Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
What? I wanted to see. He tried to reach for me to stop me, but I bobbed and weaved out of his grasp as I moved to peek around the corner too. I was tired of being kept in the dark.
Oh my God!
My gasp was enough to get Mrs. Hawthorne’s attention, because she swung around from where she was on her knees.
At the edge of a freshly dug grave.
Walker tried to yank me backwards almost immediately, but I fought him off as Mrs. Hawthorne sprang to her feet. So spry still, even at her age.
Now that she’d seen us, Walker let go of me and strode towards her. “What have you done?”
Mrs. Hawthorne shook her head pathetically. “’Twasn’t me, lad. You have to believe me. It wasn’t like this in the beginning. This wasn’t how it used to be—!”
I rushed past her and ran to the grave. The dirt was freshly turned over. And I’d never felt more afraid as I turned to look at Walker. “Is this what happened to the belle who was here before me?”
Walker had Mrs. Hawthorne gripped by her upper arms, and she wept pathetically, sagging until he was all but holding her up. “I didn’t know! It didn’t used to be like this! I’m sorry!”
Walker shook Mrs. Hawthorne, but not roughly. She was becoming hysterical all on her own. “What happened that night Cindy disappeared? Tell us everything. Now.”
Mrs. Hawthorne sagged even more in his grip, tears rushing down her cheeks. “There used to be rules,” she whispered, as if begging Walker to understand. “Rules about how far they could take it with the belles. But then…” Her eyes dropped. She couldn’t hold his gaze.
“Then what?” Walker demanded.
“Then they started breaking the rules,” she said, and sank completely to the ground. Walker moved with her, crouching in front of her.
“What does that mean?” he asked. “You have to tell me now. You aren’t them. Deep down I know it. You helped raise me, Mrs. H. Sometimes you were more of a mother to me than my own.”
She blinked at Walker through her tears and nodded.
“Tell me what they’ve done. Tell me what ‘breaking the rules’ means,” Walker repeated.
Mrs. Hawthorne’s eyes drifted to the side and her voice became monotone. “I could see… that sometimes the women were just toys they didn’t care if they broke. We weren’t always… real… to them. In my day, we had the protection of the house. But now…”
Her eyes came first back to Walker, and then to me. “The first time it happened, I told myself it was just a terrible accident. The girl’s neck was snapped, and they said she’d fallen. And I… I wanted to believe them. But when it happened again...”
Mrs. Hawthorne shook her head and put a hand to her mouth as if she was nauseous. “Well, there were so many bruises that time. I knew it hadn’t just been a fall.”
I took a step back from her.
“How many?” Walker demanded. “Who did it? Was it my father?”
Mrs. Hawthorne’s eyelashes fluttered. “Five in the last ten years.”
“Five,” I gasped.
“Who?” Walker shouted and I put a hand on his arm.
He shook me off, but I looked around, scared. “Don’t forget where we are!” I hissed.
Now that I knew how very real the danger was… Even after everything that had happened, I’d never imagined! I grew up with these men! And then I shook my head at myself. Really—still? I was such a goddamned idiot, I was still clinging to that as if it meant anything. Didn’t I get it? They were monsters hiding behind their Southern gentlemanly veneer.
“Who did it? Was it my father?” Walker demanded again.
Then Mrs. Hawthorne started laughing, an ugly, bitter laugh.
Walker let go of her and scrambled backwards. When she finally spoke again, she spoke as if incredulous that he ever thought any different. “Of course it was him! It was all of them. They called me in for clean up and I found this one suffocated, with cuts all over her body,” Mrs. Hawthorne gestured at the grave. “The first time might have been an accident but now they do it for fun. Then they call me in to clean up their messes.” She began to sob again. “These women’s blood is on my hands too.”
I stumbled several steps away again, turned, and threw up into the grass.
“Shit, are you okay?” Walker asked, coming to pull my hair away from my face and knotting it at the nape of my neck.
I shook my head no. Definitely not okay.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” he said. “Then I’m telling the others.” He glared up at the Oleander in the distance. “We’ll bring this house of sin to the ground if it’s the last thing we do.”
Just as he said it and twilight began to settle, even further distant, I could see the headlights of cars coming down the Avenue of Oaks, beginning to arrive in front of the Oleander. Which could only mean that another Trial was about to begin.