Unspeakable by Caroline Pignat Read Free Book Online Page A

a promise to Lady Hardy, so I did. And I don’t break my promises.”
    I wasn’t too keen about having my aunt’s spy watching me day and night; still, you couldn’t help but like Meg. She lived to please, and it seemed to please her to live that way. Getting paid for it was a bonus. Though, truth be told, we weren’t paid all that much; we relied on those tips. Once we paid for our uniforms and our laundry bills, not to mention all my broken dishes, there wasn’t much left. But there was always enough for us to treat ourselves when we docked in Saint John, New Brunswick. Freed from the rule of Aunt Geraldine, the demands of Gaade, and the disapproving eye of Matron Jones, we’d kick up our heels in Saint John, sharing a pilfered bottle of stout on the pier, sharing the adventures of stealing it, the recent melodrama of the passengers, and the longing for that look from those two young men we fancied. Just two girls having fun. I didn’t realize it then, but not only was she by far the best maid, Meg Bates was the best friend I ever had.

Chapter Nine
    STEELE SAT IN HUNGRY SILENCE at the table behind me, waiting to feed on whatever I might reveal next: more of my life aboard the Empress , more about Meg, more about all that I had lost. I’m not sure how long I stood staring out the front window at Aunt Geraldine’s garden, lost in thought as I watched Bates putter around in his rubber boots.
    My mother brought me here a few summers before she died. She always made time for Aunt Geraldine, her husband’s aunt who never seemed to have time for us. But Bates always had time for me. I’d often sit on the garden wall and watch him prune or weed or water. Ask him a million questions about why he plucked at the plants. Oh, just making a space for the new buds . He’d always been so gentle with the flowers, so patient with my many questions. Back then, he’d answered every but why, Bates? Yet even Bates couldn’t answer that question now.
    I looked at him now, the stoop of his back, the tremble of his wrinkled hands as he reached his shears into the whiterose bush. He seemed so old. So frail. What would become of him, of us, without Aunt Geraldine’s direction and Meg’s help? He snipped a rose, dropped it beside the other two on the ground. They’d be on Aunt Geraldine’s grave within the hour. She would have liked that. Then Bates turned his attention to the foxglove by the gate. Its vibrant purple bells rustled in the breeze, carrying its sweet scent through the open window. Meg loved foxglove. No doubt her grandfather would have cut her some, would have brought a bouquet to her grave, had he known where she lay. Like Jim, her body had never been recovered. I never saw either of them in a rough-hewn coffin, lined up among the hundreds of others. Husbands. Wives. Children. I closed my eyes.
    No .
    I never saw them because they weren’t there. Jim and Meg were listed as “lost at sea.” Lost … not dead, and something lost might still be found. For weeks now, I had clung to the withering hope that there had been some kind of mistake. That one day I’d see Jim on the docks, see Meg coming through that gate. Bates had told me it was time to let go, but I just couldn’t. I saw her struggle and gasp. No matter how my numbed hands tried to hold her up, no matter how I kicked my leaden legs, she kept slipping away, and all I could do was watch her terrified eyes disappear beneath the black water.
    I wouldn’t let go of her. Not again.
    â€œâ€”as a stewardess? … Miss Ellen?” Steele’s voice bobbed on the edges of my darkness and I gripped it like a lifeline, letting him reel me back to here and now.
    â€œSorry?” Once again, I found myself apologizing to the very man who was keelhauling me through the depths.

    â€œWell …” He scanned the pages, flipping back through the many notes he’d made