To my sides, large doors opened to a sitting room on the right and a music room on the left, and in front of me was the grand staircase with two sides curving toward each other to combine at the top, the marble a pristine snow white with gold that was the exact opposite of the floors. Dark iron banisters led up to cherry wood handrails, and the balcony stretched out to where the entire family could stand and greet their guests.
My eyes stopped as I followed the line of the balcony.
There in the shadows stood a man looking down. I couldn’t see his face for the darkness that hid him, but I could tell he was tall and broad, his arms stretched out on either side of him, hands gripping the rails.
He was an imposing figure that didn’t move as Franklin continued leading me through the foyer, a man that never spoke yet watched my arrival.
I almost tripped over my own feet, but Franklin’s arm tightened around my waist to balance me where I stood.
“Are you all right?”
It took effort to pull my gaze from the man, a shy smile tilting my mouth to look at my uncle. “Yes. Sorry, I just -“
I looked up again, and the man was gone, as if he’d never been there to begin with.
Shaking away the oddity of his presence, I laughed it off. “I think I’m just tired.”
Franklin grinned. “Let me show you to your rooms. You can take a long bath and rest up. There’s nothing for you to worry about here. You’re home now, Lisbeth.”
Lisbeth
It will take time to settle into this place.
I kept telling myself that, kept repeating those words as a mantra when I woke up on the first day home and couldn’t force myself to crawl from bed.
Exhausted from the months of worry while my accounts ran dry and I believed I had nowhere to run, I’d spent the first day watching as my old life was reconstructed around me. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were brought to me in bed while maids hurried to bring in fresh towels and toiletries.
Everything old was taken from my rooms and replaced with new soaps, shampoos, bath oils and other luxuries I didn’t necessarily want or need. I didn’t begrudge the staff, though. They were only doing their job. However, a few hours undisturbed would have been preferable, just so I could adjust to the fact that I was home again and no longer on the run.
By the second day, I felt brave enough to venture out of my suite of rooms. And while the bones of the house were the same, the air it breathed felt rancid.
My fingers chased over the chair rails of the walls, my eyes admired the stained glass windows inset within the numerous nooks and alcoves that were never used often but would be a good spot for anyone seeking to read a book while relaxing on the tufted sofas.
It escaped me how ornate the interior details of the mansion were, how those same details had been the first to become hazy in my mind over the last ten years. Reacquainted with them now, I understood just how magical my life had been up until the night of my ball.
Finding my way downstairs, I walked past a door and heard two distinct voices; one male, one female. It was a pillow whisper followed by sensual laughter that caught my attention and left me curious. I knew it was rude to peek inside that room, but the door was cracked, and I found myself flattening a palm against the wood to peer through at the source of the noise.
Behind me, footsteps approached from a distance. I turned, my cheeks pink from embarrassment for having been caught spying, only to see that someone had turned down another hall.
Leaving the lovers to their games, I walked to the hall to see who might have caught me, but it was empty, the footsteps gone as if I’d imagined the entire thing.
It was like that the rest of the day.
No matter where I went, I felt watched, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, my skin prickling in response. I assumed the staff must have been curious about the long lost daughter now home, but they didn’t stare at me openly or ask many questions.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling.
Lunchtime rolled around, and I spent it with Franklin in the dining room. He was cautious when answering many of my questions, his demeanor somewhat rushed and distracted, like he had somewhere else to be. But he was pleasant and cordial, several times suggesting that I make myself at home as much as possible and spend some time in the gardens.
After lunch, he’d excused himself to tend to business, and I was alone again, wandering the halls, attempting to remember a life lived inside what felt like a giant dollhouse.
That was the truth of my childhood when it was stripped down to the barest bones: I was nothing more than a living doll to my father, a trinket to be admired, and while I knew my mother loved me, she was always too busy with planning the next party or spending her time with whatever guests happened to be here at any given time.
I spent most of my childhood alone when I didn’t have friends visiting. Alone except for one boy who never looked at me and refused to talk. Thoughts of him kept floating into my mind as I wandered halls and explored empty rooms, my meandering path with no clear destination, eventually landing me in the place I’d last stood before my life was upended.
Draped in shadow in the large empty spaces where the low light from wall sconces didn’t quite reach, the ballroom was exactly as I remembered it.
Three large chandeliers hung in a line down the center. Even unlit, they were impressive, the crystal prisms dripping like liquid diamonds off the multilevel frames. I walked slowly beneath them, staring up, and recalled the beads of rainbow color that would mark the ground when all the bulbs fired to life.
In the center of the room, I stopped and turned a slow circle, realizing just how big this space was, so large that from the middle, you couldn’t clearly see one side or the other. Yet, it had never seemed as massive to me when I was younger. Maybe I was simply accustomed to it, the lavishness lost on a child who never understood that beyond the walls of her home, there were people suffering and starving.
Wealth does that to you, I assumed, it fastens blinders to your eyes and prevents you from seeing the truth. It whittles away at your ability to understand that while you walk on marble and dress in silk, there is an entire world of people who can barely afford shoes.
I’d only experienced that type of worry for a few short months, and it had been enough to send me running back to a house that I believed might comfort me. I’d chosen the blinders because I wasn’t savvy or strong, my makeup not quite sturdy enough to live through hardship.
It made me wonder if my family’s wealth had crippled me more than I understood.
While standing in place, I tried to imagine what the ballroom must have looked like on that night, tried to understand the silence that must have suffocated the walls after all those people had been slaughtered. I tried to picture the bodies lying where they’d fallen, tried to experience the fear they must have felt when bullets were fired from a psychopath’s gun.
It was a nightmare I thought I remembered: the scent of blood, the sound of screaming, the panic racing through swollen veins and across fractured bones.
But I wasn’t here, despite what my mind told me. Or else I’d be dead like them. Yet, I had no idea how I’d escaped. The memory was as lost to me as my friends had been that night.
How had one man managed to kill so many without someone stopping him before he’d managed to kill them all?