Chapter Five: Down The Drain

Ivy

The estate was enormous and dark and it looked like the kind of place that swallowed people whole.

I saw it through the car window as the iron gates opened ahead of us, the black stone building rising against the sky with lights burning in its upper windows. The gardens on either side were perfectly kept. Not a single weed. Not a single thing out of place. Like the whole property was holding its breath.

I pressed my shoulder against the car door and watched it get closer.

Marcus hadn't spoken much during the drive. He was a large, careful man who watched me the way you'd watch something fragile, like he wasn't sure if I was going to break or bolt and was prepared for either. He wasn't unkind. He just wasn't warm.

I kept my eyes on my lap mostly. It was safer that way.

A woman was waiting at the front steps when the car stopped. Small and neat, somewhere around fifty, with silver-threaded black hair pinned at her neck and a face that was soft around the edges. She smiled when she saw me. A real smile, the kind that reached the corners of her eyes.

"Miss Rowan." Her voice was gentle. "I'm Mrs. Chen. I manage the house." She tilted her head the way a mother might. "Come inside, dear. You must be frozen."

I followed her through heavy wooden doors into an entrance hall that was bigger than Uncle Richard's entire ground floor. Dark floors, high ceilings, and a staircase that curved upward along the wall. Everything was clean and still and expensive in a quiet way, the way things are expensive when nobody needs to prove it.

I kept my eyes down. I focused on the floor beneath my feet. One step and then another.

But on the landing above, I saw them anyway.

The portraits.

I didn't stop walking. I didn't stare. But I counted them in my peripheral vision the way I counted everything, automatically, without meaning to.

Twelve.

Twelve women in white dresses looking down at the entrance hall.

Mrs. Chen led me up to the third floor and opened a door into a room that made my breath catch. A real bed with four posts and heavy blankets. A fireplace already lit. Curtains that reached the floor. And on the side table, a tray. Soup, bread, a small bowl of cut fruit.

My stomach cramped at the sight of it.

"The bathroom is through there," Mrs. Chen said, moving around the room, adjusting small things. "I'll come by before bed with tea. It helps with sleep, especially the first few nights." She paused beside me and touched my arm very lightly. "Are you all right?"

I stared at the tray of food.

"Yes," I said. "Thank you."

She left.

I sat on the floor next to the bed, because I didn't trust myself to sit on something that clean, and I pressed my back against the frame and breathed slowly until my hands stopped shaking.

This was not kindness. It couldn't be. I had learned that lesson so many times the lesson had become part of me. Kindness in my experience was always a door that opened onto something worse.

But the soup was there and it was warm and I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning.

So I ate.

Every drop. Every piece of bread. Most of the fruit.

Then I climbed onto the bed fully dressed and lay staring at the ceiling with my arms at my sides and my mind running through everything that had happened since Uncle Richard told me to get dressed eight hours ago.

I was married. Or I would be in three days.

To the man they called The Widower.

I had not seen his face properly. I had tried not to. Looking at people directly had never served me well. You saw too much and they knew you were looking and then they found ways to punish you for it. I had learned long ago to keep my eyes low. To look at floors, at hands, at the space just past someone's shoulder.

In his office, I had looked at his collar. His hands when he set the folder down. The window behind him. I had noticed the cut of his suit and the stillness of how he moved and the way the room seemed colder around him, but I had not let myself look at his face.

I didn't need to.

I had been in that room and I had come out of it still breathing. That was enough.

I must have slept at some point because when I opened my eyes the fire had burned lower and the room was darker and someone had left a cup of tea on the nightstand.

Mrs. Chen. She must have come in while I slept.

I sat up slowly and looked at it. Steam rising gently. The smell of chamomile and something faintly sweet underneath it.

My hand reached for it.

I stopped.

I sat very still with my fingers an inch from the cup and made myself think. Not feel. Think.

Mrs. Chen had come into this room while I slept and I hadn't heard her. I who heard everything. I who woke at the sound of a door handle turning down a hallway.

She had come in and I hadn't stirred.

I pulled my hand back.

I sat there for a long time looking at the cup. The tea cooled slowly. The steam thinned and disappeared.

Then I stood up, carried it to the bathroom, and poured it down the drain.