The loud rage of my parents’ thoughts reached me through the thin wood of the walls like only judgment could do, and I stopped, pondering my odds. 

Throwing myself down the stairs just to put an end to my imminent misery crossed my mind. Instead, I tried for bravery and braced myself. My fingers ached as I tried to count how many people died as a result of their parent's wrath. Gods, I didn’t want to tempt death today, but I should know better by now that it would always follow me around.

I pressed my palm to the familiar humid surface of our home’s walls. Maybe I could prepare what to say if I knew how they were already framing the case against Hugh and I. But the moment I leaned my ear closer, the walls shook, and I jerked back.

Did the wood just bite me? 

The floor creaked heedlessly, silencing the other side of the wall. I cursed the old boards under my feet and the ghosts in the old house laughing at me. Their essence poked my skin, trying to engage in a play I had no time for. Curse them! They always showed up when they posed an inconvenience—when they could create chaos. I was familiar with their taunts and usually engaged in them, but that morning, my skin heated with rage and worry, turning my energy cold, and they sneered at the threat. They clearly never stood at the other end of Mother’s stares. 

I drowned their presence tickling my body, and focused on the silence making the hairs on my neck on end. It was a fitful thing. Soft rumbles cracked the void—a waiting silence. The type that let you know there was no avoiding what stood on the other side. 

Running up the stairs or falling wouldn’t save me. I would face my family’s wrath either in life or in death. 

And so, solely because my mother’s shrieks would follow me to hell, I continued down to a different, closer sort of penitence. Besides, if I wanted to be worthy of a future with Hugh by my side, I had to act like it. 

Anything for us, I thought. Anything for love.

But he betrayeddd you, a ghost at the foot of the staircase sneered.

No, he didn’t, I shushed back, feeling my nostrils flare.

Ignoring him, my legs pulled me forward toward a fate I did not want. 

Downstairs, my family were sat for the first meal of the day. 

Their eyes greeted me with a scream so loud my ears and pale face burned. I could feel the inevitable fate of my skin turning the same colour as the carpets heating the walls and the Summer fruits on the table. I took a seat and pointedly ignored the ghost looking at me across the room. 

This one was a child. 

His name was Len.

I was used to his presence in the house. He usually came out at meal times. 

Once, in the many events when I’d been alone all evening, he’d appeared in my room and told me I looked like he did when he was alive.

Sad.

Misplaced.

Sometimes, I ignored him. 

One time, I didn’t and discovered he died poisoned by his mother, and he knew he wasn’t liked since he was born. 

I silently wished I wasn’t about to suffer the same fate. Death was all around me, but so was life. I was eager to survive this lecture and escape to the woods. I wanted to come to my favourite clearing and feel the mist breathing soft life into my sensitive skin, washing away the weight other people’s words carried—even my own. My skin had always felt too conscious of the close range of society’s rules. 

I loved running down the windy hills up to where the cliffs plummeted to a world I would never know. Nature had secrets—parts humans couldn’t see or even understand. I grew up seeing the shades of grey no one seemed able to grasp. Nature was the only one that understood my vastness. 

My otherness.

Lately, I’d been studying the growth of flowers and was eager to speak to my mother about opening a flower shop in our small town. The words were burning my tongue, eager to spill, but I swallowed the burn.

I spent the last four years working afternoons at Sophie’s, and I was terribly good at what I did, but I wanted my own place. It’d been a fit to convince Mother to let me start, but I woke up one morning to her supportive smile like her distrust had been a figment of my imagination. 

To this day, I believed Mother only accepted to hide me, but the sting had long since worn off. Since starting, I learned much from the old crone, but I couldn’t help but want more.

I wanted my flowershop, and I wanted Hugh by my side. A boy and a dream—everything a girl could want. 

It was the anticipation of that very future that plucked my attention. There was a sheet lying incriminatory next to my mother’s plate, and my father waved another in his hand as he frowned to read the words. It caused him his usual scowl. 

I met my brother’s face briefly. The pity in his big eyes pained me. He was the only one at the table and in the house that didn’t expect anything from me, and his unburdening approval was comforting, but I didn’t always know how to take it.  

“Eilidh.” 

I met my mother’s gaze. 

“Yes, mother.”

“Again?”

Again, because this wasn’t the first time my name had been scribbled on that paper. Mother threw the list at my face as if I didn’t know what was written on it. 

Eilidh Killbride stared at me in rushed writing, listed at the bottom of the page. 

I barely had time to blink at the words before she planted the brown paper on the table with a sharp hand and shook her head. 

“We should have sent you away to your aunt’s at Kinloch. There would be talk because people are not stupid, but it would be better than this. You know that your father’s mines are causing trouble. You feel the way they look at us, so tell me, how could you be so careless? So naive?”

I kept my mouth shut, letting my rage bubble.

“Everyone can see our disgrace looming at us.” You, she meant, if it weren’t clear enough. “It’s been months since sweet Celeste came around. Even Mrs Byrthe has taken her invitation from her daughter’s birthday at her house. This is so shameful. So shameful, Eilidh.” 

My mother paused, searching for air. Her face was redder by the second. 

“Tell me, child, what would you have us do with you?” Father never spoke up, so all air left in my lungs vanished when he took her place. “ Rumour has it that you and Faulkner’s boy are having an affair. Did you lie to our faces?” 

I didn’t reply.

“No?” 

My father slapped his hands on the table and got up, dragging the chair back with an ugly shriek. 

“Speak, Eilidh.”

I flinched and stared down at the folded hands on my lap. My parent’s eyes pressed me to give them reassuring words. I had none to offer. None they could understand.

No simple words could describe what they sought to comprehend. The truth was I had been naive and silly to believe my choices wouldn’t harbour such dire consequences. I didn’t feel like a fool. It seemed so real. Hugh and I.

Around me, the room clouded with stale air, making it difficult to breathe. The smell of fresh food was overwhelming. I looked at the fruit and the stale smell of a half-eaten meal. I pictured it rotting and doubling in number. My throat closed up. All I wanted was to bolt, but I was locked here, with all that food and my father’s cheap cologne. 

“My virtue has not been compromised.” 

Father’s shoulders slumped. 

Mother parted her lips to speak. 

I didn’t let her. 

“But like Mother pointed out, that does not matter.” And I don’t think you believe me. “We’ve traded letters. Someone must have intercepted them, and I have reason to believe it was Hugh’s former lover. She must have gotten jealous.”

My mother’s eyes narrowed, accessing my words.

“You will be studying your verses from sunup to sundown,” she finally said. “Word must travel that you were caught in sin but are committed to atone for them and find forgiveness in thy Lord.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she shushed me. 

“There won’t be another word of this. Unless, of course, you propose a better solution.”

I did a poor job of swallowing a laugh, and the meal resumed with careful glances. Disappointment coated the air, making my skin itch.

Wanting to feel their approval of me was a long-lost battle. I let my mother’s words wash over me. Attending church wouldn’t change my devotion to the only living person who’d accepted me for who I was, ghosts and gods and all. I didn’t believe Hugh was responsible for my name twice making the list of girls who should be looked down upon in town. 

But then why were there rumours?

Sat at that table, I made an effort to eat, lest I give my mother another reason to start an argument.

When I got up, she was quick to speak again. 

“Make yourself ready to leave. We’re going to service in town.”