The Girl at the Hanging Tree by Mary Gray

Author:Mary Gray [Gray, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monster Ivy Publishing

34

We’ve been locked up for I don’t even know how many days.

It wouldn’t feel so long if Tansy would let me disappear, but she’s scared. We all know she likes having me in reserve just in case. She says my joints hurt less when it comes to cleaning up glass and finding new homes for the bricks our neighbors threw inside.

When the chores are done, we still have to live Tansy’s version of an idyllic life. Her idea of dinner is eating a parsnip whole, and her “exercise” consists of lifting paperweights like dumbbells between creative projects.

It kills me, hiding in here while Klan members have duped the town into believing that Francesca’s death was an accident. And I hate knowing that Francesca’s little girl could be held hostage somewhere. I should call the police. But from what Tansy said, it sounds like Jesse Beauchamp’s just as much a part of the Klan as WT.

In the meantime, Tansy’s content living her blind, idyllic life. I don’t even want to think about the kind of pushback she’ll give me if I insist on going out. So, I weather these nineteenth-century shawls and petticoats. Ignore the piles of necklaces, bracelets, and broaches she’s so fond of wearing. She’s even pinned up our hair with a crown of dried flowers and feathers. I wish our dress was at least a different color. Canary-yellow washes out our face.

I wonder what the townspeople have decided now that they can’t get inside the house. Would they burn it down? I suppose they wouldn’t want to harm the home of their precious WT. So maybe they put up roadblocks until they can get Jesse to take me away. Jesse seems like he’d love nothing more than to bring me in, but Tansy said Calhoun made him agree to some sort of arrangement because of Tansy’s and my eccentricities.

What I really want to know is why Calhoun doesn’t lock me up, ASAP. Is it because I’m Edgar’s granddaughter? Some sort of twisted way of honoring his bloodline?

Honestly, I have no idea what to think. For now, I have to sit in the library and look at some gigantic aquarium Tansy’s drawn, chockfull of plants and randomly ripped apart arms and legs.

“Does everything you paint have to be so ... murdery?”

Tansy sticks out her tongue, sassing me. “Better for me to paint it than for us to see it in real life.”

“So you’re saying that painting is your therapy. I don’t ever dream of killing people, Tansy.”

“It’s not that I dream of killing them.” She dips her paintbrush into her favorite color—chartreus mixed with pollen and other “natural oddities.” “It’s just what the muse prompts. I pick up a paintbrush, and before I know it, I’m drawing guys falling off of roofs and lions eating people alive.”

I keep my gaze centered on Tansy’s green well of paint. Maybe she really did kill WT and has yet to admit it. “You certainly have a morbid sense of creativity.”

She heaves an almost pleasurable sigh.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.