2: 2
02
I died in prison at twenty.
Not long after I came home, Bridget accused me of burning down her gallery.
My mother said I was too calculating, that there was something rotten in me.
My brother said I'd grown up in the slums, that the rot had already gone into my bones.
In the end my father made the call and sent me to prison.
There was too much wrong with me, they said. Only suffering would set me straight.
No one listened when I tried to explain.
Bridget must have put in a word, because prison was hard on me from the start.
Getting bullied was just the ordinary state of things.
But I bore it.
Because they told me all I had to do was three years, and then I'd be out.
Then, the year I turned twenty, I overheard two of the guards talking.
“That Eleanor Pruitt, she's getting out next year, isn't she?”
“Getting out? Arson's a serious charge. They gave her fifteen years flat.”
“I thought the gallery she torched was her own family's. Couldn't they file a letter of forgiveness and get her a lighter sentence?”
“It was her own family that demanded the harsh sentence. Otherwise she'd never have gotten this long.”
Fifteen years.
The fifteen best years of my life.
Spent in prison, carrying the name of an arsonist.
I didn't want that.
So that night, while the guards changed shifts, I used my clothes and hanged myself at the foot of the bed.
Thank god heaven gave me another chance. There's still time to fix all of it.
I lifted my eyes to Bridget, and the corner of my mouth curved up. “Since you know I don't want you here, why are you still standing there?”
Bridget froze, and then tears the size of beans slid down her cheeks.
She shot to her feet and bowed to me. “Sister, I know I shouldn't be here. I'll go right now.”
And with that, she started crying and walked toward the door.
I watched her back and answered easily. “Mm. Don't let me keep you.”
Bridget's whole body went stiff. She hadn't expected me to give her nothing to save face with at all.
The Fox family finally couldn't take it.
First Matthew slammed his chopsticks down and barked at me. “Eleanor Pruitt, this isn't your house to run yet!”
Then Davina stood up, pulled Bridget back, and the two of them clung together sobbing.
“Bridget, Mommy promises you, I will never send you away!”
Last came my brother Ivan's accusation. “Eleanor Pruitt, you're the one who couldn't be on time, and just because Bridget told the truth you want to throw her out? What else would you expect from the slums. Small-minded and selfish through and through!”
I stood with my arms folded, and when every last one of them had finished, I took out my phone and opened her social-media feed.
The newest post was a photo of her getting into the car.
The caption was just one word.
【Home.】
The timestamp under the photo said it had been posted five hours ago.
I held the photo up in front of the Fox family. “The butler picked me up four hours ago. It only takes an hour and a half to get from the slums to this house, but he drove me three loops around the beltway. So I'd like to ask: is it really that I can't keep time, or is it that the Fox family has no rules at all, and the help does whatever it pleases?”
No one answered.
I gave a small laugh, walked over to Bridget, and asked her. “I just got home. I had no idea who you were, and you had no idea why I was so late. So why did you jump straight to saying I hated you and dragged my feet coming back on purpose?”
“It couldn't be that you wanted to smear me, so the Fox family's first impression of me would be a bad one?”
Bridget hadn't expected me to spell it out so plainly. The color drained from her face, and her defense came out weak. “I didn't……”
Davina couldn't stand to see her like that and jumped in, aching for her. “Ellie, you've misunderstood. Bridget's just been so on edge lately, knowing you were coming home.”
I didn't answer her. I just looked at Davina, steady and unmoving.
There was so much love in her eyes. None of it was for me.
I lowered my gaze and said. “They say a cuckoo that takes over another bird's nest will push the little magpie chicks out to fall to their deaths, so it can be raised by someone else's mother. I wonder if people can be like cuckoos too. Selfish to the core, seizing another bird's nest for themselves.”
