Holding onto her seat, she is still breathing heavily. "I'm fine," she says finally.
Anyway, they've arrived home now. Henry's face still shows confusion, while the driver, with some pity for her, mutters:
'Do you need some water, miss?'
"No, thank you," she replies. Now she notices that her nails are penetrating the fabric of the chair from the strength of her grip, so she relaxes her body a little. A severe shortness of breath only binds her mind... as her eyes fall on the strange red bruises around her hands, which she nervously hides inside the sleeve of her shirt.
As soon as she opens the car door, her foot touches the street pavement, the cold air inside floods her lungs, it is already dark.
"Go ahead " Henry tells her, turning his attention back to the driver and taking out his wallet to pay his fare.
Thus, Elizabeth waits no longer and steps towards the threshold of her house, every step striking her ear with conflicting memories... She does not know why her eyes wandered to the street for a moment; she remembered the record that broke before her eyes, the tape that was the beginning of everything.
"You haven't gone in yet," a sharp voice pulls her out of her thoughts. Who else could it be but Henry, who looks at her with a mixture of annoyance and strangeness, and without giving his daughter a chance to speak, opens the door of the house and precedes her.
"Is this really the same man who looked so lifeless just a moment ago?" she whispers to herself in disbelief, before her eyes drift to the furniture left untouched and the floor stained with dried drops of blood. It must belong to the man whose eye she gouged out.
"I heard that."
Henry muttered to her, raising an eyebrow, as he closed the door behind him, removing his jacket and carelessly throwing it onto the sofa in front of him.
"Anyway, go to sleep, it's late!"
His daughter doesn't really try to discuss it with him; she is too tired. With a sigh, her eyes wander slightly towards her room, but she stops for a moment without realizing it when her gaze falls upon the dark-colored ink staining the carpet in her father's office.
"Where were you and my mother that day?" she whispers without much thought, turning slowly towards her father.
Her father's eyes meet his daughter's for a while with a coldness, he does not bother himself to talk to her face to face.
He sat on the sofa with his back to her, saying:
"We were discussing some things..." He focused on her for a moment before continuing, "It's nothing important for you to know" .
"Why? Can't you... tell me?" she whispers, her eyes not going away, her body frozen in place.
.
.
There is a few seconds of silence, during which her father's face turns angry, his eyes flashing with fury towards his daughter as he whispers:
'What did you say?'
The ticking of the clock rises to mingle with the sound of the young girl's heartbeat, yet her eyes do not flinch at all:
'I said... I want to know where you were with my mother.'
As soon as she took her first heavy breath, her father stood before her with eyes that seemed about to burst from staring so intensely. He leaned towards her in one step, saying in a sharp voice:
'Have you forgotten who you're talking to? Do I have to repeat myself?' He took another step towards her, pushing her shoulder with the tip of his finger.
The light of a lamp above them moves back and forth a little, while elsewhere, away from the silence of the house, Isabella is facing something else..
Standing next to one of the corpses in the morgue, it looks like a completely burned body, the smell of something rotten mixes with the sound of metal and dissection tools.
"Are you still examining her body? I don't understand why you're curious about this woman's corpse...what do you call it again..." A quiet voice speaks beside her; it's her assistant, sitting bored.
"Mary Kat," Isabella replies, but she is still staring at the body in front of her, widening her pupils curiously, to move to the almost melting lips.
"Oh yes, this is the lady who was killed by her husband...what was his name again!" her assistant muttered again.
"James"
she whispers, slowly raising her head.
Her robes were now completely stained with black ash flying from the corpse; she set her mask aside to sigh:
'You know very well that atropine poison can cause paralysis of the intestines primarily...which means that...she may have already died before she was actually burned...why would he bother burning her?'
Her assistant doesn't seem focused, he mutters a little unconcerned, saying: 'It doesn't really matter now that he committed suicide. who cares!' He stands up slowly to continue, 'Also, the girl's family already wants her body to bury her.'