Chapter 21: The Real Ending

"Say it, then," I said.

Gwen sat on the bottom stair with the yellow page in both hands.

Maud, Kendrick and I stood in a loose half circle on the marble, and nobody sat down.

"In his version, the girl puts her hand on the latch, and the gate swings open," Gwen said.

"That's all he got to write."

"In mine, she doesn't go through."

Her voice was flat and steady.

"The gate was never locked, you see. Not once in all the years. She could have walked in any afternoon."

"So why didn't she?" Kendrick asked.

"Because outside the gate she was the girl who was kept out."

"Everybody pitied her, and she got to be the heroine."

"Inside, she'd be a servant's daughter in somebody else's dress, and ordinary."

Maud made a small sound and put her hand over her mouth.

"I never told anyone that," Gwen said. "I wrote it at fifteen, in a notebook, and I burned it."

She lifted her eyes to me.

"I'm not gentle, Lydia."

"I know," I said.

"Every bit of it was so somebody would look at me," Gwen said.

"I told eighty people you were cruel, and I'd have told eight hundred."

Her chin shook, and she let it.

"Nobody was watching just now, and I was still crying."

"Gwen."

"I don't know how to stop. I don't know if there's anything under it."

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