After Always Page 9

  It was a spidery undertaking to dig out a working bike in the tangle of rust, flat tires, and broken chains. I managed with only a few potentially tetanus-inducing scrapes. It was Monday, and the morning had dawned crisp and clear. I’d finished a few chores with vacated rooms, but the rest of my day stretched ahead of me. We’d been working steadily to ready the rooms we’d need for the biggest influx of the summer. So there was nothing to do now but take care of what few guests trickled in and out ’til then.

  Della had told me all about Michael’s lighthouse cottage down the ocean drive. I didn’t even have to pry. I only had to sit in her kitchen and eat jelly toast while she prepared a roast for dinner.

  Down the ocean drive had instantly appealed.

  There was nowhere I’d rather be than away from Stonebridge’s perpetually gloomy and dusty rooms.

  My legs pumped stubborn, squeaking pedals while the whole bicycle rattled beneath me. It was at least fifty years old, leftover from Stonebridge’s heyday as a coastal resort. I passed Mr. Abernathy on the bridge bent over his usual cane pole, its tackle so snarled I imagined he never had to worry with catching a fish. I waved a good morning, but he didn’t wave back. He was bundled against the sea spray as if we were expecting a storm. He turned my way, but only slightly. I saw only a suggested blur of his face.

  The bike was old, but it moved. Its large balloon tires were only slightly dry rotted, and their size made up for their lack of soundness. I clung to the loose bars and perched on the wide seat and flew down the road with a stiff sea breeze buffeting me along from behind.

  It was glorious.

  Too soon, I came to what had obviously been a lighthouse at one time. The stone tower had been abandoned. The light was long gone. Perhaps a storm had knocked over the turret or maybe it had been partially dismantled. It was stunted now, half the size it must once have been, with a simple gray-shingled cottage beneath it.

  I liked it immediately for no good reason other than the warmth in my chest from the sun and the brisk ride. There was no sign of life anywhere other than high above where the gulls circled and cried.

  Della had told me about the cottage, but she’d also told me about the cemetery perched on a craggy hill above it and above the sea. Surrounded by a rusty fence of elaborate wrought iron, the graveyard was only steps from Michael’s front door. The entire length of the fence was covered in honeysuckle vine. I breathed deeply of the sweet, wild fragrance as I leaned the bicycle against the fence so they could be rusty together and opened the gate. Its screech rivaled that of the gulls.

  The cemetery was overgrown and neglected. Only sea air swept the pathways. Only the stiff breeze pressed back the weeds. I waded in and tramped through them, looking for a specific plot, searching for a certain name.

  I should have known his stone wouldn’t be small and gray. I should have known he’d take measures to stand out and be remembered. Around the hill, the weeds disappeared. I found a portion of the graveyard carefully maintained. Gravel crunched beneath my shoes, the kind mixed with shells and eroded pebbles only found near the coast. Weeds had been mowed, here. Debris removed.

  A large black marble tomb dominated a prominent rise. A hill on top of the hill with a view of the ocean for moldering remains that could no longer see. The marble gleamed with a polished obsidian shine that caused the engraved words to stand out in relief.

  Alexander Jericho.

  Beside him, in a simpler grave lower down the hill, was a smaller stone to mark the resting place of his wife, Octavia. Her grave was hemmed in on one side by more of the honeysuckle vines I’d noted on the fence.

  There was no chapel or church. Della had said these were mostly sailors and fisherman who wanted to rest by the sea. I supposed Octavia as a suicide wouldn’t have been buried in sanctified ground.

  “It’s like the painting, isn’t it? Bold and angry. Nothing about resting in peace,” Michael said.

  I’d left my bike by the gate. He might have seen it. But he continued past me up the path to Octavia’s grave. I watched as he laid a handful of wildflowers on her headstone. Mixed with honeysuckle was sea grass and daisies, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s lace.

  “You did this?” I asked, gesturing to the cleared ground.

  “My parents live closer to town. I passed the old lighthouse on my way to Stonebridge…and the cemetery. I watched the cottage crumble a little more each day, each summer. I finally approached a realtor about renting. They offered me a sweet deal if fixing it up was part of the bargain,” Michael explained.

  He’d taken a few steps back to me, and now he stood in the middle of the path with his arms crossed over his chest. His stance between me and Jericho’s tomb felt odd, as if he stood in my way.

  “I guess you don’t have time to take care of the whole cemetery,” I said. Looking back at the stark contrast between the Jerichos and everyone else.

  His sandy hair was ruffled by the salty breeze. His amber eyes even lighter in the sun away from Stonebridge’s gloom. Did he realize how odd it was that a busy engineering student should care for a couple of hundred-year-old graves?

  He looked around as if he hadn’t really noticed what he was doing or the difference between this portion of the cemetery and all the others.

  “Most of those families are gone now. I guess I just left them…undisturbed,” he said. “Some of the old-timers like Mr. Abernathy still visit. He comes by pretty often. But it’s mostly abandoned now.”

  My eyes widened. They felt huge in my face. The rest of my body stilled as if I were afraid any movement wouldn’t be by my own will. A chill of dread trickled cold fingers down my spine.

  He guessed. He hadn’t stopped to reason through his actions. Just as I hadn’t stopped to reason through my sudden urge to ride a rusty old bike out to an unfamiliar place.

  I don’t know why I’m here.

  I didn’t know why Della had suddenly talked about this place when we’d been talking about pot roast recipes. I didn’t even remember telling her to have a nice day or leaving the kitchen. I’d gone for the bike. I’d dug it out of the old livery. I’d ridden several miles.

  It hadn’t been to see Michael. I’d turned away from his cottage to search for Jericho’s grave.

  For no good reason at all.

  “You brought flowers for Octavia Jericho,” I said.

  Michael’s tanned complexion didn’t blush, but his eyes glanced away from mine.

  My chest tightened at that for some reason I didn’t want to closely examine.

  I’d thought I was the only one experiencing strangeness at Stonebridge, but here was another person acting strangely, and we weren’t even within Stonebridge’s walls.

  “It’s like the painting,” I said. I was afraid to question Michael’s devotion to the graves. If he was being influenced as I’d been influenced to play the violin, then I didn’t want to risk his temper if he fell into a fugue. I walked toward him and made to step around him toward Jericho’s grave, but a warm hand on my arm stopped me before I could mount the stone steps placed into the last rise.

  Almost like Michael held me back from an edge I couldn’t discern.

  “There’s a painting of Octavia, too. It’s in one of the bedrooms that isn’t used,” Michael said.

  “When we went clamming, you said you didn’t believe in ghosts. That the doomed romance of the Jerichos didn’t make you think Stonebridge was haunted,” I said. I wanted that Michael back. The one who was calm and certain and in no way influenced by the dead.

  “I believe you can be haunted without ghosts having to be real, Lydia,” Michael said.

  His hand was still on my arm. His fingers weren’t tight. They didn’t squeeze. They simply held. His warmth seeped into my skin and spread. He looked down at me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. Maybe he was talking about Tristan. A breeze lifted my hair so that loose strands tickled my butterfly tattoo.

  I pulled my arm from his hand, slowly and carefully. I turned away from h
im and the graves he seemed to want to keep me away from.

  “I guess I’ve had enough of a breather. I should get back to the inn,” I said. I thought I had been nervous around Michael, but truthfully I’d been more comfortable around him from the start than I was most people. Especially after Tristan. The suspicion that Michael might be influenced by the haunting of Stonebridge ruined a warm trust I hadn’t known I was beginning to enjoy.

  He stood on the path while I walked away. He didn’t follow. He didn’t say goodbye. His silence was almost eerie. But it was worse when he finally spoke just as I turned the corner that would take me back to the gate.

  “I do believe in doomed romance,” he said.

  His deep voice carried on the ocean breeze that still played in my hair.

  Chapter Twelve

  “We waste our lights in vain, like lights by day.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 4)

  It took me a long time. The day was almost over, the sun sinking in a purple haze when bedraggled and smudged and tired, I found the portrait of Octavia Jericho. Worst, I found the room where the portrait was hung.

  I’d saved the floor with the west landing mirror for last. Somehow I’d known. I hadn’t even opened every door. I’d walked right to the one. I’d reached for the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it had turned beneath my fingers.

  Like the setting for a Victorian horror movie, the furniture was draped in moth-eaten silk and cobwebs. Puffs of dust rose from the ragged Persian rug, but it was the footprints that caused my breath to catch and my stomach to plummet as if I were falling and falling with no hope of landing safely.

  Feet larger than mine had been here, often. They had crossed the dusty floor. A path was worn though the dust to a pile of dried and shriveled wildflowers beneath where the portrait hung. Octavia was faded. The drapes over the windows had deteriorated so badly to shredded, sagging rags that the setting sun fingered its way through to patchily light her face.

  She had been stunning, once. This painting showed it more than the one downstairs. This was a younger Octavia. The one who had caught a dashing captain’s attention. I could tell even though the thick oil paint that had rendered her likeness was crackled and cracked. In places it had come free to fall on the floor with the moldering petals.

  Had it been Michael who had walked here? How many times had he brought flowers to this room only half aware of his actions?

  Doomed romance.

  How many times had I played Tristan’s violin?

  There were probably historical treasures in the wardrobe and the drawers of this room, but I could only see neglect and decay. I could only smell rotten fabric and brittle petals and mold.

  I stayed long enough to look into Octavia’s eyes. Why had she killed herself all those years ago? Had she been seeking to escape a man who wouldn’t let her go?

  Octavia’s room frightened me. It caused me to doubt Michael and Mrs. Brighton. How could they allow that neglected spot in the house—beyond dust, beyond time—to fester and decay? But worse than that, the room reminded me of Tristan’s package. I thought of it, hidden away in the bureau, unopened. As if not opening it would change what had happened both before and after he’d left.

  Someone had closed off this room and left it virtually untouched for decades.

  But had that changed the past?

  The room was a decaying memorial. The person who had left it unchanged after her death hadn’t stopped her from dying, but maybe they had kept her from resting in peace.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I fear too early, for my mind misgives

  Some consequence yet hanging in the stars.”

  (Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 4)

  I was busier than I’d been all summer. The large group had ended up being the Metaphysical Society, and the inn was suddenly full of people tapping on walls and listening to the floor with stethoscopes.

  Rather than lighten the atmosphere, my tension thickened. I could almost sense an expectation around each corner, not coming from the society’s members, but fed by it no matter how silly their tappings and listenings were.

  I did my job.

  I smiled. I vacuumed. I carried towels and made beds.

  But all the while I expected trouble.

  My tattoo flitted and fluttered as if it tried to fly.

  “I’ll need more pillows and chamomile tea every night exactly at ten o’clock,” someone said as I approached the front of the house. My legs ached almost as much as my fingers, but I resigned myself to an added nightly task. Maybe I would be able to carry a single cup instead of the heavy tea service with its plate silver tray.

  “I have to have several cups of herbal tea before I can sleep at night. Especially here. It quiets them, you know,” the voice continued.

  Now I saw the woman who spoke to Mrs. Brighton. She was dressed in a purple and gold caftan that swallowed her rail-thin form whole in its silken folds. I stopped and blinked because I’d never seen someone actually wear a hat with a feather, but this woman wore a funny little cap with a sweeping peacock feather on its side.

  The cap was purple, too.

  I blinked again, sure I’d been transported back in time to 1972. Large hoop earrings made of yellow plastic hung at her ears. She wore so many beaded necklaces she clinked when she moved.

  But her appearance didn’t negate the eerie connotation I took from her words. Them. Maybe I should drink some chamomile tea.

  “Lydia! Here is Mrs. Shreve. The premier medium for the Metaphysical Society. She’s our special guest every summer at this time,” Mrs. Brighton said. I thought her voice was loud and particularly welcoming as if she was glad to have someone who might divide the weight of the medium’s attention.

  “Madame Shreve, if you please,” the woman corrected. “And I am the only medium the Society employs.”

  She reached out her hand and I took it, but I was startled when she didn’t shake it. Instead, she pulled me closer with an iron grip. Her many rings pinched my skin.

  “Lydia, Lydia…” she said.

  My space would have been invaded by her strong floral perfume and the noise of her jewelry and voice even if she hadn’t tugged me close. Only inches from her face, I was overwhelmed by scent and by the thickly made-up artificial lashes that framed her blue eyes. Each eyelash was coated and caked with black mascara. And her teeth were stained with purple lipstick.

  “You are frightened. I can sense it. You are afraid,” Mme. Shreve intoned.

  I tried not to breathe. Not only because the air was thick with crushed violets but because I feared she was genuine in spite of looking like a bad actress playing a part. Were the violets for Octavia?

  “This is a dark house with a black history. Alexander Jericho was a dangerous man. He dabbled in occult practices that have caused the damnation of many a lesser man,” Mme. Shreve continued.

  “Really, Madame Shreve. Damnation?” Mrs. Brighton protested. The word must seem harsh when applied to a man who graced the wall of her music room.

  “Yes. Absolutely. Damnation. Painting with blood is certainly not angelic, Martha.” Mme. Shreve laughed without humor.

  “Blood?” I asked. I’d touched the painting in the music room. The room was closed off for repairs now, but I could remember the feel of the thick paint on Jericho’s portrait when I’d touched his face.

  Mme. Shreve smiled. The rouge on her cheeks didn’t make them less gaunt. She was like a clown spoiling the party with macabre balloon animals…that bite.

  “Oh, yes. Years ago, one of our members took a discreet scraping. It tested positive. One of Jericho’s footman mentioned his master’s self-inflicted wounds in a letter to his cousin. He said the valet bandaged them, but they never healed because Jericho cut himself again and again as he painted the portrait that hangs in the music room. The footman mentioned Octavia’s bloody sleeves. He surmised Jericho had cut her as well.”

  “Good Lord!” Mrs. Brighton exclaimed. She
eased herself onto a stool near the secretary where she often worked during the day. This gruesome aspect of Jericho’s history must have been a new revelation to her.

  “I don’t think good had much to do with Alexander Jericho,” Mme. Shreve said, laughing again. “He was interested in Vodou. He visited Haiti many times. His valet was rumored to actually be a Houngan or high priest. A sorcerer, if you will, of the most powerful persuasion, but he’d been excommunicated for dealing in black magic, for twisting the religion to his own design.”

  I tried to pull my hand from hers, but her fingers tightened. She flipped my hand over so my palm faced up in spite of my resistance. The angle bent my wrist and I hissed, but Madame Shreve’s grip didn’t ease. She was much stronger than I would have expected. She leaned her face close to my palm.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Lydia Li. I see your presence as very fortuitous to the Society’s wishes,” Mme. Shreve said.

  I looked at my palm seeing nothing but the lines that had always been there, silent and benign.

  Mrs. Brighton spoke up.

  “Madame Shreve has a daughter around your age. Won’t that be nice? Maybe you’ll have time to make friends.”

  Her nervous gaze flitted from my hand in Madame Shreve’s unrelenting grip to our faces and back again. Obviously uncomfortable with her guest’s behavior but at a loss in how to handle it.

  “That would be useful. Hannah is always underfoot, and when I’m working I can’t be disturbed. I wouldn’t have brought her, but I’ve told her many times she could join us when she turned eighteen.” Madame Shreve let go of my hand to gesture with hers. It was a dismissive gesture as if her daughter didn’t matter in the least. “She held me to it even though she doesn’t know anything about our work. I’m afraid she’s like my mother always was. Unblessed with spiritual gifts.”

  Mrs. Brighton tsked with her tongue, but she looked at me over Shreve’s head like maybe she agreed that if Madame Shreve—unpleasant as she was—disapproved of her daughter then we should love her.