Page 85 of Bells
“Two days,” Vee replied.
I nodded, and Gabby squealed. She loved any excuse to dress up.
“Is this supposed to be a mouse or a rat?” She took the gray mask and pressed it up against her face, careful not to smudge her makeup. “It better be a mouse.”
I turned to glare at her. “What’s the difference?”
“Mice are cute,” she said it like it was obvious. “Rats are gross.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
VEERA: AGE 23 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
It had been a little over two years since I was back here, at Prescott Estates, but it felt like a lifetime ago when I was that girl running through the woods in nothing but a nightgown before escaping down a trap door that was fashioned to look like a well.
I’d learned that well had dated back to the prohibition era, when the Banner brothers built various tunnels under the city to store and transport their illegal moonshine. None of the tunnels were on the buildings’ blueprints and many of them had fallen to disrepair, caved in, and been forgotten about. While those that were left became part of our underground operation, smuggling women and girls out of dangerous situations.
Sometimes it meant faking their deaths, and other times it meant reporting them as runaways. Giving the cops false information and leads until the girls could make it far enough it didn’t matter anymore. Nina led the charge before she passed that hat onto me.
She was getting older and couldn’t handle the stress, and I needed something to focus all my energy on.
I glanced out towards the woods before making my way inside the main house, using the servant’s door located at the back. The Prescotts were all out for the evening, and the only one home was Louise. Everyone else was enjoying the reprieve by being anywhere but here.
Each step I took into the mudroom felt like taking a step into the past.
I’d spent three nights in that hole, in those woods, waiting for someone to walk down the tunnel and lead me out the other side. Three days bleeding for a child I refused to claim and living off the food Nina had snuck into a basket before sending me off.
And when someone finally did show up, I spent another few weeks pretending to be a psych patient until one of the nurses was able to move me to the next location. Another safe house. I continued bouncing from home to home, shelter to shelter. Until I finally made my way back here, on my own. With a pocket full of pills that would turn out to be the first step towards fixing all the wrongs in this house.
I let the kitchen door click behind me and tried to shake my head of the memories of the last time I was here. Some things were easier to forget than others…
Especially when nothing appeared to change. No matter how much time had passed.
“Dissolve one tab in his coffee every morning. If he doesn’t have coffee that day, any liquid will do. Just make sure it fully dissolves before serving it to him.” I closed Louise’s hand around the blank prescription bottle.
She nodded once. “And the other one?”
“All the Prescott males.”
“Including…?”
“Yes, him too.”
Prescott didn’t know it, but he would be getting a taste of his own medicine. Literally. His money went in to developing thisnew drug for use at Briarwood. A male form of birth control that no one was supposed to know about, that was never going to get approved to go to market because the people behind it never wanted it out there. Women were their target audience. They were obsessed with controlling what went into our bodies, and where Tate Prescott was concerned, what came out of them too.
The medication was used in local mental institutions, though. Because, as they said, one fertile male patient could produce dozens of children at a time while female patients—with the exception of multiple births—couldn’t do the same. It was the state’s form of population control. Fewer mouths to feed on their dime, less unexpected pregnancies to explain as well.
“He’s been asking for you.” Louise didn’t look up from where she was tucking the bottle away in one of the kitchen drawers.
“Who was?” I grabbed onto the counter, taken by surprise. As far as everyone was concerned, I was a dead woman. No one should be asking about me.
“Him.”
“He’snever met me.Hedoesn’t even know I exist,” I reminded her.
“Every child knows their mother exists. They also know when they’re missing her.”
“He’s two. He doesn’t know anything.”
