Sierra sat in the kitchen; her eyes fixed the wall clock. Sleep refused to grace her. For the last two days following what Sierra saw as her enthronement, the woman found herself haunted.

How could she live happily, surrounded by the people Cecile held to the most when Sierra's sense of justice caused Cecile's descent to her addiction.

Jonas came and sat across from her. He was more than halfway through his stay. Blindspots remained; he needed to know what hid behind Sierra's sad stare.

"Can't sleep?"

The woman slowly shook her head, "I can't, I'm unable to. It's too scary."

"Sierra, I know I've said it many times. And you don't wish to talk about this, but if you want to raise Leone, I need to know what happened. I can't offer my protection if I don't have the weapons to yield if necessary. If the Gauthiers are monsters, I must know," Jonas placed a hand on one of hers.

Sierra took a deep breath.

How long could she keep the truth?

She managed to repress it for twelve years, but now she had to speak for Leone's sake and Jonas, who deserved to know even if he didn't understand her decisions.

"When we were teens, we wrote letters. Cecile had mine, and I had hers. We wrote about our dreams and aspirations. Each of us held eight letters. We vowed not to open them until we were adults, but one day I opened my drawer. I had a habit of regularly checking they were in place. I don't know the gesture reassured me somehow. That day I had nine letters instead of eight. I thought the envelopes were the same, but one was bulkier. I understood it was the additional letter."

Scared of stopping the momentum, Jonas refrained from asking any questions.

"I don't know why. I swear, I can't say even today what pushed me to open," tears rolled down Sierra's eyes.

Jonas wiped them with his bare hands, "what was in the letter?"

Sierra covered her face with both of her palms, "I didn't know, Jonas. We were seventeen, Cecile always shined. I couldn't imagine it was inconceivable."

"What was in the letter Sierra?"

Sierra got up, "wait here."

She went to her room and came back with a four-page letter, "here."

Each page had a title. The first was The Snake In My Grass, the second Keyhole, then Little Girl, and finally Birdcage.

"They're poems?" Jonas asked naively.

"Read them."

Jonas returned his gaze on the first page; he began to read during that time. Sierra's stare remained locked on the kitchen's wall clock.

There's a snake in my garden's grass,

It entered by an infraction.

It slid slowly, slivering merrily to the foot of my shoe. It twirled up my leg, cold-blooded; it knocked on the fabric of my undergarments.

I am friendly, you know me. I'm the snake that lives in the grass of your garden. I like your scent; I love your smile; you and I could be friends with time. I can teach you things. God has made you blind.

Sierra watched the color seep of Jonas's face as the man saw the picture behind what some would consider banal prose.

Jonas stopped and stared at Sierra, "what on earth?"

In front of the woman's silence, the man carried on to read the second, which he was unable to finish. Cecile painted her sordid truth with words that strangled anyone who read them. The man wished he had not insisted, now he too found himself bound and sinking with their weight.

"Sierra I, don't understand, Iㅡ."

"I didn't either, so I confronted Cecile. She just smiled and said she didn't think I would find it so soon. I asked her who she spoke about, the snake, the shadow, the candy man in Little Girl that offers a treat if she's obedient," at this point, Sierra was barely audible.

Her voice seemed to fade with every word, "I enumerated every man around her. She chuckled; it was as though Cecile saw it as a game. Cecile's parents were always abroad. I suspected the handyman even. And then I remembered there was one person who was always around. Someone who had access to any part of her house and that no one would ever suspect. In cases of abuse, adults are the first suspects. No one ever evokes children. Yet it was a child, a little older, but still considered a minor at the time."

Jonas's eyes darted as he sought answers while Sierra explained.

His eyes fixed Sierra, "Bertrand."

Sierra nodded, "he was obsessed with her. Once I figured it out, Cecile began to explain how it started in their residential premises as they played hide and seek; she was five. That bastard told her it was not a sin. Even in the old testament, relatives were betrothed to one another."

"Sierra, this is just insane."

"I told Cecile to tell the police and that it was wrong. Cecile went into a rage; she said she couldn't tell the police. I told her to tell her parents. They were unaware of this, they had to keep Bertrand away from her, but instead, they called her Dalila and Jezabel. They said she was the snake. They called her a prostitute and that if what she said occurred, it was her flirtatious behavior that bought this upon her."

Jonas had the whole picture, the answer to the why question.

Sierra continued, "the Gauthiers said she smothered their name with filth, and they refused to have such a disgusting being living in their household. Cecile never filed a complaint, she never spoke to a professional, and it started to eat her up. She began-."

Cecile's addiction, her decision concerning Leone, Sierra's insomnia, fears, and overprotectiveness, everything made sense.

"Sierra, why didn't you say something? How could you jeopardize Leone's safety this way? The man is a predator; he was there when I went to Dijon, Sierra."

If Sierra's voice faded, Jonas's seemed to rise a notch every second.

"You let me sit at the same table as rapㅡ," the man was unable to pronounce the word.

Sierra fixed Jonas straight in the eyes, "would you have believed me? If I brought up these facts in that mediation room three months ago, would you have believed me? Wouldn't you have thought it was a maneuver to sway your opinion?"

Jonas shook his head, "Sierra, I'm not like that."

"Jonas, be honest for once, would you have believed me?"

The man got up and stormed out of the kitchen. A few seconds later, the front door slammed. Jonas was furious; the man felt betrayed by all. The Gauthiers and their hypocrisy and Sierra with her distrust.

How could she do this for him?

Crazy ideas avalanched into Jonas's mind.

Did Sierra lead him on during all this time?

Why did she keep the secret during all these years?

Why didn't she alert the police?

Jonas occulted the fact Sierra was a teen who didn't know better. She tried to help by pushing Cecile to tell her parents. She thought the Gauthiers would go to extremes to protect their child. Perhaps they would even report Bertrand themselves.

Instead, everything backfired in the idealistic girl's face. Even though Cecile assured Sierra, she was her hero. Sierra doubted as she watched her friend give into the worst of vices without doing anything to stop her.

Jonas couldn't get over Sierra's revelation. He wondered how the woman even managed to breathe and live with such a secret. He made abstraction of the fact Sierra had symptomatic reactions.

All the bubbly emotions associated with Sierra burst, Jonas's mind throbbed. He needed air; from the hall, he went outside. In his vacation cabin house, in the Swedish woods, the man would have screamed. The wolves and other beasts of the night would howl to accompany him, but in the foreign streets of Saint-Denis, such action would earn him a night in the putrid cells of police custody.

In the morning, Sierra found the living room empty.

She walked into the kitchen, where she found Jonas and Leone dressed.

"I'll take him to daycare," was all he said before passing Sierra with Leone in his arms without bothering himself to utter even a cordial good morning or anything else.

Sierra desired to break the spell she was under; her revelation broke her existence altogether.