I go to my room to change my clothes and remember my dream of my Aunt Helena. I don’t know if it was a dream at all, actually, and I wonder how I forgot, but now, I stand in my closet, looking at the floorboards and remembering what she said.
I get down on my hands and knees and begin searching for the loose board, knowing it’s a long shot. We’re talking over seventy years ago.
It takes me three turns around the place before I find it. It’s in the darkest part of the closet and I have to push all the clothes to the opposite end of the rack before I see the scratches along the short edge of one of the boards.
I try to dig my fingernail in, but only end up bending it backwards. I get up, look around. I need something thin but strong to get under it.
I go into the bathroom and find a comb. It’s the closest thing I have, but it’s not good enough. I don’t know where my pocket knife is.
There’s nothing I can use in my room. I guess he’s kept all sharp objects away. But I remember when I was in Lucinda’s room, she had a letter opener on her desk. I go out into the hallway, and once I’ve made sure no one’s around, I sneak into her abandoned room.
A violent surge of anger rushes me, and it takes me a minute to get myself under control. I want to hurt her. I want to hurt he like she did me. Like she did Sebastian.
Her room is a mess, I guess no one’s cleaned since she’s been gone.
I hurry to the desk and when I don’t see the letter opener on top, I open the drawers to search for it. I find it in the last one, slip it under my sleeve in case I run into anyone in the hallway, and breathe a sigh of relief when I’m back in my own room.
On my knees inside the closet, I wedge the letter opener between the slats and, with a little nudging, lift the board. I have a pretty good sense of smell and my stomach turns at the slight scent of decay that wafts out. I shove the thought that comes at me aside and peek into the gap and inside, I find a small notebook, rolled tight, crammed into the tight space.
I pull it out, make sure there isn’t anything else then replace the floor board.
I stand, spread the clothes out over the rack and head back into my bedroom. After tucking Lucinda’s letter opener into the nightstand drawer, I sit on my bed and open the notebook. I leaf through it, find that some pages have been ripped out. I wonder if she’d done that or if it was someone else. A quick glance tells me the entries are fragments, snippets of thought.
Winter
Cain gave me this notebook as a three-month anniversary gift. As if we’re a couple. As if I want to be here. Besides, I know he’ll make me pay for it later. He always does.
It feels like I’ve been here longer than three months. If I break my time up by brothers, I’m one-twelfth of the way done. I have nine more months before Cain must hand me over to his brother, Jasper.
I don’t know how I’ll survive those months because Cain, he has a cruelty to him. He takes pleasure from hurting me.
Jasper is different. I don’t know about the youngest yet, but Jasper is different.
Cain thinks his brothers will blindly obey him. Do as they’re told. He doesn’t know Jasper has already had me. I let him. I let him because he was tender.
It’s sick, I know. When I read that back, I want to rip that word to shreds, but he was tender, in his way.
I can’t think about time in years. I’ll die if I do. And I refuse to die at their hands.I turn the page over, scroll through more entries. None are dated, only the season noted, but if her time here was like mine, she didn’t know the date or the day or the year or anything. She knew morning, afternoon, night.
I flip to the next page where the handwriting is more choppy and jagged, not her pretty script.
Winter/almost Spring
He left me up on that whipping post all day after my lashing. I’m still freezing cold, still shivering. I can barely write.
And the worst was that he made Jasper do it.
I don’t know if I can forgive Jasper that, but what was the alternative? If he didn’t or if he was gentle, Cain threatened to shred my back.
But we were stupid. Careless. It’s not Jasper’s turn with me. I’m still Cain’s. That’s what this whipping was about, to teach us both.