ESCAPE
Chapter Fifteen
Rose stealthily slipped to the side of the
house. She sidestepped all the flowering plants growing until her eye caught
what she was looking for--an open door on the back left side of the house. It
was in the servant’s quarters and led directly into their hot, greasy-smelling
kitchen. When she needed an escape from Cal, Rose used to go down to this
section of the house and knew that the door was propped open every day to
filter out the heat and bring in more fresh air. Before bed, it was the cook’s
duty to shut the self-locking door.
She was relieved to see that it was still
open now. The risk of going into the house was too great at the time, so she
picked up a small rock and propped it next to the doorframe so that when the
door was shut, hours later, it wouldn’t be able to close all the way and,
therefore, would remain unlocked.
Rose thanked her lucky stars to see that the
cook was too tired to notice that the metallic click of a locking door hadn’t
occurred that night. After years of hearing it each day, his mind just played
the sound it knew it was supposed to hear in his brain, and the cook never
suspected a thing.
Even then, Rose waited a long while longer to
insure that everyone was asleep before venturing into the house.
*****
She crept into the kitchen and immediately
she was hit by a wall of heat. She put her cold hands up to her already-warm
cheeks. Carefully, she eased the creaking door back into place with the rock
holding it half an inch open. There was no need, but Rose was prepared to take
every precaution to make sure that her simple plan ran without any hitches.
As silent as a shadow, Rose was a soundless
ghost creeping among the solemn household. She went up the stairs from the
servant’s quarters to the second floor. In the cracks on the bottom and sides
of Cal’s office door, beams of light shown through. He’s awake! An
urgent alarm in Rose’s head went off. But she knew that Cal was sometimes in
his office for half the night, so she resolved to keep going. If I leave
now, I’ll just have to go through all this later.
She made her way to the front of the hallway.
She had come from the servant’s quarters at the back of the house and the
staircase she went up wasn’t the main staircase, but the dingy one intended
only for the servants of the household. She ran her hands along the smooth
white door of the nursery. Inside would be her perfect little baby boy, unseen
by Rose for half a year of his short little life.
The door opened noiselessly on greased
hinges. She stepped to the wide, oval-shaped crib and peered inside. She gave a
little tiny gasp, the first sound she had made since entering the premises. How
could she have forgotten the tenderness of his smooth white skin? The dear curl
of his dark eyelashes? The look of sweet, blissful peace on his beautiful
features? Relief swept over her as she was able to pick him up in her arms
without waking little Jacob. With tenderness that only a devoted mother could
ever possess, she gently rested him against her shoulder without there ever
being a ripple in his tender dreams.
She made her way to the other side of the
hall. Behind this second door lay Jayvelin, with no need to be described as
being an angel or beautiful. You looked upon her and you could tell. You heard
her sweet voice and you knew. You felt her loving touch and would swear that
the Heavenly Father would choose her over His own. It was with this thought
that Rose looked down upon her daughter.
However, Jayvelin was a light sleeper and
instantly awoke when her mother picked the tiny figure up in her arms. Yet the
child knew that silence was necessary and waited until her rose-petal lips were
pressed against her mother’s ear to whisper, "Are you here to stay or will
you leave us again?"
Rose, with Jacob still dreaming happily on
her other shoulder, looked upon Jayvelin’s wide, gray-blue eyes and softly said
to her, "I’m here to take care of you forever and for always."
*****
Jayvelin had a sense about her where she
could know deeper into people than others. She knew that her mother was kind
and loving and hadn’t wanted to go away that fateful day so long ago. She also
knew that Cal, though kind to her, had been the reason her mother had
unwillingly left. Cal was one of the few people who downright confused her. She
knew that he wasn’t her father and didn’t downright like her, yet he was
almost as nice to her as to Jacob. She also knew that he was unquestionably
horrid to her darling mother, and when he seemed to be nice to other people it
was all an act. Jayvelin didn’t know how to feel about this, because although
she was one of the people he was genuinely kind to, you couldn’t say that
either Jayvelin or Cal could ever love one another.
The truth of the matter was, even though
Jayvelin didn’t know it, Cal felt the need for Jayvelin to care for him because
when she grew older she was to be married to the Farthing boy, now just a few
years older than herself. That way, Cal could combine both family’s wealth and
he and his father could override the Farthings yet keep all their wealth.
But that was of no matter now, because Rose
managed to successfully leave the house undetected. She had stuffed some of the
children’s necessities into her bag, resting on the same shoulder as Jacob, and
now emerged back outside with sore arms and clutching two priceless treasures.