Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Immediately, she stopped moving. I thought maybe I woke her up, but her breathing was even, her pulse steady and she fell deeper and deeper into sleep.
The gnawing sensation in my chest turned warm, comforting even.
How had I helped her from the nightmare? Did that mean the nightmare wasn’t about me? Did it matter?
It couldn’t have been about me. If that nightmare had been about me, then there was no way that my touch would have soothed it.
I held her tighter against me. Her hands went around my waist and she held me there as she slept.
The last several hours were spent trying to break this sweet, innocent girl, with her angelic face and unwavering light. I had beaten her, tormented her, and almost drowned her, and now I was taking comfort from holding her sleeping body.
There was no way around it. I was absolutely destined for eternal damnation.
CHAPTER 29
ROSE
Iused to think this time of year was depressing. The brilliant hues of fall dimming into the dead of winter. Now, as I stared out the car window, headed away from my secret haven and back to the city of vultures and peril, I couldn’t help but admire a bittersweet sadness in the landscape.
The leaves, now dark brown and dead, covered the ground, but I knew that eventually they would decay and be the sustenance that gave life in the spring. There even was something eerily beautiful about the way the branches stuck out of trees like sharp spikes twisting in on each other and themselves.
We didn’t see it in the spring because of the fresh leaves covering the sharp, bare truth. But it was still there. That made me think of my life and everyone in it. My mother’s appearance did not reveal her as the raging, blackmailing, violent narcissist that she was. She looked like many other society women. Perfectly polished on the outside and absolutely rotten on the inside.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if there wasn’t some similarity between nature and people. We all went through seasons of growth and decay, the growth and the splendor not being possible without that decay. Could that be what made nature so incredible? It didn’t hide what it was. It accepted and embraced it. Whereas on the Upper East Side, almost every single woman there spent millions to look like spring in the autumn of their lives.
Untold money spent on designer clothes, Botox, spa treatments, and plastic surgery, all to continuously look like the budding breath of youthful spring, while all the rot was still there, deep inside. Hidden but not gone.
Was there perhaps a better way? Could embracing the progression of time be what took a person from a youthful glow to the splendor of aging gracefully? Was there a point where if a person did not allow themselves to change, the rot would seep out anyway? Images of some of my mother’s older friends, the women who constantly looked surprised, or could not show any emotion at all, or had so much lip filler they could hardly be understood when speaking. Was that the rot coming through?
Or was the rot revealed by being so hateful that even a priest would destroy people close to you, just to see you suffer?
I hadn’t said a single word to Father Manwarring —Thomas—the entire morning. What was there to say? He told me to pack my paintings and leave them for someone to come box up and collect, then to get in the car.
So I did it without complaint. For a moment, I wondered if I should just burn the paintings so he couldn’t use them against me. What did it matter? He was convinced that my mother ruined his life, and she probably did, and he was going to destroy her through me.
What did it matter if he did it with my art or by some other means?
I was surprised, however, to see that he drove himself to come get me. He was a Manwarring. He could have easily taken the helicopter or have had someone drive him up. Instead, I was sitting in a black sedan in the front seat with him next to me, driving, while I stared out the window.
It was an odd feeling. I didn’t think I had ever been in the front seat of a car before.
“What happens now?” I asked as I saw the New York skyline peek through the distance.
“What do you mean? Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed,” I said, staring at him in disbelief. “Are you expecting me to continue on like we have? Am I supposed to just be okay with you destroying my mother’s life, destroying my life?”
“What life?” he scoffed. “Your mother controls absolutely everything you do. If anything, I’m setting you free. Before me, you had a boyfriend who was using you for a payday, one that used to screw your mother for money.”