by L E Fraser
“Quentin, sisters squabble,” Nina said. “If Joyce and Sam were caught in the middle, it was an accident. Sam is too young to be playing with older kids.” She snorted with disgust.
“This isn’t the first disagreement that ended in violence. We have to do something before someone is seriously hurt.”
Nina sighed. “You’re overreacting, as usual. I don’t know why you’re so hard on Gabriella.”
She was always like this when it came to Gabriella. It was infuriating. Why would his wife not see what was right in front of her face?
“Isabella lies to protect her sister, and she does it because she’s afraid.” He took a deep breath to try to squash his anger. “I want Gabriella to go back to the therapist.”
Nina slapped her hands on the bed. “The doctor said there’s no reason to refer her. There’s nothing wrong with her. It’s all in your head.”
He sat up and punched his pillow. “The doctor doesn’t see what we do. She manipulates him. You have to back me up and stop blocking my attempts to make him understand.”
“Do you want your daughter to have the ugly stigma of mental health issues? Is that what you want?”
“We don’t live in medieval times.”
“Easy for you to say,” she retorted bitterly.
Nina didn’t have to explain what she meant. She hadn’t brought up An Da Shealladh in years. He didn’t know if she still believed she had ‘two sights’, or whatever she called it. They didn’t talk about it. Considering the handful of pills she swallowed every night, it would be surprising if she dreamed at all. If he brought up the pills, she’d bring up his drinking and he had no desire to have that fight again.
“I respect your feelings,” he said instead, “but I’m speaking with the doctor.”
“If you spent more time with her, she wouldn’t have a reason to be jealous of Isabella.”
Here Nina was right — he did spend more time with Isabella. It was… easier. Gabriella, well, she was a liar. She would outright deny being somewhere, claiming she was in her room when he saw her leaving the house. Her lies were so outlandish it was insulting, yet she refused to back down. Worse, she showed no remorse. She acted contrite, if caught red-handed, but he felt it was disingenuous.
“I should spend time with Gabriella,” he admitted, “but that’s not the problem. When I was in the hall a minute ago, she was talking to herself again.” He rearranged his pillows. His shoulders were tight and, like most nights, he couldn’t get comfortable.
Nina reached for one of her bottles and shook two tablets into her palm. “She was probably talking to Gana.”
He frowned. “No, she was having a full conversation. There were two voices.”
“People make up voices for their pets all the time.” Nina swallowed the pills and turned off the lamp. “She’s fine. Go to sleep.”
So long as Nina paddled up the river of denial, clubbing him with an oar every time he tried to help their daughter, there wasn’t anything he could do. Feeling powerless and out of sorts, he lay awake in the dark and listened to his wife’s breathing even out.
He was drifting off to sleep when something woke him. A shuffling sound, from the hallway. His eyes grew dry while he stared through the dark.
He climbed from the bed and skulked across the room to stand with his ear pressed against the door. Silence, then a soft clicking noise against the hardwood. A dog’s toenails? Reaching out, he yanked open the door.
“Gana—”
The hallway was empty, but he was sure a door latched.
He grabbed his shorts from the chair, pulled them on, and tiptoed to Gabriella’s bedroom. Quietly, he nudged open the door. The street light illuminated the room through the lacy curtains. Gana studied him from the foot of her bed but Gabriella appeared to be asleep. She could have made it back to her room and be faking. Did he believe she was lurking outside his bedroom door? Yes, he did and it made the hair rise on his arms.
Returning to his room, he quietly closed the door and listened. The house was quiet. He twisted the door lock, removed his shorts, and climbed into bed.
An hour or so later, he jerked awake, certain he’d heard the door jiggle. His heart pounded in his chest and his mouth was dry. Was he losing his mind, too? His lower face hurt from clenching his jaw. He opened his mouth wide and tried to relax the tense muscles.
He was being ridiculous. Why would his teenage daughter be creeping outside his bedroom door?
Because, a voice whispered in his ear, there’s something wrong with her.
He kicked away the sheet and rolled over to stare at the locked bedroom door. In the humid darkness of the late summer night, Quentin wondered how it could be true that his sixteen-year-old daughter scared the shit out of him.
CHAPTER TEN
Gabriella
“IF YOU CRY, I won’t let you out to play skully.” He was whispering against her cheek. “If you fight me, you know what’ll happen.”
Pain, excruciating pain in her bum and back. Hands pushed her against the mattress, squishing her face and driving her agonized screams into the pillow. Everything faded away.
When she drifted back, there was the stench. A horrible smell of something sizzling in the pan he kept above the fire. The sound of lips smacking while he gobbled the meat.
“Where are you?” she whimpered.
“Here,” said the voice of a girl she couldn’t see. “Shh, go to sleep and forget.”
She lifted her head from the bed and pink bars distorted the image of the man and the girl. Firelight flickered and she saw the man and the girl together as one person with two faces.
The images battled, each one taking turns in the foreground. They both disappeared and a skeleton demon emerged. Thin, stringy hair fell in gossamer strings across the monster’s shoulders. The eyes were sunken cavities and skin hung from bone, falling in dripping clumps around its feet.
“Wake up.” It loped across the room toward the cage, snarling and whipping its head from side to side.
The smell of decay filled the tiny cabin, and rotting hands reached through the bars of the cage. “Eat with me,” it growled. Strings of saliva swung from torn lips. “Wake up NOW!”
GABRIELLA JERKED AWAKE and found she was standing in the hallway outside her parent’s bedroom door. Confused, she scurried back to her room and sat on the bed, twisting her head to the right and the left, hunting for the familiar. There, against the wall, was her dresser. Under the window was her desk. Above her was the canopy of her bed.
“A dream, just a dream.” Crying, she pulled Gana against her body and buried her face in his soft fur. He whined and licked her shoulder.
Instead of fading like lacy smoke, the image of the monster remained fixed in her mind. She sat still and waited, hoping she hadn’t screamed aloud. If her parents woke, they’d ask her questions she couldn’t answer.
Gabriella climbed from the bed and went to her dresser, touching each of her princess figurines. She grasped Snow White and held the china doll to her chest.
“Just a dream.”
Gana jumped off the bed and whimpered, tugging on her nightgown with his teeth. Crying, she closed her eyes.
A moment later, she opened her eyes, glanced at the toy in her hand, and placed it back on the dresser. “Silly girl. It was just a nasty old dream.”
She smiled at Gana, plucked her diary from between the bed mattresses, and began to write.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two Months Later: London, Ontario
Nina
NINA SAT ALONE at the kitchen table, absently turning the pages of a photo album. Her finger paused at the picture of them building the tree house the summer Isabella turned five. After Nina took the picture, Gabriella hit her sister with a hammer, breaking Isabella’s index finger.
There they were, in every photo, a middle-class family doing ordinary things. What a lie. Behind each picture was the memory of an accident. Isabella was the victim of every mishap.
&
nbsp; “Accidents,” Nina whispered to the empty house.
The phone rang. She stiffened but made no move to answer it. It rang again and then a third time and a fourth. Finally, she picked up the receiver. “LeBlanc residence.”
An authoritative male voice asked, “May I speak with Mr. or Mrs. LeBlanc?”
All the saliva in her mouth dried up. “This is Nina LeBlanc.”
“Mrs. LeBlanc, this is Principal Harrington. I’d like to speak with you and your husband this afternoon.” It was a command.
Nina closed her eyes. A new school year and they hadn’t even made it to Thanksgiving. “I can come now.” Her shoulders sagged.
“I require both you and your husband this time,” he said. “How’s six-thirty. Yes?”
“I suppose…”
“Good. I’ll see you then.” The line went dead.
This was her first summons from the principal. He left most disciplinary matters to his vice-principals. What had Gabriella done this time? Maybe the principal was unaware of the multiple times the vice-principal had ordered her to his office. That was stupid. He knew. She hadn’t told Quentin about every school visit. She’d told him Gabriella was doing well, which she was academically. Socially, well that was different matter. Nina wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and replaced the phone receiver.
She went upstairs and stood outside her daughter’s bedroom. The room was spotless. The bed, made with military precision, looked ready for inspection, and out-of-fashion clothes hung by colour in the closet. China princesses decorated the top of the dresser. The collection disturbed Nina. Once, she’d given Gabriella a Maid Marian figurine, but her daughter wouldn’t add it to her collection. If it wasn’t a Grimm fairy tale character, Gabriella didn’t want it.
So different her two girls were. Going into Isabella’s room, she bent to pick up dirty clothes littering the floor. The bookcase was messy, and papers cluttered the adjacent desk. A diary was open to a half-completed entry for yesterday’s date. Nina closed the book without reading it.
If Gabriella had kept a diary, that might be a different story. She might be able to talk herself into forcing open the tiny lock to read the words hidden inside, in the hopes of understanding what her eldest daughter was feeling. But Gabriella was far too private — secretive — to write her most intimate thoughts.
She trudged downstairs to the family room off the kitchen and glanced at Gana, sitting stock-still by the patio door. The dog always sat in that guard stance from the moment Gabriella left for school until she returned in the afternoon. Nina had read that Samoyeds were sociable and playful. Gana was neither and she didn’t like him.
“Gana, you want a treat?” She reached for the treat container and held out a dried chicken fillet. “Treat?”
The dog ignored her. He only accepted food from Gabriella. If she was late and Nina prepared his kibble, Gana would refuse to eat until her daughter emptied the bowl and refilled it.
Nina wished she had a relative or a friend to talk to, but there was no one. She sat alone in the family room, staring at the dark television screen. Quentin would be home soon and the fighting would begin, again.
AT SIX O’CLOCK, she heard the front door and watched Quentin scowl at Gana on his way through the kitchen to the family room. He sat beside her on their shabby brown sofa and tugged his tie loose. He studied her for minute and stroked her cheek. “Have you been crying?” he asked and took her hand.
“Don’t bother changing. We have to meet the principal at six-thirty.”
Colour sprang into his cheeks and he dropped her hand. “Christ, what did Gabriella do now?”
The genuine disgust in his voice when he spoke their daughter’s name took her aback.
“Well,” he snapped, “am I expected to guess?”
“He didn’t say.”
Quentin glanced at his watch. “I’m tired. I don’t want to go to the damn school.”
Nina glared at the brick fireplace across the room. “Well, this is part of parenting.”
He abruptly stood, slapped the side of his leg, and stomped to the corner bar, tripping over the edge of the braided throw carpet. “Goddamn it, I’m so fucking sick of this.”
When he grabbed a glass and a bottle of whisky from the bar, Nina quietly said, “Please don’t have a drink. We have to go to the school.”
He snorted laughter and poured a drink. “As if a high school principal doesn’t keep a bottle in his desk to strengthen his constitution.”
“Certainly not when I was teaching.”
He sipped his drink and studied her over the rim. “You haven’t been in a classroom in decades.”
You’d be surprised, she thought.
“I’m sorry. I just…” He sighed. In a single gulp, he finished his drink and picked up his suit jacket. “Maybe it’s good news. Gabriella’s on the honour roll. Maybe it’s about scholarships.”
Without responding, she followed him out to the car and they drove the four blocks to the high school in silence.
They passed their neighbour’s homes and Nina fought tears. Dads were mowing their lawns, instead of sitting in the house nursing a bottle of booze. Moms were tending gardens, rather than grieving in solitude over smashed dreams. Laughing children were playing basketball in driveways, without one sibling assaulting another. Why couldn’t her family be normal?
By the time they reached the school parking lot, she was crying. She got out of the car and hurried ahead of Quentin to the entrance, wiping tears from her cheeks.
Inside, their footsteps echoed through the empty hallway. The principal, who was waiting in the administrative office, was a stout, bald man with kind eyes. His grey suit was crumpled and his tie was loose. He led them into his office and gestured to the two chairs across from his cluttered desk. They sat and Nina squirmed in the uncomfortable chair like a naughty child. She gazed at her feet and avoided the principal’s eyes.
He cleared his throat. “I want to begin by acknowledging the terrible ordeal Gabriella suffered in her youth.” Receiving no response, he added, “Over ten years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe you should get to the point,” Quentin said.
“Yes, well, I wanted you to be aware we aren’t unsympathetic to the adversity Gabriella has overcome.”
“But?” Quentin exhaled in a puff. Nina smelled whisky on his breath.
“Mrs. LeBlanc, you’ve visited with Gabriella’s vice-principal, well, to put it bluntly, regularly.”
Quentin gave her a puzzled look.
“We’re again experiencing challenges,” the principal continued. “Gabriella is bright, and her marks are excellent, but—”
“What has she done?” Quentin cut in.
The principal shook his head slightly. “Gabriella pulled a knife on a student.”
“She did what,” Quentin roared.
Nina quickly asked, “Was she provoked?”
“The other student corrected her on a subject regarding his culture — a myth, I was told. A demonic spirit called Wendigo.”
Now Quentin was glaring at her.
“I didn’t say a word to her. She must have researched the legend on her own.”
Looking as if he disbelieved her, he turned back to the principal. “What did Gabriella say?”
“She said she didn’t do it, has never heard of Wendigo, and was in the library at the time of the incident. She was very convincing.” He stared at them solemnly. “When two witnesses stepped forward, she refused to say anything at all.”
“Are you expelling her this time?” Nina knew the answer.
This was not the first report of aggressive behaviour, but it was the worst. Each time, Gabriella adamantly denied everything, insisting she was elsewhere when the transgression occurred.
“Nina, did you know about this behaviour?” Quentin asked.
Not knowing what to say, she remained silent.
Quentin took her hand. “You should have told me.”
“Mrs. Le
Blanc, you were a high school teacher, is that correct?”
With perfect clarity, Nina knew where the conversation was leading.
“Have you considered homeschooling? Gabriella is extremely intelligent. With some help, she could receive early admission to university. Our social worker thinks she’ll thrive in an independent learning environment.”
“My daughter won’t let me teach her.”
Principal Harrington ignored her. “We’ll act as academic liaison,” he continued, “and work with the university’s admissions office to facilitate junior matriculation acceptance.”
“But I—”
He avoided her eyes and continued talking. “It’s best for Gabriella. I’m afraid the students here are well aware of your daughter’s past. Teenagers can be cruel.”
“Is she being bullied?” Nina asked.
“Your daughter is a beautiful young woman. That, plus her past… well, it makes her a target. Many of the young men’s comments are sexually inappropriate.”
Nina lowered her head, fighting back tears.
“Why weren’t we told?” Quentin asked.
“Well…” He sighed. “We gave her the space to learn conflict resolution. Evidently, we made a mistake. The social worker recommends that Gabriella return to therapy. That is a stipulation, if we’re to help you.”
Quentin nodded. “We’ll have our doctor make a referral.”
“About me teaching her,” Nina began, only to have the men dismiss her by standing.
Principal Harrington extended his hand. “We’ll help you so Gabriella can achieve her academic dreams.”
When they left the school, Nina felt shell-shocked, troubled by the meeting’s revelations, and overwhelmed at the idea of becoming Gabriella’s only teacher.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and large droplets of rain splashed against her shoes. By the time they reached the car, they were drenched. When Nina looked up, Quentin’s expression was as dark and unforgiving as the heavens.