„I never thought that my life will be so cruel to me”
„Go! Right now! Both, leave this house immediately!” shouted Lorenne to the two girls, running up the stairs and, squeezing their arms, she shook them hard to make them come to their senses, for both were looking frozen, in the same place, and staring toward Christine, who was lying on the floor.
Suddenly, Lorenne stepped in front of Eva, hiding Christine’s body from the young girl’s sight and, touching her cheeks with both palms, she told her: „listen to me carefully, Eva - never ever talk about what happened here. Did you understand me?”
Shaking like hell, Eva didn’t answer. She only stared into Lorenne’s eyes, who kept staring into hers, and, so soon, the young girl’s eyes filled with tears. „No. No time for crying,” shouted Lorenne. „It’s time to be strong, finish climbing these stairs, and go to your room to gather your stuff. And… if someone ever asks you where you’ve been at the moment Christine Bircham fell on these stairs, you should shortly and clearly answer: as far as possible from her. And… not even think to mention the fact that you fought with her. Did you understand me? Don’t say anything that can turn you into a suspect or get you into trouble. That’s why… listen to my advice and quickly gather your things,” Mrs. Fabeau demanded them and pushed them from behind, forcing them to leave the place.
Only when Eva’s room door closed behind the two young girls, did Lorenne rush to descend the stairs and, with shaking hand, even if she also didn’t know why she felt like this, she approached the index finger from Christine’s nostrils and waited. But… she felt no blowing of air for about 2 minutes of waiting, and this made her hissingly breathe out. Then, after squeezing and relaxing the fist a few times to calm down at least a little bit, Lorenne touched Christine’s neck and checked for a pulse. And… she wide-opened her eyes: it was still felt, even if very weak. But… so soon, that pulse, that was barely felt at touching, stopped beating, and Lorenne understood that definitely everything was already lost.
„Damn it! It’s everything that was missing!” she murmured, even if she came there to fulfill Lyre Walker’s command and get rid of Christine. But what Lorenne intended was to send Mrs. Bircham far away from that city, telling her that the „Red Ants” intend to kill her and, if she cared about her life, she should run, very far from that place, and never turn back.
Life instead, as always, had other plans for her, plans that weren’t part of her list of „must do.” But… how she couldn’t do anything else to change that situation, she could only give up and accept everything as a real fact.
***
Breathless and with her blood somehow frozen in her veins, Eva was gathering her things in a hurry, putting them inside a small bag she brought with her when she turned back to that home.
Anne, the same or more hardened than Eva, was sitting on the bed and staring at the barely illuminated window, for that day was one extremely sad, with a purple sky, which was alike an upset child about to start crying.
„What is to be done, Eva?” Anne murmured eventually, still staring at the window.
Eva, without stopping what she was doing, said: „Nothing. There’s nothing else we can do now, Anne. Only to listen to Lorenne and leave this house. It’s the best thing we can do.”
„But, Eva, we… we killed Mrs. Bircham!” Anne almost shouted. Eva instead covered Anne’s mouth with her palm and, staring into her eyes, she said to her:
„And… what do you want to do? To sentence your child forever only because you have a conscience? Will you sentence him or her to live like the son or the daughter of an assassin, hiding from everybody? If so, go ahead! I… won’t do that, for… that’s enough my sufferance. I don’t want my girl and Brian to suffer too. That’s why… I’ll take this secret with me in the grave.”
„What about us, Eva?” asked Anne through tears, staring into Eva’s eyes, who was staring confused at her, also about to leave free the stream of tears to flow on her cheeks. „What about our soul, Eva? Will we be really able to live with this sin on our soul?”
„We must do that eventually,” said Eva coldly and, in one go, mechanically, she wiped the tears that appeared in the corner of her eyes. Then, quickly closing her bag, she grabbed Anne’s hand and forced her to follow her, and the door noisily closed behind them, as if it was the door of a cell in which the worst criminal of the world has been closed. Actually, it could have been considered this way, for Eva closed, in that room, her biggest fears and secrets, for even if Eva’s sin was an unforgivable one, she still decided to sacrifice her happiness for the ones who she loved to be safe and happy.
***
„Take this money with you and go straight to Brighton,” Lorenne demanded Eva. „Keep your course and don’t show in known places. No, no, wait! Per contra: show your face in frequented places. Leave everybody see you, for… as many people will see you in those places, better. Leave them know you far away from this place, for… it’s time to finish this madness, child.”
„What about you, Mrs. Fabeau? What will you do?” mumbled Eva, holding Lorenne’s hands into hers.
Lorenne kindly smiled: „I’ll pass through it. As I ever did. With my head up actually, as I have always done,” and she caressed Eva’s cheek, that was felt wet, even though the tears, that appeared in the corner of her eyes, were right away wiped. „And, Eva… take care of our Miss Davis too. Don’t forget her and, at least from time to time, go under that big oak, under which you love to spend the warm summer evenings, and, at least once, put some white flowers on her grave and tell her that I’m sorry that everything ends this way. For the three of us actually.”
After this, Lorenne held Eva to her chest, and two minutes later forced her to climb into the carriage, next to Anne, who kept crying. But… even if she knew that she did well, Lorenne felt sorrow for seeing them probably for the last time.
„Lorenne, I think you should also…,” Patrick told her, approaching Lorenne, after closing the carriage’s door.
„No, Patrick. I’ll stay,” said Mrs. Fabeau shortly, suddenly staring with hatred in front, with a harsh glance. „It’s time to fulfill a promise I made to someone, long ago.”
„A promise?” asked Patrick confused. „What exactly? Lorenne, what are you planning this time?” and he touched her arms, forcing her to watch him.
„The death of the „Red Ants,” said Mrs. Fabeau in a confident and severe tone. „That’s enough, Patrick! Too many Eves suffered in this life because of them, to allow them to exist and from now on.”
„Are you crazy?” hissed through his teeth. „If you do that, the old Walker will…”
„…destroy me?” said Lorenne, grinning. „Leave him to do that. Anyway: with Eva far away from him, at least he’ll have no possibility to have what he wants. That’s why, Patrick, you must go with Eva and never leave her alone. Did you hear me? If you really cared about me, at least a little bit, you’ll listen to what I said.”
„I cared?” said Patrick with pain in his voice. „I loved you, Lorenne. And I still love you.”
„Yet… we don’t have a life together,” and Lorenne sadly smiled. „Because… I’ve heard them planning to get rid of you, Patrick. I heard it yesterday evening. That decrepit old man told a young man to get rid of you. That’s why he told you to go today to the usual place. They intend to kill you and I don’t want to lose you too for a stupid idea of greatness. That’s why, do me this favor and get lost from here, for this way you don’t only protect yourself, but also you’ll make me happy, for… if you’re safe, I’ll be also happy.”
„What about you? Why don’t you go with us then?”
„It’s too risky. Someone must stay here.”
„Then, I’ll stay. I know Lyre Walker very well and…”
„No, Patrick. No. This is a madness a woman should end, just as a woman started it. And… I’ll be the one doing this, for… I promised Emily that I’ll help her one day to kill the „Red Ants” and I plan to do myself this favor before dying.”
A hot kiss on the young man’s lips, as if sealing a pact, made him wince, for that one could have been the last kiss of the woman he got to love, even though they had different ages and social statuses. Yet… he must go, for he could make Lorenne happy this way, for their relationship has been always a strange one, but they still had something in common: they were fulfilling the other’s wishes, no matter the cost or how strange didn’t it seem.
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That’s why, hardly releasing his hand from her, Patrick took a few steps toward the carriage. He turned back instead, so soon, and held her again tightly to her chest. Then, he whispered: „resist! No matter what, resist! I’ll find you and I’ll make you happy again!” Then, he turned his back on her and, without watching back, he climbed on the driving box and hardly pulled the reins, making that carriage hit the road in the mad gallop of the horses.
While they were leaving, Eva put her head through the open window and looked back, and she saw Lorenne standing in the same place and waving to them. Eva also smiled, having a long-ago image in front of her eyes: the one with her and Brian staying under that bid rounded maple tree, staring at a small fluffy pellet, called a red squirrel, that made them so happy then and which she thought that actually brought them together.
Then, when they were too far to see well those places, Eva sat normally again and looked at Anne, who was with her eyes closed and with her head laid on the back of the chair while bitter tears were flowing on her cheeks. Eva instead said nothing: neither to comfort her nor to scold her. And… how could she say something when she understood that words were meaningless at that moment and that they must start a new life, far away from that town.
***
Carefully closing the door behind her, Lorenne Fabeau first looked around, through the half-open door, but there wasn’t anybody seen around there: only the autumn and its savage beauty. Thus, seeing that there weren’t witnesses, of their madness, she finished closing the wooden door and locked it. After this, she approached the place where Christine was laying on the floor.
She stopped instead one step from Christine and watched her for a long time. But… she felt no remorse seeing her like this. Per contra: she felt strange happiness, for… she knew that only this way Eva and Emily were avenged, for only because of Christine Bircham their life has been ruined. Then, weirdly grinning, as she went crazy, Lorenne bent over Christine and put in order the dead one’s disheveled hair, whispering: „well, how does it feel, Mrs. Bircham? How does it feel now when you know that you are who lost in the end? Damn unpleasantly, huh? Well, you deserved it, fully deserved it, for as you tormented so many innocent souls in this life, you got to suffer too in the end. And… I hope you’ll creep like a worm on the other world, paying thus for all those Eves who you made creep at your feet only because you had a mad desire to feel yourself the Queen of the World, the almighty Christine Bircham.”
Then, she stood up, after finishing putting in order Mrs. Bircham’s clothes too, making her seem as if not falling off the stairs, but also willingly lying on that floor. Eventually, Lorenne climbed a few stairs and, when she was enough high to can proudly watch Christine, she sat down on one of the stairs, and, still smiling, she said: „one Bircham started this madness and a Bircham will end it, for your death, Christine, must undoubtedly be the end of the „Red Ants” too.”
***
Was crying Beth, knelt in front of Shelby Storm’s castle, holding a letter to her chest, a letter Mrs. Huntington read to everybody and where Eva wrote to Beth: „take care of my child, good friend. Please, be her mother, for… I want to see the world and at least live a little bit only for me. Maybe I’ll feel this way eventually revenged.”
And Eva’s words were so cruel, cutting to the bones in the souls of those who listen to them, for when Alice read that letter, at Brian’s request, they were all in the living room: she, Beth, Stan, Brian, Shelby, and Keen. But… what hurt Brian the most wasn’t to hear that Eva left to take revenge on him, but because she didn’t write a word to him: neither insults nor any other thing, for he would have considered them love words in the end.
At that moment instead, being in Shelby’s office, which Storm gave him to use, in front of the open window and with his hands in his pockets, Brian was crying his pain and betrayal, scolding himself for being unable to get to the heart of the beloved woman, make her forgive him, and turn back to him: once and forever.
Actually, Brian was afraid of something more: that Keen, who came that day to the castle, before they read that letter brought there by a mailman, told them all that Christine Bircham was dead and that Lorenne Fabeau has been arrested for killing her, for she accepted her guilt, right away the police entered that house, brought there by a passer-by, who Lorenne stopped in the middle of the street and asked him for calling the police there, for a trial happened in that house.
„It also seems that Miss Stonebridge and Anne Ross were also there,” Keen told him later when were only the two of them in the office. „But both of them vanished eventually and I think that someone forced them to vanish.”
Brian winced and looked scared at the detective: „did he dare to hurt…?” Keen instead calmed him down very soon: „no, Mister Beneath, Eva Stonebridge willingly left the country and it seems that Paris is her final destination. At least this is what Lenny and John managed to find out, for… at a crossroad, they lost their traces.”
„Why, Eva? Didn't you really trust me?” murmured Brian, closing his eyes, with pain. „You could have at least asked for my help and not gone into the wide world. Thus… I wouldn’t have felt so powerless and hopeless… a nobody, in fact.”
And his eyes focused again on the sad nature that was stretching in front of him. And… only from the corner of his eyes, he saw the moment when Stan finally dared to approach Beth, knelt next to her, and held her to his chest. She didn’t even oppose that hug, for it was something she needed.
***
„Why, Mrs. Fabeau? Why have you been so cruel to us in this life?” Brian asked her when he went to visit her at the police section where Lorenne have been taken after being arrested.
So calm, that he found it weird, even though her hands and legs were cuffed, Mrs. Fabeau raised her head and looked into his eyes. „It wasn’t our fault, Mister Beneath. It’s fate guilt.”
„Yet, one makes his own fate. With his hand actually,” he said, somehow hissing the words through his teeth.
„Really?” said Lorenne as chill as before. „I think you’re wrong, Mister Beneath, for not we make our fate, but the sins of the world make it.”
„And… also those sins made Eva change so much?”
„It’s possible. Even if I’m more tempted to say that what changed Eva have been all those reckless people that always surrounded her. And… if you don’t want to be one of them, Mister Beneath, leave her free. Even only God knows for how long.”
„Why? Why are you talking like that? If you tell me where she is, I…?”
„Will you look for her? I don’t doubt this. But… Mister Beneath, are you sure that you can protect her? From the world and its madness? I’m sure that you can’t do that, for you’ve been unable to do this. And… if you had protected her right from the beginning, you would have acted differently, right from the moment you understood that she wasn’t a nobody for you. If you had given up on your life to take her out of Christine Bircham’s claws, she would have been safe now. But… you couldn’t even protect her from yourself then.”
„I would have done this if Emily Davis…”
„You’re right. Emily has been wrong: right from the moment she went to Sophie Anderson Bell and told her about Eva’s pregnancy. But… even if Miss Davis’s way of acting has been a wrong one, she did this for love, for even if Emily Davis was alike a stone statue in many of the cases, a being incapable to love, but capable to destroy everything she wanted, she did you a favor then, taking Eva from next to you because, doing this, she saved them both: Eva and your child. Only because of this you should be grateful to Emily Davis and stop blaming her for what happened. And… don’t get me wrong: I don’t ask you to forgive her or understand her. I just… ask you not to stain her memory with bad words. Leave her at least there, where God wanted to send her eventually, be calm, if not happy, for what Emily Davis wanted the most, but she never had, has been happiness. That’s why I dare to give you this advice: stay away from this madness if you don’t want to lose your girl too, for only because of this Eva sacrificed herself and left England: for you two to be happy. And… be humble, with your head bowed, and don’t even try to kneel the power, for you won’t make it ever, no matter who stays behind you.”
And that time has been the last time when Brian or anybody else saw Lorenne, for since that day she refused to see anybody, and everything that they could later find out has been that Lorenne Fabeau has been eventually sent to a salt mine.
***
Two booties were on Eva’s lap, tears in her eyes, and loneliness in her soul… it was everything which Eva Stonebridge was taking with her while leaving England, having only Patrick by her side, who was in fact a stranger for her.
And… she was also taking the memories with her: those where she was extremely happy and those when she wanted life to stop existing in that world. Yet, she took a load off her heart when she went to Emily Davis’s grave and put some white flowers under that oak, telling the woman, who she had once adored, but who actually stabbed her heart, in the worse manner: „I forgive you, Miss Davis, for there’s nothing else to do. Yet, I can’t tell you that I’ll remember you with nostalgia or regret, and nor that I’ll feel sorrow for your sudden death. Actually you paid as you deserved, for everything you did in this life. Yet, it’s a shame that when you went you also took the love with you, a love you never appreciated or understood, for if you had done this, if you had cared at least for a second about it, Albert would have been with us right now and we wouldn’t have cried ever for his loss.”
After that, she turned her back on that place and went away, feeling no pain or remorse, for even if on one hand she accused Emily of trying to take her baby from her, Eva was also grateful to her, for teaching her to fight for what was hers and never give up.
***
It’s night outside. Night in the soul. Only the playful fire is dancing in the chimney, as if competing with the weak light of the candles in Shelby Storm’s living room, where Alice Huntington was sitting on an armchair, with her face at the fire and, sad, was rocking the little Laura in her arms, who was calmly sleeping at that moment, even if the entire day has been extremely nervous, as if feeling that she has been abandoned by her mother, probably forever.
Only when a painful sigh came out of her chest, Mrs. Huntington stood up and headed toward the stairs. She stopped, however, halfway, hearing Beth’s cry, who closed herself again in her room and refused to see anybody.
„Poor child,” the old lady murmured, words told to Beth, who for the x time has been abandoned by the one she loved the most and she got to name sister.
But, at the moment Laura moved in her arms, without awaking, Mrs. Huntington came back to her senses and continued climbing the stairs, slowly-slowly, with pain and sadness in her soul, stairs which she considered the ones of the divine punishment at that moment, for she once again failed protecting an innocent soul, for even if she had promised Helen to protect Eva and her baby, she couldn’t do that and once again a woman’s soul, a small Eva, an innocent soul, was growing up without her mother, paying thus for the sins of the entire world in the arms of wisdom.
TO BE CONTINUED