Ivy of Our Hearts

Thirty-six

As the days went, I wrote more letters to my parents. Little things telling them I hadn't been harmed and I hoped to see them soon. I'd made sure to write them when Margaret wasn't in the room. I hadn't told her the truth because I hoped for help to arrive. I'd keep the letters well-hidden until I could give them to Manderley.

Manderley took them away for me for nothing in return but our friendship. The next morning, after I'd sent the letter, I'd hope for a note or for someone to turn up. I'd wait the entire day and the whole of the next, but nothing ever came. No one ever came for us.

"Are you sending them, Manderley?" I'd asked her once when we were out of Phillip's earshot.

She'd cawed at me and nipped the flower from my hand. I fed her often because I needed her to remain loyal to me. Although she and Phillip had a special bond, I believed she pitied me and for that reason she helped me. I'd sent so many letters my notepad had gotten thin. It all seemed hopeless. My parents hadn't moved on without me. Maybe a pile of my letters now sat out front of our old house with no one to receive them.

Yet, on November 12th, I wrote again, using the last few sheets of paper in the small notepad. Even if Manderley never took them to my parents, writing to them kept me in good faith. I could and would be free of Phillip. We would make it out of these woods, our hearts intact as they once were. I scribbled my letter down as fast as I could. I told them all I could about what had happened. I apologized. I'd never apologized in any of my letters.

The bedroom door swung open as I wrote. I hid the letter underneath my hand as Margaret came in. "I need my coat," she said. "It's freezing." Once she had her coat and had gone, I scribbled down the last line.

He isn't violent, but he frightens me.

I'd told them of the beast Phillip was, how whenever I looked at him, I no longer saw a boy, but a monster who'd taken more than he should have from me. I didn't care how much of the letter sounded like something out of a storybook. I folded it up and left the room with it tucked in my fist. It would be my last one.

Margaret and Phillip had gone out, not far though. Their voices drifted in from outside. Manderley wasn't here either, so I'd have to wait to send the letter. The paintings Phillip had moved to the wall behind the couch called to me, whispering as the trees often did. I knelt in front of them. Nora hadn't been crazy after all. I was still on the floor by the paintings when Phillip and Margaret came back in, laughing and holding hands. Her cheeks were flushed. His cheeks were flushed. They were happy. My stomach convulsed.

"What are you doing?" he asked when he saw me sitting there on the floor.

I scrunched my fist tighter, crinkling the note. "Nothing."

Still in his coat, he plopped himself down on the couch. Margaret undid hers and went straight for the bathroom. I got up. Hands tucked behind his head; Phillip put his feet up on the coffee table. "You okay, Ivy?" he asked.

I jumped when he said my name, even though I'd been watching him. He had a way of saying my name that made it rhyme with mine. I was his. I belonged to him. He'd had my heart.

"Yeah," I said, shaking my head as if this whole thing, me and him and Margaret was a made-up story in a book I'd read.

He turned to me. I tucked the hand holding the letter behind my back. His eyes shifted to my hand, but he didn't say anything. When his gaze left me, I stuffed the letter into my boot.

"Are you going to stand there?" he asked. He took his feet off the table and began to take off his coat. "I want to show you something."

"What is it?" I asked, but I didn't move. I stayed near the wall. My back almost pressed to it.

"Come here and I'll show you," he said.

There was laughter in his voice, and I felt the familiar pull towards him I'd had before, the willingness. I remembered what Margaret had said, "He could have been worse." He could have been worse, but that didn't make him right. I went to him, not because I still cared for him but because he thought I did. Margaret thought I did. As I sat, I kept several inches between us, which he closed as he scooted closer.

He took something small out of his jean pocket. "I was going to wait until your birthday, but there's no time like the present." He smiled, as if shocked with himself. "Nora used to say that," he said. He held the thing up to the light. I saw it now, a pendant, a glass bead with dandelion wisps inside of it. "I found this," he said. "I thought you'd like it."

He took my hand and placed in into my palm, folding my fingers down over it. He held my hand. "I hope you like it," he said. I thought he meant to add, "Please stay with me."

He didn't.

I pulled my hand from his grasp and held the bead up to my eyes. I didn't like it. I loved it. Phillip must have noticed because he said, "Make a wish for us, Ivy."

I almost laughed, but I caught myself. I couldn't accept it. I couldn't give it back either. I'd have to get rid of it somehow. Maybe I'd toss it into the lake. The longer I held it I realized I wouldn't toss it into the lake, but Nora's paintings whispered to me.

He isn't what you think he is. He is a beast like his mother.

It was in his eyes. Something hid beneath the surface. I feared that if I stared for too long it would reach out to me, seize me, and pull me into its depths.

I would drown if I stayed here. I would drown in him.

***

I left our bedroom in the wee hours of the morning. I wouldn't sleep, not when I had so much to keep me up at night. Out in the morning gloom, Nora's grave would keep me company. I hadn't gone to Nora for many nights now. I'd felt betrayed by her. Phillip wasn't the sweet, innocent baby she'd found in the crook of that tree any longer, and a part of me blamed her for it. She'd taken him in. She'd raised him as her own.

I bent down at her grave. He'd brought her a new rose, this one as red as the other had been. I picked it up and held it to my nose. "Why didn't you tell me, Nora?" I asked, settling down on the ground. "He isn't human, is he? He's like your paintings."

As the wind blew through the trees, there was a long hushing sound, like a mother soothing her young, like Nora attempting to calm a wailing Phillip when she'd found him.

"I want to go home," I said, almost in tears again. "Tell him to let us go," I said, knowing that she couldn't and wouldn't do such a thing. I did cry. I wailed, until a sudden wave of anger came over me. I tossed aside the rose and dug my fingers into the dirt of her grave.

It was a wicked thing to do and my nail beds stung, but I shoved my hands into the pits of the earth with as much vigor as someone who'd been buried alive. I dug for ages, until my arms ached, or at least I think I did. The dirt was everywhere, in my hair and in my ears and on my tongue. I found nothing.

The rose, the twigs strung together, marked nothing.

Nora was not here.