Chapter 2

I was in my studio, packing a portfolio of my designs into a briefcase when I heard his car in the driveway.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I had been planning to leave for New York tonight, to run to my Aunt Jean.

The door opened downstairs. His voice, cold and authoritative, echoed up the staircase.

"Ava, where are you?"

He was home early. And he was not alone. I heard the soft click of a woman's heels on the marble floor.

I closed my briefcase and walked out onto the landing.

Elliott stood in the foyer, his arm around Katarina Ward. She looked up at him with adoring eyes. It made me sick.

"What are you doing with that?" he asked, his eyes narrowing on my briefcase.

"Just organizing some old projects," I lied, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands.

He didn't believe me. I could see it in the hard set of his jaw.

"Unpack it," he commanded. "You're not going anywhere."

I heard noises from upstairs. The sound of things being moved, of drawers opening and closing. They came from the room next to our bedroom.

My sanctuary.

I froze, my briefcase slipping from my numb fingers and clattering to the floor, scattering architectural drawings.

It was the room where I kept everything my parents had left me. Their books, my father's drafting tools, my mother's paintings. It was a room full of ghosts, but they were my ghosts. They were all I had left of them.

"No," I said, my voice sharp as I looked up the stairs. "Not that room. Any other room."

Katarina leaned against Elliott, her lower lip trembling. "Oh, Elliott. I don't want to be a bother. I can stay in a hotel. It seems Miss Pratt is not happy to have me here."

"Nonsense," Elliott said, his voice softening as he looked at her, then hardening again as he turned to me. "She will stay here. In that room."

"Elliott, please," I begged, my composure crumbling. "That was my mother's studio. It's... it's important to me."

"Your mother is dead," he said, his words like stones. "She doesn't need a studio. Katarina is alive, and she needs a place to rest."

He raised his voice. "Mary! Get it done. Now."

The maids, Mary and another, appeared at the top of the stairs, their faces full of pity. I ran to block the doorway.

"You can't," I whispered, tears blurring my vision.

Katarina let out a small sob. "Elliott, she's scaring me."

That was all it took. Elliott's face contorted with anger. He strode over to me, grabbed my arm, and threw me aside. I stumbled, my head hitting the wall with a dull thud.

The maids rushed past me and went back inside the room.

The room was just as I had left it. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light. The smell of oil paint and old paper filled the air. My mother's unfinished canvas was still on the easel.

"Get all this junk out of here," Elliott ordered. "Throw it away."

They started pulling things off the shelves, handling the precious memories of my parents with careless haste. A box of my father's letters fell, scattering them across the floor.

I scrambled to pick them up, but they were being trampled underfoot.

I fell to my knees, sobbing, helpless.

Katarina walked over to me, a cruel smile playing on her lips. "Don't be so sad. They're just things."

She picked up a silver-framed photograph from a nearby table. It was my favorite picture of my parents and me, taken on my tenth birthday. We were all smiling. Happy.

"This is a nice frame," she said, her thumb stroking the glass over my mother's face. "But the picture is old."

Then, she "tripped."

The frame flew from her hands and shattered on the floor. The sound echoed in the silent room.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she cried, stumbling backwards. "Ava, I didn't mean to! Did you push me?"

Elliott was on her in an instant, his face a mask of fury. He didn't even look at me. He just reacted.

He slapped me.

The force of it sent me sprawling. My cheek stung, my ear ringing.

"How dare you?" he roared, his voice shaking with rage. "How dare you hurt her?"

"I didn't..." I tried to explain, but he wouldn't listen.

He grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the room, out of the house, and onto the front lawn. It had started to rain, a cold, miserable drizzle.

"You will stay out here and think about what you've done," he hissed, his face inches from mine.

He threw the box of my father's scattered, muddy letters onto the wet grass beside me.

"And you can keep your precious junk with you."

He turned and stalked back inside. I heard the heavy front door slam shut, the bolt sliding into place.

I was alone. In the rain. With the shattered remains of my past.