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Solitary Lamp, Divergent Paths
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Because of my selfishness, my whole family burned to death in a fire. One second my boyfriend was watching the fireworks with me, and the next he was reduced to ashes. Even my best friend, the goddaug...
章節（4）
第1章
Because I couldn't let it go, my whole family burned to death.
The boyfriend who had been beside me watching the fireworks one second was ash the next.
Even my best friend, the girl my parents had taken in as their goddaughter, didn't make it out.
Overnight, I had nothing left.
Everyone said it was because I was a lawyer with too many hard edges, that I'd made enemies everywhere.
That I'd brought the slaughter down on us, that every one of those horrible deaths was my fault for dragging them into it.
In the days after, I lived buried in self-blame, until it turned into severe depression.
Another Valentine's Day came around, the very day Mark Stephens had once promised he'd marry me.
I'd already picked out the burial plot for all of us, and I wanted to go to the photo studio for a funeral portrait, so I could spend my death atoning beside them.
But the moment I stepped into the studio, my feet froze where they were.
Behind the glass window, Mark, who was supposed to have died in the fire, stood holding my best friend's hand, posing for their marriage registration photo.
My mind went blank, and I started forward at once to storm in and demand the truth.
A large hand caught my arm. It was Damon Radcliffe, the boy I'd grown up with.
"Bianca Whitman's pregnant. They're happy now."
"If you weren't so vicious, making enemies everywhere, we wouldn't have had to hide from you like this."
My mother hurried out, crying, pleading.
"Lucinda Henson, I'm begging you. They hid for five years just to finally have a peaceful life. Show them some mercy and let them go."
Something dropped away in my chest, and the cold spread out through my arms and legs.
I looked at all those faces standing there, whole and unharmed, and only then did I truly wake up.
So all the pain, all the ways I'd tortured myself, from beginning to end, was nothing but a joke they had deliberately played on me.
……………………
Damon planted himself in front of me, coaxing.
"Lucinda, stop this. Bianca's carrying a child, and the two of them are doing well now. If you force your way in, how are you any different from a mistress?"
My chest clenched hard, and before I could say a word, the phone in my pocket rang.
It was my psychiatrist, Dr. Finch.
I put it on speaker.
"Ms. Henson, your severe depression has worsened lately, and the hallucinations are coming more and more often. I've adjusted your medication plan and increased the dosage. Whatever you do, don't stop taking it on your own."
This Dr. Finch was someone Damon had made a point of "kindly" recommending to me.
At the start I only had mild depression, just couldn't sleep.
But the more I saw the doctor, the worse I got, until the hallucinations came again and again.
Crossing the street after work, in a daze I saw Mark standing on the other side, reaching out to me.
My eyes stung, and I ran toward him without thinking, and a truck came straight at me head-on.
By the time I woke, I was already in the operating room.
The doctors told me my uterus had ruptured, that I'd hemorrhaged badly, and that I'd probably never be able to carry a child again.
Back then I still thought it was my hallucinations acting up, that I'd brought it on myself.
But only now did I see it had never been an accident at all.
I lifted my hand and pulled my shirt up.
The long, jagged surgical scar across my lower belly lay bare in front of everyone.
Mark's gaze slid over it, without a trace of surprise.
"That car crash. I arranged it."
"Only once you couldn't have children could Bianca sleep easy."
He paused, and there was even a hint of charity in his voice.
"You don't need to be afraid, either. The surgeons I hired for you were the best in the field. The stitching was done well. There won't be any lasting damage."
Bianca stepped forward, smiling, and hooked her arm through mine.
"Lucinda, don't blame Mark. It's all my fault. He only lost his head because he was hurting for me."
"I told him long ago he couldn't do this to you, but he wouldn't listen. If you're angry, take it out on me. Don't hold a grudge against Mark, all right?"
I stared at that face of hers, innocent as a little white rabbit, and it suddenly felt like a stranger's.
When I first met her, she was an orphan with no father or mother, and seeing she had nothing to eat, I started bringing her food from home every day.
Afraid she'd be bullied, I looked out for her in everything and invited her to my house to play.
My parents' hearts went out to her, and they took her in as their goddaughter on the spot.
Bianca was so sweet and well-behaved that, somewhere along the way, they came to love her even more than me.
But back then it never occurred to me that from the very beginning, he had gotten close to me only to take everything I had.
第2章
My mother rushed up in a few strides and jabbed a finger at my face.
"Lucinda Henson, did you hear me? Bianca's already backed down this far. What more do you want? If you hadn't hounded people into the ground back when you were a lawyer, offending everyone left and right, would our whole family have been driven to this?"
Damon was frowning too, staring at me with a face full of disappointment.
"Lucinda, are you only satisfied when you've made every single person miserable?"
Even my own brother, Cornelius Henson, who should have died in that fire, stepped up and ordered me around.
"Go over there and apologize to Bianca and Mark. If you weren't so ruthless, pushing them at every turn, they wouldn't have had to hide away for a whole year, unable to sleep at night."
I looked at their faces, all so familiar and so strange, and suddenly it struck me as almost funny.
I took out my phone and sent a message to the Paris law firm headquarters.
"That offer to join. I accept. I'll report in three days. As my condition, please prepare a 'gift' for me."
As I put my phone away, Bianca stepped forward and took my hand.
"Lucinda, honestly, I've always thought of you as my closest friend. On the day Mark and I get married, will you be my flower girl?"
"Having you there to witness our happiness with your own eyes is the only thing that would set my heart at ease. If you won't forgive me, then this wedding... I just won't go through with it."
Mark's arm was around her at once, all doting tenderness.
"Silly girl, don't say things you don't mean."
He turned to me, like someone coaxing a child who didn't know any better.
"Lucinda, it's time you grew up. I'll have the dress sent over tomorrow. Be good."
Maybe afraid I'd start saying wild things, Bianca reluctantly let my mother agree to take me home.
The car came to a smooth stop in front of that familiar courtyard gate.
I remembered how, less than two weeks after they "died," a pack of vicious creditors had shown up at the door.
They waved IOUs, saying Mark and my brother owed more than three million from a business deal.
A wife pays her husband's debts, a brother pays his sister's. They pressed me for the money.
I emptied every last cent of my savings and still couldn't fill the hole, and in the end I had no choice but to sign away the house I'd lived in since I was a child.
Not one cent of the sale was left. It came out just enough to "clear the debt."
To buy them a shared burial plot, and to pay off what remained of the funeral loan.
I bused tables, I swept streets, I delivered takeout, until I'd worn my body down into sickness.
But I couldn't bring myself to spend money on a doctor, so at midnight I curled up in front of Mark's headstone in the cemetery, holding the cold stone.
Over and over, I thought, if only he were still here, if only he could hold me.
If only none of this were real.
My thoughts snapped back to the present. And none of it was real.
Yet all they wanted now was to drive me out of this home for good.
To clear it out clean, to make a safe, settled home for Bianca and her child.
The moment I opened the door, my heart dropped hard.
A pair of matching couple's slippers sat in the entryway, and on the most prominent stretch of the living room wall hung an enormous wedding photo of Mark and Bianca.
The two of them leaned into each other, smiling, and it was blinding to look at.
I gripped the handle of my suitcase, had no interest in looking any longer, and turned to head for my old bedroom.
I'd just reached the foot of the stairs when Bianca hurried up and stepped sideways to block my way.
"Sorry, Lucinda. Mark insisted on tearing down your room to make me a dressing room, and it's packed full of things now."
She smiled gently.
"But don't worry, I've got you an even better room. You'll settle right in."
Then she pointed toward the basement.
I lifted my eyes to her.
"That's what you call a better room?"
Bianca fussed at my collar with feigned affection, laughing under her breath.
"Lucinda, I'm only thinking of you. You've got this whole shabby, hard-up air about you now, and the way you're dressed is so..."
She looked me up and down and clicked her tongue.
"If you tracked dirt onto the floors, that would be terrible. Mark's a clean freak, you know. He can't stand trash."
My hand shot up and knocked hers away, my voice going cold.
"Who are you calling trash?"
第3章
"What's going on here?"
Mark's voice cut through the room, and he was already crossing it in long strides, one hand shoving me hard.
I stumbled back two steps and hit the wall with my spine.
He tucked Bianca behind him, brows drawn tight as he glared at me.
"Lucinda, what the hell has gotten into you now?"
Bianca gave a small tug at the hem of his shirt, the picture of wounded innocence.
"I only wanted Lucinda to make do in the basement for one night. I was going to clear out a room for her first thing tomorrow. But she suddenly turned on me and told me to get out of this house, and then she... she called me a whore, said I was trash..."
Slap.
Mark's face went livid, and his hand came across my cheek.
Half my face went hot and numb in an instant, the faint taste of blood spreading in my mouth.
My mother came running right behind him, gathered Bianca into her arms, tears falling for the poor girl.
Then she rounded on me, shrieking.
"Lucinda! How did I ever give birth to something this venomous! From today, I have no daughter! Bianca is my real daughter!"
Cornelius stood on the steps, looking at me with disappointment.
"Lucinda, you were never like this before. When did you turn so bitter and cruel?"
Mark turned his face away and gave the servant beside him a cold order.
"Take her down. Lock her in the basement and let her think about what she's done."
I pressed a hand to my burning cheek and looked him dead in the eye, one word at a time.
"This house was left to me by my grandfather. The name on it is Henson. Mark, what gives you the right to lock me in the basement?"
My words left his face cycling through white and green, but he answered as if he had every right.
"I'm doing this for your own good! I'm knocking that arrogant streak out of you, so you don't go out there offending people and causing real trouble down the line! No dinner for her tonight. One night hungry and she'll come to her senses."
The iron door of the basement clanged shut, and the dark closed in all at once.
Water seeped up through the floor, mold and cobwebs everywhere.
I had only a thin jacket on, and the cold sank straight into my bones.
All I could do was curl up helplessly on a broken cardboard box, my head growing heavier and heavier.
Somewhere in the haze, warmth suddenly wrapped around me.
I forced my eyes open and saw Mark crouched in front of me, brows furrowed.
The dim basement light fell across the clean line of his face.
For a blurred moment, I remembered how things used to be.
Back then he was away on business in a city hundreds of miles off, and late one night I sent him a message without thinking.
"Mark, I miss you so much."
He drove those hundreds of miles through the night, and came home worn out from the road.
Just to hold me for a moment, to spend a few short hours at my side.
Once, he cradled me in his palm, treated me like something precious.
He would have given me every tender thing he had.
But now, none of it was the same.
Seeing me awake, he sighed.
"Go apologize to Bianca. I've talked it over with her. As long as you behave from now on and take good care of us and the baby, you can stay in this house for good, with a decent room of your own."
I braced against the wall and pushed myself upright, my throat rasped raw from the fever.
"This is my home. You're the ones who should get out."
He flared at once and seized my wrist.
"Today you are going to apologize to Bianca!"
The words were barely out before his fingers touched my skin, and his tone snapped taut.
"Why is your body this hot?"
Only then did he notice how bloodless my face was, and panic hit him all at once.
He turned to go call the family doctor.
"Mark?"
Bianca's voice drifted from the top of the stairs. The moment she saw my flushed face, she cried out.
"Someone come quick, help me get Lucinda up to the bedroom. I'm the one with medical training, I'll take care of my sister. I promise nothing will happen to her."
I had no strength left to fight, and I was carried up to the bed in the second-floor guest room.
Bianca sent the servants away, locked the door, and drew out a syringe of a powerful stimulant.
The needle sank into my skin.
It had been nothing but a low fever, but as the drug burst through me the heat swelled until my head spun and my vision blurred and my mind started slipping.
I realized something was wrong and shoved her away with everything I had.
Bianca fell backward and slammed hard into the nightstand with a crash.
Bang. The door was kicked open.
"Bianca!"
第4章
Mark rushed in and caught Bianca in his arms, his face darker than she had ever seen it.
"Mark, I only wanted to bring Lucinda's fever down. I found the best medicine there was, just for her... so why would she shove me?"
"My stomach hurts so much... our baby..."
Bianca sagged against him, tears spilling on cue.
Damon walked in right behind them, staring at me, his eyes full of rage.
"Lucinda, you're heartless. Bianca tried to help you out of pure kindness, and this is how you treat her?"
Cornelius stopped in the doorway and shook his head, disappointed.
"I honestly never thought you'd sink so low you can't even tell right from wrong anymore."
Mark got Bianca settled, then came toward me, his face like a storm.
He seized the wrist I'd cut on purpose earlier, gripping it hard, and slammed me against the wall.
The wound crushed under his fingers, and the pain drained the color from my face.
"Lucinda. Apologize to Bianca. Now. This second. Right now."
I lifted my eyes and looked straight at him, dragging a cold, hard smile across my lips.
"In your dreams."
The last warmth went out of his face in an instant, and his grip on my wrist slowly loosened.
Every ounce of strength left me, and I slid down the cold wall to the floor.
The fever burned all the way into my bones, until I couldn't even lift a hand.
He looked down at me, not a trace of feeling in his eyes, then turned to the servants.
"Lock the windows and the door from the outside. No one lets her out without my say-so. No water, no medicine."
Then he bent down, lifted Bianca into his arms, and turned to go without a backward glance.
The door slammed shut with a heavy bang.
I curled up on the floor, my mind going dim.
With the last shred of clarity I had, I felt around and found the spare key I'd hidden in advance.
In the next breath it was the day of Mark and Bianca's wedding.
The ballroom of the city's top hotel was staged on a grand scale, opulent past all measure, the talk of all of New York City.
Everyone envied this dazzling wedding the whole city had its eyes on.
The ceremony had just reached its peak.
The master of ceremonies drew out the two long words, "You may now," and the applause hadn't even faded when the giant screen went black all at once.
The next second, the "gift" I'd prepared jumped out.