After the long bumpy ride, I emerged from the cart to find my mother’s house was dark. Not surprising since it was so late at night. I went to the door and knocked. No one answered. I knocked again and waited. I don’t know how many times I repeated that cycle before finally accepting that they weren’t there.
A chill crept up my spine. Where would they be, if not there? Had something gone wrong with Elaina’s assignment? I had not been given the time or the permission to write home. I was entirely in the dark about the well-being of my family, but nothing explained why they would all be gone...leaving the house entirely empty. Unless it was something very bad. Sirens started going off in my brain...begging me to consider the one thing I refused to acknowledge. Had something happened to our mother?
Everyone in the neighborhood was asleep, and I didn’t want to run around in a panic, knocking on doors. I decided I would find a way inside and sleep in my own bed. The next morning I could try to find out what had happened to my family. There was a window around the back of the house that Jada once knocked the glass out of when we were kids. She accidentally kicked a ball straight through it, and our poor, sweet mother never had the money to repair it fully. The misshapen pane that took the old one’s place was wobbly and easy to sneak in and out of.
With the window opened enough for me to climb through, I started to hoist my leg up. But light turned on from behind me suddenly, followed by a woman shouting at me.
“You! Hey you! Get down from there! What are you doing!? I’m calling the police!”
I put my hands up in surrender, as if she was the police, and slowly climbed back down to turn and face her. I was ready to explain everything, but her face softened as soon as she saw me.
“Lucia!?” she gasped. “Oh, child! You’ve come home! Your mother and your sister have been worried sick about you!”
“Where are they?” I asked urgently.
“They moved. I have the address. Hold on.” She turned and wobbled back into her house.
While I waited, I tried to imagine how on earth they would have managed to move. Could they not afford the house anymore? Had Elaina stopped sending them money? That’s when I realized that without any way to send my own money home, I had been stashing it all back in my room at the estate. I was so excited to get the hell out of there, I didn’t even think to ask Dario to bring it to me. Every moment of torture and mistreatment I had endured had been for nothing, and now I had nothing to bring my struggling family to make up for my disappearance.
I was on the verge of tears when the neighbor finally returned with an address scribbled down on a piece of paper. I cringed at the sight of it. I recognized the name of the road, and it wasn’t anywhere near here. In fact, it was close to where I just came from and where I never wanted to go again. It was the same road the estate I worked at was on. How was this possible?
“Your house is without power and food. Come in and stay with us for the night. I’ll warm up some food for you, and you can call for a ride tomorrow morning.”
I didn’t want to have to wait that long to know what had happened to them. Even if the neighbor could tell me more, I would have to see them for myself before I really believed they were okay. But there were no other options. It would be impossible to find trustworthy transportation at this hour, and the horse cart that delivered me there was long gone.
I reluctantly followed the woman into her home. She couldn’t tell me much about what had happened to my mother and sister - only that they left their address with her in case I ever came back to the house. They didn’t have a phone installed yet, so there was no number to call. Just the address. I tried to imagine what must have been going through their heads this entire time and felt overwhelmed with guilt. It felt impossible to wait until the next day to know how they were, but they had spent months worrying about me - not knowing where I was or if I was okay.
I could barely sleep that night, even after the generous, filling meal my neighbor provided for me. It didn’t feel like anything in me could rest until I saw my mother and sisters again. I needed to tell them I was sorry. I had failed, and I didn’t even have anything to show for my hasty, stubborn decision to run off to the auction.
My stomach turned as I traveled to their address the next morning. I wanted to stay far away from that nightmare of an estate, but here I was willingly being carted right back to a property that I gathered couldn’t be more than just a few houses over. My mouth dropped when he pulled up to the hacienda on a big sprawling property.
“This can’t be,” I murmured for the twentieth time.
“This is the address you gave me! Now pay me and get out!”
My neighbor had been kind enough to give me a little money to pay for the ride, which I tossed over to him just as rudely as he had ordered me to get out. One thing that had changed about me after meeting Leonardo and his cousins was that I had even less tolerance for rudeness than I did before.
I was hesitant to knock on the front door, convinced that this couldn’t be the right place. But before I even made my way up the rest of the long driveway, the door flung open. Jada stood there with tears streaming down her face.
“Lucia!” she cried, not wasting another second before flying forward to throw her arms around me, nearly sending us both toppling over.
We rolled around on the ground, crying and hugging each other for a long time until mother finally came out and yelled at us for acting indecently. Of course, the moment Jada freed me, she couldn’t stop herself from acting just as indecent as she embraced me.
It must have been at least an hour before the three of us were finally able to calm down enough to speak actual words beyond “I can’t believe it’s you!” and “You’re home!”. When the chance finally did come, I noticed what was missing.
“Where’s Elaina?” I asked with a hard gulp, afraid of what the answer might be.
“Next door!” Jada smiled. “She’ll be so happy to see you!”
“How...why...where did…,” I stammered my way through trying to make sense of it all. “How did you all end up here? I was...I have been down the street this whole time.”
Their brows furrowed and pure heartbreak shined through their eyes. “If we had known,” mother sobbed.
“You couldn’t have known! I wasn’t allowed to write letters or send money or...anything. It was awful. How is Elaina!? I have been worried sick about her! She had to have lied in her letter! That auction is a terrible place and the people who get workers there are monsters! Slave drivers!”
I saw the pain on my mother’s face and regretting spewing all of that out. I should have lied too, for her sake. I realized right then that’s what Elaina did. She lied so we wouldn’t worry or beg her to come home.
But instead of apologizing, all I could do was break down in tears. “I’m sorry. It was a terrible mistake to go. I should have never left you two. And I don’t even have a penny to show for it. One of my employers helped me flee in the middle of the night, and I had to leave all of my money behind.”
Jada reached over and squeezed my hands in hers. “Oh, Lucia. You don’t have to worry about any of that now. You don’t need any money. I just wish we had known how to find you sooner. We have so much to tell you.”
5
Leonardo
I hadn’t returned to the shed to check on Lucia since I took her out there. I suspected one of my cousins or some of the staff were sneaking out there to provide her with food and drink, but if they weren’t I didn’t care. It would serve her right to starve out there after what she did to my grandfather.
I was more concerned with keeping my eye on the remaining staff to ensure this wasn’t the start of some organized mutiny on a larger scale, though it was doubtful. No one liked Lucia enough to join in on a revolt with her. The women were jealous of her and the men were angry they couldn’t have her. I had noticed it from her first day here. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t like her either, and now I hated her.
Donña Ang
ela was still out of town, and we hadn’t breathed a word of any of this to her. Then there was the issue of Don German. The hospital had said he could come home, but we had to pay for an extended stay. With my mother gone and Lucia locked up, not to be trusted, we had no one around to give him the proper care he needed. We would have to find some way to sort it all out before Donña Angela returned.
I was mulling over that very thing when Dario came barging into the room, dragging Jorge along behind him. “I need to talk to both of you,” he ordered urgently, before holding something up in his hand. “I searched Greta’s room and found this stashed away behind a loose board.”
I stormed over and snatched it from his hand to read the package. Powdered Peanuts.
“In Greta’s room?” I asked. He nodded.
I was immediately flooded with an urgent need to go after Greta. I had punished the wrong person and all this while she had been left to think she got away with it free and clear. I could practically hear her laughing about it, even though I knew it was just in my head. Dario could see the rage on my face.
“I’ve taken care of everything,” he assured me. “Greta has been let go and turned over to the authorities.”
“Why the hell did you do that!?” I thundered. “They’ll never give her the punishment she deserves!”
“Maybe so, but she’s older and in bad shape. You can’t throw her around the way you did Lucia, and I really don’t feel like helping you dispose of a body when it’s easier to just let the policia handle it.”
Lucia. A strange feeling crept over me...something I suspected I hadn’t felt since I was a child, or maybe never. I felt a sick uneasiness in the pit of my stomach and my throat tightened. There was a strong urge to do something, and I got the sense that I wouldn’t feel better until I figured out what it was and did it. Was this...guilt?
I didn’t want to sit with it long enough to find out. Without really giving it another thought, I stormed out the room. Jorge and Dario chased after me.
“Where are you going!?”
“To the shed.”
“She isn’t there,” Dario informed me.
I spun on my heels and got very close, towering above him as I clutched his shirt collar. “Where is she!? Take me to her now!”
He threw my hands off of him and straightened his shirt. “She’s gone.”
I didn’t have time to keep asking questions and playing guessing games. I kept marching on to the shed. I don’t know why. I knew Dario wasn’t lying to me, but I didn’t know else to do. Maybe I wouldn’t accept that she was really gone until I saw it for myself.
Then a terrifying thought crept over me. What did he mean gone? What if he and the other staff weren’t sneaking her food this whole time and she had died out there? Only now I knew it was for no reason. She had never tried to poison Don German.
“Gone?” I asked again, turning back around to face him.
“I sent her away. I let her go,” he explained.
My shoulders dropped with relief. I knew now that I was definitely feeling guilt, even if I would never admit that to Dario and Jorge. If she was dead, there would be no hope of making myself feel any better. But as long as she was alive, I had a feeling if I just saw her in person...it would somehow absolve me.
“Where did you send her?”
“Wherever she wanted to go,” Dario shrugged. “I put her in a cart and off she went. I don’t know where.”
“Bull shit!” I fumed. “I demand to know where she is! I demand to see her!”
His eyes flickered with part surprise, part fear. “Why do you need to see her!? She’s not our concern now! She was innocent, and the best way to make her feel safe so she wouldn’t press charges against you for how you treated her, was to let her go! Beyond that, we have no business with her.”
“She’s always finding some way to make a fool out of me,” I muttered to myself, manically pacing the halls. “If I do ever see her again, I’ll make her pay for this.”
“She always thought she was too good for this job,” Jorge huffed. “I don’t know where she got off being so high and mighty when she was in no position to.”
Dario shook his head in exasperation as his voice grew shrill. “You’ve both lost your minds! That poor girl did nothing to you! She came here and worked hard, did everything we asked. She tolerated shitty treatment and even your accusing her of trying to murder her own patient! She ran off into the night and we’ll never hear from her again. You got off easy, Leonardo! And yet, somehow you’re still swearing vengeance on the poor girl who's done absolutely nothing wrong! Except maybe show you a little too much mercy.”
I stopped listening to Dario halfway through his rant. I didn’t care what the hell he had to say about any of this. I was all out of sorts and wanted to be alone. Even Jorge’s little bird-like responses, always agreeing with me, were starting to get on my nerves. I turned to storm off in the opposite direction. Dario gave up with a wave of his hand, but Jorge attempted to follow me.
“No!” I snapped at him. “Just let me be!”
“We will have to figure out what to tell Donña Angela before she returns!” Dario reminded me before storming off in the opposite direction.
That time, I waved him away. I was very well aware of that. I didn’t know who he was always trying to act so authoritatively while he was younger than me and even younger than Jorge. He had no right to take this matter into his own hands. Everything would have been different if I could have seen before she left, though I really didn’t know how or why.
That was beside the point. I was the man of the house, especially with everyone else gone. And he should have never acted without my approval. He shouldn’t have even been sniffing around in Greta’s room without asking me first, though I guess I was glad he did get her handed over to the police. He was right. I probably would have flown into a rage and killed her.
But then I wondered...Why hadn’t I treated Lucia the same? Was it because there was no proof or because Greta could have confessed and saved us all the trouble of a wrongful accusation? It was all so confusing, and I felt a storm of conflicting emotions rising up inside. First off, I was almost never wrong about anything. No, actually. I never had been wrong before, especially not with proof to show just how wrong I was. Second, I never felt sorry for anyone. It wasn’t like me to go easy on anyone, regardless of their age or if they were a man or a woman.
Which is what made what I did next even more puzzling. Once Jorge had ran off into our basement parlor to decompress and Dario had busied himself with a staff meeting to organize around the missing employees, I found myself sneaking into Lucia’s room.
Dario must have sent her off in a hurry because all of her things were still there. Her nightgown from her last night spent in this room was thrown across the bed, and I couldn’t resist trailing my fingers across it. That somehow turned into me clutching it in my fingers, and before I knew it I had raised it up to my face. My nostrils flared as I breathed its scent in and out.
For all the times I had chastised her while she worked, I had grown familiar with her scent of cinnamon and vanilla that wafted from her body. It lingered on the gown in my hands, and I couldn’t help but imagine what she might have looked like in her room alone at night, wearing nothing but this sheer white cloth. The sight seemed much more appealing than the ugly brown frock my mother made her wear daily.
I snapped to suddenly, unsure of what the hell I was doing or why I was doing it. Smelling this ingrate’s gown like some sentimental madman. I threw it down to the ground and stomped on it out of sight. Just as I was about to stomp out of the room, something caught my attention. The top dresser drawer was slightly open, and I couldn’t resist peeking inside.
Mixed in with the folded underwear was a colored scarf, and rolled up inside was a wad of cash. I roughly estimated how much it was by the weight of it, and quickly gathered it must have been all of her wages from her time here. That strange feeling from before came creeping back
again. Guilt or whatever it was. Ingrate or not, she had been her to perform a service. Whether she did it well or not, she was paid this money fair and square. But after all that, she was sent off in a hurry without all of her wages. And somehow...it felt like my fault.
Never wrong, I reminded myself. I was never wrong. I stuck the money in my pocket and huffed out of the room. As I flung open the door, a maid startled at my sudden appearance in the hallway. She stared at me in shock, cutting her eyes to the room over my shoulder, likely puzzling over what I was doing in there.
“Have this cleaned at once!” I barked coldly.
“Yes sir!” she stammered back nervously before running off.
I sulked off to the garden to sit alone. I didn’t like the feeling of her room being cleaned out. I ran my hand over her money sitting in my pocket. I would give it back to her if I could. That seemed only fair. And maybe it would make this terrible feeling that was plaguing me go away.
But Lucia was gone, and she was too smart to ever show back up here again. I guess I wouldn’t either if I was her, though that was a hard thing for me to imagine. A lowly caretaker. Ha. Even if I hadn’t been born into such a wealthy, prominent family, I would have never settled for such a pathetic place in life.
Since she was gone for good...I would have no way to return the money. No way to ease my guilt. Ah well, I thought. At least I cared enough to even consider how I might make amends or...whatever it was I was trying to do.
But that wasn’t quite it. It wasn’t just about returning the money or making myself feel better. I would never see her again, and that fact bothered me more than I would have liked. A great deal more. I could only hope that some other hot cook or caretaker would be hired in one of their places. Someone new for me to avert my attention to. Maybe she wouldn’t be so stuck up and prudish for me to have a little affair with.
Bullied Cinderella (Olive Skin Devils Book 2) Page 4