Page 2 of Hellebore

“I wish she would. I hate it here. I can’t wait to grow wings and fly away,” she said wistfully, watching the sky. Plumes of fog escaped from her mouth as she slowly exhaled.

“I envy you, Raven. I wouldn’t dare press my luck having even an ounce of personality within earshot of my mother, let alone wear it proudly on my face.”

She would tsk whenever I spoke of my mother, her tongue sucking the roof of her mouth.

I glanced down at my clothing – thick linen overalls and weather-beaten loafers that never fit quite right. I was in the first months of adulthood, with no pleasures of my own. Simply clay for my mother to mould as she wished.

“Have you considered my offer?” Francesca asked, head crooked in concern.

“Yes,” I sighed, daydreams beginning to swell through my thoughts. “But I can’t leave Isabel alone with our mother. I’m the only tether to reality she has, as you were for me. Without someone here to ground her through mothers’ ideologies, she’d surely drown in the lessons.”

Lessons. More like fear enabling fables designed to keep women in line. To be weight bearers for men – their fathers and brothers and husbands alike.

She hummed quietly as she stepped over swaying weeds that broke through the pebbly path.

“You can’t tell me that you don’t think Cole is absolutely steamy.”

I feigned a gag, though I thought of his face, and the way his jawbone turned sharply at the edge. The way his stubble grew into his hairline. The way he always smelled of rain and lumber, even in the middle of a drought.

If I were a braver woman, I’d have approached him that day, shown interest – but I wasn’t.

I was a rabbit –

a frightened

little

mouse.

Winter is always claustrophobic here, nestled in the woodland. Tepid wind collected raindrops, carrying them through the air to invade your chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.

I felt as though I could have melted into a heap of muscle and sinew when Francesca and I eventually stopped. Even in the middle of the coldest season, a rare day of unrelenting sun will occur, and reset something across the hills.

The hideout we made as children remains nestled between trees in the woodland that skirts the edges of our properties. Perfectly mid-way. Neither hers, nor mine. Ours. We had a collection of memories there – moments together, fusing our bond to iron within the quiet appreciation of friendship.

But our secrets remain there to this day, never to be spoken of again. I haven’t dared enter it since she left. Since she vanished into a mist of tears and broken promises.

I often wondered if she got out, just decided to leave under the secrecy of the moon, hitchhiking her way to her brother in the city. I wondered if she felt guilty for leaving me behind. I wondered if she ever planned to come back for me.

“Mrs. Rhodes, please, sit down.” The uniformed officer directs my mother, gesturing to the old fraying chaise.

“We found her.” The officer inhales, preparing herself. I can see it in the way her eyes sag, sadness crinkling the corners. The sympathy. “We found Francesca’s body.”

“How can you be sure it was her?” I ask, my heart stilled, words scraping from my throat.

The urgency of it feels like a hurricane inside me, the wind knocked from my chest.

“Are you sure?” my mother asks over me. Frustration blossoms like pins and needles in my fingertips.

“Yes, we’re certain. Though decomposition was moderately progressed, she was identified by a small tattoo on her chest. A hellebore flower.”

Shock grips my nerves, each thread of my understanding burning at the edges. She’s not just gone, she’s dead.

D e a d.

“Where?” I ask through my breath. Tears don’t come, they can’t – after months of questioning her disappearance, every possible scenario circulating in my skull, there’s nothing left to cry for. I am spent; sorrow having twisted to a blur of palatable emptiness.

“What happened?” my mother asks.