After Always Page 4

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Michael said. It was old fashioned and formal and serious. “But I’m not sorry you’re here this summer,” he continued. He had dropped his hand when I’d moved away, but he rubbed his fingers together, thoughtfully, as if he was remembering the feel of my skin.

  My pulse jumped again and my neck flushed with heat, though nothing and no one was touching it now. I recognized the slight thrill as one usually inspired by poetry or music. Michael had basically said, “I’m glad you’re here.” Those simple words and his preoccupation on his fingers shouldn’t have caused my reaction.

  And definitely not when I should be missing Tristan’s eloquence. But I couldn’t deny it. I was suffused with a warmth that seemed to echo the warmth of Michael’s eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter where I am,” I said, determined not to agree with him in spite of the warmth.

  Michael met my eyes. Mine were hooded by lashes to try to hide my flustered feelings, but I don’t think I fooled him. He placed one hand on his tool belt and the other on the handle of the multi-tool that protruded from his back pocket. The pose was relaxed and thoughtful. He probably stood exactly like that when he was trying to figure out how to patch a leaky roof or open a jammed window. So calm. So competent. But this time he didn’t pull the tool from his back pocket. I guess even fix-it guy had to admit when he’d been beaten.

  “It matters,” Michael said. “To you and to the people around you.”

  My eyelashes definitely didn’t hide the blush that crept up my neck. He wasn’t talking about Mrs. Brighton. Or Stonebridge’s guests. He meant that my being here mattered to him. He didn’t have a hope of fixing what was broken in me, but he liked me all the same.

  “I better get back to work,” he said. His eyes left mine, and the multi-tool was back in his hand as if my blush had sent him grasping for a distraction. I left him to his tools and ladder with only a few backward glances.

  But the pleasant heat of his obvious attraction was with me for the rest of the day.

  Until I rediscovered a reason to be cold again.

  …

  I avoided the poppets and the masks, the bits of bone and teeth. What was a few layers of dust to such gruesome tchotchkes? Truth was, I couldn’t touch them. Wouldn’t. The papers and books were different, as were the other, less macabre things. I was curious about the vast museum of a place where I worked even as I avoided the more frightening artifacts.

  Stonebridge was Victorian. It had survived over a hundred years of inhabitants and visitors. As I cleaned and straightened and ordered the rooms Mrs. Brighton hadn’t been able to visit for years because of her knees, I made a discovery.

  On a shelf, behind an intimidating collection of vintage books about dark subjects, I found a curiosity box filled with faded silk violets. They were tattered and smelled more of age than the violet sachet nestled beneath their soft petals. The outside of the box was hand-painted, a flock of gulls against a blue sky. It was at the edges of the design that I found the stylized “O” and “J.” I think even before I found the initials, I knew.

  Octavia Jericho’s style of painting was different from her husband’s. Delicate brushstrokes and the slight application of watercolors had created a scene as light and ethereal as the wind disturbed by a gull’s wings. Even though I held the box, its solid wood in my hands, I was trying to hold something intangible.

  Beneath the silk flowers, I found a small amethyst brooch in the shape of a violet posy. When I picked it up from its hidden resting place, the world went still around me. Sounds were muffled. Everything seemed to exist at a distance from me and the brooch in my hands.

  He had given the brooch to her as an engagement present.

  My heart raced as Octavia’s had when her darkly handsome fiancé had pinned the brooch to her dress. I could almost detect the scent of ocean and cigar. The promise of eternal love dazzled in his green eyes. My imagination was in overdrive. I told myself to chill.

  But I was the opposite of chilled.

  I fumbled to bury the brooch back in its silken violet grave. My cheeks were flushed. My breath light and quick. The memory had to be imagination. And, yet, I’d seen the brooch before.

  I visited the portrait again to be certain. And, there, on Octavia’s chest, was the amethyst posy. Once again, my gaze slid over where Jericho’s hands rested on Octavia’s shoulders so I could meet his eyes. So vivid. So hypnotic. My heart still beat too quickly from the “memory” of him pinning the jeweled violet bouquet to my breast as if his promise of eternal love had been for me.

  …

  I showed up for my lesson later that day. For once, my head wasn’t filled with music. Mrs. Brighton was already close to dozing in her chair. I set my violin case near her, but instead of opening it, I walked over to the portrait on the wall.

  “What happened to Octavia Jericho?” I asked Mrs. Brighton. My stomach tightened as I waited for her response. I didn’t glance her way. The portrait held my full attention. The truth of it didn’t lie in Jericho’s hands on Octavia’s shoulders or the smile on her face. It wasn’t in the amethyst brooch.

  It was his eyes. They were deep and dark and vivid in the shadows. So like Tristan’s I could hardly look away.

  “Octavia Jericho drowned in the cove where those rocks lead into the sea. They say she drowned herself. Some versions say Alexander Jericho was a force of nature that swept her away long before the ocean did,” Mrs. Brighton said.

  I could tell the words were distant to her. Her chest wasn’t compressed. She didn’t have to make an effort to draw breath. Her heart didn’t constrict as if squeezed by the cruel vice of fate. My glance skimmed over Jericho’s hands on Octavia’s shoulders, and then I looked into his darkly handsome face. It wasn’t only his eyes that were Tristan’s. He could have been a slightly older version of the beautiful boy I’d loved.

  I didn’t play that day. The violin wouldn’t sing. I placed it quietly back in its case and left Mrs. B. to nap beneath the painting that haunted me more now than it had before.

  That afternoon, I dusted for hours. Mrs. Brighton hadn’t asked me to, but I needed to stay busy. I was moving from one hall into another when a mirror caught my movement and startled me.

  Another one.

  This one was more statue than mirror, I surmised, as I shifted it and turned its front farther from the wall. When my focus shifted from my face reflected in the glass, I was more than startled. My breath caught. My fingers went numb. Then they tingled with an odd sort of empathy like imagined water against my skin.

  The piece was a blending of mirror and bronze figurine. I recognized the art nouveau style from a history class I’d taken my junior year. The mirror’s glass had been bubbled with air when it was made, and the bubbles seemed to rise from the lips of the bronze figure. It was a woman who was posed against the glass. Her dress ebbed and flowed around her limbs, artistically illustrating that she was underwater. Her delicately rendered face was tilted up toward the top of the mirror where the surface of the “water” was unseen.

  My heartbeat sounded loud and far too slow in my ears, and my face grew cold as all the blood I needed for warmth seemed to drain to my toes. My cheeks went numb. I saw myself, stark and white, in the glass as if I was underwater, too.

  The piece was lovely and horrible at the same time. So macabre in this house, in my hands.

  Octavia drowned in the cove where those rocks lead into the sea.

  It felt heavy in the moment, like a portent or sign. Ridiculous. The house was full of miscellany from Jericho’s travels. Some much more gruesome than this. Yet…I couldn’t draw my tingling fingers away from the glass.

  It wasn’t mine to take. This underwater moment when last gasps of air rose and rose to dissipate in quiet sighs, unseen. But it was dusty. Forgotten. To move it from one room to another hardly seemed a crime. I picked it up. I carried it across the house. This drowning moment that somehow through the inclusion of a mirror in the piece also in
cluded me.

  I didn’t touch the glass.

  I would remember that later. Much later. I would remember how reluctant my hands were to feel that underwater chill.

  I did look at it. I examined it carefully. I reminded myself it was fantasy. Where was the struggle? Where was the cry? Where was the panic on the woman’s face as she breathed her last breaths?

  She was serene.

  That’s what I should have seen. That was what should have scared me.

  She was perfectly serene.

  Chapter Five

  “I have seen the day

  That I have worn a visor and could tell

  A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear

  Such as would please. ’Tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5)

  Occasionally, Mrs. Brighton had a bad day. When low pressure storms threatened on the horizon, she would stay in bed, her knees too weak and creaky to safely support her. The third time she had a bad day after my arrival, I was comfortable enough to go to her with a tray from Della, the cook, even though I hadn’t been called. I’d never been to her room before, but I knew it was beyond the shuttered ballroom at the back of the house.

  She called out when I came to the door. She seemed surprised but happy to see me.

  “Lydia! And with a breakfast tray. So nice of you to help Della. She has enough to do without having to tend to me. These knees… It’s so frustrating to not be able to move about. I’m glad Alfred isn’t here to see me like this. It would worry him. He used to pace the floor if I had so much as sniffle or a scratch,” Mrs. Brighton said.

  I carried the tray into the room and placed it over her lap so she could enjoy a glass of orange juice and a flaky croissant.

  Beside her bed, on an antique Queen Anne table covered in a lacy cloth, was a large sterling silver frame that held a photograph of a man in uniform.

  “He was in the air force. He flew supply missions during Vietnam. Ours was a May/December romance as they called it in those days. My parents had just moved to Portland from London, and he was almost fifteen years older than I was, but I was well over eighteen and smitten by his smile. And his walk. You should have seen his swagger. Once a pilot, always a pilot, you know.”

  Mrs. Brighton’s cheeks had gone rosy, and I had to smile as memories of her brash American husband made her blush.

  “After he died, I bought Stonebridge because I thought it would keep me busy. And it has, though times have slowed over the years.”

  She still smiled in between sips of juice and nibbles of bread.

  “He was very handsome,” I said.

  Alfred Brighton had probably been in his early thirties when the photograph was taken, and his clean-shaven face was attractive with a tilted smile and a strong square jaw. Even with the odd photograph retouching common in old portraits, I could see his humor and appeal.

  “Oh, he was. Always. Even after he went gray.” Mrs. Brighton pointed me to a stack of albums beside the silver frame on the table. They were obviously well-worn and shiny from frequent use.

  I paged through them, taken through a photographic journey of the happy couple’s life together. They’d traveled—there were pyramids and piazzas, cities and mountain vistas. They’d settled in a pretty suburb. Rows of picturesque houses and manicured gardens. I glanced around the room where souvenirs and mementos reflected the photos on the pages in my hands.

  “I miss him, of course.” Mrs. Brighton sighed, but her smile didn’t fade.

  Her glass was drained and her plate left with only crumbs so I closed the albums and placed them back within her reach. I rose and picked up the tray. When I did, I leaned in to kiss her soft, wrinkled cheek.

  Her eyes sparkled when I straightened, from the gesture or her memories, I couldn’t be sure.

  “I hope you find someone like Alfred one day, Lydia,” she said as I walked away.

  My steps faltered, but I braced myself before the tray could rattle or fall.

  Mrs. Brighton must have noticed. She was immediately contrite.

  “I’m so sorry…I didn’t think. I’m just a silly old woman…and you with your heart so recently broken…”

  I couldn’t speak. My chest was tight. My throat constricted. I tried to murmur my forgiveness, but it couldn’t get past my numb lips. I could only hurry away from her concern.

  Tristan hadn’t loved me the same way Mr. Brighton had loved Mrs. B.

  Not at all.

  And when she had talked about the husband she’d obviously adored, it hadn’t been Tristan who had sprung immediately to my mind. For some reason, it had been Michael Malone’s smile I’d seen and his warmth I’d remembered. My hands went shaky because I didn’t think it was safe for me to feel that way about a guy I’d only just met. With Tristan, everyday life had been so edgy. I’d survived on a tightrope walk as I’d tried to make him happy. I’d been in free fall since his death, but that didn’t mean I wanted to step back onto another high wire.

  Michael seemed different, but I’d learned not to trust my instincts. After all, they’d led me straight into Tristan’s arms.

  …

  When the package arrived, I couldn’t believe my mother hadn’t texted. We touched base every day, but it was never more than l-o-v-e y-o-u. We still hadn’t talked about Brice Conservatory or the fall semester. I don’t think Mrs. B. had told her about the violin.

  It was just as well. The lessons were nap times for her now because my playing had surpassed her skill. Though she lamented my technique, the sounds that rose from the instrument were true.

  Mrs. Brighton called me to the foyer and handed me the brown paper package. She had her own stack of correspondence from peers who still used paper. It fascinated me, those stacks of scented envelopes she received each day in wafts of violet, jasmine, and rose. The pretty pastel stationary was as exotic as a plumed bird, long extinct.

  I took my own snail mail to my room. The return address was my parents’ but inside there was a letter and a package that, from its familiar shape and size, I knew to be The Butterfly Lovers. Tristan had taken the book with him for the summer. I’d gladly given it to him because it had started to bother me on my shelf, a once-loved possession turned darker and less enjoyed. My hands shook as I avoided the familiar book and picked up my mother’s note instead.

  Dear Lydia,

  I’m sorry I didn’t send this to you as soon as it arrived. I wasn’t sure if I could bear to send it to you at all. But, of course, I must.

  Love,

  Mom

  It was short, but I knew her. I felt all the pauses, the stops and starts, the worry evident in every line. But also her integrity. Some parents—especially worried ones—would have thrown away a package from a dead man.

  Finally, I picked up the package that Tristan had held. There was no doubt he’d mailed it to me before the accident. I recognized his handwriting, but there were multiple marks in addition to the original postmark on the brown paper envelope. It had obviously passed through many hands. There were ink stamps in several foreign languages in red and black and green. There were smudges and crinkles and torn edges. But there was also his bold penmanship, like calligraphy, where he had written my name for the last time.

  Lydia Li

  His writing made me seem like a different girl. More beautiful and interesting merely because he had moved the pen that made the marks for my name.

  I held it to my face, to my lips, but it had been gone from him too long, it had traveled too far and there was no fragrance, no flavor that came from the person whose scent and taste I’d known so well.

  I couldn’t open it.

  That much I knew.

  There might be a note included with the book, and I couldn’t bear to see more of his familiar script. I couldn’t read words about what we would do when we were together again. About running away to Vanderbilt in the fall. I couldn’t deal with having him and his expectations again for a paragraph or two
only to lose him once and for all when I’d read the last words he’d ever written.

  I carried the package to the bureau and opened the door. I opened the violin case. It was a reflexive action. I didn’t pick up the violin, though its wood shone seductively in the shadows. I closed the case instead. Carefully, purposefully. I placed the package beside the case, then I closed the bureau.

  The potential for communication would exist forever as long as I didn’t open it. I could shut away the grief and guilt so that eternity was ours. And eternity with Tristan was my punishment for trusting him in the first place.

  …

  Stonebridge was never truly silent. There was the distant sighing of the sea, the call of gulls, a floorboard creak, or a door slam. And yet, I walked in a vacuum. Those distant noises might as well have come from a different world. I was buffered so that all else was muffled and strange. Only Michael seemed to penetrate my bubble. When he spoke to me or touched me, the world rushed in—sounds became clear, life came near.

  I craved each fresh awakening and avoided it as well.

  It seemed a betrayal of the familiar charge I’d felt looking into Alexander Jericho’s eyes. I was supposed to be grieving. I couldn’t allow myself to watch for my coworker around every quiet corner. The very idea made my nerves scratch a discordant warning beneath my skin. If I didn’t mourn for Tristan, I’d be admitting to the world that our relationship had been a mistake, and if I allowed myself to fall for Michael, a guy I barely knew, I might be making another one.

  So I began to avoid him even though I was drawn to him.

  I took myself to the farthest reaches of the house away from where I spied him working. I cleaned dark corners that hadn’t seen a broom in years. I lingered in dusty reaches that no guest would ever see.

  The house’s noises were even more distant in those places. Far, far away I heard a foot fall or a rumble of speech. But where I busied myself there was no noise at all.