Rags Meets Riches

“Shhh, be quiet!” I whispered to Harry whose breathing had accelerated since last hearing my mother’s thunderous voice. My head throbbed against my skull and my pulse leaped right out of my heavy chest as I stood up and walked to the door slowly, still in the midst of contemplating the best solution to the problem at hand.

Before I decided to leave the room after reaching the final plan, I turned around once more and told Harry, “Hide behind the door after I open it and stay quiet until you don’t hear anything anymore. I’m going to try and get her out of the hallway and into her office. You should be fine, but don’t get caught, Harry, please. I don’t know what my mother will do to you.”

I spoke honestly. There was no telling what my mother would do to him. She was a completely different person when angst and vengeance consumed her thoughts. Harry’s facial expression hinted at nothing but confidence in my words, but his eyes which had fallen soft spoke otherwise as they conveyed an appearance of distraught and worry. I didn’t think it was possible to see him like this, but it was about time I became open to new possibilities.

My shaky hands wrapped around the door handle and turned it, the sound of the door clicking as it opened. Harry was standing behind me and he grabbed my hand as I peeked my head out of the doorway, turning my head from left to right as I took in my surroundings. He laced his fingers with mine and held on tightly. My breathing had picked up also and I wasn’t aware of it until the eerie silence surrounded me. I pulled my hand away from Harry’s as I saw my mother walking out of my bedroom. I was grateful that my mother was at the end of the hallway and not anywhere near the music room where Harry was waiting silently behind the door for the cue to leave.

“Adelaide? Where are you?” she asked for me again. He opened the doors to the rooms around my bedroom, but he wasn’t going to find me there.

I sucked in a deep breath and walked to her, trying to regulate my nervous jitters. “I’m here,” I spoke up. “What did you need me for?”

“Where were you?” my mother questioned, her spectacles dropping from the bridge of her nose as she turned to look at me. I couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit of empathy for my mother as I saw her in her rawest state.

“I was playing the piano. I thought I told you earlier,” I reminded him, my voice soft and kind.

My mother scratched the side of her head and said, “Oh right. Of course, I do remember that. Well come Adelaide, I have something to show you.”

As my mother walked into her office which was right across from the music room, I prayed to God that she wouldn’t notice the shadow of the figure hiding behind the large ornate door that belonged to the music room and thankfully, she didn’t take note of a single thing. Right before I entered her office, I looked back behind me and saw Harry’s eyes through the crack of the door. He smiled reassuringly at me, telling me to go on, and I smiled back at him, my heart pounding a thousand times more rapidly.

I closed my mother’s door behind me after I got into her room and took a seat by the window, the window I normally sat and dreamt about having another life. My mother rummaged through her multiple drawers and I kept quiet while he was occupied trying to find something. It wasn’t until we both heard a loud clattering noise in the hallway that she looked up. I held my breath as I heard it again. Harry must have run into something.

“Did you hear that?” My mother looked around, trying to get a better opinion of what the sound was.

“No, I didn’t hear anything. What was it?” I lied to her, but she was unconvinced of my excuse nonetheless so it didn’t matter anyways.

“Greta, is that you?” My mother raised her voice so that she would be heard over the fire blazing in the background and through the closed door.

A silence echoed back nothing in return because it wasn’t Greta who was wandering the hallway. It was Harry and I felt an uneasy feeling come over me as my mother became more and more suspicious over the noises that had been made a few moments earlier.

“Greta! Are you out there? If you are, say something for god’s sake!” she asked again.

My mother stopped rummaging around in her drawers for what she was trying to show me but instead she pulled out a gun that was locked away and held it in her hand. She slammed the drawer shut and loaded the gun with fresh bullets. I hugged both of my knees and rocked back and forth in my seat as I watched my mother walk towards the door.

“What are you doing!?” I stood up from my seat and stared at the gun in her hand, deeply worrying about Harry’s fate if she were to walk out of the room.

“Someone’s out there,” my mother whispered back to me. “I’m going to find out who it is. Stay in here, Adelaide. Don’t come out until I say so.”

But of course, I refused to do that.

Notes

if this doesnt get 30-35 votes by tomorrow, i'm afraid i'm going to have to delete it :(
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-brianna