She didn’t like to talk to him, didn’t like to talk to anyone, not even Ida, not the way she was grieving, but when New Year’s had passed and the new term at Miss Everton’s was about to commence, she came to him where he was sitting by the fire, a book open in his lap and the glass on the table at his side, and handed him the printed schedule for the Santa Rosa. “I thought tomorrow morning’s boat would be best,” she said. “Classes start Monday and this way I’d have Sunday to settle in at the dormitory. We could wire ahead to Miss Everton to have someone meet me at the pier — and I don’t have much with me, so I can walk to the boat if you like and save the expense of a carriage…”
Patches of peeling skin traced the margin of his side whiskers, yellow-edged flakes that dusted his shoulders and clung minutely to his mustache. He’d worn a beard on the island for at least part of the time — too much trouble to shave, he’d said, though her mother had hated it — and the beard had hidden the flaws of his skin. She looked at him now in the lamplight and saw the pits and eruptions run rampant there, his whole face aflame as if all his sorrow had bled out of him and settled in the pores of his face, and she felt a wave of affection for him: he was grieving, grieving every bit as much as she was herself. He looked up from the book. His eyes shifted to her, gray eyes, eyes the color of smoke drifting over open water. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said.
She said nothing. She stood there in the pool of light cast by the lamp, looking down at his blistered face, the stippled beak of his nose, the pink revelation of his scalp where the white hair was thinning, giving him her attention.
“Well,” he said, closing the book on one finger to mark the place, “the long and short of it is that I’ve decided — and your mother, before she died, agreed with me on this — that you’ll not be going back.”
“Not going back? What do you mean? It’s school, my school, I must go back.”
For a long moment he just looked at her steadily. “I don’t know about that,” he said finally, and he gave her a smile — or a simulacrum of a smile — that chilled her. “If you ask me, a girl’s place is in the home — especially a home like this one where there’s been a tragedy so fresh I don’t think any of us has had a chance to put it in perspective.”
“But”—she was stunned, pleading now—“Miss Everton will be expecting me. Mr. Sokolowski, all of them. My things are there. My studies. My books—”
“That’s all been arranged.”
“Arranged? What do you mean?”
He took his time, shifting in the chair so that he was facing her, his eyes locked on hers. “Do you know something,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, “I don’t like your tone.” And then he added, “Young lady,” as if he were her mother, as if he were speaking in her voice, in her place, and the address rang hollow on his lips.
He was still staring at her, his eyes hardening, and she should have known better, should have backed off and waited till he was more reasonable, but she couldn’t help herself. “My mother would never have said such a thing, I don’t believe you. She wanted me to have an education, you know she did. You’re a liar!”
He rose from the chair so suddenly she didn’t have time to react, the book spilling to the floor, his mouth twisted in a sneer, his breath in her face, whiskey breath, hateful and stinking. “No,” he said, “I’m no liar. Every word out of my mouth is the truth and nothing but the truth — the truth of your life from now on. You’ll not be up there in that city with no one to watch out for you and your, your boys—”
“But Miss Everton never—”
“Enough! You listen to me and listen well because as long as you live under my roof not only will you do exactly as I say in every phase of your conduct, but you can put Miss Everton out of your mind for good and all.” He swung angrily away from her, stalking across the room to set his glass on the mantel. She saw that his hand was shaking. She kept thinking of Ida — where was Ida? Ida would stand up for her, Ida knew her mother’s wishes. But Ida was in the kitchen or out in the yard, and even if she weren’t, Ida was only a servant and servants had no say in anything.
The house was still, every mote of dust hanging suspended in the air. The fireplace framed him, the great squared-off ridge of the back of his head rising up out of his collar like hammered stone, his shoulders barely contained by the crudely tailored cloth of his jacket. In the next moment he swiveled round, moving so swiftly she didn’t have time to react, and he was right there, thrusting his face into hers and snatching her by the wrist. “Miss Everton,” he spat. “Miss Everton’s an irrelevance. And so’s Mrs. Sanders and the music teacher and all the rest of them. Because the fact is I’m taking you back to the island where I can keep an eye on you. Do you hear me? Do you?”
He was shouting now, but she wouldn’t stand for it, wouldn’t listen. She jerked her arm away, struggling for balance, and then she was running for the door, the front door, with one thought only: to get out, to get away, to put a stop to whatever it was that was happening to her.
“And we leave as soon as I can break off the lease and put this furniture in storage, if you want to know!” Then the parting shot, his words hurtling at her as she pushed through the door and fought her way out into the sunshine that seared the walk and set the trees afire: “Go ahead, cry your eyes out. But you pack your bags. And don’t you ever dare call me a liar again.”
* * *
She kept on running, through the gate and out into the public street, hatless, sobbing, in her plainest dress and the shoes she wore around the house, not caring what anybody thought. People gave her startled looks, stepped aside for her. The boy three houses down, a boy her own age she barely knew, called out in a jeering voice but the words made no sense to her. She ran past him, ran past them all, and she didn’t stop till she’d reached the grounds of the Arlington, and even then she veered off the flagstone path and across the lawn till she found an isolated bench — the farthest one in the farthest corner of the property where no one was likely to see her — and threw herself down on it. For the longest time she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, couldn’t seem to stop crying, and she understood that she wasn’t crying for her mother anymore but for her own stricken self, because she’d rather die on the spot, rather kill herself, than go back out there to that island. And she would. She’d take poison. Cut her wrists. Find a serpent like Cleopatra, and if it wasn’t an asp then she’d dig up a rattlesnake, with its dripping fangs and furious buzzing tail, and press it to her breast and feel its bite like the kiss of a lover. He couldn’t do this to her. He didn’t have the right. She was almost seventeen years old and he wasn’t her real father, anyway.