and take me back to the airport, but of course he had disappeared, evaporated into the mystical invisible plain. More than likely he was delivering my bags to my room. If I didn’t hurry, some poor young woman on the staff would be unpacking before I ever made it up the stairs. I wondered what that same person would think of my vibrator. It was the first thought since I’d been picked up at the airport that put a smile on my face. Honestly, I didn’t care if it was the talk of the kitchen. Montague Manor needed a good laugh.
“Mother, you know I’m in the middle of getting things set in New York. I have a lot that needs to be done before classes begin. I don’t have time to spend wandering around Montague Manor.”
She reached for my hand and led me toward the large staircase. “No one’s asking you to wander, dear: straight up to your room and back down. It’s been so long since you’ve been home. Don’t forget to wear appropriate clothes for dinner.” She squeezed my hand, like she was doing me a favor. “I may have done a little shopping. Besides, I’m sure the things in your suitcase are wrinkled.” She kissed my cheek. “Just peek in the closet.”
With each step up the stairs, I lost a piece of my life. When I’d entered the front gates I was Alex, a twenty-three-year-old college graduate. In less than ten minutes, I’d regressed to Alexandria Charles Montague Collins, a teenager caught in the tower of lies and deceit. If only the stairs went higher and higher. Instead of a teenager, I could go back further to a time of pure innocence.
How far back would I need to go?
I closed my eyes and inhaled the familiar scents. Even after four years, nothing had changed. The closed doors to unused rooms were like soldiers along the corridor, assuring that I did as I was told. They didn’t need rifles upon their shoulders. The glass doorknobs that glistened from the crystal lighting were their weapons, locked portals to destitute lands.
Before the loss of innocence, I pretended that Montague Manor was truly a castle and I was the princess. It was the name my mother said my father called me, his princess. But the princess I imagined was more like the one from storybooks I was read as a child, trapped in a tower.
A memory hit, stilling my steps. I hadn’t thought of it in years, but it was as vivid as if it were happening.
I was ten years old, and I’d embarrassed my mother by refusing to let a stylist cut my hair. It was the princess thing. I believed that if it grew long enough I could escape my room high in the sky. The second floor wasn’t that high, but it was to a ten-year-old.
Every time she’d talk about having my hair trimmed I’d cry and stomp. Thinking she could lull me into it, she made reservations for us at an upscale spa. We had pedicures and manicures. However, it was as they moved me to a stylist’s chair that I figured out their devious plan. I screamed at the stylist and my mother as I ran to the car.
Even now I remembered her ashen expression of disappointment and embarrassment. Per her usual response, I was sent to my room. It was all right: my hair would eventually get me to freedom.
That evening after Alton came home, I was summoned to the grand hall. When I arrived there was a chair. I didn’t understand at first and asked where my mother was. He said she was resting, too upset over my behavior to leave her room. Then he told me to sit in the chair. One by one the entire Montague Manor staff materialized around me until the hall was full of eyes.
That was when I learned about the staff’s ability to see and yet not see. That was my first lesson. He told me matter-of-factly that neither a Montague nor a Fitzgerald behaved in the manner I had. I reminded him I wasn’t a Montague or a Fitzgerald. I was a Collins.
He said that my behavior was unacceptable in public or in private, and if I wanted to behave like a common street urchin, then I could look the part. It wasn’t until he stood back and a man I recognized as one of the gardeners came forward with large shears that I understood what he