Chapter 75: 75 – The Real Plan

Leonor…

I take more pills to calm my head. I tuck them away with the rest of my special ones, the ones I’ll need when I finally manage to run. Especially if I don’t, and end up having to marry Romero.

I adjust the dress just as Leonora walks in with the seamstress. I push my purse discreetly behind a pile of clothes.

“You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen,” my mother says, and I can’t help rolling my eyes.

“Please don’t, Leonora. I look exhausted, and that line doesn’t deserve respect.”

She comes closer, holding a jewelry box. When she opens it, I see the most exquisite pieces I’ve ever laid eyes on. Leonora’s secret jewels, the ones I never dared to touch if I wanted to keep my head on my shoulders.

“I have the right to be cliché, my daughter is getting married tomorrow. That doesn’t happen every day in a mother’s life, especially when she’s my only child. My firstborn and my youngest all at once. It couldn’t be any other way.”

I roll my eyes again. Leonora’s been dramatic and emotional ever since this wedding charade began. It’s her way of playing into the plan, pretending she’s sending her daughter off while secretly planning the escape. She’s gotten so deep into the act that sometimes I almost believe it myself.

“Stop with the drama, will you? You’ll ruin your precious makeup, and I bet you don’t want worse dark circles than mine.”

She rolls her eyes this time.

“I wouldn’t compare myself to you, darling. You’re at your peak, eighteen and more beautiful than ever, or as always. My little girl grew up so fast…” Leonora holds my face and starts to cry.

That’s all I needed. My mother is thirty-six, for God’s sake, and she turns heads everywhere she goes. The kind of woman people call traffic-stopping, both because she drives like a maniac and because cars slow down to watch her when she walks down the street.

“Dramatic,” I mutter.

She finishes fastening the necklace around my neck and hugs me tight.

“I love you, Leonor. You know that, don’t you?”

I hold her shoulders, uneasy now.

“That’s a little much. You’ve made your point, Leonora. Everyone already knows how heartbroken you are that I’m getting married.”

She wipes her tears, nodding. It’s definitely strange. My mother isn’t like this, she never lets me talk to her that way and just lets it slide.

This is the same woman who nearly killed us both in a car crash because she refused to look away while I challenged her authority. Something’s very wrong here.

I touch her shoulder. She doesn’t turn to face me. I see her reflection in the mirror, tears threatening again. Intrusive thoughts fill my mind.

“Leonora, why does it feel like you’re saying goodbye to me?”

She doesn’t answer. She fiddles with the jewelry box, fighting her emotions.

I step down clumsily from the fitting platform, lifting the layers of my wedding dress in frustration. I grab her arm and turn her to face me.

She pulls herself together, takes a deep breath, swallows her tears. Then, with perfect politeness, she asks the seamstress to leave us alone.

I like this conversation less and less.

The door closes, and suddenly I can’t breathe. When I finally manage to exhale, it comes out in one desperate breath, shaped like a question I’m terrified to hear the answer to.

“You’re coming with me, right, Leonora? Don’t you dare say otherwise. I’d never forgive you, you know that. You can’t just leave me like that.”

She touches my face gently, moves my bangs aside. I push her hand away, already losing patience.

“Answer me!” I demand.

She takes my hands in hers, and I already know the answer before she says it.

“I lost my chance at freedom years ago when I fell in love with your father. I was only fooling myself thinking I could run away with you. I have to stay so he won’t come after you. It’s the only way the plan will work.”

I pull away and walk to the other side of this awful room, all silk and lace pretending peace and joy. I try to rip the dress off. This can’t be happening. It has to be part of some nightmare from the night before my eighteenth birthday.

My mother moves toward me, and I pull harder at the dress, snapping a few delicate ribbons. The buttons are stronger and trap me in this prison of peace-colored fabrics. But what I want now is war.

“Don’t come near me! How can you even think of something like this? It doesn’t make sense. You must be out of your mind. You’re my mother, you can’t just abandon me like this. I won’t accept it.”

“It’s the only way, my love. It may seem cruel now, but in time you’ll see it’s the only way,” she says, trying to convince me.

“We’ve done it before, we can do it again! You stayed hidden for fourteen years. Why wouldn’t it work this time?”

She sits in one of the few chairs not covered in sewing materials.

“I had help. Help I won’t have again. Not when the person who helped me wants you too.”

“Speak clearly, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

Leonora clears the chair beside her. I sit, despite myself.

I hate the way she looks at me, so solemn, so full of certainty.

“Your grandmother, my mother. She’s the one who helped me run. That’s how I managed to stay away from Lucius all these years, why we kept moving back to this city from time to time. She wants you too. She thinks it’s time you were trained as an heir to the family. And I can’t let that woman get her hands on you, Leonor.”

Pieces of my life start snapping into place. Things I never understood suddenly make sense. We were never free, not really.

Freedom is nothing but a beautiful illusion.

I was born marked, just like my mother.

“No, I’m not going without you. I can’t. I wouldn’t even know what to do with that much freedom. You’re controlling and impossible, and I hate how you boss me around and... and... I don’t know how to live any other way. You can’t do this to me. What about your freedom, Leonora?”

She smiles, just with her lips.

“I chose to marry your father. I knew what I was getting into, what kind of man I was binding myself to. I didn’t want freedom if it meant losing him. But that was before you. You were my freedom, my real love. And now it’s your turn to start your own life. That’s what I always wanted for you. Stop fighting it. Accept it.”

I shake my head. I want to scream, to make her understand that it’s wrong, that I won’t accept it.

She straightens her back again, she’s back to being my commanding mother, the one I know, the one I don’t want to lose. And she uses that to convince me to go without her.

Once again, I lose the argument.

“We’ll still see each other, very carefully, of course. Not often, but we will. This isn’t goodbye forever. Do you understand?”

I shake my head.

Leonora stands and pulls me up with her.

“This is wrong,” I whisper.

“I know. Now, let’s finish with this dress. Stay here while I make sure no one heard us. Be a good girl for once, please.”

She leaves without letting me answer.

She’s in control again, and it hurts knowing this might be one of the last times I’ll see her that way.

Tomorrow is my wedding day.

And I’m not ready for what’s coming.