One evening Aunt sets aside her needle and hoop and squeezes herself onto her piano stool to plunk out some songs. Aunt hasn’t touched the piano since all three boys had been dispatched. She plays a few hymns, and then the strokes of her fingers on the keys choose Will’s favorite song, “Lilly Dale.” On purpose or by accident, I cannot say.
Tears spring to my eyes. The very walls and corners of the rooms seem to watch me. As Aunt lurches into the third verse, I slip from the room, resolving to come back and steal away the pages from Aunt Clara’s songbook. I don’t want her to play it again. I want to go to the coat closet to be alone, but Quinn catches up with me in the foyer.
“Mother is a foolish, selfish old woman who sees nothing wrong with imposing her sentimental impulses,” Quinn says, taking advantage of my stillness to move close and caress my cheek. “You mustn’t let her come between us.”
“It’s more than that. Will haunts you, too,” I say. “It’s Will who is between us. Not Aunt.”
“Only if you let him.” His arm is encircling me, an antidote to the darkness all around us. His other hand leaves its touch on my cheek as he digs into his trousers’ pocket. “Wear this,” he says. “I found it in Aunt’s jewelry box. But it’s always been your ring, my dear Fleur. And so is the promise that goes with it.”
“Oh.” I am taken aback. “But…”
“Of course I plan to replace it with another a ring that’s meant for only us. But I just need a bit of time, until I begin to make my own money. Until then, you must have something. So that Mother so that everyone understands my intentions.” Quinn’s forehead is creased with worry. “But frankly, it’s the promise that I am hoping for, from you. I want you to be my wife, Jennie. If you’ll have me.”
He slips the ring onto my finger. I blink at the twinkling stones, the garnets and diamond. I am speechless, anxiety stirring as my mind is seized with a memory of that long-ago holiday in Nantucket, the sudden crash of a wave over my head, the hard rush and slam of my body against the sand, the undertow dragging me back as I struggled to move forward to shore.
“Oh, yes,” I say. “Of course, my love.” My voice deliberately raised against my fears as I pull him close against me.
24.
“One more chapter,” I plead.
“Jennie, I can’t. I’m hoarse.”
There’s a squeak of the leather chair when Uncle Henry heaves himself up to pour his last brandy. Quinn slaps the book cover shut on another chapter of Barchester Towers. And then the draining sip of cocoa on my tongue and Aunt’s eggshell-thin cup clicks in its saucer. Mavis tiptoes in to take the tray.
After good-nights are said, Quinn and I confer our last thoughts and lingering embraces outside his door.
“Try to sleep tonight,” he whispers. “You’re not getting nearly the rest you need. I see it in your eyes.”
“You worry too much. I’m fit as a fiddle,” I assure him, and offer my mouth for one last brush against his lips. Though I am in dread of what awaits, I dare not confess it.
There is no use delaying the inevitable. I take my candle and tread the flights of stairs to my attic, where I slip into my nightgown, say my prayers, and burrow under my quilts. I don’t blow out my candle.
It has been one week and one day since Quinn’s and my engagement. Perhaps this night will be different. I hold on to that hope like a child’s doll as I curl up, a snail without a shell, in dread wait of what lies just beyond sleep.
No sooner have my bones and mind relaxed into unconsciousness than I am slammed out of sleep by nameless, abject terror. I sit up in a sweat, thrashing, the scream dying in my throat as I struggle against the sensation of choking. I can almost feel Will’s breath on my cheek, the pressure of his body on the bedclothes. “Stop! Stop! What do you want from me?”
The candle has guttered and the fire gone dead. Just as it has every night before.
My shaking fingers grope to find the matches. The jolt from darkness to flickering light reveals nothing more than my ordinary room. My twisted covers, hot cheeks, and pounding heart are the only evidence of disturbance.
I recite a simple prayer, which helps me find my breath again. Then I leave my bed to retrieve my scrapbook, where I turn to the page where I’ve affixed my locket. I can’t bear to wear it anymore. I stare at Will’s photograph for a long time. “Maybe you never loved me after all,” I whisper to his image. “It’s a truth I must face. You think I have betrayed you, William. But you have become a demon.”
A tear slips down my cheek. Not once in his life or mine have I spoken unkindly toward Will. Even now it feels wrong. But it is harder and harder for me to recognize that carefree, high-spirited boy who went away to war and never came home.
Tonight the entire house is sleeping. Everyone but me. Slipping down the stairs, I pause by Quinn’s shut door. No, better not disturb him with my wild tales of ghostly visitations. Creeping farther down the hall, I decide to visit Will’s room.
It has been closed up for months, save Mavis’s occasional perfunctory dusting, and when I enter, the trapped air holds a faint, stale odor of lye and must. The sickle moon casts a glow on every object, safe and familiar. My fingers drift over Will’s bookshelves, his pigeonhole desk, and his velveteen hobbyhorse, McHale, which stands in a corner. Beneath sparse lashes the horse’s glass eye fixes on me, almost as if to beckon me closer.
There is no anger here. I lie down on Will’s four-poster bed, the dark core of the room, and immediately I’m enfolded by my past, where I am once again at Benjamin Hodge’s birthday party. An October afternoon of Brookline friends and amusements, and after lunch we’d played Sardines, a game that required one person to hide and the rest of us to find and then hide with him until one last, lone searcher remained.
Will had been picked as “It,” and I’d found him almost immediately in the Hodges’ barn, wedged in the back of a hay bale. I’d tucked in next to him, and we’d nearly laughed ourselves sick listening to the others scurry through the door and then decide against making the climb to where we’d buried ourselves away, our arms wound around each other’s waists. Not yet sweet on each other, but alert with possibilities we could not have yet articulated.
It is only when I hear Mavis’s knock and her exclamation, “For the love of heaven, here you are!” that I am awake again.