.

“That’s Andries. Don’t mind him. He’s always cranky.”

“How old is he?”

“Around sixty, I’d say.”

“He’s too old to be gardening in the heat of the day.”

“Nah.” Russell utters a wry chuckle. “He’s tougher than you think.”

“Why would Damian employ a sixty-year-old man?”

“He needs the job.” He stops, making me look at him. “Andries is Zane’s grandfather.”

There’s something about the way he says it, like a message he wants me to get. I do. If Zane isn’t my friend, neither is Andries, but Andries is just an old man. Even if he’s grumpy, I worry about letting an old man weed the soil.

“Can’t he do something else?”

Russell shrugs. “It’s not my place to ask.”

“Does he stay on the property?”

He points at a cottage behind the house. “In the granny flat.”

By the time we reach the pool, Russell is walking next to me instead of following. He shows me the summerhouse, greenhouse, and tennis courts. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why Damian needs all of this, and I can. It’s a statement. It’s what people ask first in certain conversations. “So, where you do live?” It’s a casual question, and it’s loaded. Location is everything. I, of all people, should know.

“We better head back,” Russell says. “You’re burning.”

I touch my cheek. “Am I?” I haven’t been outside for too long.

When Harold fetched me from the mental institution where he had me locked up for the better part of a year, drugged and kept on the brink of starvation, he decided isolation and starvation were effective ways of control. It was easier to handle me if I left the table always a little hungry, and never left the house at all. He didn’t lock the interior doors, didn’t even force me to close them, but he locked me in, nevertheless. As long as he’s hiding my child’s body from me, he knows I’ll never escape. He knows I’ll put my life on the line to find that piece of evidence. If Damian hadn’t returned to his study after his run, I would’ve been going through his drawers already. Not having realized how tight my stomach muscles are pulled, I make a conscious effort to relax them. Impatience is like an ever-present, distant ache that gnaws at my gut. I just have to bide my time.