4: 4
4
The braided rod cracked down and Charlene let out a muffled grunt, but her spine stayed straight. She did not beg.
Hal's brow knotted. He raised the rod high and brought it down again.
"Still won't admit you were wrong? Still won't apologize to your brother and beg his forgiveness?"
The whip came whistling down, about to bite into Charlene's back again, when Wendy screamed and threw herself over her, wrapping her daughter tight in her arms.
She didn't feel the pain at all. She just cried, shouting up at him.
"Hal, stop it, stop hitting her. We've already got one child lying in a hospital. Do you mean to beat the other one to death too?"
She wept until she came apart, every ounce of her aching for Aaron, aching for the daughter who had done this terrible thing, and from start to finish she never once saw me, my face a mess of blood, curled on the floor in agony.
Hal stopped, breathing hard, and let out a heavy sigh.
Wendy only held my elder brother and cried as if her heart were being torn out.
A long while later, Hal threw down the rod, turned, and looked at me with guilt and helplessness. He lifted me up gently, an apology in his voice.
"Lance, it's my fault, I didn't raise your sister right. This is on us. We wronged you."
He fell silent for a moment, as though weighing it carefully, before he made his promise.
"Tomorrow I'll set up a card for you and put two hundred thousand into it as compensation."
"Once this blows over, once Aaron has fully recovered and he and Sybilla are married, I'll send you abroad right away to the best doctors. I promise you, they'll make you even more handsome than before, not a single scar left."
As the words landed, Wendy let go of my brother, still sobbing, and hurried over to me. She wrapped her arms around me and held on tight, her tears dropping one by one onto my neck.
"Lance, my good boy, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Mom never imagined it would come to this. It's my fault, isn't it, I didn't keep you safe."
She cried and apologized and explained, over and over.
"Lance, you'll understand me, won't you? They're both my flesh and blood, one side a child we raised for twenty years, the other side your sister. Mom really had no choice."
"Just forgive your sister this once, all right? Even if your face really does scar and you're not handsome anymore, Mom will never think less of you. Your father and I will provide for you your whole life, take care of you for the rest of your days, never let you suffer a moment's hardship."
Her warm tears fell onto the raw, festering wound, and each one sent a fine, splintering sting through it.
I leaned into her arms, listening to this hollow comfort, the searing pain in my face long since gone numb, and the last thread of hope I'd held for family finally broke apart, clean and complete.
Hal began ordering the butler to fetch a doctor for me. I let them carry me to the bed and work over my face however they wished.
Under the heavy anesthetic, I slowly sank into sleep.
When I woke again the room was pitch dark, the sharp pain in my face faded now, leaving only the dry, stinging rasp in my throat.
I sat up slowly and felt my way out to find some water.
Standing at the bend on the second floor, I could see down into the ground-floor hall, where Hal sat on the sofa with a grim face, and Wendy, tending the wounds on Charlene's back with aching care, wept and reproached him.
"Hal, how could you be so cruel to your own daughter? She did it for Aaron, out of good intentions."
Hal let out a breath, his face iron-hard.
"Good intentions or not, she had no right to lay a hand on him and hurt him like that."
"If I didn't punish Charlene hard, vent it for that boy, calm him down, and he'd gone running to the police today, tomorrow the Floyd name would be splashed across the headlines. By then, do you really think the Hardings would still let Sybilla marry in?"
