The Prisoner Project

THIRTY SIX

I had done nothing to deserve this.

Imagine you were tossed in an incinerator, left to burn to an inkling of your life, and just as the flame began to dwindle, the only person you love, re-lit the flame. That's how it felt watching her stand in front of the mahogany door of Mirabels office. If God himself had sauntered in in her place, I would be better equipped to handle it.

She had yet to look at me and so I made myself known. "Diana?"

On hearing my voice, she froze in an alarming way. Slowly, she looked up and her eyes widened for a fraction of a second. A whirlwind of emotions blinded her from seeing anything other than the consequences of her actions. She resembled our father, in many hideous ways.

"Aria..." She gasped.

Her eyes then flew from Mirabel to me but all she could do was heave a deep, heavy sigh. The kind of sigh that took things with it as it left; a borrowed laugh, a smile, a memory. The kind of sigh that could start a hurricane.

"I didn't want her to find out this way, M." Diana muttered, her voice sounded like it were trying to hide from me. She looked uncomfortable as she crossed the gap between her and the futon in front of me. "Not like this."

Mirabel chuckled, a sound I had become allergic to. "I know." She gestured to the chair. "Sit down, Diana. We have a lot to talk about."

"I don't—"

Mirabel lifted a hand to stop whatever words were about to leave her lips. In a sharp turn of events, she pulled open her desk drawer and dropped a stack of papers on the table. The letters. "After that little stunt you pulled, coming here and bringing these? You better sit the fuck down."

When I turned to face my sister, her eyes were screwed shut in what might have been pain, but I knew was guilt. She sat down. "This is sick, Mirabel, even for you."

Mirabel grinned, manicured fingers twirling her dainty gold necklace between fingertips. "Darling, if I'm sick, then you are absolutely depraved because you and I know why you're here."

Hurriedly, Diana whispered a plea. "Don't."

There were many reasons why I wasn't screaming and crying and telling Diana all the vile things I thought about her. It was because I could see it then. They were all so alike. My dad, Hugh, Mirabel and Diana. They had all taken something beautiful within their palms, shook it up like dice, and spilled it everywhere like poison. My realisation that the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree at all was setting my thoughts ablaze.

There was no rose-coloured lens blurring my vision anymore. "I'm going to be sick."

Mirabel leaned forward and picked up the first letter from the pile and slowly fingered it open. "This was the first one." She toyed with the piece of paper and lifted her eyes to lock with mine. "Read it."

"Mirabel, don't make her do this." Diana interjected.

Venom sprayed like gas throughout the room when I shot a glance at her. "You don't get to sympathise with me now. The time for reckoning was over the moment you wrote your first letter."

Even Hank, from the other side of the office, felt the ice in my words and cleared his throat.

I glanced down at the letter.