Curse of Rose de Winter

Chapter 27

I used to often annoy my mom, my real mom, when I was small. I had a bothersome habit of waking up at night and wandering out the house.

My sister sometimes went out to look for fairies, but she went home once the sun set. I liked leaving home after having my dinner and going to a place they couldn't find me. I only ever ran back if I heard my dad shout my name, promising he'd tell me a fun story or joke he heard.

He was the only one who never got upset. He would walk far until he found me, held my hand firmly so I couldn't run off again, and talk in his deep voice, a voice I missed.

My dad was an intelligent man with a soft way of speaking. I never knew why people didn't like him because he was a Jew. He was dark haired and used to wear a strange cap and have locks until he stopped. I think he said it got in the way of work but I had secretly missed it.

I never thought of him romantically, in fact, he was the only person I thought of as family. He walked me home and told me stories I didn't really understand about medical things. Things I remembered was usually when he laughed at jokes I didn't really get or ruffled my hair randomly.

"We have the same curly black hair," he'd say. It pleased me because my sister with her nearly blonde light brown hair didn't get her hair played with lovingly.

Then after his death I stopped going on night walks.

I realized at that point I didn't really like the crickets chirps in summer, the smell of wet grass in autumn, or thin layer of melted snow. I didn't care for the scenery or the skies with its perfectly placed stars and moon. I didn't love the night—I only loved the hand that brought me back from the darkness.

So I stopped going on night walks.

***

It felt like years (and it was) before I left the de Winter house one night after dinner, saying I needed to walk off my dinner. No one really remarked on it but Connie followed while Ruby and Angel stayed behind.

I walked quietly, as the awful events with Dylan transpired yesterday.

"...as a brother."

The words made me sick inside, like I had something treasurable, some body part, pulled apart and stabbed with shards of glass too small to pin exactly where the pain was. A kind of phantom limb pain came from all over, like I was born with fifty more arms and legs.

It was mainly in my chest.

I met about a woman once with her heart outside her body and it was like a breast on top of a breast, apparently in a fancy covering like a leather brassiere. She seemed very delicate and yet aged despite being only a year or so older than me. When she walked down stairs she would hold on to the leather-clad heart, lest the movement pull on her heart and hurt it.

"What are you thinking of?" Connie asked. She was crass and hid nothing, and on our walk she carefully stepped into the grass I was just asking in, but looked for signs of animal excretion or maybe in case of dead squirrels or rabbits.

"I was wondering what the best way to describe a heartbreak is."

"Heartbreak? I read it in books as pain in the chest."

"Me too. But I always thought it was silly. When a father figure that took care of me died, my head never let me stop thinking of him and my childhood. My mom screamed like a madwoman and my sister cried into a blanket until it was soaked." I couldn't tell Connie it was my real father because I was Blanche now, and that made me lonelier.

"I never knew you had such a past," she whispered. "You always seemed so ladylike, like you were born Blanche de Winter."

"I went by a different name," I said.

"But what's with this heartbreak deal? Is it the boy from the ball, Leroy Redwood?"

"Blackwood. Leroy Blackwood."

"Oh, my mistake." Connie turned her face in embarrassment. I envied her, who was so easy to read and somehow blunt.

"I think it's just hard for me to become this Blanche figure. If love is real, shouldn't someone love me for all of me, not only as this Blanche? Shouldn't they be someone who has forgave my past and accepted it all despite—despite—"

I stopped talking, and hated what I said.

But it's hard to tell your mind to stop thinking of the talk Dylan and I had. My confession of being Rose and his acceptance. His own realization he might've loved the very Rose I was impersonating.

Yet he told me he loved me for me. Not my uncanny resemblance to her, my willingness to be Blanche, but my time with him and my own personality.

"As a brother..."

Dammit! Why couldn't I think of anything else!

Dylan's scowling face, Dylan tired with Calvin energetic by his side, Dylan careful around Ruby, in his black jacket, and in his white shirt at the treehouse.

How he turned to face me and I saw his face, black hair messy from the wind. Dylan putting the Oxford shoes on me like I was a Cinderella. Dylan touching my hair. Dylan smiling rarely. Dylan—

"Don't love anyone who doesn't cherish you," Connie said out of nowhere. "It's something I always tell Angel. She's hanging out with a boy who she doesn't even like, because she has a crush on Dylan. She told me she told you about her feelings, and it's simply so foolish. I mean, if a man doesn't cherish you then he's not the one. He'd leave you eventually. If Leroy doesn't treasure you, look for someone else, Blanche."

Connie's speech stunned me.

"It's not exactly Leroy," I whispered. "But don't you think it's hard to give up feelings that easily?"

"I know, I had to give up almost every crush I've had. Boys who ever came close to me wanted to use me to get close to Angel. You know her, she's not only beautiful but amiable. I'd choose her over me any day, too.

"And yet I still can't be jealous of Angel. She was just born patient and much more sociable than me, and she doesn't ever leave me alone; I can't hate her because she's really a great sister."

Connie raised her head and smiled at the starlit skies. I squinted through to see the flickers through the grey misty clouds like cigarette smoke.

"I had a sister I love like you do. I was always the ugly duckling—or a fake swan. My life is like Fantomina's," I said.

Fantomina was a novel where a woman takes on the persona of different people, eventually losing sight of her real self. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

As I sobbed, Connie hugged me, my head resting on hers.

Were these tears even real? Did I truly love Dylan, or was it only because I admired how devoted he was to a dead girl?

Or maybe it was that evening in his treehouse.

Or maybe it was those shoes.

No—I loved him.

"I love a man I can never be with, too," I said to Connie.

"Both Angel and you are so foolish," she said, but it wasn't in a mean way, but her tone was sad as she hugged me and rocked me side to side.