Page 71 of A Girl, Unbroken
So much time has passed and summer in Louisiana is almost over. The leaves of the ancient Rosewood Manor oaks already have a touch of gold and the humid air grows a bit cooler each day. In my flowing dress, I walk through the elegant halls where I once played hide-and-seek with Mom and Grandma as a child. So much has changed since those days and yet it is still the same. It still smells of old furniture and a bit of dust, but also of cleaning products.
I enter the light-flooded foyer where the only existing portrait of Richard Hampton hangs, the man I considered for a long time to be my grandfather. I avoid looking at the proud young stranger with the yellow eyes who always looks down on us like an employer.
“You don’t have to win all your battles in one day,” Nathan always says, and I know the time will come when I have to deal with that. However, that date is still far off in the future. And of course, there is a reason why this portrait is still hanging in its place.
As I step onto the large veranda, I spot Sammy and Grace playing catch in the garden between the rose beds. As so often, when I see Sammy, I think of Sparta, Stanton, and for a few seconds, my heart flutters with sadness, but then Sammy squeals with joy and I have to smile. It was one of Ian’s best ideas to bring the two of them here. And not only them. Ian’s parents also live with us, Jack’s grandmother and his little sister, May, as well as Raphael’s dad and his aunt.
Rosewood Manor stood empty for so long because my father was afraid of Isaac and his own past, but now this mansion shines in its former glory and that makes me happy. It feels like I still have a tiny piece of my former life, something that has not been tainted by my father and his lies. And it was my luck that Dad signed this property over to my mom a long time ago for tax reasons. Normally, I would not have been able to use it until next year, but I was able to bring that date forward with my lawyer. For three weeks, since we moved in, Nathan, Ian, Grandma, and I have dusted the furniture, washed the long silk curtains, and scrubbed all the man-sized windows and floors. Jack, Raphael, Kjertan—or Rayk—after they arrived, trimmed the hedges, trees, and bushes in the garden, and Nathan and Ian re-erected the marble columns and antique sculptures, some of which had been lying desolately in the garden. Now everything is as magnificent and fairy tale–like as it was when I was a child, and most of the rooms in the mansion are occupied. Basically, we live in a kind of commune, waiting for Mr. Hampton’s trial while we put things in order here.
“Hey, love.” My grandma comes outside with a tray of glasses and a carafe of homemade lemonade. “Where is Nathan?”
“Waiting for me.” I smile, take the tray from her, and set it on the table.
“Then you should go.” She waves happily toward the garden where Ian, Kjertan-Rayk, Raphael, and Jack are working. Theywere just waiting for Grandma. Laughing, they storm the veranda, high-fiving each other and gulping down the ice-cold lemonade like beer.
“Great, Mrs. Farmer. If you were twenty years younger, I would marry you just for that lemonade.” Ian grins mischievously, but I look away to watch the twin. I still hope that one day he will give himself away in some way, but he is as cautious as if he were walking on glass every day. As cautious as they all are with me, I still have a concrete suspicion about him.
Grandma’s laughter draws my gaze back to her. I can’t believe how young she still seems and how much she reminds me of Mom. She is one of those people who master life with dignity no matter how great the loss. Her husband, my maternal grandpa, died when my mom was ten years old, and almost fifteen years later, Grandma lost her only daughter, and shortly after that, her second husband. And yet she seems to defy these losses. Her eyes still radiate joy and a certain mischief that makes her so attractive. I have also rediscovered a part of my life with her. And even though I know that Nathan is probably waiting at our entrance, I stay with Grandma until the men get back to work. I look after them thoughtfully.
“What am I supposed to tell her one day, Grandma?” I ask, looking at the twin who is doing his favorite thing—chopping wood.
Naturally, she knows immediately what I mean. “You don’t have to decide that now, Willa. There’s still plenty of time. Do you know what your great-grandmother always said about how to climb the highest peak in the world?”
I shake my head. “No. How?”
“One step at a time.” She smiles warmly.
“I like it.” I’m so happy to have her back, and at the same time, so incredibly sad that I lost Mom. And Dad too, of course. At least the dad I loved as a child. Sometimes, it seems to me as ifthe accident happened only yesterday. It’s only now that I know what happened then that I can grieve on a much deeper level. Only now can I truly let Mom go. They say that no one will ever love you as unconditionally as a mother. Losing a mother’s love is one of the greatest tragedies that can happen to a child and I’ve become more and more aware of this loss lately.
I hesitate for a moment. I’ve been avoiding this question for the last few weeks because I was afraid of the answer, but now I ask it anyway. “Is it my fault that Mom is dead?”
My grandma, who is collecting the empty glasses and putting them back on the tray, looks at me in horror. “Your fault?”
“I betrayed her.”
“Willa, you were a child who, as innocent as you were, believed your father.” She wipes her hands on her apron. “It was Nicholas Hampton who killed her, not you.”
“I know. But if I hadn’t…”
She comes over to me and hugs me, squeezes me tightly as if she is deliberately ignoring my experiences last winter. In a way, her casual way of dealing with me is actually good for me. When she lets go of me, she says, “If only I had—maybe it would have been better—these are questions that lead nowhere because you can’t undo what has happened. The great clock of life only ticks in one direction, Willa Rae. If Ivy-Rose had managed to escape, your father’s wrath would most likely have hit her differently. He would never have accepted that she was leaving him, which is why she wanted to do it secretly. But in the end, it was she who hid those pills in your rabbit. Your father, Mr. Hampton, merely put two and two together.”
Part of me knows she’s right, but the other part fights the guilt every day. I now know that the drug was Tryfanol, an old pain medication that caused severe depression in almost seventy percent of cases and was therefore taken off the market sixteen years ago. I also know that my father’s surveillance crept intoMom’s life like a virus. It happened gradually, subtly. My mom didn’t even notice for a long time. At some point, after she had sneaked out of the house with me here in Baton Rouge, Dad had her prescribed the pills. She wasted away in front of the staff, but everyone believed she was suffering from depression, which they thought was probably just part of being an artist, after all, she painted with the same devotion as I did. When she became suspicious, she sent Grandma a pill in the mail and wrote:If it’s not a vitamin pill, don’t answer me, just pretend you’re in town unexpectedly. Come with an empty bag and I’ll give you some of our things.
Three months ago, I asked Grandma why she didn’t fight for custody of me back then. “You knew he wasn’t my father. Why didn’t you sue him?” I had unintentionally sounded reproachful, but she had just looked at me seriously and sadly.
“Your father threatened me, especially when I confronted him with my theory that the accident wasn’t an accident.”
“Which you were right about,” I said more gently.
She nodded. “But I didn’t know that at the time. It just seemed strange to me. Why didn’t he have a captain with him like he usually did? Why weren’t the life buoys on the decks? Had he left the option of setting fire open in case he couldn’t persuade Ivy-Rose to stay with him?” She sighed. “I didn’t want to talk you into anything, so I always hoped you would remember one day. The only truth I had for you was that Mr. Hampton was not your biological father.”
“It would have changed so much if I had known.”
“You were attached to him, Willa.”As anyone can be attached to someone else. “You loved him and idolized him. You wouldn’t have wanted to be with me. And after I confronted him with my suspicions, it started. Suddenly, dark figures were lurking outside my house and following me when I went shopping. He told me I stood no chance against him and Ialready knew at the time that he could buy his paternity in court. Who was I compared to him?”
I looked at her, shocked.
“I would have liked nothing more than to have you with me. But I was afraid, Willa Rae. Besides, if something had happened to me, who would have told you the truth one day?”
