“Sit.”
There are two chairs in the room. A thin wooden one against the wall, and a faded green one before the desk.
The one against the wall is already taken. A thin little ghoul sits, bent forward, legs swinging back and forth, too short to touch the floor. Olivia stares at the half-formed girl, wondering who would choose to haunt this room of all the ones in Merilance.
The head matron clears her throat. The sound is a bony hand, pinching Olivia’s chin.
The ghoul dissolves back into the wooden boards, and Olivia forces herself forward and takes a seat in the faded green chair, sending up a plume of dust. She stares blandly at the old woman, hoping the expression reads as dull, but unfortunately, the head matron of Merilance has never been polite enough to underestimate Olivia. To take her silence for stupidity, or even disinterest. Laid before the old woman’s blue-eyed gaze she feels unmoored, exposed.
“You have been with us for quite some time,” says the head matron, as if Olivia doesn’t know. As if she’s lost track of the years, the way a prisoner might within a cell. “We have cared for you since you were a child. Nurtured you as you grew into a young woman.”
Nurtured. Grew. As if she were a houseplant. She studies the dusty silk roses that sit on the old woman’s desk, the color leeched by window light, tries to remember a time when they were anything but gray. And then the head matron does a terrible thing.
She smiles.
There was a cat one year at Merilance. A feral little beast that hung around the garden shed, catching mice. It would stretch out atop the tin roof, tail flicking and belly full, its mouth curled in a smug little grin. The head matron wears the same expression.
“And now, your time here has come to an end.”
Olivia’s whole body tenses. She knows what happens to the girls when they leave Merilance, sent to wither in a workhouse or gifted like a prize pig to a middle-aged man or buried in the bowels of someone else’s house.
“There are not many prospects, you know, for a girl in your . . . condition.”
Olivia peels the skin from the words. What the head matron means is that there are not many futures for a high-tempered orphan who cannot speak. She’d make a fine wife, she’s been told, save for her temper. She’d make a fine maid, save for the fact so many take her silence as a sign of some greater ill, or at the least, find it unnerving. What does that leave? Nothing good. Her mind races through the halls, planning an escape; there is still time to raid the matrons’ cupboards, still time to flee into the city, to find another way—but the head matron taps her bony fingers on the desk, calling her back.
“Fortunately,” she says, sliding open a drawer, “the matter seems to have been sorted for us.”
With that, she produces an envelope. And even before she hands it over, Olivia can see that it’s addressed to her. Her name curls across the envelope in peculiar cursive, the letters falling slantwise like rain.
Olivia Prior
The top of the envelope has been torn open, the contents removed and then returned, and she feels a brief, indignant flare at the invasion. But annoyance quickly gives way to curiosity as the head matron passes her the envelope, and she withdraws the letter, written in the same strange hand.
“My dearest niece,” it begins.
I confess, I do not know exactly where you are.
I have sent these letters to every corner of the country. May this be the one that finds you.
Here is what I know. When you were born, your mother was not well. She took you and fled from us, pursued by delusions of danger. I fear that she is dead and can only hope that you still live. You must think yourself abandoned, but it is not so. It has never been so.
You are wanted. You are needed. You belong with us.
Come home, dear niece.
We cannot wait to welcome you.
Your uncle,
Arthur Prior
Olivia reads the letter again, and again, her mind spinning.
Niece. Uncle. Home. She does not realize how hard she’s gripping the letter until it crumples.
“Fate has smiled on you, Miss Prior,” says the head matron, but Olivia cannot take her eyes from the paper. She turns the envelope over, and there on the back is an address. The words and letters jumble, meaningless, in her mind, aside from the word at the top.
Gallant.
Olivia’s ribs seem to tighten around her heart.
She traces her thumb over the word, the same one that ended her mother’s journal. It never made sense. Once, long ago, she’d looked it up in one of the matron’s heavy dictionaries, learned that it meant brave, especially in trying times. Courage under duress. But for her mother—for Olivia—it is not a description. It is a place. A home. The word washes over her like a high tide, knocking her off balance. She feels a little dizzy, a little ill.