The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

and I’ll dish you out some chicken soup while I tell you about my book.” Mother ladled the golden liquid into the first bowl. “It’s called Lilies in the Cellar, I’ve decided to name it after all of you.”

Nate caught my gaze, eyebrows up before he immediately dipped his head and brought a spoonful of broth to his lips. “This is delicious.”

“Thank you, but...don’t you like the name of my book?” A vulnerable tone laced Mother’s otherwise hardened voice. “This book is inspired by my little lilies; I want only to honor my muse in you.” One of her palms rested on Yarrow’s bony shoulder. I could see him visibly attempting to control the tremble in his muscles.

His eyes scrunched closed, the furrow along his forehead deeper than usual.

“I think it’s a great name.” Nate beamed up at her.

She smiled softly, but a permanent dent had been added to her armor. “Thank you, Nate.”

“I don’t like soup,” Susie, the littlest of the crew, complained.

“Well, that’s all we have, my dear. Now eat up, if we get the first tunnel cleaned up tonight, I’ll have Walton see about putting up some more lights and won’t that just be fine?”

“I don’t like to work in the basement.”

“It’s not a basement exactly, think of it more like a factory, a factory for beautiful things. I know the garden doesn’t look like much this year, but all of the work you’re putting in now will make Usher House a beacon on the hill again.”

I could hardly contain my groan.

“I’m skipping lunch to do some extra reading in my room,” I excused myself, praying Mother wouldn’t object.

“I’ll leave yours in the fridge. Are you feeling well?”

“Perfect, thank you,” I uttered, and then turned the corner and took the stairs two steps at a time. I ascended the next flight of stairs, and then to the even narrower steps up to my widow's walk room.

When I entered, I removed the tiny finger bone from my pocket and turned it in the light.

My escape from Usher House couldn’t come soon enough.

PAST

Zara - Summer 1964

“She’s deranged,” Nate boomed as he came around the corner of the fountain. “It’s been two weeks and all she’s fed us is chicken soup and pudding while we work fourteen hours a day in the cellar.”

“She’s not that bad,” I hummed, holding my hand out to the tiny black bird that sat perched on the marble crown of the cherub. “We have pot roast on Sundays.”

“You’re ridiculous, Zara. You saw the twins at breakfast, they can hardly keep water down. There’s something wrong with them.”

“They’re always sick. Mom called a specialist from the city to come next week.”

“Do you really think they have until next week? Yarrow’s hands shake when he packs the bulbs up to be shipped.”

“Shipped?”

“Oh, she didn’t tell you? She’s expanded the business. Apparently, Usher House bulbs are now shipping to all fifty states.”

“Really?” I finally broke my concentration on the bird, depositing the seed on the stone ledge and turning to Nate. “That sounds like her best business idea yet. This writing a book thing has zero chance of amounting to anything.”

“But on the upside, she locks herself in her room all day to write it.”

“Except today. She left as soon as all of you went to work in the cellar.”

“Where did she go?”

I shrugged. “She never tells me.”

He let my words hang, assessing me before asking: “How come your dad doesn’t come visit? I thought she said—”

“She says a lot of things. I thought he was going to come too, but…I guess he’s abandoned us.”

His eyes settled on something over my shoulder. “He’s probably just busy.”

“He’s always just busy.”

Nate plucked a petal from a nearby red rose and threw it my way. “Why doesn’t she make you work, anyway?”

“She makes me work.” I defended myself lamely.

“Not like the rest of us.”

I turned away from him. He was right. Since we’d come to Usher, Mother had been surprisingly avoidant of me. She’d even missed my fourteenth birthday last week while she was out having cocktails with writing friends. “We went through a lot when we lived at the library, trust me, it’s better when she’s not around.”

“So?”

“And so, she makes me work. I’ve been working on the orchard, just like she said.”

“For two weeks?”

“Yes. The tools are old and rusted, it’s hard for me to reach even with the ladder.”

“She is deranged. She should have me working on the orchard. You're a child, what could you do anyway?”

“Hey, I’m not a kid. I’ve read more books than anyone. I grew up in a library, remember?”

“And books don’t help you cut branches, do they?”

I rolled my eyes. “If she catches you out here…”

“Wouldn’t want to give the child labor a break or anything,” Nate huffed.

“So why don’t you leave then? Just run away?”

“You think I haven’t tried? I thought about stealing a boat and taking off for the wide-open sea but that takes a solid plan. If you think your mom is the first foster parent to capitalize off of me, you’d be dead wrong. Plus, like it or not, this place is still better than the orphanage. It’s bleak over there once you hit around the age of eleven and haven’t found a permanent living situation.”

“So, you’re here for now, but not for long?”

“Never for long.” A reckless grin lit his face.

I smiled, unable to fight the pull I felt when we were alone. I didn’t like many people, but Nate was different.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you!” Excitement surged through my system at the urge to share my discovery with someone. “I found the medical records for the kids that used to live here when it was a boarding school. I knew there was weird stuff going on just from the old photos, but I found these files that list all the kids with a patient number. Some of them were on prescriptions and vitamins, an eight-year-old was taking lithium. I know they did a lot