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Preview Chapter One: Girl From The Tree House
Lilly: 17 November 2015, Midday, At The Funeral
I’m sitting in this cold, musty church, giving my best impression of the grieving widow Reid. I’m good at that… getting the job done, like a magician who saws a person in half and puts her together afterward. Only, with me, it’s no trick or illusion. What you see is what you get. That’s me, Lilly. I’m one of many who live in the body of Elizabeth Reid.
The poor girl disappeared a long, long time ago. I believe she’s dead. It’s us, the Tribe, who live in the body now. But nobody knows that.
The smell of incense and sweet graveyard flowers wafts over from the oak coffin sitting only ten feet in front of me, covered with white lilies. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, fear creeps up like a wildcat lying in wait, ready to attack and devour me. My eyes are glued to the lid expecting it to lift any moment and out steps Horace like a Jack-in-the-box.
Of course, I know he’s dead. I touched his waxen, ice-cold face and gagged at the smell of formaldehyde surrounding his body after the funeral people had finished preparing him.
I had to. I needed to know that I was free. Finally!
Am I devastated? I should be. After all, we’d been married for twenty-four years. But I’m not. We know now he tricked us to marry him. Back then we were too innocent, too afraid, and too young.
The death certificate said death by a heart attack. He had a heart? Horace? I never noticed. Neither does Helen. Have a heart, that is. She’s the elegant lady sitting next to me portraying the grieving sister of Horace Reid with a performance worthy of an Oscar.
“…Horace Reid was a wonderful man working tirelessly for the greater good of our community. He will be missed in Waitakere Flats. As managing director of the New Gateway for Young Delinquents, he took a personal interest in the young boys and girls who lost their way. We will miss his wise guidance and philanthropic contributions that helped young people not only here, but also in Auckland and even wider New Zealand.”
The elderly man giving the eulogy reminds me of an old, weathered, dried up pine tree way up in the mountains. He stares at us with intensity, as if he tries to burn his message onto our brain.
I get it. One of Waitakere Flats’ upstanding pillars of society cut down in his prime, at the age of seventy-three. Much too early. Everyone agrees.
Everyone except us.
In my head, I hear a whisper, “Don’t trust him.”
Thanks, guys, I’m on to it.
Horace was wonderful? Oh, sure, you would say so.
Took a personal interest? He was a disgusting pedophile like the rest of the NGYD lot. Even just thinking of the Gateway people brings my blood to boiling point. I could tell stories, but nobody listens to me. I’m just the poor, crazy wife who should be grateful that he took a shine to me.
A shine to me?
Horace and his sister Helen were friends with Elizabeth’s parents and became our guardians after they died. We were ten years old when their car went off the road and plunged eighty yards into a gorge.
We call them Elizabeth’s parents because they didn’t give life to us. We don’t know exactly where we came from. We like to think we came from Elizabeth. Nobody noticed when the angels took her away and left us to pick up the pieces.
After the parents died, we celebrated with M&Ms, marshmallows, and pineapple lumps and hoped this would be the end of the abuse. They should burn in that special place in hell reserved for parents who hurt their children. After a few months with Horace and Helen, though, we found out how terribly wrong we were.
They were worse than Elizabeth’s parents.
Horace ended up marrying Elizabeth eight years later, and that was that! It happened after one of the electroconvulsive therapy sessions we had. He gave us the choice of marrying him or being admitted to a mental clinic.
“I’m horrified to see you suffer like this. If you become my wife, I can protect you from being admitted to the hospital for further treatment.” Those were his words. Back then they rang true. Nothing scares us as much as mental hospitals do, not even Horace bloody Reid.
Elise, our front person, had tears of gratitude in her eyes when she said: “I do.” She was eighteen and he was a forty-nine-year-old geezer with a receding hairline. That’s how we got here, staring at the lid, praying it stays down.
Auf wiedersehen, Horace Reid. Geh mit Gott, aber geh! (If German is not your thing, that’s longhand for good riddance H.R.!)
From deep inside me comes the urge to kick the coffin and an even stronger one to escape and get out of here. It’s hard not to succumb and instead stay put. I swallow.
Shush, guys. Not now. I’m on the job.
The service ends. About time too. My insides feel like a pressure cooker ready to explode anytime. They’re playing the last hymn on some hidden cassette player. The church’s organ is at the repair shop. I have to fight back a giggle. Imagine, an organ at the repair shop, like a car with a malfunctioning clutch? I find stuff like that funny.
A stream of mourners files into the church’s foyer, like a snake slithering out of its hiding place. Most of them I’ve never met. Their somber faces from earlier now lean more toward a smile. Some even laugh as they greet each other. The social stuff begins.
Yay!
Helen stands beside me in her black business suit, shaking the hands of the long line of people. Sunglasses are hiding her eyes, and she presses a lace handkerchief
