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It takes a month for her to move back into that house.
Completely, that is. When she can see the sun she's alright, but when the sun sets, she is a child again, a house that's suddenly too big and too cold.
She sees her sometimes, and she has to hide herself until her heart stops racing. She's gone, she knows that, but she could come back, and she wouldn't be as kind the second time around.
Matilda, the sweet, brave thing she is, suggests cleaning out her room.
"To make it less like her," she says. "I could even do it for you, if you'd like."
"No, Matilda. I won't let you do that for me."
"But I want to help! I can fix this, I-"
"You don't have to keep fixing things, Matilda. That isn't your job."
"But if you're too scared to do it, why can't I?"
Matilda stops. She thinks they're both trying to find a safe way out of this.
"I appreciate you trying to help," she says softly. "But it's an adult's job to keep a child safe. I know it hasn't been like that for us. But I want to change that. You don't have to be the one to protect me." Matilda says nothing, staring at her shoes.
"Would you like to go for a walk?" She suggests, after a moment. "It's quite a nice day. We shouldn't spend it all cooped up." Matilda nods.
Partway through their walk, the girl takes her hand and squeezes gently.
"I'm sorry for saying you were too scared," Matilda says later. "I would be scared too."
"We can talk about it tomorrow. It's getting late."
"I love you."
"I love you too, darling."
"You don't like people calling you Jenny," Matilda notes, as they're walking to school. "You get a funny look on your face when they do."
"It reminds me of worse times. I doubt you like people calling you a boy." Matilda's face scrunches up, and she shakes her head.
"I suppose not. But your dad called you Jenny."
"And she called me Jenny for much longer." Matilda frowns, kicking at a rock in the road.
"That isn't fair, then."
"It isn't," she agrees. "But we can't do much about it, can we?"
The thing about being headmistress is that now she works from her office. Pathetically, she can barely be in there for more than a few moments before she starts shaking. It's silly, isn't it?
Not like the room did anything, she was the one who yelled, and she's gone now, so why can't she even enter a room without falling apart?
"You're late. I told you to be here at twelve thirty, and here you are at twelve thirty-one. Were my instructions that difficult, Jenny?" Don't talk back, she tells herself, even though she stopped talking back years ago. "What have you got to say for yourself?"
"I was-" something hits the wall behind her. She doesn't flinch. Her jaw clenches.
"I'm not in the mood for excuses, Jenny. We had a deal, and you broke it." Somehow, she never gets used to how much it hurts.
She starts by getting rid of the portrait. Maybe she'll breathe easier when she isn't there to watch her. Never stopped her before, she thinks, stomach twisting. She'll find some new way to be sure she stays in line.
"We should burn it," Matilda says, and despite how sick she feels, she finds herself agreeing wholeheartedly.
They make a day out of it. They hold a little campfire in the courtyard and watch the painting, along with a few more easily burned items, turn into nothing but ashes and memories.
"Do you ever feel like someone is watching you, Miss Honey? From all the way back in your head, watching what you do?"
"Sometimes. It isn't terribly common for me." The truth, in a sense. It isn't terribly common anymore. Before is a different story, but she isn't the storyteller between them.
"It used to happen to me lots," Matilda says. "Back when I was still living with them, and they would be yelling at me. I'd go to a faraway place in my mind and watch. They were still yelling, but I wasn't as scared of them."
"Oh," she says, once again unsure of what to say. Matilda has a remarkable talent for saying throughly concerning things and not realizing it at all. "Has it become less frequent?"
"Yes. I'm less scared now. I don't have to go away as much."
"That makes sense. Was there a reason for you telling me, or were you just curious?"
"Curious mostly. Do you think it's normal?"
"Well, that I couldn't say. I don't quite know what normal is." Matilda frowns, clearly unsatisfied by the answer. "How about we go to the library later and see if we can find any books that would help? And you tell me if it starts happening again. Does that make sense?"
"That makes sense." She keeps an eye on her the rest of the day, just to make sure.
She hasn't told Matilda everything. Of course she hasn't- it's something no child should have to know about, and Matilda already knows far too much for a girl her age.
She supposes that means that she shouldn't have known all she did when she was a child, but a different matter. She can't change the past. She may want to, but it simply isn't possible.
So all she says is that she had a very cruel aunt, and sometimes, she's still convinced that she's going to hurt her.
The rest can stay in the past. If she had her way, it would stay buried forever.
She tried to run away once, when she was younger. Perhaps running away isn't the correct thing to say- she really just went to the library and hid between the bookshelves, hoping that she wouldn't find her.
"Isn't there someone at home waiting for you?" they'd asked, but she'd just smiled and shook her head.
"Oh, yes, but my aunt likes it when I get out of the house. She says it's good for me."
"Aren't you a bit young to be out alone?"
"Maybe. But I'm very smart. You don't have to worry about me."
How like Matilda she was. Just without the spine.
Her aunt first broke her arm when she was seven. Not the first broken bone she got at her hands, by far not the last.
I fell out of a tree, she'll say. I caught myself wrong on the way down. She gets good at making up reasons for it all.
The worst part, she thinks, is that everyone knew. And if they didn't know, they suspected. They must have. The quiet girl in the back of the class who only speaks when spoken to, who always had an injury of some sort, who had no friends.
She shakes her head. Done, it's done. She's an adult, not some pathetic child who wilts when questioned. If she could only remember that, that would be lovely.
If she could only believe that it was done, that would be lovely.