Page 8 of Relentless Charm

“You’re a doll, Mrs. Tully. I’ll get this to her and come back for Bigfoot here. Try not to scare him off too quickly. We can put him to work before we run him out of here.”

Bailey leaned in and kissed her cheek. Their love for each other was apparent, and again King tried to find the cracks, the fissures that would allow him to see what was broken in Cinderhill. But he could see nothing yet.

“Fair enough,” Mrs. Tully sang as she sliced off a piece of freshly baked bread and brought it to King. “You can’t live on stew alone. Not a boy your size.”

“These giant jokes aren’t going anywhere, are they?”

“They won’t,” Bailey teased as she stepped outside. Over her shoulder she called back to him, “But you will.”

CHAPTERFIVE

Bailey

Gravity was hitting her mother harder these days. Pulling the skin on her cheeks down. Making her slump in her bed. Everything seemed heavy to her mother. That’s what illness did. It added weight to your life even as the pounds melted off.

“I brought some of Mrs. Tully’s stew. Do you want it in bed or at the table?”

“In bed,” her mother croaked. “But I’m not very hungry.”

“You know you have to eat to keep your strength up. Dr. Murray wants you to go to the hospital. Have you thought more about that?”

“I’m staying here. It’ll all work out.” Her mother was an expert at placating someone. She’d done it all her life. From what Bailey knew of her mother’s parents, they were dominating people. First generation immigrants, fleeing some horrible atrocities in Romania. It made them hard and inflexible people, which in turn made being malleable her mother’s best coping mechanism. She had needed to be clay in their hands as to not be crushed by their tight grip.

Bailey’s father was like a replacement for them, filling in the gaping hole when she finally moved away from her parents. Bailey assumed he could sense her proclivity for people-pleasing and matched it perfectly with his need to dominate. Now, with none of those controlling voices in the room, Bailey tried to take a kinder approach, but it had dangerous consequences. Her mother’s health was deteriorating fast, and though the doctor had warned it could be life-threating if untreated, she couldn’t get her mother to budge on going to the hospital or even agreeing to have any medicine at home.

“Let’s try for at least half a bowl.” Bailey grabbed a spoon and carried it over to her mother. She was brainstorming different ways she could try to get her to agree to the medical interventions.

“Did they come?” she asked, moaning in pain as she tried to sit up.

“Don’t worry about that, Mama. I’ve got everything under control.”

“They are going to come. It’s part of the prophecies,” she sputtered between bites of stew. “My time is short here. They must sense that.”

There was nothing more difficult in Bailey’s experience than pretending to believe what her mother was saying. Or at least not openly challenging it. She had to walk the tightrope of allowing her mother to still live half in the past while trying to pull her into the truth and the future.

Her mother was like a scuba diver down so deep that if she surfaced too fast, she’d suffer grave consequences. Bailey had learned this in Italy. Through intensive therapy she’d been able to conquer her own demons and realize fully that the propaganda and lies her father were telling could not be true. He’d turned Cinderhill into a cult. One she was fully faithful to. But in time, and with help, she’d been able to unravel the many threads of lies that had been carefully wrapped around her brain.

Her mother was much deeper in the dark sea, and getting her to surface was taking time. But there was no time left. Without treatment she’d fall into sepsis and death would follow. Bailey wrestled with the notion that her mother would die still in the grip of her father’s mind control. Actually because of that mind control.

“We talked about this, Mama. I’m handling it. You’ve done a great job over the years. Now you just need to take care of yourself and I’ll take care of Cinderhill. It’s why you need to listen to Dr. Murray.”

“I’ve kept your father’s dream alive. Kept this place going for the day he comes back. He knew there had to be a period of cleansing to keep the eyes of the outsiders off of us. But my illness will be the catalyst for the new phase of Cinderhill. Your father will be back. A miracle is coming.”

Bailey couldn’t bite her tongue. “He’s not going to come back. You know that. He’s in prison for many more years. I can’t imagine he’d want you to die when medicine could treat you.”

“He’ll be back. You don’t know your father like I do. He’ll think of something. They’ve had him in there for all this time, but he’ll find a way out. A way back to me. Back to Cinderhill.”

Bailey hoped with everything in her soul that her mother was wrong. There was no world in which Cinderhill was better off with her father there. He’d been the one to bastardize and destroy it in the first place.

Her childhood had been idyllic. Truly perfect. It was filled with a sense of belonging, community, and freedom. They lived in a close-knit group where everyone looked out for one another and shared resources. Children were free to explore and learn in a natural setting, surrounded by nature and the simplicity of rural life. She had friends and was surrounded by love. Every good memory she had was tied to this place. But sadly, it was corrupted and destroyed. She’d been fighting now since her return to recreate the place she remembered.

But this kind of conversation always went nowhere, so she knew better than to try to debate too hard. What would it matter soon? Her mother was deteriorating so quickly. The most important thing was to get her to agree to medicine.

“You’ve got get your strength up.” Bailey gestured at the stew and smiled.

“Just a few more days,” she sighed, closing her eyes. “The cleansing is over. It’s time for a return.”

“Don’t worry about that. You just get focused on when Dr. Murray comes back so we can decide—”