Page 128 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
“As you wish.” He flicked his fingers at her. “Shut the door on your way out.”
“My name is Kateri!” She did shut the door, as hard as she could, but the heavy oak and well-oiled hinges did no more than make a muffled thump. She raced to her room before bursting into loud sobs swiftly muffled by her hands, the blankets, the pillows. She fell asleep crying and when she woke up, it was dark and late, she was starving, and she was determined to get up to that attic and take that album.Hedidn’t care about it.Shedid. Those were her parents, and that was the only image of her mother Kateri had ever seen with Mary looking radiant and happy.
She slid out of bed and headed up the narrow servants’ stairs, two flights toward the wooden attic door. The stairway was cold, airless. She didn’t turn on the lights; with no windows she had to grope her way along the bannisters, feel the steps with her bare feet, and all the time, a sense of being stalked grew. She got to the top, slid her hands down the door until she wrapped them around the knob. She turned it slowly, in growing anticipation—but the door wouldn’t yield.
It was locked, and remained that way for all the rest of her years trapped in that cold Baltimore mansion.
***
Rainbow said that in the album Kateri would solve a mystery, and so at last Kateri opened the leather-bound album and leafed through the pages, looking at each photo, seeing her mother young and happy, her father… looking happy, too.
Odd. In all the years she had lived with him, he had never been anything but grim and distant with a lurking cruelty that terrified the whole household. While with her mother he seemed almost human. Maybe in his way he had loved her. Maybe.
But what did it matter? He had broken Mary’s heart then. Later, when he took Kateri from her, he had broken Mary’s spirit. He had been her mother’s frog god, shaking the earth and breaking the sea and changing her life from a bright shining eagerness into the long, dim tunnel of hopeless years.
Kateri had forgiven him. The frog god had demanded it. Nevertheless, she was sure he burned in hell.
The album’s last pages were blank, black sheets of dull paper filled with nothingness, and Kateri had not yet solved any mysteries.
The very last page wasn’t black or dull; it held a sealed tan manila envelope inserted into the binding. Kateri squished it between her fingers. Not much inside. Tearing the envelope, she pulled out—
From the doorway that led into the kitchen, a woman’s voice spoke. “You found it.”
Kateri came to her feet. She looked up to see Lilith staring at her. Sneering at her.
Kateri looked down at the header and the ornate green border on the mottled security paper.
CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE
NEILL PALMER AND MARY KWINAULT
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
“You trashed my house for this?” Kateri held up the paper.
Lilith lunged across the room, reached for the certificate.
Kateri pulled it back, fended her off with a sharp elbow to the rib cage. “My father and mother weremarried? Hemarriedher? Why?”
Lilith doubled over, gasped. “He said he loved her.”
“He said… he loved her? My mother? Mary?” The whole world was falling apart around Kateri’s ears, all the perspectives were changing. She didn’t know how to put the pieces back together.
“He had clearly lost his mind.”
Kateri weighed how much force to put into the next blow to Lilith’s rib cage. And head, chest, face… But she wanted information and she couldn’t get it if Lilith was unconscious. “How did you find out?” She lifted the paper. “About this.”
“Fathertoldme.” Lilith straightened up. “Hetoldme he married your mother. Hetoldme he loved her. I asked where the marriage certificate was, and he said he hid it.”
“What did he hope to accomplish by telling you… any of that?”
“He was in pain. On medication. He said someone needed to know.”
“Deathbed confession? How human of him.”
“I suppose.” Lilith clearly did not see the humor. “I knew I had to find it before… before disaster struck. I sat down and I thought. Thought about his last days and his last words and I knew… I knew somehow he’d managed to send it to you.”
“Why do you care? Why would anyone care except me? I’m the one who… who’s suddenly legitimate.” Was she? Kateri wasn’t sure that a child born of bigamy was legitimate. Hey, maybe Lilith was no longer legitimate.
