Page 72 of See Me After Class

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Dessie

The silence of my room slammed into me like a physical force. Door shut, I collapsed onto the bed, thoughts crashing through my skull like a rogue wave. Something didn't click. John, Viktor, Leon—their twisted possessiveness still simmered, but one truth burned bright. If they truly wanted me gone, the footage wouldn't be needed.

Oswald, I suspected, hadn't breathed his last through natural causes. So, what was I? A gnat buzzing around their gilded cage? No threat, no reason. Yet, they kept me alive and didn't silence me before I could unravel their secrets. A chilling thought coiled in my gut. Could their reasons for filming our rendezvous mirror mine? A desperate, twisted need to understand this tangled web we were all trapped in?

And if that was the case, who hadactuallykilled Oswald, and why?

I tried to rest, but sleep eluded me. The sheets clung to me like damp ghosts as the stubborn shards of doubt kept growinguntil I couldn't take it any longer. By this time, dawn had spilled through the blinds, painting stripes on my exhausted face.

The men wanted to sear their names on my skin. I had no qualms about that because I wanted to do the same to them. They craved control and mistook my surrender for submission, but behind all that predatory hunger, there was vulnerability. I knew it because I felt it before, in the loneliness that was my life until Oswald found me. My brain clung to the logic of survival. They could have eliminated me. Oswald wasn't the only loose thread they needed to snip. If they were the killers I'd made them out to be, a little bit of searching would reveal he had an heir. But none of them had bothered with that.

Why? Where did the lines blur?

The question gnawed at me like a persistent tick as I dressed, the silence broken only by the cawing of a crow outside my window. A strange unease lingered, a discordant note against the morning's symphony of birdsong.

My feet, guided by a lingering urgency, led me back to Ms. Wainwright's cottage. The scents of lavender and damp earth wafted through the air. Ms. Wainwright knelt in her herb garden, rays glinting off her silver hair as she snipped rosemary with steely precision.

"Dessie," she said as I approached her. Her voice held a sigh. "How are things?"

I mirrored her disgruntled expression with a resigned shrug. "Not good."

"I can't say I wasn't expecting this," she replied.

I raised a brow. "Expecting what, Ms. Wainwright?"

She angled her face toward me, meeting my eyes with her own. "You to come to me in such a state. You have changed your mind about the men working at the Institute, have you not?"

The words hit me harder than a slap in the face.

"What? No, I…" I stammered.

She shook her head. "Don't bother lying to me, child. It does no one any good."

I gave up. What was the point of it, anyway?

"Let's say you're right," I said resignedly. "Let's say I'm here because I'm in a world of trouble, and I can't seem to get to the bottom of Oswald's murder no matter how hard I try. You're the only person who can guide me, Ms. Wainwright. Is there anything, any tiny detail you might have missed?"

Something churned in her eyes. "I've already told you everything I know, Dessie."

"There has to be more to it," I mused exasperatedly. "I'm almost certain it wasn't those three, fools though they are. I think… I think it was someone closer to Oswald, someone with direct access to his life, his habits, and his weaknesses."

Ms. Wainwright was silent.

"Do you not agree?"

She placed her shears aside and turned to direct her full attention to me. "If that is the case, there is only one thing left to do."

My heart stuttered. “Go on," I rasped, the word clawing its way past a throat suddenly clogged with dust.

She hesitated, then spoke, her voice heavy. "He spent his childhood in a lonely house, swallowed by the Connecticut woods. He had a difficult childhood but built a name for himself despite that. I don't know all the details, but he had a family once upon a time."

"No!" I exclaimed, surprised. "That can't be possible."

In all the time that I had known Oswald, I'd never heard any mention of a family. Not once, not in all the publications that celebrated him, or all the news articles, or the Institute's website. Surely, it couldn't have been such a well-kept secret?

"Oswald's truth was different from what you know, Dessie. These things… I could never think to tell you because comingfrom me, a third person, they would inevitably sting," Ms. Wainwright murmured quietly.