wrest pin. noun. a pin in a stringed musical instrument (as a harp, piano) around which the ends of the strings are coiled and by which the instrument is tuned.
Neville pinches the bridge of his nose, shoving his glasses out of the way to do it. They’re half way up his lined forehead, age marking his skin where once nothing but smoothness existed. He was good at masking emotion, but age and stress have compounded to make him wrinkled and unattractive. With dark blonde hair pushing into silver, he might be attractive to the sorts of women who like a ‘distinguished gentleman’, falling for an act borne of pub crawls and dares way back in college. But law has a way of aging people – especially when you’re the Michiligan family lawyer.
Estella, the esteemed Mrs Michiligan, once ended up on the receiving end of a lawsuit. She’d scoffed at its’ ridiculousness and pawned it off on Neville , told him to get them out of it or at least barter them down, lest he lose his place as their family attorney, paid thousands to be on retainer at a moments’ notice, just in case Mr Adrian Michiligan found his shady business practices and family money somehow under scrutiny. “Tera was the only one around, and Nigella,” Estella had said, “deal with it, Mr Llamo.” And that was that. Estella Michiligan didn’t make time for manners when the recipient was being paid for their services anyway.
He’d dealt with it, of course, approached the daughter – then nine years old – of the couple directly. “Miss Tera,” he’d opened with, “do you know the neighbours dog?”
“The one that got what it deserved, or the less annoying one?” Tera had asked, and, okay, no. That was not an appropriate response, and Neville had frowned at her and the implications, and he did not want to know any details as to why she looked so smug, thanks ever so much.
That had been the start of it, years ago, the start of stress heaping up. Shady business practices were one thing, but the Michiligan name meant something in London’s high society, and Neville couldn’t have their name being dragged through the mud on his watch. He certainly couldn’t let it get out that the esteemed Adrian Michiligan, fourth of his name, had fathered a complete psychopath and left her to her own devices.
So Neville arranged for Nigella to be replaced with his own daughter, a twenty-something year old college student who needed all the money she could get, and who wouldn’t question the sanity of her charge in exchange for that money. Call Edith whatever you like, but the fact that she lacked scruples made her incredibly useful to him, at least in that respect. (Also, if anyone asked, he loved his daughter dearly, she was the apple of his eye, she reminded him of her mother who had abandoned the pair of them for a torrid affair with a tennis coach in a ridiculous cliche, and it didn’t bother him at all that her approach to babysitting involved lighting up a stream of cigarettes that burned a hacking cough into her lungs, et cetera.)
He’d had taken on the role of tutor and course designer, advising Tera’s parents away from boarding school where she would be left unchecked, not that he gave them that reason. One-on-one lessons multiple times a week, coaching the little brat on how emotions worked, on appropriate responses to certain stimuli. Training her to respond to things outwardly, instead of bottling things up (because it became clear, eventually, that she had emotions and liked to ignore them, discard them in pursuit of curiosity and rationality and experimenting in a way that made very little sense, considering her attitude towards science and discovery was typically quite dismissive). Coercing Adrian into registering Neville as one of Tera’s official guardians, so that he could sign her up for every possible activity: paintball, Scouts, gymnastics, swimming, a list of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat he couldn’t remember in hindsight. The aim was to offer her something interesting enough that she’d be distracted from her more sinister interests, exhaust her with activities so that she’d stop being outwardly malicious and lose the creepiness factor.
All of that, Neville lamented, and it was largely for nought. Edith had delivered Tera’s latest round of homework, as requested, or at least the notes the brat tended to scrawl alongside, and he’d found a list he didn’t much approve of.
Date someone from outside high society. Draw attention to a colleagues injury. Ask incessant questions about anything at all. Interrogate Neville about the legal system, until such point that he reports them. (This one was crossed out; likely because she knew he had the patience to endure endless questions. There were more, of course, and across the top of it all: ways to annoy parents into paying attention.)
“Tera,” he lamented aloud, and the girl herself invited herself into a seat. Fourteen and pretty and clearly starting to think about boys, he wouldn’t be fooled by her put-together look. She might be in a beige sweater and pristine cream skirt that fell past her knees, demurely crossed one knee over the other, but Neville knew her. He knew the glint of intent in her eye, her mischief and her general everything. All the things that made Tera a prophetic name, because she was a constant nightmare for him to deal with, a constant terror. “You can’t do any of this,” Neville says at last, resting his hands on the desk.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says, and Neville doesn’t have to meet her eye to know she’s already got a plan to make it all happen.
