The Visitant by Chance Megan

Author:Chance, Megan [Chance, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2015-09-22T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Samuel was asleep when I returned, which was a welcome reprieve. If my years at Glen Echo had taught me anything at all, it was that madness couldn’t be cured. It could be lulled into obeisance, babied with laudanum and cold baths and calming words, enough so that patients could return to their families—at least for a time, with everyone pretending that all could be normal again, that all that was needed was a nice rest in the country, and oh, how pink your cheeks are now! How rustication becomes you!

But most came back to Glen Echo, every year or so surrendering to voices or hysteria or melancholia, come to nurse invisible wounds out of sight of society, out of mind.

How often I’d heard bitterness in the voices of the women I’d tended at the asylum. How much they’d feared and hated having to hide the pieces that did not quite lock together. I’d heard it in Samuel’s voice too. Living a lie. The strain of a lifetime of keeping secrets. I had not understood before. Not really.

And perhaps I didn’t understand now, either, but I began to wonder if perhaps it was time to write to my father and tell him what I suspected. I suppose I even wanted him to tell me it was all right to give up, to leave Samuel to himself and the Farbers to their quaint little delusions that he could be the son they wanted. It will be all right, my dear, he would say. We will find another way to survive this.

I wondered what Littlehaven would be like, and whether my cousin would expect me to bake bread, or clean out stalls, or milk cows, and . . . and I felt only a swift and debilitating desperation. No. Not yet.

I racked my brain, trying to remember my every interaction with other epileptic patients. I studied my father’s notes with renewed vigor. There must be something I’d missed, something that could help me. I was not ready to admit defeat.

I heard a scraping sound, like something heavy being dragged over stone, and I looked up in alarm. Then I heard someone racing down the hallway. There was a frenzied rap on my door.

“Mamzelle! Mamzelle!”

My heart froze. I dropped the pen and jerked to my feet, unlocking the door and pulling it open to find Giulia standing there. Her hair was down, volumes of hair, thick tangles to her waist, and her eyes were wide and frightened.

“Please, mamzelle.” Her gaze darted toward Samuel’s door, which was wide open.

I pushed by her, running to his room, stumbling to a stop just inside. The first thing I noticed was the thick and spicy smell of the sguassetto. The second was the mess. The chair was on its side, halfway across the room—the scraping sound I’d heard—and handkerchiefs were strewn everywhere as if someone had grabbed them from the dresser and tossed them into the air. The drawers were wide open. Sguassetto spilled in an ugly brown pool on the carpet, next to an upturned bowl.

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.