Chapter 4
The rules began the next morning.
Nadia was on her way to the study with a duster and a bottle of polish when Clarissa stepped into the doorway and folded her arms. Behind her, the walnut desk and the bookshelves stood in their usual order, and the morning light came through the tall windows and lay across the carpet like something precious.
“Starting today, you’re not allowed in here,” Clarissa said.
Nadia stopped. “It’s part of my work. Mr. Hawthorne likes the room kept—”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.” Clarissa’s voice was flat, cold as stone. “When I say you’re not allowed in, it means you’re not allowed in. And the next time you open your mouth to contradict me, you’ll learn that in this house there are people who are allowed to speak and people who are only allowed to stay silent.”
Nadia looked past her at the desk. Seven years of polishing. She had learned the grain of that wood the way she had learned the lines on Mila’s palms.
She lowered her head and stepped back.
That afternoon, Clarissa called her up to the dressing room to rearrange a wall of cosmetics. The room smelled of powder and roses. Clarissa was on the phone with a business partner, a bottle of dark dye in her hand, and when Nadia walked past with a stack of towels, Clarissa’s wrist tilted — a small, casual movement, the kind that could never be proved — and the dye poured down the front of Nadia’s white uniform.
“My God,” Clarissa cried. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Are you so clumsy you can’t cross a room without ruining something?”
Nadia stood very still. The dye was cold and wet against her chest, spreading in a black stain that she knew would never wash out.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said.
“Sorry.” Clarissa looked at her with something like delight. “You’re always sorry. Do you know what you are, Nadia? You’re a woman who apologizes for existing. It’s the only talent you have.”
Nadia went back downstairs and changed into a spare uniform. She scrubbed the stained one in the laundry sink until her hands were raw, and the stain stayed, and she hung it to dry anyway, because it was the only one she had.
The worst of it came the next afternoon, when Mila stopped by with a box of pastries.
She stood in the side passage near the kitchen, her cheeks pink from the cold, and she and Nadia talked with their hands, quickly, the way they always did when they were happy. Mila had made a new kind of roll. The baker said she had a gift. She wanted Nadia to taste it.
Clarissa passed by on her way to the car. She stopped.
“What a strange sight,” she said. “Two sisters. One who can’t speak, and one who really shouldn’t.” She smiled at Mila, a warm, lovely smile. “Perhaps you should both learn to keep quiet according to your place.”
Mila couldn’t hear the words, but she saw Nadia’s face, and her own smile faded.
Nadia’s hands closed at her sides. Her nails bit into her palms. For one moment she wanted to answer — wanted to say something that would wipe that smile off Clarissa’s face — and the wanting was so strong it frightened her.
Then she thought of Mila’s ears. The surgery. The follow-up. The folder on the counter.
She lowered her head.
Clarissa watched her do it, and something in her eyes sharpened with pleasure. “Good girl,” she said, and walked on.
That evening, Nadia was called to the scullery. Clarissa was there with the folder again.
“The clinic called,” she said. “Mila’s follow-up. I told them to reschedule.”
Nadia’s hands went cold. “It’s a routine appointment. She needs—”
“Indefinitely.” Clarissa put the folder in the drawer and closed it. “Until I decide otherwise.”
She left. Nadia stood in the scullery with the smell of bleach and the sound of the dishwasher, and she understood, finally, that obedience would not save her. It would only teach Clarissa how much could be taken.
She dried her hands. She walked up the back stairs, down the hall, and stopped outside Theodore’s study.
She knocked.
May you like
The door opened. Clarissa stood there, her hand still on the handle, her platinum hair bright in the lamplight.
“I wondered when you’d come,” she said.
