Luella

33 | sweet dreams

L U E L L A

My eyes stung when I finished reading out the words so I closed them. I could picture a young thirteen-year-old Harry with his handbag strapped to his shoulder, craning over his desk to write his entry and his goodbye letter to his parents. I open my eyes quickly and blink away any potential tears. Harry speaks from beside me after a moment of painful silence.

"One of my shortest entries, that is. I was kind of in a hurry, you see."

"What-" I clear my throat and look up at him, trying again in almost a whisper, "What happened then?"

He pursed his lips and shrugged slowly. "I took the train to London-"

"From where?" I ask curiously.

Harry is, for some reason, taken aback from my question, but he answers anyway. "Bristol. Walter had multiple factories there, for wine and tobacco."

I nodded for him to continue. Harry stared at me, his emeralds taking mine into them, inspecting my face and studying it. My lips part and he swallows harshly, looking back again down into my eyes, with his still bloodshot and exhausted. But he seems sober now.

"I've never..." He whispered, still slurring just a little. "I've never talked about this with anyone."

I try to control my breathing. "We can- You don't have to. Maybe let's just rest. Y-You've had a long past couple of days..."

"Luella," he shakes his head about five times and says, "I need to tell you. You're the only... You're the only one I can talk to, because I know you're not gonna judge me." He stares into space and frowns deeply, thinking about this through his fogged conscience.

"Then tell me, get it out of your system," I pleaded with him.

He closes his eyes, clenches his jaw and continues his story. "When I got to Lancaster and tried to pay for a hotel room, I was just a kid with no ID and a bunch of cash that could buy the entire hotel, you know? So, of course, they were pretty suspicious. A lot of crap happened next... I remember police men thinking I was a brat thief. But no one reported theft of that much money. And no kid was reported missing as well. I was just...a mystery.

"They finally settled on sending me off to the Boys Orphanage here in Lancaster," he furrows his brows, as if recalling the moment. "That was the hardest thing I had to go through. It was like going from one jail to another. I hadn't accomplished anything."

I waited two beats before I opened my mouth, "But what made you hate it? Your home at Bristol?"

"Home?" Harry let out a bitter laugh. "Luella, you ask a lot of wrong questions. What could have made me not hate it back there, is a more appropriate one." He pauses. "I hated every little single thing about it. Nothing was ever appealing, except maybe a couple of friends at school who also hated their parents, so we had something in common for starters."

He sighs and continues, "My parents always wanted a boy as an heir for the companies and factories they owned, so when I came..."

"You were forced?"

"I was too forced. Walter," he stops and elaborates, "that's my father."

My heart sinks. He doesn't have it in him to call him Dad. I bend my knees towards my chest and hug them to me, watching Harry talk.

"Walter was all about making me study Business," he says and shakes his head. "And I wish he forced me towards it when I was old enough to go to college. Oh, how I hated him. He used to- He used to bring me books and booklets and college notes and everything that had to do with Business just when I turned ten. He made me tag along when he was in meetings and all that. I hated it, I absolutely loathed everything about it."