A Daughter's Duty

Chapter 17

I took off my necklace and set it on the bedside table. After an entire day of crying I was utterly exhausted. My ribs and shoulder were throbbing hard, and I hadn't cleaned the wounds and dressed them up yet. It was around four in the afternoon, and Michael had called me almost a hundred times, but I didn't answer the phone. They didn't know, and I didn't know if I could handle them knowing.

Gran's dead. Gran's gone. Gran's never coming back again. She's gone. The thoughts wouldn't leave my head. It was so damn hard to accept the fact that I was never going to see her face again. That gut-wrenching feeling knotted my chest - it was a mixture of pain, guilt, hopelessness, and seething anger. And although the latter was comparatively less prominent, it still seemed to burn a hole in my lungs. It was that Dunaway, that wretch of a man, that had ruined my life. Whatever that was good in my life was taken away by him.

By him, and the key.

Ever since my Gran was kidnapped, I had developed a loathing towards that necklace, a cross to bear for my family that had been passed down to me and I had willingly allowed it. It was the source of all my misfortune - the reason why my family and I had been targeted for so long.

Our family heirloom, our legacy, our sworn duty, our responsibility that Mr. Hardinge had given us...

...was nothing other than our pain, our scourge, our self-imposed curse...

...our destruction.

With this newfound idea, I jumped out of bed, and immediately regretted it after the sudden head rush that made me tumble back. I groaned and slowly got up again, walking with one hand on a wall to support me, and the other checking drawers and shelves, looking for what I needed.

When I found it, I sat down at the table, took the pen out and wrote at the back of it-

'To, Her Majesty, the Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA'.

The sound of the telephone ringing for the thousandth time that day woke me up. I realized that I was sleeping with my head on the table, surrounded by the scatters of paper filled with rough drafts and dirty handwriting. I stood up and slumped to the telephone, picking up the receiver reluctantly to answer. "Hello?"

"Evangeline!" A voice said, relief apparent in it. "Finally! Why haven't you been answering?"

I closed my eyes. I had been afraid of this moment. I had to answer.

"Hello? Eve? Can you hear me? Don't you dare ignore me again, Eve!"

"You were right, Mike." I said quietly.

His frantic questioning stopped abruptly. "About?"

"About Gran."

The silence that followed for a while was deafening. I had to look back that the screen to see if we were still connected. "What are you saying, Eve?" The fear in his voice was horrible to hear.

All my self control broke when my voice finally cracked. "She's dead, Michael."

I hung up as the tears overflowed again.

Not again, thought a voice in my head before the slideshow of memories accompanied with the music of sheer pain and guilt replayed in my mind.

It had been three days since I sent the letter - and three days since I let anyone into the house. Mike gave up on calling me, and it seemed like he advised the others against that too since no one did either. I was barely hanging on now.