The Last Writer Adriane Leigh (story reading TXT) 📖

The journalist frowned but scribbled her reply down on his notepad.

“Now, the children have to get to their morning lessons, we appreciate the Happy Birthday gifts and wishes for the twins, but no rest for the wicked.”

I forced the manufactured smile on my face as I held the stuffed animals and balloons in one hand, the gift the governess had given Yarrow to give me in the other: a silver letter opener with All My Love, Y engraved along one finely-wrought edge.

That was the other thing about becoming Yara: my birthday was no longer my own. None of the days were.

“Come along my little lilies,” the governess cooed as she ushered us through the gates and down the main path to the front of the house.

I hovered close to Yarrow as we walked, camera shutters snapping behind us. I leaned my head on my brother’s shoulder and laced my fingers with his. The camera clicks came to a hot crescendo and I could almost imagine the smirk on Mother’s face as the media ate us up.

The Usher House Twins.

A name fit for a book cover.

Mother’s voice lowered an octave, her steps slowing. “Yarrow has informed me that your father called while you were doing your interview. He saw you on television live, isn’t that wonderful? He can’t make it to the island for your birthday but he promised to call back later.”

I knew the call wouldn’t come, they never did.

The governess reached the top of the steps, regal in her black skirt and black, beaded vest. A shiver slipped down my spine when her smile twitched up as she caught my eye. “Beautiful.”

She waved to the photographers one last time before turning and disappearing into the darkness of Usher House. Yarrow and I lingered an extra moment, letting the small crowd eat up the last moments before they scurried to their desks and wrote weird opinion pieces about the eccentric twins of Usher House. We were becoming a bit of a sensation, even if it was for sinister reasons.

Our lives had turned upside down since moving to Usher, each day unlike the one that came before.

“I’m starving,” Yarrow complained.

I didn’t reply. I was accustomed to not eating to keep my weight down so Yarrow and I were better matched on camera. We stepped over the threshold of the house and I dropped my arm from Yarrow’s elbow. I ran a hand through my hair and frowned when a few white strands came out between my fingers. “I miss Yara.”

Yarrow’s eyes narrowed on mine, a look of anger crossing his fine features before he spit, “Who?”

And with that he turned, long white hair pin-straight down his back as he crossed into the kitchen, the sound of the fridge door opening a moment later.

I climbed the stairs with tears in my eyes, unable to keep my hands out of my hair now that it was officially falling out.

I’d had so much trouble bleaching my roots before the premier last week, I’d used two rounds of peroxide and left it on a little too long. I was now leaving a trail of white-gold strands around the house like silvery, bleached breadcrumbs.

A bald spot had begun to form behind my ear and the skin was pink and raw from a chemical burn.

Numbness crawled through my skin and sunk deeper into the marrow of my bones every day.

I fingered the tiny pair of black birds in my pocket, their feathers thinning much like my hair. I’d carried them every day through the filming of the movie and the press engagements, held them close to my cheek and cried into them at night as I thought about Nate and Yara and even my father, unaware of so much behind the stone walls of his library.

The library is his fortress, Usher House, our dungeon.

Did he know about Lilies in Cellar?

Sure, who didn’t? But he’d never come to a premier or Usher House at all. Mother said it was because he didn’t care, but secretly I wondered if she’d even told him. I’d gotten so desperate after the loss of Yara that I’d scribbled up a letter to him and snuck out of the house in the middle of the night to mail it. I couldn’t find a stamp, so I’d left two quarters stolen from the governess’s office on top of the small white envelope sitting on the steps of the post office building.

I never knew if the words of desperation reached him in the city, because no answer ever came.

But it didn’t stop me from dreaming that someday he would come save all of us from this nightmare. Yarrow and I could raise the rest of the foster kids among the New York Public Library stacks and live a life that would resemble something more normal than anything on Shelter Island.

A wry grin crossed my face as I thought about my first impressions of tiny, idyllic Shelter Island when we’d first landed here on the ferry the first day. Its downtown, sweet and quaint, the villagers even sweeter. The governess had found a way to taint all that goodness in this story somehow.

Just days after Lilies in the Cellar was published, it achieved the #1 spot on the New York Times bestsellers list and every citizen of the island and their long-lost fifth cousins came for regular walks by the house. Usher was suddenly on the map again.

Soon tourists were coming from far and wide, some adventurous ones even attempted to climb the gate, but Carnegie and Astor kept them at bay as they paced the walls and kept onlookers out. I knew the buzz in the village, many on Shelter Island spread rumors that the horrifying stories that unfolded in the book were all true, all had happened under the roof at Usher.

I hadn’t even read the book, the governess had forbidden any of us from touching it and kept the only few copies in the house under lock and key