The Reluctant Heiress

“Darling?” My mother called, the honey sweetness of the words ruined by her prominent smoker’s rasp. “Can you come here, please?” That please, low and murky as it lingered about the back of her wrecked throat, was a warning. Gift wrapped in yellow and black police tape, it was delivered on a sigh that ran bone-deep. It was a sound I heard often. But it was the ‘darling’ that set my nerves alight, something like foreboding buzzing in the roots of my teeth. My mother never called me that. Not even when she wanted me to babysit the boys. Or clean the house. I was “Mags’ when she was happy, ‘Maggie’ when she was exasperated, and ‘You ungrateful little brat’ when she was angry. But the worst was when she called me Margaux. When she looked at me with her soulful, cornflower eyes and begged. “Please,” she had pleaded that first time, elbows buckling under her weight as she tried to push up from the stained carpet. Johnathon aimed a kick at her side, roaring at her to shut up. He hadn’t realised I was there, that I stood in the doorway, eyes wide and shaking hard enough that my teeth rattled in my skull. “Margaux,” she gasped, hand reaching out towards me even as Jonathon pulled her up by the hair. “Go, please.” I had run up the stairs before Johnathon could spot me, slamming the door and piling up clothes and books behind it. Panting by the time I was done, I had jumped beneath my threadbare duvet and listened for the footsteps coming up the stairs. But they never came. And when my heart had slowed and the gasping breaths had begun to condense on my skin, the tears had flowed down my face. Shame burned in my twisting gut. How could I just leave her like that? Clawing at the floor, bruises blooming on her delicate skin. How could I have been such a coward? I had made a vow in that dark, muggy cocoon. I would never let it happen again. Even if I shook, and cried, and soiled myself. Even if Johnathon turned his fists and hate on me and left be broken and bloody. I wouldn’t leave her. I wouldn’t. The salt sting on my lips sealed the vow but it did nothing to patch up my broken, cowardly heart. It was the first and last time I had run from Johnathon and his fists. But it wasn’t the last time my mother had called me Margaux in that voice. It only got worse when the boys came along: honey, dearest and sweetie in turn. Jon junior, Andrew and sweet little Teddy. The lights in our dull, colourless life. “Yeah, mum?” I called back, slumping against the doorframe as I waited for the answer and prayed that Johnathon hadn’t hit her again. Exhaustion nipped at the back of my eyes and turned my limbs to lead. It had been a long, long morning taking the delivery in for Ethan at the coffee shop. Where were the boys anyway? Even straining, I couldn’t hear them. There was nothing but buzzing silence filling the house. Hopefully, they were upstairs in their bedroom, playing quietly amongst themselves. For all his faults, Johnathon had never lifted a finger against the boys. But…there was no guarantee it would stay that way. My mother’s voice was sharper this time, her words bitten off into sharp, little shards. No doubt I was Maggie today. “I asked you to come here.” The ‘now’ went unsaid. I glanced up the stairs, regret rushing to fill in the spaces between my heavy limbs and heart. With a sigh of my own, I shouldered open the door to our dingy Livingroom. “What is it?” I couldn’t keep from snapping back at her. I pulled up short at the sight of my whole family. They were arranged along the length of our worn leather couch – far more worn than leather these days – like Russian nesting dolls. Teddy had been plopped on the floor at my mother’s feet, where he clung to the hem of her trousers. Their smiles, or grimaces, were painted on their faces with care. With how stiff and grey they all were, they looked like one of those portraits of the Victorian dead I’d learned about in primary school. “God,” I said, leaning down to pluck Teddy up. “What happened? You all look like you’ve seen a bloody ghost or something.” Teddy gurgled, his big blue eyes flicking over my shoulder. “You’ll find that the ghosts of the past have a nasty habit of making one look a tad peaky.” A smooth, deep voice spoke. “Isn’t that right, Jane?” Clutching Teddy, I spun around to face the cool as velour voice. How could I have possibly missed him? He sat in the far corner, sunken into our ‘good’ armchair and cloistered in the shadows of our life. But, even so, he was loose and smiling blankly, his legs crossed as though he were a king keeping court. And we were his reluctant subjects.  “I didn’t know we had company.” I blinked at him, my legs tightening as I got ready to run and get the boys out of there. He inclined his head in acknowledgement, dark eyes glittering in the murk. “Who are you?” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. Not that it mattered. They hung in the dense air, unanswered. Those eyes flicked over my form, the glint of perfect, white teeth appearing alongside. I shifted to the side, the leather of my jacket whispering and giving me away as I put myself between this man and my brothers. Teddy was fussing properly now, his chubby fist catching my jaw as the other grabbed my hair. “Margaux,” My mother spoke softly, eyes trained on the stranger. Without a word of argument, I handed over my youngest sibling. It only made Teddy cry harder. If the man cared about the noise, he didn’t show it. Instead, he just laughed softly to himself, the sound as smoky as the shadows enveloping him. The chair squeaked under his weight when he leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees…as though to get a better look at me. I levelled a flat stare back at him, taking in the sleek lines of his navy suit, the gloss of the wingtips under our shitty, over-yellowy lamps, and, finally, the weight of what I assumed was a Rolex on his wrist. Moments seemed to pass, the air thick with the Rolex’ tick, tick, ticking. He had to be from the bank, the carrion stink of money rolled off of him in waves. As though it leaked from his very pores and sweetened his breath. Were we behind on rent again? My mother hadn’t mentioned anything about an eviction notice… Oh, God. Were we going to lose the house? Was I going to have to use my savings up again? What if- “Maggie, darling—" there was that word again. I stiffened, my breath feeling too thin in my throat. Was she trying to impress him or something? Did she hope that if we seemed like a normal, loving family he would somehow take pity on us? We didn’t need his fucki- but we did. We couldn’t afford to lose the house. What if they found Johnathon’s ‘garden’- “—This is your father.” I blinked, my whirling thoughts grinding to a sudden, deafening halt. “What?” I croaked. I must have misheard. She couldn’t have said what I thought she did. Father? No, no, no…my father was dead. Killed in a hit and run when I was six months old. He was buried in the cemetery near our first house… Before my mother had met Johnathon, we’d visited that cemetery every few months. I’d only been four or five, maybe. Young enough to skip between the headstones and flowers without care for offending the ghosts of the dead but old enough to be curious. Horribly, painfully curious. “Is this one daddy?” I would ask, pointing at the biggest, cleanest looking headstone. I can’t remember the name it had chiselled into its alabaster face and mother had never told me either. My mother, hands shoved deep in the pocked of her peacoat, had only ever smiled sadly and ushered me along. Once she’d met Jonathon and fallen in love with him, we’d moved into the city and stopped going to that cemetery in the outskirts. She told me that it upset him whenever I asked about my dad because he loved me and wanted to be my new daddy. She’d whispered it to me like it was our secret and his gift to the both of us. It was only now that I realised how stupid I’d been. She’d never told me my father’s name, never confirmed which headstone was his, never talked about him. “You told me my dad was dead,” I accused, rounding on my cowering mother. She did that all the time now. Even outside, she was shrunken and suspicious. She hadn’t used to be like that – the sun had once been desperate to caress her golden hair and skin, and she had loved it too. With one hand clutching Johnathon’s, the other gripping Teddy like his namesake, my mother’s eyes were as wide as the good saucers that we used to keep in the china cabinet. The ones that had been hand-painted with bluebells and delicate vines. I’d used to stare at them in wonder, dreaming of the day we’d finally get to use them. That was before the money had run out and we’d had no choice but to sell them to an old crow-faced woman with greedy, fast hands and a smile as cold as the grave. “Really, Jane?” The man chuckled before a cold smirk crept over his face, his hand over his heart in mock hurt. “You always were a heartless bitch.” Johnathon growled and leapt to his feet, stabbing at the air with a finger. “Why you—” The man – my father – rolled his eyes. “Don’t make me call the police, Mr Smith.” The blood drained from Jonathon’s face, leaving behind the blotchy spots of passion that I’d come to hate. My mother jumped forward in her seat, eyes looking watery in the dim light of morning. “Richard. Please don’t.”  “Shut it, Jane,” Johnathon snapped, his hands tightening into a fist as his side. I stepped away out of reflex, looking between them all. Just who was this man? This reedy stranger that sat in our front room like he owned it, who had the damned audacity to look too bright and clean and just too-good for the grey stage of our mundane life. Who held back Johnathon with nothing more than words and vague threats. Johnathon had never backed down from such a threat before, even when it came from the local kingpin’s goons. He wasn’t a man who communicated with words. They meant nothing to him, achieved nothing in his world. He was a man who used force to solve his problems…and yet here he was, restraining himself like a trained Pitbull. Richard’s – my father, father, father – eyes narrowed but his tone was casual, conversational. He gestured around the room. “How many years is it for cultivation and distribution anyway, my good man?” I’d never seen Johnathon deflate like a balloon before either, his shoulders rounding overtop his barrel chest. When all the air was gone from him, leaving him impotent and vibrating with pent up rage, he looked at me. Fire and hate snapped in the depths of his slate eyes. I shifted further away, looking at my father. Surely, he wouldn’t try anything with a stranger in the house. I watched as my father’s frigid leer widened into something cruel, something edged with satisfaction and steel. With fear gripping my heart, the room dulled at the edges and my fingertips fattened with blood. Suddenly, I was more scared of this flesh and blood stranger than the man who raised me, raised his fists to me whenever I got too mouthy for his liking. The man who was staring at me now as though I was solely responsible for everything wrong in his life. “Just take her and get out of my sight!” Johnathon spat after a long moment, turning that red-hot stare on my father before storming out of the room. The slam of the front door jangled the house right down to its foundations. Piercing heat flooded my face at the sight of dust raining down on us, laying across the shoulders of my father’s impeccable suit. But the shame was nothing in light of the words pounding in my head: Where was he taking me?