“Oh, it’s wonderful,” she replies robotically, an answer that seems to be well-practiced and rehearsed for this very moment. “And Emilian takes such wonderful care of all of us. We really are very lucky.”
I reach up, my fingers softly coming to rest on her hand that’s still brushing through my hair.
“Bryony,” I speak up gently as I feel her fingers tremble beneath mine. “You don’t have to lie to me. You can tell me the truth, you know that, don’t you?”
She hesitates, and after a moment’s pause, I whisper, “I’m not going to tell him. I don’t want to get you in trouble, Bryony.”
With a fake smile, she returns to brushing my hair as if nothing’s happened, but a moment later, she starts speaking to me, her voice soft and lost in thought.
“I like my dolls so much,” she says, confusing me. “Sometimes they’re the only thing that helps me get through the day.”
“What dolls?” I question, narrowing my eyes at her.
I haven’t heard of any dolls.
“Oh, my favorites are the blue ones,” she says with a dreamy smile. “I also have green and red ones… The white ones I don’t take as often. They’re the strongest. I only take those when…”
She meets my gaze in the mirror and snaps out of her reverie, shaking her head as if she hasn’t said anything at all. Color me fucking confused. What the hell is she on about?
“Who gives you the dolls, Bryony?” I ask her, still trying to come to the bottom of her secret.
“Well, Emilian, of course,” she replies with a blissful smile. “He gets them from his doctor… bottles and bottles of them.”
Finally, I’m closer to finding out what these mysterious dolls are. They sound like medicine now. Sleeping pills, perhaps? Or a mixture of all kinds of stuff – uppers, downers, sleepers… anything to shut up my stepmother and prevent her from saying too much, like she’s doing now.
My stomach twists into knots. Fuck. My father is more fucked up than I’d thought. He’s filling my stepmother up with all kinds of meds to keep her mind dulled enough so she’ll overlook his terrible actions. The thought alone makes me uncomfortable. My father… he’s a monster.
“Bryony,” I go on. “I was hoping you’d help me understand something.”
She gives me a blank look in the mirror, which I take as encouragement to keep talking.
“Dexter Booth,” I go on, his name heavy on my tongue. “My fiancé. I wanted to know why my father wants me to marry him specifically. Why he’s so desperate for an heir?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Bryony laughs. “Emilian doesn’t involve me in his business matters… I’m much too pretty for that.”
She giggles, but there’s a bitterness to her voice when she says it, as if it’s a well-practiced statement my father has taught her to say at these occasions. Still, I believe her – he wouldn’t tell her the details of his business. She gossips like it’s nobody’s business, it would be a recipe for disaster if my father’s secrets got out this way.
I have a back-up plan though.
“What about my mother?” I ask next, trying to ignore the note of desperation in my own voice. “Do you know anything about her, Bryony?”
“Your mother?” she repeats, glaring at me in the mirror with her eyes glazing over. “I’m your mother now, Lily Anna.”
“Pandora,” I remind her.
“Lily Anna,” she insists, beginning to tug on my hair painfully yet again.
I wince at the pain but remind myself I need to get as much information as possible out of her. I can’t give up now, not before I find out more. We’re so close to a revelation, so close to learning more about my family’s secrets… I can’t back down now.
“He never loved her,” Bryony spits out, making my brows shoot up in surprise. “Your father, he never loved that woman. He loved me from the very beginning.”
/> She smiles proudly at this, as if it’s some kind of achievement. I don’t want to burst her bubble, so I keep up pretenses, carefully navigating the topic around the questions I desperately want answers to.
“Was he cheating on her with you?” I ask, almost afraid of her response.
But Bryony doesn’t falter, nodding right away as she continues to brush through my now silky hair. “Of course he was. He was sleeping with me when she was pregnant… he didn’t give a shit then, or now.”
Her voice has turned bitter, which makes me wonder whether she knows about my father’s secret meetings with Minnie. I have no doubts he has other women in the city, women he sleeps with without my stepmother’s knowledge. Or perhaps I was wrong all along – maybe she knew about them from the start, but kept her eyes firmly shut and her mouth, too. As long as she doesn’t make a scene, she can keep living her comfortable life, pretending to be none the wiser. She has too much to lose, after all.