The next morning, we’re eating breakfast on the small terrace off our room. It’s early but the city is already abuzz.
“Will you take me there? I’ve always wanted to see it.”
“It’s overrun with tourists. I’ll take you when it’s quieter.”
“I don’t mind the tourists.” I bite into a croissant.
Sebastian runs his hand through his still wet hair and pours himself a second cup of coffee.
“I’ll take you. Just not right now.”
I want to ask why, but I have other questions today. “Okay.”
I finish my juice and set the glass down.
“Why did Lucinda do what she did? Kidnap me? Leave like she did? I don’t understand that. Why not just wait for the year to be up? Do what she wanted to do to me then? When it came to Ethan’s turn.”
“Because Ethan wasn’t ever going to get you.”
I’m momentarily stunned into silence.
“I don’t understand. Isn’t that the rule?” I ask.
“Ethan isn’t my father’s son.”
“What?”
“What I said. That’s why I went to Verona. I had final confirmation then. I didn’t want to use it if I didn’t have to. Ethan’s more fragile than you think. I told you that already.”
“What happened to him?” I remember how afraid of Sebastian he was. How he wouldn’t touch me for fear of him.
“After Lucinda’s discipline sessions, I used to take the boat out. A canoe I used to have. I always just went out on my own to deal with it. I didn’t want her to see what she did to me. How it impacted me. I didn’t want to see anyone and I didn’t want anyone to see me.”
He takes a minute, and I wait.
“Well, the beatings got worse after my father died. Not that he did much to stop them when he was alive, but they got worse. When I was sixteen, there was a particularly bad one. I still have scars from that one. I was ashamed. And by this time, pissed as fuck. So I invited Ethan on the boat with me.”
He shakes his head, runs his hand through his hair and is looking off like he’s seeing it again. Like he’s back there on that canoe.
“Ethan wasn’t always shitty. I mean, he was a lot of the time, but not always. Lucinda spoiled him, doted on him. Led him to believe he was a king. But he wasn’t. And after my father’s death, as soon as I came of age, she knew I’d take over the family. She knew her rein was fast ending. I sometimes wonder if she didn’t want to kill me outright. But that’s a whole other story.”
There’s another, longer pause.
“Anyway, Ethan joined me on the canoe and I rowed us out. I don’t like to think what my intention was.”
He gets up, walks into the room, keeps his back to me.
I get up too, go to him. I think I know where this story is going.
“You were a child, Sebastian.”
“No, Helena. He was a child. I was sixteen. Old enough to know better.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed.
“You don’t have to tell me the rest.”
“I want to. I’ve never actually told the story and I should. I own it.”
I sit beside him, watch him.
“Ethan wasn’t a strong swimmer. I think he was afraid of water, but never could admit it. So, when we were out there, too far from the island for anyone to see us, I tipped the canoe.”
He looks down at his lap for a minute before looking back up to me.
“I watched him struggle. I watched him sink. Watched him reach for me.” He shakes his head, looks at the floor. “I watched his eyes close as he stopped struggling. By time I pulled him up, he’d gone too long without oxygen. The damage was irreversible.”
“Oh, God.”
He stands, shakes his head. “No, Helena, there is no god. No god would allow these things to happen. Not to Ethan. Not to you. Not to my mother. Not to all the Willow Girls who came before.”
I go to him, touch his face, make him look at me. “You were sixteen years old and you were abused.”
“I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what I was doing. Ethan was innocent.” He looks away again. “So now you know why he’s so afraid of me. What I’m capable of. I think some part of him, some subconscious part, knows. Remembers.”
He pulls away, straightens. Takes a deep breath in and a moment later, he’s himself again. Like he’s shoved this other part of him into some box and closed and locked the lid.
“But there’s still Gregory to deal with. He is blood and he has a right to you.”
Sebastian is somber when we return to the island.
The other boat is already docked, and I wonder where Gregory is. If what Sebastian said is true, that he went to find someone to fuck last night. I don’t know why that bothers me.
I go to my room to change my clothes and remember my dream of my Aunt Helena. I don’t know if it was a dream at all, actually, and I wonder how I forgot, but now, I stand in my closet, looking at the floorboards and remembering what she said.
I get down on my hands and knees and begin searching for the loose board, knowing it’s a long shot. We’re talking over seventy years ago.
It takes me three turns around the place before I find it. It’s in the darkest part of the closet and I have to push all the clothes to the opposite end of the rack before I see the scratches along the short edge of one of the boards.
I try to dig my fingernail in, but only end up bending it backwards. I get up, look around. I need something thin but strong to get under it.
I go into the bathroom and find a comb. It’s the closest thing I have, but it’s not good enough. I don’t know where my pocket knife is.
There’s nothing I can use in my room. I guess he’s kept all sharp objects away. But I remember when I was in Lucinda’s room, she had a letter opener on her desk. I go out into the hallway, and once I’ve made sure no one’s around, I sneak into her abandoned room.
A violent surge of anger rushes me, and it takes me a minute to get myself under control. I want to hurt her. I want to hurt he like she did me. Like she did Sebastian.
Her room is a mess, I guess no one’s cleaned since she’s been gone.
I hurry to the desk and when I don’t see the letter opener on top, I open the drawers to search for it. I find it in the last one, slip it under my sleeve in case I run into anyone in the hallway, and breathe a sigh of relief when I’m back in my own room.
On my knees inside the closet, I wedge the letter opener between the slats and, with a little nudging, lift the board. I have a pretty good sense of smell and my stomach turns at the slight scent of decay that wafts out. I shove the thought that comes at me aside and peek into the gap and inside, I find a small notebook, rolled tight, crammed into the tight space.
I pull it out, make sure there isn’t anything else then replace the floor board.
I stand, spread the clothes out over the rack and head back into my bedroom. After tucking Lucinda’s letter opener into the nightstand drawer, I sit on my bed and open the notebook. I leaf through it, find that some pages have been ripped out. I wonder if she’d done that or if it was someone else. A quick glance tells me the entries are fragments, snippets of thought.
Winter
Cain gave me this notebook as a three-month anniversary gift. As if we’re a couple. As if I want to be here. Besides, I know he’ll make me pay for it later. He always does.
It feels like I’ve been here longer than three months. If I break my time up by brothers, I’m one-twelfth of the way done. I have nine more months before Cain must hand me over to his brother, Jasper.
I don’t know how I’ll survive those months because Cain, he has a cruelty to him. He takes pleasure from hurting me.
Jasper is different. I don’t know about the youngest yet, but Jasper is different.
Cain thinks his brothers will blindly obey him. Do as they’re told. He doesn’t know Jasper has already had me. I let him. I let him because he was tender.
It’s sick, I know. When I read that back, I want to rip that word to shreds, but he was tender, in his way.
I can’t think about time in years. I’ll die if I do. And I refuse to die at their hands.
I turn the page over, scroll through more entries. None are dated, only the season noted, but if her time here was like mine, she didn’t know the date or the day or the year or anything. She knew morning, afternoon, night.
I flip to the next page where the handwriting is more choppy and jagged, not her pretty script.
Winter/almost Spring
He left me up on that whipping post all day after my lashing. I’m still freezing cold, still shivering. I can barely write.
And the worst was that he made Jasper do it.
I don’t know if I can forgive Jasper that, but what was the alternative? If he didn’t or if he was gentle, Cain threatened to shred my back.
But we were stupid. Careless. It’s not Jasper’s turn with me. I’m still Cain’s. That’s what this whipping was about, to teach us both.
I’m going to kill the bastard. I’m going to kill him.
It hurts so bad this time and the ointment Jasper snuck in here makes the open skin burn. I should have cried. If I’d cried, maybe he would have been satisfied and the whipping would have ended sooner.
But there’s a way out. Jasper told me there’s a way out. What I’ll have to submit to, though, it terrifies me.
That passage stops abruptly leaving me curious. I scroll through several more pages to see if there’s more, but I can’t find details and I have to put the book down for a few minutes because too many of the entries are like this one.
Beatings.
Pain.
Hate.
I scroll through, skimming, until a dark stain on the corner of a sheet catches my eye.
Spring
We’re doing it tonight. Jasper has the irons and Benjamin, the youngest Scafoni brother, will bear witness.
And probably hold me down.
I’m scared. It’s going to hurt so much, but the alternative, I’m sure, is death.
Cain grows angrier and angrier by the day and his punishments leave permanent marks now.
Tonight, at midnight, I’ll meet Jasper at the mausoleum. God, I hate that place. It’s haunted, I swear.
And the ghosts mean me harm.
He showed me the secret door that leads to the room beneath. I am chilled thinking about it. But he’ll be there waiting for me and after tonight, I’ll be safe. Cain will have no choice but to give me to Jasper when I wear his mark.
I am terrified.
Six days later
I know it’s six days because I’ve started to tally it on the back of the headboard.
I endured the marking ceremony. Benjamin signed the contract as witness. According to the Scafoni family’s own rules concerning the Willow Girls, I belong to Jasper now.
Rules.
It’s sick. This family is sick. These rules, I swear, have been put into place to ensure their cruelty and to guarantee our suffering.
Part of this page is missing, torn out. And the next entry is only a few lines:
This morning, I woke to news that Jasper has left the island.
Benjamin won’t tell me anything.
I wonder if he’s alive. If Cain didn’t hurt him, or worse, for his betrayal.
And I am lost.
She doesn’t describe what happened. She never says what they did, but I remember my dream of her. I remember the edge of that mark on the back of her neck and how she tried to cover it up. Is that what it was? A mark of ownership?
I endured the marking ceremony.
The thought of cattle being branded crosses my mind.
It’s what Willow Girls are. Property. Living, breathing property.
Cattle.
I kneel up on the bed, touch behind the heavy wooden headboard. I can feel ridges, the lines she carved into the wood to mark the days.
Getting off the bed, I shove it forward a little. It must weigh a ton, but I can see the scratches Aunt Helena left. It makes me feel like she’s here again. Here with me. Like I’m not alone.
Shoving the bed back in place, I resume my seat and pick up the notebook to read the passage again.
There’s a secret room under the mausoleum? I have to go there, search for it. I have to find out what they did to free her from Cain.
I read a few more entries, then get to this one:
Summer
They did it.
I couldn’t write the plan here because I think Cain has been reading my journal. How could I have thought, for one single moment, that he wouldn’t? That was my own stupidity. It’s exactly the reason he gave it to me.
But they did it and it doesn’t matter! He’s dead. Cain is dead.
I heard the brothers from my room. Heard them enter, heard the struggle, heard Cain’s muffled cries. It didn’t even take long.
I went into his room after they’d gone. He looked like he was just sleeping but he had no breath and his color was already graying and I stood over him and smiled a real smile for the first time since I was brought to this island.
And then I did something terrible.
I took the dagger he keeps in the nightstand. I know about it because he held it to my throat enough times. He liked that when he had me. Liked scaring the life out of me. It made the sick bastard come.
Well, tonight, I took his knife and I put his hand on the nightstand and I cut off his finger and I didn’t even care that I had blood on me. They’ll accuse me of killing him anyway. I didn’t care.
I took it back to my room and peeled the skin off like I’d peel a potato and flushed it down the toilet and I carried those bloody, wet bones to my secret place and hid them.
And I don’t even care what they do to me. I don’t care because now, I have a piece of them.
This is my victory, even if I am not free, because my time here isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
It’s the last passage in the book, even though about a third of it is still empty pages.
I put the notebook down and rub my face. I feel a little sick. I wonder if I could do that. If I could cut off Sebastian’s finger. If I could hurt him.
I don’t think I could.
I don’t want to.
Were the Scafoni men of generations past crueler than those of today? Brother pitted against brother, that’s what this does. The fact that the right of one brother can be challenged by another, that alone sets the stage for a family to turn on itself.
If I think about Lucinda and what she did to Sebastian, what Sebastian did to Ethan, it’s brutal. Then there’s the competition between Gregory and Sebastian.
This family is sick.
They’re rotten and rotting from the inside.
And I don’t understand why I am not repelled by them. Repulsed by them.
Why I’m drawn to them.
Instead of hiding the book back in the floorboards, I tuck it between the mattress and the box spring and lay down. I’m tired. Between last night’s events and this, I’m exhausted.
I lie on my side for a while just watching the breeze softly blow the curtains. And when I close my eyes, I dream. I dream of my Aunt Helena, except I’m not sure if it’s her or me. I’m seeing through her eyes, opening the door between my room and Sebastian’s.
Gregory doesn’t see me when I walk in to watch him hold a pillow over Sebastian’s face.
He doesn’t hear me when I step closer. There’s no sound, in fact, not even when he pulls the pillow away and I see it’s not Sebastian at all, but someone else, another man who resembles them.
Cain?
I’m confused as I watch Gregory leave. And I have to force my unwilling legs to carry me closer, closer.
I feel my mouth stretch into a wide grin but I’m sick. I feel sick.
The skin of my hand, when it reaches for the nightstand drawer is like parchment, spotted and old, the yellowing nails bitten down and jagged.
I open the drawer, and inside is my pocket knife. I take it out but it’s like I’m resisting myself, like my arm is struggling against itself, but the pull is too great and I’m too weak and when the other hand, this one mine, takes up the dead man’s hand and brings it to the nightstand, tears drop on that dead hand, even as the fingers are splayed out.
The switchblade is opened, and I turn away from it, turn to the man on the bed and when I see him, when I see Sebastian, I scream.
I scream and scream and scream until I’m startled awake, jolted upright in my own bed, the room dark, pitch black. The cool breeze of earlier now chilling, freezing.
I switch on the lamp and rub my face.
It was a dream. Just a dream.