Penelope read through the letter again but the content continued to be the same way. She started to fold it when Damien took it from her hand, “When did you receive this?” she asked the elderly woman who was her aunt.
“Two days before we came to see you at your village. There was another before that, a second letter but my husband tore and threw it in the fire. We didn’t know she was dying. I wanted to see her die,” came the inhumane words from her aunt’s mouth which Penny would have never imagined before. There was some sort of bitterness in the words she spoke to her. A hidden secret of hate.
“Why would you say that about your sister? I thought you were on good terms. You always made me believe that you were on good terms,” at least that is what it was. Her mother had spoken about her sister fondly and her aunt had been nothing less when it came to showering good praises.
Damien who had finished reading the short letter folded and placed it in his pocket, filling up the silence to ask Penelope’s aunt, “She wasn’t your sister, was she?” Penny’s head snapped to Damien before looking back at her aunt.
“She wasn’t?” Penny repeated the question, a look of disbelief passing across her features. That would only mean her aunt was no black or white witch at all. She was a human and so was her husband.
At the same time, her uncle who had been at the back of the house entered in to find the last two people they would ever think about inviting to their house, “What are they doing here? Didn’t we already establish that she was not allowed back in here even in the future?” he asked his wife.
It somewhat pained Penny to hear the wordsthat were directed to her but at the same time, there was anger that surpassed the pain and blinded it.
“I am telling her how wonderful her mother was,” her aunt responded back.
Her uncle’s face scrunched in disgust, “Don’t talk about that disgusting woman. And throw that disgusting daughter out so that she is out of my sight!”
Damien tched to have the elderly couple’s focus on him, “Mister. I believe breaking your fingers last time was insufficient as you have the nerve to speak rudely right now. Would you like me to refresh your rotten memory?” he asked, his eyes staring down at the man across the room.
The old man gritted his teeth. How could he forget how this intruder had damaged his fingers weeks ago. Remembering the pain, he couldn’t help but bring his hand close to his chest. The elderly woman glared at the threat that was imposed.
She turned to look at Penny to say, “You dare to come inside our house and threaten us as you please.”
Penny’s jaw ticked, “I wouldn’t have threatened if you would have been frank with me since the very beginning. You only hid things from me and the relationship of how you felt with my mother. Is she not your sister?”
Her aunt’s eyebrows raised, a sarcastic smile appearing on her aged and fine-lined face, “What did your mother say about us? That we only lived apart and couldn’t make time for each other? That we didn’t have money or was it something else? She was insane. Crazy in her head,” she raised her hand to her head, pointing it out. Penny didn’t comment anything and continued to hear what the woman had to say,
“I was ten when my parents found your mother. She was found in the forest, lost, homeless with no family. My parents took pity on her. Considering she was only a year or two apart from me, they didn’t feel it right to leave her there when they met her and brought her home. For two years, everything was going well. We had the fourth person in the family and my parents were happy as she was sweet but that was all a disguise.”
“What do you mean?” Penny asked. Her aunt huffed loudly, taking a seat on the chair as if standing for too long and having this conversation was bringing back the past she had blocked.
“At the beginning, I didn’t pay attention but she was always strange. No matter how pretty and sweet she was by her appearance and talk, there was something very eerie about her. It was only later that I found how she liked to be isolated to not have people around and when Isay that, it wasn’t restricted to her. When I was fourteen, a boy was found dead in the woods along with my sister with blood in her hands. The same boy, who was just three years older than me. When I checked on what had happened I was told that the body had been trying to force himself upon her. Laure had said that she had only killed him in self-defense.It was hard for everyone to believe it because both of them were good children. The boy would have turned out to be an excellent man if it weren’t for your mother and I know that. He had never once laid his eyes on her because he liked me. She killed him.”
Was her mother jealous?
“Even though she was my sister who I cared for back then, I had my doubts that something was not right. I spoke to the magistrate without my parent’s knowledge but there was nothing they could do as the case was closed.”
“Why not have the case reopened?” Penny asked to get a response from Damien who was standing next to her, who said,
“When a case is closed it doesn’t reopen unless there’s something found with proof. It needs to be submitted in the magistrate’s office and then be sent to the council for approval which takes several more days,” he explained on how the council worked, “For the villagers, it takes time to bring back the case alive while the higher society has the ability to either stub the case or have it going until they come to an outcome…”
