3: 3

On the fifth day, my mother made her move.

She didn't come cry at the hospital again.

She switched battlefields.

That afternoon, Brad called me. His voice was colder than I'd ever heard it.

"Maud, your mother brought your uncle's whole family to my company to make a scene."

My head buzzed.

"She knelt outside our door, crying in front of dozens of people, saying you pocketed the dowry, that you're an ungrateful daughter, that you're jealous of your cousin, saying it was her fault for raising you wrong..."

"You know how my coworkers are looking at me now? Eight years of reputation in this industry."

I wanted to explain.

But what was there to say?

Brad was quiet for a long time. In the end he said just one thing.

"Let's call off the engagement."

I froze where I stood. All that was left in the phone was the dial tone.

The next day he mailed the annulment agreement to my rental. The terms were spelled out clearly: the entire three hundred thousand dowry to be returned in full.

My hand didn't shake when I signed.

I found I wasn't as heartbroken as I'd imagined.

In a world where even the woman who gave birth to me and raised me could use me up and throw me away, what was one man less?

But the thing that truly broke me happened three days after the engagement ended.

That day I was burning with fever. A hundred and three point five.

Half-conscious, I heard the door. My mother had let herself in with a spare key.

There was a pair of scissors in her hand.

"Maud, let me tell you something."

She sat on the edge of the bed and propped me up against the pillow.

"A woman who's had her engagement called off carries bad luck. That's just the rule. Let Mom cut your hair, shed the bad luck, so you can start over."

I flinched on instinct.

"Hold still."

She pinned my shoulders down, with a strength that didn't belong to a fifty-four-year-old woman.

Ten years of long hair, falling to the sheets one lock at a time.

I couldn't fight her off.

The fever had drained every bit of strength out of me.

At some point my cousin had come too, standing beside her, handing over a towel.

"Don't blame Aunt Marjorie, sis. She's just afraid your bad luck will rub off on me now that I've just gotten married."

She said it in a light little voice, but the satisfaction in her eyes was impossible to hide.

It was done.

My mother set the scissors down, cupped the loose scraps of my hair in her hands, and sighed.

"From now on stay home and help out your sister. Men can't be relied on. Mom will provide for you your whole life."

But I looked down at the hair all over the floor, and suddenly I had nothing to say.

I slid off the bed, knelt on the ground, and picked up the hair scattered across the floor, strand by strand.

Partway through, I stopped.

Not because it hurt.

Because something had just occurred to me.

She'd let herself in with a spare key.

I'd never given her one.

It was Brad's.

They... had been in on it together all along.

The engagement wasn't called off because he lost face.

It was because my mother had used my dowry to cut a deal with him.

4: 4

After they cut off my hair, my fever came and went for four days.

Marjorie dropped her old attitude and stayed at my bedside.

She brought tea, kept the water coming, changed the towels, cooked porridge.

Nothing overlooked.

On the second day she even went to the pharmacy for fever pills and vitamins, counting them out one by one and setting them on the nightstand.

Even the landlady next door said your mother's so good to you.

I didn't answer.

I was waiting.

I knew she wouldn't be good to me for nothing.

The fourth night, late.

My fever was up to a hundred and one, my whole body limp, and half asleep I heard something in the kitchen.

Then the sound of herbs rolling in a pot.

Half an hour later, Marjorie came to my bed with a bowl of dark brown medicine broth.

"Maud, drink your medicine."

She propped me up and brought the spoon to my lips.

I cracked my eyes open and looked at the bowl.

Darker than ordinary herbal medicine, with a bitterness I couldn't place, covering a sweet, raw undertaste.

"This is a calming remedy from Reginald in the village. Drink it and you'll be fine."

I drank it.

Not because I trusted her.

Because before she came, I'd already put something under my pillow.

A micro camera, lens pointed straight at the bed.

The little red light blinked on and off beneath the pillowcase.

After the broth went down, the drowsiness came fast.

Ten times faster than any fever pill.

My eyelids were heavy as stone, my arms and legs too soft to lift.

I bit down on the tip of my tongue and fought to stay awake.

Ten minutes later, she moved. "Wallis, come in."

The door opened. My cousin's footsteps were light.

Then the sound of things being rifled through.

Marjorie lifted my limp right hand, pried my fingers open, and pressed them into a box of red ink.

Cold, wet.

Then the rustle of paper unfolding.

My fingers were pressed down onto something.

"That's it, right?" Wallis whispered.

"Mm." No hesitation in Marjorie's voice.

"Gordon's waiting on collateral. Without that shop your grandfather left Maud transferred over, there's no loan."

She paused, then murmured to herself in a voice full of tenderness.

"She's not even married. A woman alone can't hold on to a place like that. Someone would swindle it out of her sooner or later. Signing it over to you is just keeping it safe for her."

Wallis chimed in. "Once my husband's business does well, I'll take good care of you, sis."

They tucked the paper away.

The footsteps faded.

I counted to sixty before I slowly opened my eyes.

The drug had my head heavy as lead, but I forced myself to sit up.

I felt for the micro camera under the pillow and hit playback.

The picture was clear.

She gently pried my fingers open, pressed them into the red ink, then down onto the paper that read "Property Gift Agreement."

Every move, plain as day.

Fighting the dizziness, I climbed off the bed and stuffed what I needed into the suitcase.

The camera, my ID, my bank cards.

The door was locked from the outside.

I looked at the lock, then at the iron hammer on the shoe cabinet.

One swing and the cylinder shot loose.

Near the edge of the village, I saw firelight.

The village chief stood in front of a fence, flashlight in hand, more than a dozen villagers behind him, some holding torches.

Marjorie was there too.

Her eyes were red, but her face wasn't panic. It was fury.

"Stop right there!" The chief stepped forward to block me.

"Maud Henson, you called off a wedding, you carry bad luck. Leaving the village early brings down heaven's wrath. This has been Willow Creek's rule for a hundred years!"

A few of the older women echoed him, pointing.

Marjorie stood in the crowd, shaking her head, crying.

"Maud, go back. Go back and Mom won't hold it against you."

I looked at her and said nothing.

I just kicked the fence down and strode out of the village. (Paywall)