After Always Page 8

  …

  I didn’t wake again until late the next morning. We had only two days to prepare for the largest group of guests for the season. Thirteen rooms had been rented in odd corners of the house even though the group was traveling together.

  I rolled from the bed, detangling myself from downy covers that seemed determined to hold me in place. I must have been restless in my sleep. The sheet was pulled loose from the neat tucks I’d given it and wound around my legs and arms multiple times.

  I stood, blinking the sleep from my eyes and practically panting when I was free.

  And that’s when I saw the open bureau.

  I came wide-awake in an instant. My eyes unblinking. My breath caught mid-yawn. I didn’t want to approach the bureau, but I couldn’t be afraid of the furniture in my own room, could I?

  Of course, it wasn’t the bureau I feared.

  I drew breath again only when I saw the violin case was closed up tight, the package wrapped beside it. Relief caused my shoulders to droop. Even if I had walked in my sleep, I hadn’t played the violin. The compulsion that had me in its grip—or whatever it was that had me in its grip—wasn’t that strong.

  I closed the bureau doors, but as I did, at the edge of my perception, something out of place caught my attention. A sliver of gray and black where only glass should be.

  I turned from the bureau.

  The gull feather Michael had rescued from its fall into the sea…was embedded in the thick wavy glass of the casement window. Its quill had been driven with inconceivable force into the glass until fine, hairline cracks spider webbed out from the shaft in a blossom of destruction.

  The sunrise shone on the feather, making it beautiful as the shadows hadn’t the night before.

  But its impossible violent position stabbed deep into the vintage glass made me taut with fear. Every muscle hardened and flexed as if my body thought I should run but had no idea where or from what.

  I hadn’t done this in my sleep.

  Horror drew me forward. I had to look. I had to see. I reached up and touched the black tip with a trembling finger.

  What had propelled the feather with such force that it impaled the glass while I lay vulnerable and sleeping only steps away?

  I stared at the damaged glass and imagined the feather aimed for my sleeping face instead.

  I flung open the window and knocked the feather free. It tumbled down with no one to catch it or care if it fell. I watched. The gift Michael had given me had turned into something confusing and dark as it tumbled—fluttering, fluttering—end over end into the sea.

  The feather was gone, but the memory of Michael’s kiss remained. My lips tingled as I thought of the warm exploration we’d shared. I lifted my hand and pressed my fingers against my mouth as if I could keep our kiss from being tainted by whatever had happened to the feather. The gift Michael had given me wasn’t a physical thing, but the feather had represented the hope of leaving my past with Tristan behind. Its white flutter had disappeared, but the true gift of Michael’s interest and affection remained. Where I went with Michael from here was up to me.

  Would I allow myself to be frightened away?

  My head fell away from my mouth in the same way the feather had fallen into the sea. With a flutter and a sigh.

  There seemed to be a ghostly stalker in between Michael and me, but it wasn’t the only thing standing in our way. I had built a wall around my emotions to try to protect myself from being hurt again. I had to decide if I had the courage to lower my defenses and explore the new relationship that Michael seemed to offer.

  I watched the gulls soar through the open window for a long time, studying their flight as if they could teach me how to spread my own wings and fly.

  Chapter Ten

  “Too great opposition for a tender thing.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4)

  I avoided the parlor music room when Mrs. Brighton wasn’t there with me, and I’d stayed away from the baby grand since that first day. I kept the nub of a crayon in my pocket, a talisman against what I couldn’t imagine. Chopin or darker things?

  So strange that my mother hadn’t brought her cello to Stonebridge that summer long ago. So odd I abandoned coloring for dolls and games soon after our visit when I could well remember hours of devoted coloring beneath the piano bench.

  I’m not sure why I stood at the closed parlor door that night or how long I stood there. I only knew when I reached for the knob and turned it, when the metallic clink and whispering squeal of hinges echoed down the downstairs hall, my shoulders sagged in relief and defeat.

  Both, I’m sure of it. Both.

  The room was already lit by a single lamp. Like the ones in my room, its stained-glass shade glowed instead of illuminated. I stepped into soft, muted darkness, my own shadow joining less identifiable shapes in a hunched gray menagerie on the damask walls.

  The piano was closed, and I was glad.

  I stood awhile behind the bench, not opening it, not sitting down to play, not listening to Chopin.

  Across the room, the portrait of Jericho caught my attention. It was an oil, thick and dark and passionately painted. I stepped closer. Jericho’s vivid green eyes and dark mussed hair made me think of Tristan again. Even the expression on his face was familiar.

  My hand raised of its own volition. I reached out to touch the side of the man’s cheek and trace his angular jaw. Not the same. Not exactly the same. But…something…so familiar. When my finger trailed across the thickly applied paint, a shiver tracked down my spine.

  My fingertips dipped in ridges of paint, which had been used to create Jericho’s hands on Octavia’s bare shoulders. His fingers pressed into her skin. My fingers dipped in the dimples he’d painted. I hadn’t noticed before…how…tightly he held her. I had meant to come and look closer at his hands before now. How could I have forgotten so easily? I looked at them now. Each digit’s placement on Octavia’s skin. My ears echoed with sibilant whispers. My instincts tingled, worrisome insects under my skin. This painting…did it portray a fierce love…or something darker?

  “It’s a self-portrait. I’ve seen actual photographs at the library in town,” Michael’s voice interrupted me. I brought my hand down and tightened my fingers in a fist as if I could hold the resemblance to Tristan there for no one else to see.

  “What did you think? Is the painting true to life?” I asked, lightly. More lightly than I felt. My pulse quickened and my breath caught as Michael stepped closer. I heard his tread on the carpet. I felt his solid, warm presence in the cool air of the deserted room.

  Did he see the secret fear in my eyes? That Tristan wasn’t actually gone forever? That there might be deeper meaning behind the resemblance than mere coincidence could explain away…and those hands, those fingers holding her close, forever.

  “Daguerreotypes from that time are black and white. I don’t know if his eyes were that green or his hair that black and wild, but the expression is the same. All knowing. Arrogant. Mischievous even. A lot like a cat toying with a mouse,” Michael said.

  I swallowed against the desire to argue. Michael was talking about Jericho, not about Tristan. When I’d touched the painting, the two had become joined in my mind. I struggled to separate the insult of one from the injury I perceived to the other. I’d always defended Tristan to anyone and everyone who questioned him. I’d learned early in our relationship that he expected that kind of loyalty to prove my love. It was hard to break the habit even now when I knew an abusive boyfriend hadn’t really deserved love or loyalty.

  “My mother always told us the version of Octavia Jericho’s death where her husband was a villain. Mrs. B. swears he haunts the inn,” Michael continued. “If he does, he doesn’t bother me. Maybe he only haunts women.”

  I thought about the lone dark figure I’d seen on the beach and the phantom touch on my butterfly tattoo. I thought about the open bureau and the feather embedded in glass.

  Tristan or Jericho? />
  Jericho or Tristan?

  And what about the pale hands beneath the waves?

  Upstairs in my room a violin waited to sing a lover’s song.

  “It’s only a ghost story, Lydia. Don’t panic. Your skin’s gone pale,” Michael said. He stepped closer to me. In the shadowed room, he looked less ordinary and more like he might have secrets of his own, swimming in the amber of his eyes. It felt brave, even rebellious, not to back away. My heart thumped in my ears and my lips tingled.

  I didn’t move when he reached to touch my face. I held very, very still, but I didn’t back away. When he leaned slowly to press his lips to mine, I didn’t gasp or sigh. I was completely frozen. So cold I thought his warm mouth might freeze to mine.

  But it didn’t.

  Instead, a thaw came. From where our lips touched, heat spread outward and I could almost imagine frost dissipating as my skin came to life. It was quick. It was lush. I gasped as sensation flooded my whole body. It wasn’t only a thaw. The soft press of his mouth was little more than a whisper of skin to skin, but Michael’s whisper soft touch was everything. It warmed, but it also woke.

  My eyes had closed, but now they fluttered open, and I swear I was as dazzled as Sleeping Beauty. And as suddenly awake. I kissed him back, forgetting the lesson I should have learned when our boat was capsized. He hummed in response, and his hands dropped from my face to my back. He pulled me close, fast, as if he was afraid I would change my mind.

  I didn’t.

  I forgot Tristan and Jericho. The frigid water and the flash of pale hands was a distant memory, and I was braver than I’d been before. Michael’s warmth gave me courage. Our chests were mashed together, and the closer we came the farther away the world and all the threats in it receded.

  But as warm as I was in his arms and as bold as I wanted to be when my hands slipped under his T-shirt, we both paused. My touch on the bare skin of his lower back was too much, too soon. I gasped into his mouth, and he lifted his face away from mine as if he was afraid he had hurt me.

  He moved away slowly. Gently disengaging from my hands and stepping away from my body. I let him go because I didn’t know how to ask him to stay when deep down I was cold and alone again, but not as alone as I should be.

  The self-portrait of Jericho was behind me looking down with green knowing eyes, and I wasn’t free. I couldn’t ignore the threat just because I didn’t fully understand it.

  “I’m sorry. That won’t happen again,” Michael said. He misread the look on my face. The expression there felt all frightened and tight. Because of Tristan and the threat he somehow still posed. But Michael wouldn’t understand.

  He backed away, several steps more.

  He thought my silence was agreement. He thought I regretted the kiss, but I couldn’t speak. My lips had gone icy once more. Tristan was gone, but the kiss frightened me. The pleasure I’d allowed myself to enjoy damned as well as it intrigued. I wasn’t supposed to wake up. I wasn’t supposed to want to be with someone new. Someone different. Someone kind. The warning came from within me from all the hard lessons Tristan had taught, as well as from my external fear of whoever or whatever was haunting me. Last time I’d kissed Michael, I’d almost drowned. Coincidence? Or were there darker forces at play than I could imagine?

  Michael pushed his hands into his pockets. To warm them? To keep them busy? He didn’t reach for the multi-tool in his back pocket. Maybe he was finally beginning to accept the real, unfixable me. He glanced at the portrait above my head. What did he see? The long-dead ship captain looming over my shoulder? Or the ghost of the guy I was supposed to love forever superimposed over the painting’s face. Before I could tell, before I could see what he saw reflected in his golden eyes, there was a tinkling shudder above our heads.

  I looked up into a floating cloud of falling dust. It shimmered in a million motes lit by sunlight through the window, a miniature snowstorm of swirling particles. My brain didn’t make the connection between the sound and the disturbed dust, but Michael the engineer-to-be didn’t see a snowstorm, he saw a warning.

  “Move,” he said and punctuated the directive with a full-body shove, pressing against me to force me back several feet…out from under the chandelier.

  We were only steps away when the large crystal and wrought-iron light fixture fell from the ceiling to the floor where we’d been standing, where we’d been kissing, moments before.

  The sound of crashing glass tinkling together was almost musical. If it had fallen on our heads, it could have been deadly.

  We both looked up at the crumbling plaster where the fixture had been. I saw a hole and exposed wires. I’m not sure if Michael saw more technical things that would explain why the hundred-year-old chandelier had fallen.

  Then I forgot completely about dust and danger because we were still in each other’s arms. His body was pressed to mine. I held him while he held me. His warm hands were on my back. I’d seen him use them in strong and capable ways, but right now they trembled slightly even though his arms were muscular and firm around me. Was he reacting to the narrow escape or my nearness? I was shaking, too. For numerous reasons. The least of which was the shattered glass all around us.

  I looked up at him. I didn’t shove him away. He might break his word. He might dip down to taste my lips again. But he didn’t. He was the one who backed up to step away. He was the one who put distance between us.

  “That’s a first,” he said, looking at the chandelier on the floor rather than at me. He cleared his throat after he spoke. Again, I didn’t know if his hoarseness was caused by the close call or…had he been thinking about another kiss, too?

  “Thank goodness this room is usually closed,” I said, pretending to think the chandelier would have fallen if someone else had been under it and not because it had been me and Michael, together, kissing. If his voice had been hoarse, mine was positively squeaky. I tried to blame it entirely on an evil poltergeist. My throat was tight and dry. Because fear. Not because my lips were lonely. While I tried and failed to swallow, Michael’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his tanned throat.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Michael said. His voice was clear and firm again. His jaw was hard. Whatever had caused him to tremble—shock at the sudden accident or our kiss—the fix-it guy was back and under control. “Let’s lock the room so no one will wander inside, and I’ll tell Mrs. B.,” he continued.

  I watched him go. It would take more than the ever-present multi-tool in his back pocket to fix this mess, but I didn’t say so. I just stepped around the broken glass. I glanced back once at Jericho’s hands on Octavia’s shoulders, but I only paused long enough to lock the door. Silent. Too silent. And afraid.

  …

  Once, I’d been paired with another senior for an economics project. Tristan hadn’t taken the class, but my father had insisted I should. There had been some epic sulking on Tristan’s part when I’d followed my dad’s advice, but nothing compared to his reaction when he found out Brad Shaver was going to be my partner.

  Brad was our class president. He was a sunny, happy-go-lucky jock as different from Tristan—my type—as could be. But that didn’t stop Tristan from being…uptight. He showed up at our library meetings ostensibly to give me a ride, but he was always early and glaring. Brad’s happy-go-luck didn’t last long when confronted by Tristan’s brooding intensity.

  For some reason, the chandelier made me remember the last night Brad and I met at the library. We’d reached a point where our awkward pairing of jock with artsy chic had eased, and we were new friends on a mission trying to make the mission bearable. Brad had been imitating Tristan’s glare until I finally laughed and, of course, that’s when Tristan walked in as beautiful and as stormy as ever, his eyes flashing and his brood in place.

  I always suspected Tristan had something to do with convincing Brad to bow out of the project. I finished it with Tristan’s help and presented it alone.

  Brad was so quiet that last day
in the library. The next day he called to tell me he wasn’t going to be my partner anymore. I remembered his words now, and my memory was punctuated by the brittle sound of tickling glass.

  “Just…be careful, Li. Juliet died, and that guy definitely sees himself as your Romeo.”

  I laughed, but Brad hadn’t. He’d disconnected the call, and after that he never spoke to me again.

  Tristan had been happy…for a while.

  But that was when I’d started to become uncomfortable with “forever.”

  I loved him.

  I’d lost him.

  Part of my devastation following his death had been because I was afraid I hadn’t loved him enough.

  I’d been hot and flustered with the way he’d treated Brad. My stomach churned and my chest grew tight whenever he talked about my parents as if they were our enemy, trying to keep us apart.

  He’d been beautiful. The world had been brighter because he was in it, but it had been an edgy brightness, like the glint off a shard of broken glass. Some teeny tiny part of me experienced relief now that the world was quieter and calmer.

  Unexplainable things happened at Stonebridge. Deep down I’d told myself that Tristan was trying to come back to me. That I’d have another chance to love him as I should.

  But maybe if he was here he knew I’d enjoyed Michael’s kiss.

  Maybe he knew I was thinking about Brice Conservatory in the fall with warmth rather than dread.

  Maybe he knew I was thinking of forgiving myself for not loving him enough and for wanting to say goodbye.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I have a soul of lead

  So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 4)

  I hadn’t yet braved Stonebridge’s old livery stable full of rowboats and bicycles. As far as I could tell, Mr. Abernathy spent most of his days fishing from the bridge. Rain or shine, he wore the old flapping raincoat. To that, he often added a hat as old as the coat.

  When I decided to take a ride, I didn’t bother asking him for help. He was a distant figure on the bridge, but even from here I saw his bent posture and his slow, painful movements.