Prologue

                                        

                                              
Mum said this place would make me better, and that was the last we ever spoke. Dad made the visits. Whenever I told him about Racheal, he kept silent. He wasn't fond of them. All the Racheals in my life. I didn't mind, though. At least they'd never left me. At least, not yet.
"Evelyn."
Jenna rushed out as the wooden door slammed open. Two pairs of eyes bore down my skin. The matron and her assistant, her daughter. This has been their routine for months now, although the kids said they've carried on for years.
Irene stepped away from the door and closed the window. The rain was back. Outside, some kids rushed the laundry into their baskets, clutching their skirts to their knees. They would be punished for that. Three whips and a night in the kitchen.
She gave the matron a knowing glance and then marched out to the garden.
I closed the door and sat on the wooden stool opposite the matron. It wouldn't sit still, continuously cracking against the wooden floorboards. I might have cut it too deep.
"How's the hostel?" the matron asked in her baritone voice, already scribbling in her notebook.
"When can I send a letter?"
Dad hasn't visited in a month, and Mum's letters stopped. The dozen I've written sit untouched in the rusted metal box behind the matrons chair, buried with countless others.
We both glanced at it, the rain filling the silence between us.
The matron fixed her gaze back to me as she rested in her chair. After a moment, she reached inside her drawer and stretched out a letter with a green seal.
I frowned as I received the letter. This one was from Mum, and it would be the last I'd receive in months.
I shoved it into my pocket and turned to the window. Outside, birds huddled in the shriveled tree near the garden. One was featherless. My stomach sank as I realized: I'd eaten it last night. That explained the odd taste.
Another plague in two weeks. Hardly the strangest.
"You know the rules," matron asserted, her pen slicing across the page. "One letter a month. That means no letters in two months." 
She carried on scribbling in her notebook. As she did, I asked Racheal for a favor, one I've asked a thousand times.
"Take her. You can take her, but see my letters are delivered."
Silence.
The rain song quickly dulled into a gentle hum, intensifying the awful creak of the stool. In the midst, I could only stare at the Matron's receding hair. Her hair was always done in a slick-back bun, which I took to my advantage.
"You can have her hair. Everything," I hummed silently.
The matron looked up at me and nudged her head toward the door.
"Julian."
Julian walked into the room and spared me a smile as I walked away. The weeper was the nickname he gained in the week he had spent here.
I grabbed my skirt to my knees once I got to the garden. Trinkets dropped to the ground and added to the stream of muddy water that ran through the garden. On the other side of the building was Irene, watching me closely. She did what she was best at doing.
I lifted my skirt until my lap was covered in goosebumps, and with a soft smile, I raced to the hostel.
My quarter was on the first floor, where I shared a cramped room with five girls. They whispered before the matron, but here, they conversed like hyenas. Doing away with the girls has been a challenge, seeing that sister Irene would get even nosier ones like Stephanie.
Her dark eyes followed me as I ran inside the room and collapsed on my bed. I sat upright and kept a straight face despite the jabbing pains on my sides. I was yet to get accustomed to the metal bed stand. 
"What did I tell you," Stephanie skipped from the bedside she was etched against to my bed corner. "Say you regret taking on the extra work for a meeting swap."
Not sparing her a glance, I slipped the letter from my pocket and watched as her smile faltered. 
"That's it for months," she muttered, not even looking up as she returned to smooth her blanket.
I tapped my feet on the floor, watching Stephanie ready herself for another Friday night. She pulled on her milk-colored dress, slipped into her white panties, and stepped into her Cortina shoes, moving with the ease of someone who belonged elsewhere. She never noticed how I stared, hoping for something different, something new.
After she left, I lay on the bed with the letter to my stomach, wondering about its contents. Mum was moving, without Dad. Maybe she'd be leaving to the Williams. Maybe this was her final goodbye until I visited again—that would be in years. She would hardly recognize me.
"Tell me what's in it," I said.
Racheal sat at the edge of my bed, her silhouette lazy in the dim light. She didn't speak, just smiled faintly and shrugged.
This was the Racheal I despised. The mute Racheal. Rachael would tell me the letter's contents without ever asking. That Racheal knew too much. She always had. Maybe that's why she stayed. 
Keeping the letter in place with my hand, I turned to Racheal.
"Rachael will be back tomorrow?"
She smiled and nodded, her presence as steady as the silence. 
I tucked the letter under my flat pillow and curled up on the bed, with my hands squeezing my knees.
Racheal would visit during the dark hour when the convent would be ever so awake and we the barely living would be in a sinister slumber.