Loving Him Was My Punishment novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pen
At her welcome-home party Hazel's stepmother holds out a pen and a power of attorney in front of ninety guests, Hazel says no, and a tall man at the back of the room makes her body shut down.
My stepmother held out a pen in front of ninety people and said it was only a formality.
The boat club had hung paper lanterns for my welcome home.
Marguerite stood at the microphone in a cream suit, one hand on my shoulder.
"Our Hazel is back with us," she said. "Three years away, and look at her."
Everyone clapped.
I had been home nine days, and this was the first time anyone had looked at me without lowering their voice.
An hour before, at the door, I had asked her the only thing that mattered.
"He isn't coming, is he?"
"Padraig?" Marguerite had laughed and squeezed my hand. "Sweetheart, he wasn't even invited. You're safe here."
I believed her.
She was the one who had sat with me in the car from the airport and told me how it had gone.
For four years, she said, I had chased Padraig Ellsworth through every room he walked into.
I had waited outside his office and sent him letters.
When he got sick of me, he told my family to send me abroad or he would ruin us.
Three years of treatment in Switzerland had cured me of him.
I did not remember being sick.
I only knew that when I heard his name, my stomach turned over.
Now Marguerite took the pen from her handbag and a folded document from a waiter's tray.
"Just a few signatures, sweetheart," she said into the microphone. "The doctors say it will take the weight off you."
The room went quiet and kind.
A man by the bar lifted his phone.
I looked at the page.
The heading said Durable Power of Attorney.
My name was typed in the first line.
Her name was typed under it, in the box marked Agent.
A neat blue note sat in the margin: Sign here, H.
The slant of that handwriting was familiar.
That afternoon I had gone through my old desk upstairs, looking for anything that was mine.
Every desk calendar was still in the drawer, with his appointments written on them, one day at a time.
They were in Marguerite's hand.
She had copied them out for me, she'd said, back when my own hands were too restless to keep a diary.
I had thanked her for that too.
"It's routine," she said, quietly now, only for me. "Everyone's watching, darling. Don't make a scene."
My father, Edwin, stood by the cake with his glass held to his chest and did not meet my eyes.
My brother Finbar stood by the wall, a hoodie under his suit jacket, and stared at the pen.
I took it from her.
The tip was warm from her bag.
I thought about the nine mornings I had taken the little white vitamins she handed me from her silver case, and swallowed them without looking.
The clinic had cut my stay by six months, and nobody would tell me why.
I wanted to know what else I had signed without reading.
I put the pen down on the tablecloth.
"No, thank you," I said.
My voice carried farther than I meant it to.
Marguerite smiled. It did not move at all.
"Of course," she said. "We'll talk tomorrow, when you've rested."
"I'm not tired," I said. "I'm just not signing."
A murmur went around the room.
Then the back door opened, and cold air came across the floor.
A tall man in a black overcoat stood against the glass, with the dark harbor behind him.
I couldn't see his face.
I don't mean it was in shadow.
The lanterns were bright, and he was forty feet away, and I looked straight at him and my eyes simply would not hold him.
My hands went cold first.
Then the edges of the room went grey and the floor tilted.
My body remembered a place I could not, where a voice said a name and pain came right after.
Someone near me whispered, "That's Padraig Ellsworth."
I did not know his face. My body knew exactly who he was.
Marguerite's hand tightened on my arm.
"Don't look," she said. "I'll have him removed."
It was the first thing she had said all night that sounded like fear.
I pulled free.
So I turned my back on the pen, and on the man in the doorway, and walked out through the kitchen.
The cooks stepped aside for me.
I came out into the car park with the cold on my face and my hands shaking so hard I couldn't work the clasp on my bag.
Footsteps crunched behind me, fast.
It was Finbar, out of breath, with his jacket half off.
He took my hand, turned it over, and looked at the pale line on the inside of my wrist.
"Don't take anything she hands you tonight," he said. "Not a pill, not a drink, not a pen."
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