5
After her shower, with only a few hours left to get ready for the gala, on a rare occasion Malik left her there alone, Mia tiptoed through the top level of the house. He’d informed her that he had some business to take care of before the gala, but that she should be dressed and ready by the time he returned.
After informing her glam squad—the hair, makeup, and clothing team awaiting her in the beauty room on the second floor—that she’d be ready for them in half an hour, Mia pattered barefoot up the white staircase and then across the black limestone floors of the home’s top level. The estate hadn’t always been her and Malik’s but had spanned several decades, giving shelter to nobility, admirals, and several other people of distinction. So even the home’s top level, which went largely abandoned, was perfectly maintained. Not a single creak emitted when any of the black wood doors were opened. Not a single scratch on their sterling silver handles. Not a single lick of paint uneven on the walls as she journeyed through the narrow hallway.
A cold breeze raced down the hall, and Mia tightened her white cotton robe around her body, huffing softly as she came upon a lone back door. The only door on the top level of the house. A door that was usually manned by a seven-foot tall, three-hundred-pound beast of a man with no sense of humor. A door that now went empty since that beast was in the midst of a shift change downstairs. A shift change that happened at the same time every night, leaving the door clear for five to ten minutes.
It was a rare instance when that door went unmanned, and Mia never let those occasions go by, which was why her glam squad sat abandoned two levels down, awaiting her arrival.
Swallowing thickly, a small smile on her lips, Mia hid the book in her hand behind her back while unlocking the black door.
Pushing the door open, she peeked into the small room that had once served as an attic. The deeply slanted roof always made Mia feel constricted and claustrophobic. The fact that every wall was comprised of exposed brick, making it feel like an underground cave, didn’t help. A twin bed decorated with purple bedding took up most of the space, with a desk alongside it and a tall chest of drawers in the far corner. Unlike the rest of the house, the attic had been allowed to deteriorate with worn beige carpet that had seen better days and wood paneling on the ceilings long invaded by termites. Even the bars built into the arched window— the only window in the room—had seen better days, their dark paint peeling away and dancing with the breeze outside.
Mia peeked inside the room just in time to see a head full of curly blonde hair flying, along with the flailing limbs of the tiny body it grew out of, as that tiny body shuffled atop a twin sized bed.
Mia’s glowing eyes fell to the pillow on the bed as the young blonde girl shoved something underneath it, moving far too frantically to achieve the discretion she was clearly attempting.
“Emma, it’s okay. It’s just me,” Mia whispered, laughter lacing her tone.
Emma snapped her head in the direction of Mia’s voice with a gasp, hair flying, her green eyes shiny and big with an innocence only a child could manage. Their gazes locked and Emma’s eyes expanded to twice their size, her blonde brows shot up high, and a glorious smile spread across her pert pink lips, showcasing a mouth full of snaggleteeth.
“Mia!” she cried, though still in a whisper, yanking her hands from under her pillow in her excitement, revealing the massive blue book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, she’d been trying to hide away. She abandoned the book and leaped off the bed, her bare feet pattering against the wood floors. Her white floral dress dancing around her knees before she launched her body at Mia, clapping her arms around her waist as tightly as they would go while pressing her cheek into the tie in her robe.
“Shhh…” Mia whispered through her laughter, embracing Emma in return and cupping her cheek with her free hand once she’d pulled back. “We have to be quiet, remember?”
Emma pressed her lips together with a nod, trying to wipe the smile from her face, but it only re-manifested in her eyes.
Mia stroked Emma’s curls, pushing some pieces away from her heart-shaped face and tucking them behind her ears.
Emma played her fingers together, allowing Mia to groom her with a patient smile, even though her shining eyes were rife with excitement.
“We don’t have much time,” Mia whispered, taking a deep breath through the pain that shot across her heart. “But I know someone’s got a sixth birthday coming up.”
Emma gnawed her bottom lip and did a little hop, already knowing what was coming.
Still, when Mia revealed the book she’d had hidden behind her back, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Emma jumped nearly a foot in the air. She didn’t scream because she knew better, but instead, continued jumping up and down for nearly a minute, pumping her fists into the air, whispering, “Yes, yes, yes!”
Mia’s gleaming smile spread wide as she stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, following Emma, who had eventually bounced her way right back to the bed and flown into the blankets like a soaring bird, landing head first before freezing completely, as if the excitement of it all had caused her to drop dead, her blond hair fanned all around her.
Mia sat at the edge of the bed. “I’m guessing by your excitement you’ve already finished the fifth book?”
Emma shot up from her comatose state and crawled across the bed, her tiny limbs moving her faster than they seemed capable. She snatched up the book and showed it to Mia as if Mia wasn’t the person who’d given it to her in the first place.
“I’ve read it seven times already,” Emma beamed.
“Seven times? How is that possible? It’s nearly eight hundred pages!”
“It’s massive,” Emma agreed, a soft British accent lacing her words, flittering through the gaps in her smiling teeth. “But I love it. I cried.” Her cheeks heated up in slight embarrassment at her admission.
Mia’s chest swelled in a deep breath when Emma’s words caused hot tears to burn her eyes. She sniffled to fight then back. What right did she have to cry? Especially when the angel before her, regardless of her circumstance, still had the strength to smile?
“I did, too—” The lump in Mia’s throat broke her words. “What was your favorite part?”
“When Voldemort and Dumbledore battled!”
“Oooh, that’s a good one. Mine is when Harry and his friends banded together to create Dumbledore’s Army to defeat that fascist dark arts teacher.”
“Ugh. Umbridge was the worst.”
“She was, but it didn’t matter. They knew if they stuck together, they could defeat her.” Mia reached out and caressed her cheek. “They knew, as long as they had each other, there would always be hope.”
For a long, silent moment, they held each other’s eyes. Then Emma’s voice came softly. “Thank you for teaching me to read.”
Tears filled Mia’s eyes, and she looked away to hide them from Emma, not wanting Emma to see her tears, mere seconds after she’d told her that there’d always be hope. She wasn’t ready for Emma to know that hope was a lie. So she waited until her eyes had dried, even as the fire continued raging in her heart.
Collecting herself, she drew in a breath and reclaimed Emma’s eyes while holding up the green book, The Half-Blood Prince. “Switch.”
Emma gasped, offering up her book in exchange for Mia’s.
Mia laughed at her enthusiasm, but when she went to take the book, Emma wouldn’t let go.
A frown came between Emma’s brows. “I just love it. I think it’s my favorite of all.”
“I know.” Mia lowered her voice. “But remember, Papa can never know, which is why we can’t have too many books up here at once. We don’t want anyone getting suspicious or catching on.”
Emma searched her eyes, a gleam of fight still left in her gleaming orbs, but she bit her lip and released The Order of the Phoenix, taking The Half-Blood Prince in trembling hands.
“Once you finish them all,” Mia said. “You can choose which is your favorite and keep it forever, okay?”
Emma hugged the book to her chest, nodding softly, her smile returning. Her hope returning. “Okay.”
The sight of that hope making a comeback was the only reason Mia was able to finish taking a deep breath, sighing as she looked down at The Order of the Phoenix and began flipping through its many pages. “I might have to go ahead and re-read this monster… too…” Her words floated away when, as she was flipping, the book jumped to a specific page. The way it only could when there was something thick between the pages, serving as a bookmark.
Emma’s eyes widened when Mia retrieved two photographs that had been jammed between the pages.
Mia’s stared down at the two photos, one of a raven-haired woman and the other of a man with shoulder-length brown hair. She looked up at Emma.
“It’s a secret,” Emma whispered.
“Emma, who are these people?”
Emma pointed to the photo of a woman, who had hair so black it made her gray-blue eyes pop ferociously, appearing seconds from tearing through the photo. Her skin was pale and her features slim and classic, like an old movie star.
“That’s my mommy,” Emma said, softly, before moving her pointer finger to the picture of the man, a scowling behemoth who was breathtakingly handsome but also utterly intimidating, with a deep scar slicing his left eyebrow in half. Something striking, almost terrifying, lingered at the depths of his hooded green eyes. “And that’s my daddy—my real daddy. But it’s a secret, okay?”
Mia shook her head as she took in the pictures, sputtering because clearly, the consequences of being sardined into that tiny room for two years with little to no exposure to the outside world had finally taken its toll on Emma’s mind.
“Emma, where did you get these pictures?”
“From my Mommy.”
“But you’ve never met your mommy, sweetheart.”
“Yes, I have. Before I came here. I just never told Papa because I knew he wouldn’t like it. When I met my Mommy, she gave them to me. She said I had to hide them and keep them a secret. Just between us.”
A frown came between Mia’s eyebrows when she realized Emma might not be imagining things after all. Before she’d been forced into that attic and locked away from the world, it wasn’t out of the question that she could’ve met her mother. The photos were rife with deep lines and creases, proving they’d been unfolded and refolded many times. The way they’d have to be in order to hide them inside of books, pockets, maybe even shoes and socks. She imagined, over the years, Emma had found many inventive ways to keep them under wraps. Malik’s plans to keep Emma delayed by refusing to have her schooled or even teaching her to read had failed epically. Though she always did a stand-up job playing dumb whenever Malik was around, Emma had never been dumb, but instead dumb like a fox. Mia had always known that, but never more so than she did right then.
“My mommy says daddy’s looking for us,” Emma said. “She says he’s gonna come and get us, but she says it might take him a long time.”
For the first time since she’d laid eyes on Emma, Mia understood why it was always her—and not the six-year-old across from her—fighting back tears whenever she was in that room. Fighting to find hope in her heart where there was none, even though Emma’s heart still pumped with hope in spades. It hit her that Emma really did still have hope because she knew her mother was out there somewhere. Thinking of her. Missing her. Longing for her. Mia imagined it must be a wonderful feeling, even when one was locked away.
Her heart sped up. “How long ago did your Mom give you these?”
“When I was four.”
Right before Malik got to you. Mia pushed those thoughts away. “Do you know your mommy and daddy’s names?”
Emma shook her head before reminding Mia, gently. “It’s a secret, okay?”
“Okay, Emma. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
Emma let her promise sink in for a long while. Let the quiet air carry it away.
Then, something broke in Emma, as if one secret had avalanched into two. “We’re gonna be a family again.”
“I’m sure you will, sweetie.”
Sensing a condescending undertone, Emma shook her head rapidly. “No, I mean it. I’m gonna run away and go find my mommy and daddy, and we’re gonna be a family again.”
Mia took a deep breath, wondering if patronizing Emma for so long had been a mistake. Perhaps hope wasn’t always a good thing, but a dangerous thing. An unfair thing. Was it unfair to let the angel across from her believe there was a light at the end of the tunnel when she knew damn well one didn’t exist?
Before Mia could remind Emma that there was no way in or out of that house without Malik’s express consent, Emma had swung her legs over the edge of the bed, jumped to the floor, and pattered toward the other side of the room. When Emma realized Mia wasn’t behind her, she slowed, looked over her shoulder, pressed a finger to her pursed lips and then waved for Mia to follow.
Mia did, hiding the photos of Emma’s parents between the pages of The Half-Blood Prince before creeping across the attic on tiptoes and coming up next to Emma at the wood dresser drawer in the far corner of the room. When Emma struggled to pull the dresser away from the wall, Mia helped, suddenly curious as to what Emma was hiding. What had her so sure that escape from a house manned by hundreds of security guards was anything but a pipe dream?
When the dresser was pulled away from the wall, Emma pointed to the patch of concrete that had been painted over the wall behind it, and Mia’s mouth fell open. Not because the thick concrete had several cracks running through it like a broken window or a splintered piece of marble, but because, beyond that crack, was the outline of what looked to be a door.
“It’s the laundry chute,” Emma whispered, pointing to the outline. “A few months ago, my toilet was clogged, so Papa let me use the bathroom downstairs, and that’s when I saw the chute. I looked inside it and saw it came all the way back up here. And I think it goes all the way down to the basement.”
“These chips weren’t always here, and this is solid concrete. How did you do this?”
Emma’s eyes shone and she bent down, seizing a piece of brick that Mia hadn’t even noticed had been hidden on the floor under the dresser. She held it up.
Mia couldn’t help exploding into laughter that she had to stifle, burying her head in her hand. “What on Earth am I going to do with you?”
Emma wiggled the brick, as well as her eyebrows, eliciting another laugh from Mia. “It was coming loose from the wall anyway. I figured it would be strong enough to break the concrete and it did. It’s taking forever, ‘cause I can only do it at night, but it’s working.” Emma pointed to the cracks in the concrete again, cracks Mia now realized she’d made herself.
“You’re so smart,” Mia breathed. “You’re so damn smart, Emma, but this is very… very dangerous. If Papa finds out—”
“I’m gonna go find my daddy,” Emma finalized, her voice having lowered in determination right along with her pinched eyebrows.
Mia covered her mouth, not because she didn’t have anything to say, but because some part of her still couldn’t bear to break Emma’s spirit. To tell her that, even if she did manage to get enough of that concrete chipped away to expose the laundry chute, and even if she did survive the four-story drop from the attic into the basement, she was still far too small, and far too weak, to get passed the army of guards who manned that house like a maximum-security prison.
She couldn’t tell Emma there was no way out.
Sensing Mia’s silence as sadness, Emma beamed, “You can come too! We can both fit in the chute, one at a time. I already checked the measurements.”
Mia smiled warmly, and it ebbed into a soft laugh—even as her eyes filled with tears—tucking Emma’s curls behind her ear once more. “Maybe one day we’ll both realize our dream of escaping together, my love.”
Emma nodded.
“Just promise me you’ll be very, very careful?” Mia said. “And very, very quiet?”
“I will.” Emma nodded sharply and then squared her shoulders as if she were one of the soldiers manning the house in the grass down below, ready to put her life on the line for the sake of her goal.
Mia cupped both her cheeks, pulled her in, and placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “I have to run.”
Emma’s face fell, and for the first time since Mia had walked in, it was her green eyes that filled with tears.
“But I’ll be back,” Mia promised, the way she always did. “With the final book in the series.”
Emma set down the brick and took the arms of Mia’s robe in big clumps in her fists. “What’s it called?”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “Whoa…”
Mia laughed again, placing one last kiss on her forehead before standing, pushing the dresser back into place—hiding the chipped concrete wall once more—and turning to move toward the door.
“Wait,” Emma said, hurrying after Mia, only stopping in the middle of the room when Mia paused at the door.
With one hand on the door handle, Mia met Emma’s eyes over her shoulder.
“I made you something.” Emma’s shoulders rose in excitement, right along with her beaming smile, before she pattered to the desk next to her bed. She seized a single white piece of paper that was sitting among scattered pencils and crayons, and then raced up to Mia, presenting her with the picture, and holding it up as far as her arms could reach—which was only up to Mia’s ribcage.
Mia laughed breathily at the cartoon picture of two female stick figures. One was tall and black with long, dark hair, the other short and white with thick yellow spirals fluttering down her back. They stood together on a smattering of colorful grass, holding hands. They both smiled, and so did the sun Emma had drawn in the sky, its yellow rays shining down on them. The rose garden in the far corner of the picture was the same garden Emma could see from her barred window.
“Is that us?” Mia asked.
Emma gave a nod, suddenly shy with red cheeks and tightly sealed lips, locking her hands behind her back as Mia inspected the photo.
“I think I love this one most of all.” Mia held the picture to her chest. “I’ll cherish it forever.”
“Be careful that Papa never finds it.”
Mia’s heart melted to the floor. As much time as she spent warning Emma to never let her “Papa” find out about the Harry Potter books or any of their secret meetings, she couldn’t lie… it was nice to have someone else give her a little warning too.
It was nice to have someone who cared enough to do it.
“I’ll be extra careful.” Mia poked her lips out with a squint to show she meant business.
Emma launched across the small space that separated them, locking her small arms around Mia’s body once more, pressing her cheek into the valley below her belly button and letting her green eyes flutter closed.
“I’ll miss you,” Emma’s voice wobbled.
Mia cradled the back of her head gently, letting her fingers get tangled in her curls, voice breaking as she responded. “Oh, I’ll miss you so very much.”
“You’ll come back?”
“I will.”
“You don’t even have to have The Deathly Hallows, okay?” Emma tightened her hold. “Just come back as fast as you can.” She pulled back and looked up at Mia with gleaming eyes, making her long curls swing in the air behind her. “I’m breaking out of here any day now, and I don’t want you to miss it.”
A glorious smile crossed Mia’s face. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She bent down and kissed Emma’s forehead in one final goodbye. “Now, go on.”
Emma turned away and raced for the bed, launching onto the mattress while seizing the latest Harry Potter book she was set to demolish. Sitting Indian style on top of the bed, she hugged the book to her chest and gave Mia one last wave.
Mia waved back, her eyes moving to the dresser drawer in the far corner of the room one last time before she stepped out, making sure to lock the door behind her.
Even as she descended the steps to the glam squad awaiting her downstairs, Mia couldn’t make her heart slow, make her breathing even out, or piece the sharp fragments of her broken spirit back together.