CHAPTER 2- THROWN OUT INTO THE RAIN

CELESTE'S POV

I stood there with my palm pressed to my cheek and looked at him.

He was looking back at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before, something between shock and anger, like he was surprised by what he had just done.

I was surprised too, never in the past twenty three years had he ever layed his hands on me.

Nobody in the kitchen moved.

I did not give anyone the satisfaction of watching what came next.

I turned and walked out, heading straight to the balcony.

Because the last thing I was going to do was let any of them see me break apart in that kitchen with the staff watching and Vivienne's lipstick still smeared from her champagne glass and Margaret standing there with her hands folded like she had just watched something she had been waiting on for a long time.

I made it to the corridor before the first teardrop fell from my eyes.

I made it to the end of the corridor before I stopped being able to see properly, everywhere became blurry.

The balcony door at the far end of the east wing was unlocked and I pushed through it into the night air and let the door close behind me and then I sat down on the cold stone floor with my back against the railing and let myself cry in a way I had never done before.

Even when my mother died I don't think I cried that much.

It came from pain bottled up for years, scars I choose to ignore.

I thought about my mother.

Whenever things got bad I always thought about her, I would always remind myself that if she were here things would have been better, I wouldn't have been here with Margaret and Vivienne and watch them torture me everyday.

I thought about the years after she died, being brought into this house that was never mine, being handed a uniform in the home that bore my last name, being raised by a father who found it easier to pretend I was just another member of staff than to face the truth.

I sat on that balcony for a long time until the tears ran out and the cold air settled against my skin.

I got tired of sitting there for too long so I got up, straightened my uniform, and went to find my phone. I decided to go to my friend's house.

*****

Nadia opened the door before I had finished knocking, took one look at my face, and pulled me inside without saying anything.

That was the thing about Nadia. She had known me long enough to understand when things were bad.

She made tea and sat across from me at her small kitchen table and waited while I told her everything, starting from the slap in the main room and ending with my father's hand across my face in a kitchen full of people who watched and said nothing.

When I finished she was quiet for a moment.

"Okay," she said. "You're moving in here. Tonight. I'll help you pack."

I shook my head.

"Celeste."

"I can't."

"Why not? Give me one reason that actually makes sense."

"Because I can't run to someone else every time things get hard," I said. "Because if I do that I will never stop. I need to figure out how to stand on my own properly, not just shift from one place where I'm tolerated to another place where I'm the friend who needed rescuing."

She looked at me for a long moment with the expression she used when she disagreed with me but understood that pushing further would not help.

"You are the most stubborn person I have ever met in my life," she said.

"I know."

"You're going to let me know if it gets worse."

"I always do."

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand and did not let go for a while, and we sat there in her small warm kitchen drinking tea and talked about other things for a while.

By the time I left it was late and the city outside was wet and dark, rain coming down at a slow pace that had soaked the pavements and turned the streetlights into blurred orange smears in the distance.

I pulled my jacket tighter and walked to the bus stop and rode the bus home in silence.

The house was dark when I turned onto the street.

I pushed the gate open and walked up the path and reached for my key.

The front door opened before I touched it.

Margaret was standing at the door way with her arms crossed on her chest.

She was still fully dressed in the same clothes she had on this morning, which meant she had been waiting, and she looked at me with the expression of someone who had spent the last few hours preparing exactly what they were going to say.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"I went out," I said.

"Out," she repeated. "You cause a scene at a family event, embarrass this household in front of our guests, assault your sister, disrespect your father, and then you disappear for hours and come home at this time with nothing to say for yourself except out."

"I didn't assault anyone," I said. "And I didn't cause a scene. I was the one—"

"I have been more than patient with you," she said, cutting across me smoothly. "More than patient. I took you into this home when you had nowhere to go. I have given you a roof and work and more grace than you have ever deserved and this is consistently how you repay it."

I said nothing, I just kept my head bent avoiding her eyes.

"Let me be very clear," she continued. "One more incident. One more embarrassment. One more moment where you make this family look bad in front of people who matter, and you will not have a place in this house anymore. Do you understand me?"

"I understand you," I said.

She looked at me for a moment longer, then stepped back from the door.

"Go and get your things from outside," she said.

I stopped.

"What?"

"Your things," she said again. "Go and get them."

I did not understand what she meant. I walked past her through the door and down the hallway and out through the back entrance toward the front gate and then I stopped walking.

My bags were outside the gate.

Every bag I owned. Two suitcases and a duffel bag and a box of the things from my room. Sitting on the pavement in the rain, soaked through, the cardboard of the box already beginning to give at the corners.

A throaty sound escaped my lips as I ran towards my things.

I ran through the gate and dropped to my knees on the wet pavement and grabbed for the box first because the things inside it were things that could not be replaced, the photographs of my mother, the small things she had left me, and the cardboard was already wet and soft and falling apart in my hands and the rain was coming down hard and soaking through my jacket and I could not hold it back anymore, I just wanted to cry.

But then suddenly the rain stopped hitting me.

I looked up slowly.

An umbrella drifted into view, held by a man I’d never seen before. He was tall and broad-shouldered, looking down at me with an unreadable expression. All around us, the downpour continued to slash against the pavement, but he just stood there, keeping the umbrella perfectly still above my head.