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‘If you’ll skip one more painting class, you’ll forget how to be my daughter.’
Sometimes Alicia wonders if Maman only meant it half as a threat. What if she didn’t? Alicia is already halfway down the east corridor, running like the Manor’s after her. Which, in fairness, it sort of is. Everything echoes in these halls. Footsteps. Expectations. Papa’s cane. And now her own thoughts, which are the loudest of all. As the cane clicks too close for comfort, she chooses a longer, sneaker route.
He will ask her about the bruises that ‘the nettle’ left, and she’ll stammer. He’ll offer her comfort and sympathy, like she can’t just get the former only. Alicia hates it. She hates painting and mixing colours in ways that don’t make sense, and having to keep her back straight for hours, and swaying her arm until it hurts. She’s good at imagining. Why can’t pictures materialize from her head into the canvas? Stupid painting, stupid brushes, stupid canvas. Stupid Alicia for thinking she can escape Maman.
There are days when she suspects she has already forgotten how to be Aline Dessendre’s daughter.
Maybe that’s why she runs.
There is a room in the library that Alicia believes no one knows about. You have to run your fingers along the book spines on the north wall until you find the false volume—Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture—and press. The original copy, bound in leather with gold tooling, was never there. Maman and Papa already know it by heart. The fake one has foxed pages, but who marked them? Alicia always assumed it was some old family member, a whimsical aunt, or a melancholic uncle. Maybe the Manor ghost. Her siblings laugh at her ghost beliefs, but how else do you explain one sock vanishing weekly from Verso’s drawer?
Alicia likes to think the room chose her. Maybe for her loneliness, if nothing else. It’s not fancy: just a table and a chair, but exactly what she needs. She goes there when the house is too loud or too quiet. When Clea is being sharp or Maman is being silent, or the other way around. When she needs to be more alone than alone, like today.
The panel swings open softly as she presses the book, ushering her inside.
She flings herself into the dark, victorious and finally away, and smacks directly into something solid and groaning. Alicia shrieks in disbelief.
She was right, the Manor is haunted! Of course! She needs to tell Verso and Clea, and—
Wait. You cannot walk into a ghost. And ghosts don’t usually say ‘Ow’.
‘Not happy to see me, are you, ma choupette?’ Verso teases, extending his arms to the sides so she can hug him.
Her heart leaps as she presses herself into his chest, inhaling the scent of fresh grass and warm bread. He went to the market in the morning while she was obliterated by the colour theory.
‘Verso! What are you doing here?’ she squeaks, her bravado collapsing in on itself. No one else was supposed to set foot here. The place was meant to be hidden.
‘I got us some madeleines,’ he mutters evasively, lighting the candle and wrinkling his nose curiously, ‘I thought I was the only one who knew of this hiding spot.’
They exchange long looks filled with curiosity and hesitance.
‘Fancy a bite? Got one in my pocket’ he offers her a piece, and she almost swallows it whole. All this running made her hungry.
Alicia shuffles her feet where the crumbs from the pastry fell and wonders how many times they missed each other walking into the room, maybe just minutes, only a few steps apart.
‘So,’ he says eventually, sitting back down on the chair with a sense of comfort of someone who sat there many times before, ‘Was Clea pulling your hair again?’ he asks like he already knows the answer.
‘Not this time,’ she replies, smiling sheepishly. She tries to tuck her hands behind her back, but it’s too late— Verso has already spotted the bruised knuckles. She could never hide anything from him, not the broken vase in his room nor the stains from the dessert she pilfers from him.
He takes a step forward and gently reaches for her hands. She does not object, but takes in a long breath and holds it. Not ready to admit to anything yet, shame flushing her cheeks. The bruises stay silent too, reluctant to complain.
Verso takes his time inspecting the marks – a bit too long – and Alicia has half a thought to laugh it off. She could say she fell or wrestled with a shadow, or blame it on Monoco. But Verso isn’t dumb. And Alicia can’t lie. Not to him. Not like him.
‘You can’t outlie a liar,’ Papa would say.
In the end, he lets her hands go without a word and avoids her eyes for a moment. He knows.
Everybody in the Manor knows what a failure Alicia is as a painter. And now there is additional proof for all to see. She looks away, too, wishing she had another madeleine to sweeten the discomfort.
‘We are safe in this room,’ he finally says, and his mouth hangs open like he wants to add something but changes his mind, ‘as long as no one else finds it’. He blinks at her conspiringly. The plural form catches Alicia’s attention. He, too, like her, is escaping from something or someone.
‘You found it, though,’ she says, almost accusing. If he did, so can Clea, Maman, and Papa.
Verso shrugs. ‘Who do you think found it first and foxed the false book?’
So this explains it at least. She hesitates before answering. This place has always been hers, perhaps the only place in the whole Manor, where she could spill ink without worry of reprimand, where she could write freely and fully herself.
Her writing!
‘You didn’t… read anything, did you?’ She eyes him suspiciously and tries to keep a straight face. A sweat rolls down her back.
His head tilts as if the thought alone never occurred to him. ‘What could I have read?’
Against herself, Alicia glances at the stack of notebooks she sometimes leaves under the low table. Her poems and tales. Unsend letters. Testaments of other worlds. Verso has enough grace not to follow her gaze and pretends to inspect his fingernails. But Alicia’s convinced he’s seen her poetry. The stack is a bit crooked, paper sticking out. Verso pretends not to notice that she knows he knows, but his lips twitch nervously.
‘I just needed some space,’ he confesses, unprompted, perhaps to change the subject. Alicia understands immediately – her brother has been venturing out of the Manor more often in the last year, always finding an excuse to stay in the bar or a concerto hall a bit longer – and grabs his hand, rubbing small circles with her thumb on his soft skin, like he used to do when she was little. The gesture fills them both with nostalgic warmth and agreement. Their eyes meet, and a silent pact is made.
The secret room is small, but there is enough space for two escapades.
‘For a moment,’ Alicia says, swinging on her feet to left and right, ‘I suspected you come here to practice the piano, away from everyone’s eyes. Or write your next greatest sonata.’
One of Verso’s eyebrows raises.
‘Do you see a piano here?’
Oh, right, the walls are probably not as soundproof as they seem. Silly her. ‘Of course not,’ she stutters, ‘the piano would be too loud for you to play in secret.’
‘And too big and heavy to bring it in here every time,’ Verso laughs and Alicia covers her face in embarrassment.
They don’t say it out loud, but the room becomes theirs. And neither mind sharing.
Alicia brings the old typewriter a week later. It’s heavy and stubborn and missing the 'e' key cap, but it has character, or so the seller had advertised. Typewriters are not exactly banned in the household, but are frowned upon. The lesser medium, they call it. ‘Why write when you can paint?’
What Alicia wonders is, why not write if you don’t want to paint?
She found the machine at the market and got a nice deal for it – only half her weekly allowance and a button from her autumn coat. Verso proudly declares her a real bargain hunter.
‘I thought we could fix it,’ she says hopefully as they place it on the table. Verso’s good at fixing things. He fixes her hair when Clea messes up, and fixes Maman’s mood when Alicia sours it. He uses hands and words like a repairman uses his tools.
‘We’ll figure it out,’ Verso says, turning the machine gently onto its side. ‘It’s old, but not useless. Same as me.’
‘You’re not that old.’ Alicia pouts at his silliness. Ever since his last birthday, Verso has been very dramatic about his age; something about the end of teenagehood that she’ll only understand once she’s older and bitter like Clea.
‘There was a time when twenty was considered old.’
‘Yes, a thousand years ago!’ she playfully taps with a screwdriver on his head.
‘Now, don’t get so smart with me and hand me the tools,’ he says, sleeves rolled up. ‘If you dragged it all the way here – and torn your tights on the way, Papa will not be pleased – I can at least see what’s wrong.’
‘You’re the best brother I ever had,’ Alicia blurts.
‘Not much of a competition, is there?’ he replies, a delicate smile tugging at his lips.
They sit on the floor, tools spread out, cross-legged with loose paper everywhere. Verso’s hands are long-fingered, careful, slim. Fashioned for the piano specifically. Pressing keys and holding hands. These are safe hands; soft and reliable. Alicia looks at her own small pair. The bruises from Maman’s reprimand are nearly gone now, though if you press too hard, they still whisper ‘ouch’. There is ink beneath her trimmed fingernails, too. She never notices it until Clea points it out. ‘Careful, now, sister dear. You’re one step away from looking like a stray.’
She wonders what Clea would say if she saw them right now. Probably something about ‘wasting time’. Maybe twenty really is old.
The resurrection of a machine ends in a huge success, though celebrated in secret. Once the typewriter makes the first hustle sound, the poetry battles are born.
Verso proves to be a gentle critic – a rare, endangered species in the Dessendre household.
No matter how many fragments he underlines in her poetry (‘maybe try metonymy?’ or ‘I feel this.’ or ‘that’s very depressing for a ten-year-old’), he always draws a little smiling figure at the end. A brushhead on legs, holding up his fist. He calls them Gestrals. Funny fellas.
Alicia tries to be gentle in return, too, but she’s too focused on being constructive. She wants to be helpful. Useful. Writing is the only art she doesn’t feel like an imposter in. Well, sort of. Definitely more adequate than painting, which is not much, but something.
So she retaliates with dramatic footnotes and one-liner reviews:
‘Too many metaphors. Try again, Sir Sadness.’ or ‘You used the word ‘melancholy’ four times. Get the dictionary.’
For once, they aren’t painting or performing, or competing for anyone’s approval. The words on the page don’t have to impress anyone but each other. Alicia feels braver when she types, and Verso seems lighter when he reads. It’s like discovering a language that belongs only to them. She learns that Verso can be funny in his margins, and he learns Alicia can be bold in her critiques. Their paper conversations fill the little room with laughter in a way the rest of the Manor has not lately.
Then one Thursday, Verso doesn’t come.
Which is alarming, because Verso does not not come. He’d come even during a fire. He came even on the day Clea sculpted him a very unflattering bust. Even when Papa and Maman had their silent war across the dinner table and Alicia had to pretend her soup wasn’t shaking.
She waits and writes. She checks the hall for any sounds. No footsteps, no Verso. Alicia tries not to think the mean thoughts. The ones that say:
He’s tired of the poems.
You’re the boring sister. The clingy one. The extra sibling they didn’t ask for.
She curls up on the floor and wraps her arms around her knees like they’re handles to hold herself in place.
Then deeper fears bloom: she'll never be good enough at being someone the others want around. Or the worst: that Verso is hurting, and she can't help.
She’s too young to name it, but Alicia knows Verso folds his pain into quiet corners. He keeps it tucked in the pauses between sentences, in the way his smile lingers half a second too late. He hides it the way she hides her poems — not to deceive, but to protect. And Alicia hates it, because if he keeps hiding it, she’ll never know how to help.
Later that evening, she passes Clea in the corridor. Her older sister stands with arms crossed, and that look like she’s already won the argument you didn’t know you were having. Before Alicia turns around the corner, she hears her hiss as if the kettle started boiling.
‘You can’t keep running off, you know. I didn’t take you for a coward, brother. At some point, there will be nowhere to hide.’
From behind a half-closed door, Verso retaliates. His voice is muffled, but there’s still a strain in his voice. ‘And you can’t keep acting like you’re in charge of everyone, you’re not— you’re not Maman. I have my own life and you have your own, Clea.’
Clea huffs, increasingly annoyed and deadly. Alicia moves away from her eyes' vision, ashamed to be eavesdropping but curious enough to stay.
‘And I’ll soon be damned than see you waste it away. But fine, suit yourself. I have a vernissage to prepare. Alone.’
Verso shouts back with the finality of a sword piercing a chest, ‘Tell our parents I will not attend that one either.’
Clea’s shoulders rise for a moment and then slump. Whatever she wanted to add, she decided it was not worth it.
‘Not everything’s about you,’ she simply concludes, but Alicia notices the barely audible lump in her throat.
As Clea storms off, not even gracing her sister so much as a glance, Alicia catches something — a faint discordant sound, not music but the ghost of it. Like Verso pressing piano keys too softly to be heard, then letting them go before they can ring. Or maybe it’s just the creak of his chair as he leans forward, silent but heavy. Either way, it makes her stomach twist. She almost knocks. Almost.
Her hand hovers in the air, useless, fingers curling back against her palm. She tells herself that if he wanted anyone there, he’d open the door first. So she pulls away and tiptoes down the corridor, heart heavy, until she’s back in the library. In their room. The one small enough to feel safe and just big enough to hold a silence between two people. She rolls a piece of paper into the typewriter and fits as much comfort into words as they can carry. The typewriter hankers heavy with hope.
Once she’s done, she slips the paper under his door and gives him the space he needs.
The next morning, after Verso skips the family breakfast, she hurries into the library.
She is relieved to see him standing tall and in one piece, with only a small darkness beneath his eyes. He read. He listened.
Verso holds up the note she slipped under his door. ‘Still too heavy on the adjectives. But I liked the comparison to the phantom stars. That was clever.’
Alicia shrugs, unsure how to read his mood yet. ‘Thank you. I didn’t know if you wanted words or silence, so. I tried both.’
He folds the paper carefully and puts it in his pocket. ‘You chose well. Sometimes I don’t even know if I want music.’ His voice drops, and this shocks her. Verso would never say something like that. Verso, who can compose on nothing but inspiration and stubbornness, would insist on playing music even with a broken arm.
‘You shouldn’t have skipped breakfast, brother. You’re delirious.’
He looks at her confusion softly. ‘You know, sœurette, music is… It’s supposed to be freedom. But sometimes it feels like another cage. Like I can’t tell if I’m playing for me or for them.’
Alicia tilts her head and knows better than to suggest dropping music at all. That would kill her brother for sure. There are days when even the things you love enslave you. There are also days when you need to do them differently or take a break. Maybe Verso needs a different goal for a while. And she already proved to be a good listener and a critic.
‘Then maybe you should play for me.’ She suggests with a smile and a little bow.
The simplicity of the solution seems to surprise him, then calm him. He nods.
‘Maybe I will.’
A beat.
‘Just remember that the piano will not fit in here.’
‘Verso! We moved on from that already!’