Clinton Priest

Chapter Fifteen

Diana is seated on my bed when I reach the bedroom. She already has a bowl and a pair of tweezers in her lap as well as a first aid box.

Her dark fists clench and unclench and her light brown eyes glisten with tears. She always cries when she's angry.

I sit next to her and she takes my injured hands gently in hers . She takes out the embedded shards of glass from my flesh without saying a word. It occurs to me that she never says a word during moments like these. I don't mind though. I find silence calming as well. Especially when my cheeks are throbbing and my back is blazing with pain.

"He's a bastard," she says as I strip out of my cotton nightgown.

"He didn't hit me this time," I tell her.

"He didn't have to," she says. "He got what he wanted in the end."

I don't say a word because we both know what she's said is the truth. In the end, all he wanted was to make me hurt and I did.

My gaze falls on the book Clinton gave me yesterday. On it is an illustration of an angel tumbling to earth. It reminds me of the image I had of my father when I was younger. An angel of death. I used to wonder if he prayed for war all the time so that his business would flourish.

I take a bath and hastily dress up. It's been a while since grand pa and I had any time together and despite the wounds on my palm and fore arm, I'm excited.

"I want you to have breakfast before you leave," Diana tells me. 

"I can't. I want to leave before anything else happens."

"At least promise me you'll eat something wherever it is you're going with master Edwin," she begs. I nod.

"Of course. I'm already hungry."

I kiss her right cheek before making my way to the car outside.

Grand pa takes about five minutes to join me outside. He sits at the back and I sit in front with the driver, Abram.

Abram doesn't ask where we are going. He just drives out of the Barclay estate and towards town.

"I need to buy some flowers," grand pa tells us as we drive past a few flower shops.

"Tulips," he tells me as he hands me his credit card.

Abram stops in front of a brightly coloured flower shop. On the sign board pointing to it is a set of brightly words, Montserrat Flower Shop. I push open the glass door and walk inside. My eyes widen at the sight of a young woman with long dreadlocks waving wildly at me.

"I've always wanted to meet you," she says when I reach her. "Your grandfather has told me a lot about you. Oh pardon me, I'm Montserrat."

"I'm Scarlett..."

"I know who you are," she interrupts. She leans over the counter and takes my hand in hers. She stares at my palm in rapt attention, her eyes glazed in some sort of trance. "Oh!" She gasps in shock. "It can't be. This isn't supposed to happen."

I snatch my hand out of hers and her head snaps up to look at me. "Don't you want to know what I saw?" She asks.

"No," I tell her.

"You don't believe," she says. "I don't blame you. Not many people believe in my practice." She snaps out of her sudden mood and hands me a bouquet of tulips.

She declines payment and I thank her before leaving. In the car, I realise I never told her the kind of flowers I wanted to buy.