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| Rebecca meets with Dr. Nikolas Jordan |
From the outside the red bricked exterior of Churchill Green Asylum looked like a beautiful winter-wonderland when contrasted with the bright white snow of that had fallen the night before to the early morning. The sun, as it shined it's white light down to earth felt a little brighter this day as Rebecca Lord scurried down the hallway to Dr. Nik Jordan's office.
She was late to for her appointment, for good reason.
All night she furiously discussed with Caspian her son Jacob's overtaking the company she kept afloat for decades after her late husband Albert died. Jacob had successfully found a way to use Rebecca's mental break-down and Evie's own misfortune to use in his favor to take over the family company. Legally, it seemed, but Rebecca was dead set on getting her rights back.
She was in a feverish state ready to jump back into the fray as the one and only Mrs. Lord, her daughter-in-law Celeste be dammed.
What stood in her way was the ability to actually leave the Asylum after what she did to baby Gabriel and Evie herself. Over all their discussions, Caspian and Rebecca had come to a final and good understanding with each other. They had put their past behind them and decided that there would have to be consequences for Jacob and Celeste, and Rebecca was the only one who could hand them down.
Another caveat would come later, but Rebecca first had to get out of Churchill Green.
"You're late." Dr. Jordan said, his youth showing on this perfect face. He lifted his brows allowing his hazel eyes to shine in the afternoon light the seeped in from the shaded office window.
Rebecca, dressed in a white dress with sleeves that ended in a triangle over the back of her hand and gray shawl did not sit after she entered and crossed her hands at her waist.
Sensing the dowager Lord matriarch had something to say, Nik asked her to sit so they could talk.
"I don't think this will take long doctor, because once I say my piece you'll understand that it will be the best thing for all of us." Rebecca said.
"What's this about Mrs. Lord?" Dr. Jordan asked, resting a pencil between his fingers and lower lip.
"While I've been here, in this place, I have had a lot to think about. A lot has crossed my mind and I've seen the ways that I have hurt others. But at the same time, things have been brought to my attention that I feel require me to return home. At once."
Nik shook his head as if he were shaking water out of his ear.
"That's impossible. The only way you can leave here is if I agree to it as your attending medical psychiatrist and we still have much on the judge's list to cover before I can do that. Mrs. Lord you kidnaped and almost killed your own great-grandchild because you were under mind control. I still don't see that you're able to break free from people who are inclined do use you the same way in the future. I want to feel comfortable that when you finally do return home that this list of requirements the judge has laid out for you is complete and that you're no longer a danger to Gabriel, or Fabian or even Charlotte. That was the deal."
"Nikolas, you know as well as I do that locking me up here to face my fears with the very man that controlled my fears was a struggle. And I've survived. And I've thrived. He and I are actually friendly now. I do not fear him. He has no will to control me either." Rebecca explained.
"You actually feel that after only a few weeks of being friendly with Caspian you're ready to break back into the real world? Mrs. Lord you are here--the two of you are here--in a controlled environment where you have to literally see each other and deal with the horrors you both caused. It's too soon. It's just too soon."
"Nikolas! Please! You have to, you have to let me go!" Rebecca shouted as she stepped forward towards Nik's desk.
Nik stood up, his white coat creased from the long time seated at the table. "It's impossible!!" he replied.
"Jacob has begun to do things, against my wishes. You know what he's capable of, and if I'm here any longer than I've already been there is no way I can feel safe in my place back at Tirymor when I arrive. I don't have much time, Nikolas. Please. Sign my release forms."
"I still don't think you're listening." Nik replied frustrated with the entire conversation. "Gabriel is my nephew and you could have killed him. I don't hear any remorse from you, not now or even in our many sessions since you've been here. Which by the way have been very few because you've refused to even acknowledge what you did."
"I have acknowledged my part in what happened to Gabriel. Many times! Do you really think when I look into my mirror that I don't see a woman that went mad at the top of a lighthouse? Every day, Nikolas, every single day that sits with me and I wonder what would have really happened had I not been stopped. But I stopped, Gabriel was saved, and thank god for it. But this involves him too--- his future. Jacob wants to take everything, the entire business that my husband and his father created for their heirs and Jacob wants the whole thing for himself. So far he's succeeding. I received papers showing just that. How do you think Evie got here? She stands in his way. She's always stood in his way. As did I. As did Gabriel. As Did David. I was always able to somehow thwart more of his admissions but with me here, Gabriel's future, the future he inherited through our dear Sebastian's parting is at stake. Listen to me Nikolas, sign the forms and get me out, my return is the only way to stop Jacob."
Nik scoffed.
"Listen to yourself! None of this sounds rational! How can I send you back to sort things out with Jacob if you're not thinking rationally?"
"Because you have to. For your sister. I promise you, sign the papers, sign them today, and I will be sure to get Evie out of here. She won't be here more than two or three days more after I'm released. Trust me when I say that I can get her out, you know as well as I do that she doesn't belong here." Rebecca said.
Nik paused. He was like a rabbit with a carrot dangling in front of him. He did know his sister was once again wrongly admitted into the asylum. He knew she was sane and that the issues that surrounded her were mere dreams that should not control. But with his help, outside of Churchill Green, he could fix her. She didn't need to be trapped like she was.
And perhaps neither did Rebecca.
"Why would you help Evie?" Nik asked, pushing the topic to see if he could detect and kind of deception from Rebecca.
"Because Nikolas, because I know she's not what they say she is. Not on paper. Not in real life. Her whole existence is a major threat to Jacob and now Celeste too. Her son extends that --- splits the inheritance once again to one more. Jacob is trying to make sure he gets the whole pie and he doesn't deserve it. He deserve only his part--- Send me home, and I get Evie out and she will be free of this place and Jacob's conniving. I promise you." Rebecca said.
Nik mulled it over in his mind. He wanted his sister out, he knew he couldn't do it on his own especially with Dr. Ward being the one who admitted her himself, but if Rebecca was sent home and was able to pull any levers she had with the right people she still had contact with maybe then Evie would be free of the nightmarish world she had been entered in again. That's all Nik wanted, his sister's freedom to return to her baby boy who was now in Jacob Lord's greedy clutches. The danger was palpable.
Nik lifted a brow and yanked open a drawer on his desk. After several seconds of tossing things around he pulled out a form and sat back down and began to fill it out. He looked it over and over and when he was happy with what he had written on it, he signed it.
It was Rebecca's discharge papers.
"If you betray me, Rebecca, you won't have to worry about Caspian and any kind of hell he brought on this earth because I will make sure the hell I pass on to you will be a thousand times hotter than what Caspian Casador could conjure. Evie is my best friend, my blood, my sister and my hands are tied with her being here. I am trusting you."
He handed the form for Rebecca to read over. She quickly scanned and saw that it was indeed what she wanted. She took a break and handed it back to Nik.
"Now one for Caspian." She said shocking him.
"What?"
"Write one for Caspian too." She repeated.
"No, this is about you and doing what you need to get what you want back of this Lord Empire of yours and then getting my sister out too the way you say you can. Caspian has nothing to do with this." Nik said.
"Oh, but he has everything to do with this. He's the reason I'm here in the first place and he's going to help me get my husband's company back." Rebecca explained.
"Caspian is? How?"
"Doctor Jordan leave all of that to me and just get him out of here so that the two of us can go on our way and work on getting Evie out. You have my word that once I'm free and Jacob gets the shock of his life, Evie will be free too. It wont take more than a few days with my plan in action."
"This isn't what you said before. Had I known you wanted Caspian out...Caspian! The man who ... who... he's ... the man who did what he did to my mother! And to You! Myt God, what he wanted to do to Gabriel! I can't! No, I can't do it!!" Nik said showing signs he was about to rip Rebecca's discharge papers up.
"NO!" She yelped extending her whole body of the table and grabbing his forearms. "Let go! Let the papers go! You don't understand, Caspian is the key to all of this and he's not who he once was. In fact he's back to where he was before, before the devil took over. The exorcism worked, doctor, he's his real self now and he is going to help me. He is going to help Evie! I give you my word, get us out of here and I will get Evie out too and I'll bring things back to norma at Tirymor. Trust me, I know what Jacob is doing. He thinks he's won, but I still have a trick up my sleeve, but not from in here. I cannot take back what is mine and give back what is Evie's and Gabriel's from inside this asylum Dr. Jordan. Caspian and I have to get out, again... I give you my word."
Frozen in place Nik paused and looked Rebecca dead in the eyes. She was serious. She was sure. She was in now way showing any signs of deception that he could tell. He gave it a split second thought and put the papers down grabbed another of the forms and filled it out for Caspian's release.
"I'm doing this for my sister," Nik said as he signed the second batch of forms while staring at Rebecca. "don't ever make me regret this."
He handed both forms back to Rebecca so she could once again take a look and approve. She was still doing managerial work even while locked away at a mental hospital. She could negotiate anything with anyone and that's why she was the best at her job. Contracts for anyone would always go the way Rebecca Lockwood-Lord wanted.
Even one's with young doctors who controlled the fate of their patients' discharges.
"You never will." Rebecca said.
The Lord family matriarch replaced the slipping gray shawl back over her shoulder as Nik walked her out of his office and made his way down the hall to the nurses station to file the release of Rebecca and Caspian.
As the two parted mid-hallway, Rebecca made her way back to her room and she passed a small card room where several patients were sitting around playing child games and sipping tea from protected beakers. She looked over in a corner and a nurse with one patient playing with a puzzle she looked in the other direction and saw Evie staring out onto the white frozen grass of Churchill Green that faced the main hospital.
"I'm going to get you out of here." Rebecca told Evie as she came up to her by the window.
Evie turned and looked at Rebecca and didn't say a word. Her sea-blue eyes were glazed over. Her expression distant but the life still strong. She stared at Rebecca and all the memories of everything that had happened over the past two years flooded her clouded medicated mind but she could not speak. She could not open her mouth. She just stared intently at her one time grandmother-in-law for what seemed like hours to Rebecca in silence.
"Evangeline?" Rebecca said gabbing Evie by the shoulders. "Did you hear me, dear?"
Evie, heavily medicated by orders of Dr. Ward still said nothing in reply.
Rebecca helped her over to an overstuffed chair and sat her down. Evie's light blue and white stripped hospital dress falling in a heap on the cushion. Rebecca pulled Evie's hair back and combed it with her fingers then began to braid it.
"You've been so wronged, my girl. And I'm sorry for my part in it, but I promise as soon as this is over you'll be free to be home with your baby boy and I'll never ever hurt you again. Ever." Rebecca said.
Evie suddenly lifted her hand and grabbed Rebecca's stopping her from continuing the braid. Their eyes met and there were no words exchanged, just the notion through eye-contact and her medication, that Evie understood.
Rebecca smirked sadly.
"It's a heartless world, I know it well. I've seen it myself." Rebecca continued. "You're only about 13 years younger than my Vivi would have been, you know? Even though I'm the age of your grandmother, I could have been your mother. Maybe?"
Evie said nothing.
"And yet I've been apart of doing such awful things to a girl the age of my own lost Vivian-Victoria. My Vivi." Rebecca added.
Feet from Rebecca and Evie's conversation was the open door of the card room. Caspian rolled himself in a wheel-chair over to the door of the card room and watched as Rebecca grandmother Evie. Just looking at the two without knowing the truth of their pasts made it look like a loving Grandmother/granddaughter connection, but there was always more than met the eyes.
It was still lovely however. Caspian smiled as he heard Rebecca singing a sweet song in Evie's ear as she braided her hair.
"Its almost over." Rebecca whispered as she looked up towards the door and saw Caspian sitting there. She smiled at him and whispered again to Evie, "Caspian and I will make it so. I promise."
As Rebecca stood with Evie and Caspian watched, a nurse fiddled with another patient at the other end of the room. The patient, struggling to put a puzzle together, sat with the nurse who seemed uninterested in her duty at the moment.
The nurse was much more fixated on what was happening on the other side with Rebecca, Evie and Caspian.
The nurse, with her intense stern expression, stood up from her post with the patient and the puzzle and walked over to a window. She suddenly seemed nervous, concerned with something hidden behind her eyes. She was listening to the whole time to Rebecca speak with Evie. She listened and took down notes in her mind of it all.
She was pressed for time, this nurse. She was counting the clock it seemed. Worried that the other shoe was about to drop in whatever was preoccupying her mind.
As this nurse stood in the glow of a window of the card room allowing the light filtering and glazer her skin with a bright light, her reflection in the glass was something much more ominous.
The reflection in the window's glass showed a different face than what the nurse presented to the naked eye.... in the glass was the face of Jacqueline Gray who was masquerading and using her powers of shape-shifting to confuse the world around her and walk around Churchill Green under a new face and free of being detected. She wanted to be close to her so-called new friend Evie. She wanted to watch her every move.
Now Jacqueline worried that Rebecca had her own twist to Jacqueline's own plan to make sure Evie and Sebastian stayed apart for all time. Now, the witch watched and secretly panicked that if Rebecca and Caspian were successful, Evie would be free; Free from the Asylum and Free to rekindle her love with Sebatian, forcing Jacqueline to be alone again.
Alone and scorned. Now, Jacquline had to think quick and neutralize the thorn in her plan before Rebecca could succeed in hers.
****
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| Tensions rise between Aurora & Gregory |
Meanwhile, at the apartment over the Constable's office, Aurora finished unpacking her belongings. Her mind was rife with emotions from the last few weeks. The loss of the child she gave birth to still looming over her like a ghost in the shadows. Her eldest child, Evie Jordan-Lord, also now locked away in an asylum by the man she loved -- Constable Gregory Reigs.
Because of the turmoil at Tirymor with Evie's ousting, Nik and Aurora felt it better to make their homes elsewhere away from the twisted world of the Lords. For now, Aurora would stay with Gregory and Nik would stay with Asha. The two living with the very conspirators that took Aurora's child away and adopting him out to Filipe and Mary.
After Aurora filled the dressers and closet with her things she walked back into the living room where Gregory was pinning his Constable's shield on his uniform jacket. Her turned to her from the mirror and smiled, a happy feeling flush on his face to see the woman he loved making a nest of their home together.
"As soon as I can get us an actual house, we'll be out of here this small place." He said to her of the small accommodations the county gave him.
Without looking up from the fresh cup of tea he just poured Aurora replied, "It's fine."
Gregory sensed the chill from Aurora.
"Listen, I know you're angry with me about Evie, but I swear to you, if I could have stopped her arrest, I would have but there were legal papers filed and the judge signed off on them. The Lords have it down to the letter. I couldn't go against a judge's order, Aurora. Not for anyone." Gregory explained.
"You're too close to the entire situation, Gregory!" Aurora said, snapping her body around to finally face him. "Couldn't you have had a deputy take Evie instead? I mean, my god, I’ll have that in my mind forever now, watching you cart off my own daughter into a patty wagon. That's not exactly something I can let go of."
"This is my job, Aurora. Anything this major from a judge should be me, not a deputy, no matter who is involved." He replied.
"Evie is not mad, insane, crazy! Do you understand me? She's not!" Aurora shot back, her eyes filled with tear.
"I know that I swear I do. What we have to do now is change focus. Evie is a strong young woman, just like her mother. We'll do what we can to reverse all of this, but what I think we should both try and figure out is how to get Gabriel away from Jacob and Celeste."
"How? You said Lear's legal paperwork was ironclad."
"There are always loopholes, we just have to do our part and figure it out." Gregory added.
Aurora sighed and sat up in the chair. She pulled a scarf out from inside of her sleeve and looked down at the various silk patterns of light pink flowers that were all tangled in vines. She felt the soft silk in her hands and smiled. It was a Christmas gift from Evie two years before she moved from London to Welshport.
"It's pretty." Gregory said, rubbing Aurora's shoulder.
"She gave this to me and told me that the day she saw it in the shop she thought of me and held on to it for months and months so that I could have something pretty to open on Christmas night. We opened our gifts on Christmas night, a little tradition to keep the kids from sneaking out before Santa arrived Christmas morning. It never worked." Aurora said. "They'd always find the real gift hidden in the house somewhere. Robert, my late husband, had lost so much and we were already going through terrible times and she saved and saved for this scarf and two pairs of wool socks for her brother and father. She's always been there to cheer us up, to hold us up into the light when there was so much darkness and now, here I am again, in the dark and I have no Evie to cheer me up."
"Aurora," Gergory began before Aurora interrupted.
"No. I have to be there for her now. I have to find the light for myself and get out of this dark wave of depression and get Evie out of hers. She's not mad, nothing any god-damn-judge's order will tell me that. No lie Jacob or Celeste concocts -- nothing. She's my daughter and I know her better than I know myself. She's NOT mad!"
The tears burst from the sorrow filled mother. She sobbed into the pink scarf, her long light brown hair covering her alabaster skin, like a fresh peach of pink cheeks and lips.
Gregory sat down and put Aurora into his arms and held her as she cried. He rocked her into a deep sobbing until she tapped him on the shoulder signaling she felt better.
"I'm going to help you. I swear it." Gregory said softly as he looked into her green eyes.
"I’m not letting her stay in there. Do you understand me? I lost one child I'm not losing another." Aurora replied.
Gregory sighed, his heart sank thinking about the child he took from Aurora, her child with Caspian. The child he said was a girl but was a boy. The child he said died, but was living. The child Filipe and Mary believe was an orphan and adopted and named Caleb.
Gregory thought about how hated he would be if Aurora discovered the truth. He thought about how difficult their lives would have been too if the child would have stayed in their lives. A constant reminder of Aurora's time under mind control when Caspian took advantage of her to conceive the baby. A baby Aurora wasn't even sure she wanted. A child that Gregory saw as a dark force only because it was a reminder, a physical reminder, of a man so dark and evil that he could not bare to help raise it's child.
Not even if it was half Aurora's.
The lie, so complex and twisted, had remained intact and so far Gregory was pleased with Asha's ability to have the child taken and adopted so quickly.
Gregory felt safe. With his lie. With his position in Aurora's life.
Aurora's eyes, dried. Her heart was feeling stronger with the idea that she knew she could be a force of nature too if forced to. She had it in her to fight like hell to get Evie out from under the powers of the Lords and their lawyers.
She stood up and sifted through her handkerchiefs. Gregory grabbed Aurora's hand. So soft and delicate. She was still wearing her wedding ring despite being a widow. He kissed her hand and then pulled her back over to the bed. She stood in between his legs and smiled as he looked up at her from his seated position. Her long flowing dark dress plopped over his knees like the leaves of a copper beech tree.
She put her hands on his face and smiled then leaned down and kissed him deeply.
She did love Gregory. He did love her.
And for now they were a team, a team that would do all they could to free Evie and save her from the treachery that was keeping locked in the asylum again. But the clock was ticking on a secret in the form of a baby left to grow up on Goode Island with his adopted parents, Filipe and Mary.
And one, maybe not anytime soon, the clock would stop and the secret would explode.
Damage was certainly on the horizon for Aurora and Gregory -- far, far off but coming, like the cold winds of winter biding their time to deliver their final frosty kiss in late December's greying skies.
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| Charlotte lays into her Father Jacob |
At Tirymor House in the study, Jacob puffed on a pipe as he read through the afternoon edition of The Welshport Globe. There was an ease to him as he sat in the yellow chair in the dimly lit drawing room. After everything that had happened, he seemed to not have a care in the world.
Celeste, walked in with the maid Jane and the two boys Fabian and Gabriel. Jane helped Celeste put the boys on the floor where they began to play together. Jane excused herself, curtsying as she quickly left the Lord alone to bask in the glow of their perfect plan of raising Gabriel as their own, thus controlling his entire future free of Evie's potential involvement in the family fortune.
"He's gotten quite used to us already, hasn't he!?" Jacob said in a puff of smoke from his pipe about Gabriel's seemingly easy going nature.
"So far so good. But his hearing loss is something we need to discuss." Celeste answered from the floor where she was sitting with the boys in her turquoise dress. "I think the sooner we get someone here to help us with what he'll need the better. I want to make sure he grows up feeling the same as Fabian as best we can."
"Do you mean some kind of doctor?" Jacob asked.
"Well, maybe someone who can help us learn ways to communicate with him. I don't know that there are specialist who teach ways to communicate using hand signals and Dr. Ward said that Gabriel would regain some kind of hearing even in a minimal capacity."
Jacob nodded. "Of course. Anything. Just say when and we'll make it happen."
"Jacob...." Celeste said, leaving the boys to play alone while she went over to the adjoining drawing room chair next to Jacob. She fanned away smoke and grabbed his hand. "This was the right thing to do, right? I want to be sure. When I went to see Evie she was so angry, and rightly so. I can't imagine what it would be like if the tables were turned."
"Are you having doubts now? You shouldn't. Evie was and is a danger to herself and to this child. Yes, I admit, when she moved here I did somethings to her to make it seem like she was not in her right mind. It was my own attempt and saving myself but now? Now I think she really is unstable. I saw her with my own eyes on the ledge of her balcony. You heard with your own ears the story of her horrible dreams of a dead man, Matthew. She told Father Ryan right in front of you. Even Father Ryan was worried about her. Celeste this was the right thing to do." Jacob explained.
"But to send her away...." Celeste began to say still with doubt in her voice.
"Darling listen to me: She's here on the island, not far off like before. Her brother is a doctor there, she's familiar with him obviously, and of course my mother is there. Perhaps they'll also learn to bury the hatchet and gain some focus together. A reunion, perhaps."
Celeste cocked her head and rolled her eyes at Jacob. His attempt to gloss over what they did to Evie and to Rebecca was making her see he was doing his best to not only erase all doubt in her mind but also make it seem like what they did, the underhanded usurping of Rebecca and Evie was good when deep down in the pit of her stomach she felt the sick feeling of guilt.
"There's a bit of delusion in your whole speech there, Jacob, that I'm not going to get into. If its all the same to you I want to be sure that I keep tabs on Evie. I don't want her to feel abandoned. Even if she doesn't want to see me, I'm still going to be there for her every week. She was my best friend." Celeste said.
"So it was you!!" A voice suddenly said from the entrance to the drawing room.
Jacob and Celeste turned to see Charlotte standing there. Her hair tied up a large blond bun with two strands of hair on either side of her face framing her eyes like a picture of an angel.
"Charlotte? Is that how we enter a room?" Jacob asked his daughter patronizingly.
"There has been enough chatter and gossip in the halls of this house from the staff for me to write several books, but the things I've heard in the last week I thought I'd never get confirmation on. How could you do that to Grandmother and Evie? You two were responsible for their admittance into Churchill Green? On what grounds?"
Jacob's eyes narrowed at his 13-year-old daughter's sudden bravery and confrontation. It wasn't like her, but he could see she had had enough. He stood up and walked over to her. She stepped back as he approached.
"Young lady, where is this coming from? I ask you again, is that the way you speak to you parents?"
Celeste stood up too, uncomfortable with Charlotte's obvious accusation.
"Grandmother certainly needed help after what she did to Gabriel, but Evie too?" Charlotte replied. "It's like the two of you found the opportunity to take control and ran with it. There must of been better ways, more kind ways, to help both of them."
"None of this is your concern." Jacob replied.
"Why not? They're my family too."
"Charlotte, both your grandmother and Evie were not well. We had to do what we had to do to protect not only their own lives but in Evie's case, we had to also protect Gabriel." Celeste said.
"Protect Gabriel and your bank accounts." Charlotte snapped.
Jacob again narrowed his eyes. "You're out line. This was for your good too."
"My good? I don't want anything to do with this family's money! I never have. All the money and power this family controls only corrupts. Look at what you did to Celeste. She's not only concerned with what will happen to her if you get angry with her. She's using it for her own good too. Not Evie's! Not Fabian's! Not Gabriel's! Money and power only lead to greed and wanting more and more!" Charlotte replied.
"Fine! You don't want our family's protect? You won't have it Charlotte. That's your choice and far be it for me or anyone else to force you to take it when you'd need it most. Tell me here and now, is that what you are saying? Are you saying you want nothing to do with how this family can protect you?" Jacob asked.
"Not if it means using it to hurt other people in this family. No, I don't want it. I want Grandmother back home. I want Gabriel to be with Evie. I want a sense of normalcy."
"Charlotte, please, you don't understand!" Celeste said, stepping aside to get a better look at Charlotte, so that the two could meet eyes. They had grown close since she became her stepmother and since Fabian's birth. They had become a family, albeit fractured with the lies and secrets that had been buried within their family walls over the years. But Charlotte realizing the truth in the gossip she had heard, was now a step too far.
"I do not understand! I do not understand how you both can pay off judges and doctors and anyone who can thwart your threats by incarcerating our own family members in an asylum just because you fear they'll do something to take more money from your bottom line. I can tell you right now Evie didn't give a damn about Lord publishing. And Grandmother, she ran the company better than anyone else in this house."
"Enough." Jacob said softly.
"You'll never be able to hold a candle to her, father, you know it, we all know."
"Enough!" Jacob said again a little louder.
"And when the cards fall, when they all fall down around you no one will be able to help you. Grandmother will be free at some point, I promise you that, and when she is, she will turn the tables and then what? You'll find another scheme, another trick? No, you won't. The clock will run out on you father and then, the house of cards will collapse and bury you both!" Charlotte added.
"ENOUGH!!!" Jacob shouted grabbing Charlotte by the arm.
"Jacob stop!" Celeste yelped jumping in and peeling Jacob's hand off of Charlotte's arm.
"I had it in my heart that you'd be more like me, I raised you. I gave you everything." Jacob said with a slow cold tone in his voice. "But despite it all you've done nothing but give me heartache and headaches. You're more like your mother than I ever wanted you to be. That is the real tragedy here."
"The mother that you took me from? The mother that you spread lies about so that she would not be able to have anything to do with my up bringing? Yes, I know, I know what you did. I know how you controlled every second of my raising and how you lied about her and how you wanted me to believe those lies. But I don't. Not now, not anymore. Not after what you've done to her and to grandmother and Evie. You are the treacherous one, You...father. It's always been you." Charlotte said strongly.
"Alright, the both you stop this." Celeste demanded. "You are family, we are a family. We cannot come at each other this way."
Charlotte scoffed. "Are we family? Are we really?"
Celeste looked at her confused.
"Get out." Jacob told Charlotte. "Get out of my sight. I don't want to see you, or hear your voice. I need you to go upstairs, Charlotte, and stay there until I come for your apology."
"Then never come for it, because you will not get it." Charlotte said shocking both of her parents with her words.
"What has gotten in to you?" Celeste wondered.
"It's her mother. She's showing signs of her mother's contempt for proper norms. Mary is just as childish and pathetic. But she'll change her ways when she realizes she has no one else. No one else in this world." Jacob said. "And she never will."
Charlotte was sick to her stomach. She had grown up in the shadows of her father's lies and treachery. She had seen everything he had done to many of her family members. She had known all the truths, everything. But she hadn't been able to do anything. Not with Sabrina's help. Not with her grandmother's help. Not with her own new psychic ability showing her the right path in life with revelations of the true nature of her father and her family's realities.
It was a cold, hard, realization that she had no choice but to reveal to herself. It was time. Time for her to grow up.
"I don't need you." Charlotte said. Jacob, who was walking back to his pipe and chair turned to her and stared at her dead in the eyes with a cold look. He sneered at her and chuckled under his breath.
"Charlotte, stop." Celeste said.
Charlotte looked at Celeste, a woman she loved so much even before she had become her step-mother but did not recognize now as the same. Charlotte grabbed Celeste's hands and squeezed them tightly.
"You'll be next." Charlotte replied cryptically as she left the room.
"She's out of her mind, just like her mother and Grandmother Eliza. I never thought I'd see the day where my own child would turn against me." Jacob said to Celeste now that they were alone.
"Can you blame her? We're breaking down her family right in front of her face. It's not something easy for a girl of that age to witness. Children like her, who have seen so much of their lives erode so quickly need to feel secure. With things constantly changing around her, I'm not surprised she's rebelling."
"This seems more than a teenage rebellion. This is a mutiny." Jacob said, once again puffing from a pipe.
"I'll go talk to her." Celeste said turning to walk out of the drawing room and suddenly seeing herself in a large mirror on the wall with a golden frame made of gold flowers and leaves. Charlotte's words echoed in her mind. Celeste too was beginning not to recognize herself.
"Absolutely not! This is just a game of hers. Leave her. I refuse to play her game of cat and mouse so that she can feel more powerful. This is her way of getting attention now that she has two brothers."
Celeste turned to Jacob, her whole body was uneasy. She felt sick. She felt unlike herself. She loved Charlotte and only wanted to help her through all of her pain but Celeste knew where her loyalties had to remain and it was with the man who sat in the plumes of pipe smoke reading his paper.
She knew that Charlotte was right, but Celeste also knew --- it was too late for her to turn back now.
****
 |
| Morgan & Charlotte |
Upstairs at Tirymor, Charlotte tore into her bedroom furious over the conversation with Jacob and Celeste. As she rushed down the hallway, she passed Johnathon DeViana, who saw how upset the young lady was.
It puzzled him.
As Charlotte angrily paced in her room she realized what she had to do.
She found a suitcase buried deep in her large closet beneath coats and dresses and behind several hat boxes stacked neatly on top of each other and began to pack it with as much clothes as she possibly could. Hearing the nose down the hall way, her friend Morgan Thorne came running in.
"What are you doing?" He asked, his eyes bright and hazed toned.
"Leaving." she said quickly.
Johnathon then came from the other end of the hall and eavesdropped.
Morgan grabbed Charlotte's hands as she furiously packed "Why? What's happened?" He asked.
"I can't stay here anymore. My father, he's ... he's just crossed a line that I don't know if he'll ever be able to cross back." She said.
"Are you afraid of him?" Morgan wondered.
"I'm not afraid of anything." Charlotte replied assertively. "I've seen enough to know real fear and my father doesn't fit that. But I can't stay in this house any longer knowing he has no remorse."
"Is this about Evie?"
Charlotte nodded.
"Where will you go?" Morgan added.
"I don't know. To my mother, maybe. I was taken from here when I was just a baby and lied to about her. All my life I was told these terrible stories about what kind of unfit family my Spencer side was, and that I was to having nothing to do with them. All of it lies. I'm old enough to know now that it was all just garbage. All of it."
"Charlotte, how do you know your mother will want you back? I can't imagine she'd turn you away, but I don't know I feel like you're not thinking clearly." Morgan said.
"What would you do then? Morgan, my father has everyone one of us on a target! He only thinks of money and power and things that can make him soar higher and higher and he doesn't think of the consequences of what it'll do to anyone else, not even his own children." Charlotte added.
Johnathon, listening in the hall took note of this.
"You don't think he'd hurt you, do you?" Morgan wondered.
"He locked me once in the turret room. He fears exposure. I am probably the only one who can do that, expose his cruelty. So yes... I do think he'd hurt me."
"Well then I'm going with you." Morgan said, finally releasing his hands from Charlotte allowing her to pack again.
"What?"
Morgan reiterated "Im going with you. I don't want to stay here in a place like this without you. Your my best friend. I... I guess I want to help you."
"What about your mother? What about Johnathon, he's supposed to be watching over you, if you leave he'd most certainly have issue with that."
Johnathon waited for his ward's response.
"I don't know him very well and he seems like a nice man but at this point he has a lot to deal with. He may not even miss me. And as for my mother, she's already abandoned me twice. I'm on my own." Morgan said with tears in his eyes.
"That's right, you lived with your late father's mother in San Francisco all this time while your mother was here making a life for herself. I guess you and I really have a lot more in common than I realized. Both of our mother's were absent from our lives -- on different terms but all the same, absent." Charlotte said connecting the dots.
Morgan sighed.
"My mother has a lot of heart in her. She loves me, I know she does, and she only moved out here to make a better life for us, but it basically took my whole life for that to happen and now she's off somewhere chasing the ghost of your uncle David."
"I'm going to Goode Island where my mother and her partner Filipe live. I want to be with her. I want to be away from my father and this awful place once and for all. And when I'm free of him then is when I will deal with how I can finally expose him." Charlotte said, confessing her plan.
"But you can only do that if you are free from his watching eyes, I understand." Morgan said. "I want to help you."
Charlotte smiled sweetly. She could see Morgan, who was only a few months older than she was, was really a good hearted boy. She felt such a comradery with him and she truly did need a friend no matter what. Despite her strange psychic abilities that to their core frightened Morgan, they were still the only friends they had in the entire world.
They'd become best friends. They'd become as close as two 13 year old children could become.
"Pack lightly." She said. "We don't have far to go, but it's still going to be a long journey especially sneaking out."
"I will." Morgan said as he quickly left her room.
Johnathon, still listening, hid himself behind a large potted palm in the hallway from the exiting Morgan. The conversation he listened to was interesting and enlightening. Charlotte's idea that Jacob had a target on all the back of every single Lord family member made him think twice about trusting him now that he too was apart of the Family business, and in turn made him think twice about trusting his own sister Celeste.
There was truth in what Charlotte said after all. Truth and precedence.
Johnathon though of David and Sabrina, Sebastian and Evie, Rebecca and Gabriel.
All of them, every single one of them, members of the family that had stakes in the family business. Every single one of them agents of their own inheritance that if they were eliminated somehow, the funds, the trusts, the money the power, would all seep closer and closer into Jaccob's clutches.
So far, the dastardly older brother had succeeded in usurping everyone.
But Johnathon, new to the rules of the Lord family way, wasn't just another brother for Jacob to steamroll and overtake. He was his own ruler and would do all he could to make sure Jacob was put on notice NOT to trifle with him.
Johnathon knew the way to Jacob was through Celeste. But the worry in Johnathon's heart was that Celeste was too far gone.
Back in her room, Charlotte snaped shut her suitcase.
She moved over to a table where she had a few rings and necklaces that her grandmother had given her. She cupped the pieces of jewelry in her hands and put them to her chest and closed her eyes. She felt their power, the power within them that was passed from generation to generation.
In her mind she could see a bright light bursting like a rising sun, and in that light stood Eliza Goode, her maternal grandmother.
Eliza, swallowed up in the light inside Charlotte's vision stepped forward and smiled at her granddaughter, the child that was taken from Mary at a very, very young age. Eliza reached out her ghostly and ad placed it on Charlotte's shining face and sang to her a song.
"Inside you is a world of secrets, inside you is a world of women. To our coven you belong, in your heart, you will do no wrong."
Charlotte, stood in her room, with her eyes closed as tears squeezed through. She could feel her grandmother's powers fill her body though the jewelry she was given. It was a powerful connection that she had always felt but only as she had grown into her own powers did it all make sense.
"I will not let him win." She whispered to herself.
"Charlotte," a voice said from her bedroom door.
It was Morgan.
Charlotte wiped her eyes and turned to him "Are you ready?"
Morgan entered her room and saw that she was crying. He furrowed his brow, his heart crumbled seeing her so hurt by what her father was doing. He reached over and gave hugged her tightly. She flinched at first and tensed up but then like a wave of warm water she fell calm and rested in his arms.
"It's going to be ok." Morgan said to her in a soft voice. "We'll leave tonight. Together. And we'll never turn back."
Charlotte squeezed Morgan in her arms, he squeezed back.
She whispered to him "Thank you." Then closed her eyes and saw the vision of Eliza still in her mind. Then She said to Eliza only in a way the ghost of her could hear "Thank you."
Jacob perhaps had finally met his match --- his own child Charlotte, who now was old enough to take him on and make him pay for the terrible things he'd done over the years. She would stop at nothing until he finally met his consequences.
Once and for all.
