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.
It is morning. Astoundingly, I have slept through the entire night.
“We’ve been up for hours looking for you!” says Mavis.
“I don’t…I didn’t…” I yawn and stretch. What a wonderful rest.
“Hurry, now. I’ve got a fresh dress right here. You’ll need to change quick to catch the last of breakfast. You’ve had us in a tizzy. Missus Sullivan was just about ready to declare you a slattern who’d eloped with some fancy man from the city.”
“How unsurprising.” I am yanking out of my nightgown and then splashing with water from the pitcher and basin that Mavis has brought. When I enter the dining room for breakfast, it’s with a sense that my strange antics have been recently discussed.
“Jennie, it has come to my attention that you must move into the yellow room,” Aunt announces first thing.
I blink across at her. “The yellow room? Are you quite sure?”
“Do you propose sleeping again in Will’s room as you did last night? Do you find that an appropriate arrangement?”
Chastened, I look down at my plate.
“A perfect choice,” Quinn adds, so swiftly that I realize it was his idea. “After all, I’m not moving. I’m jolly as a bear in your old room, with my books and papers taking up every shelf and crevice.”
Uncle Henry rustles his newspaper but doesn’t rub at his head.
“Thank you, Aunt Clara.” It might be the first time in months I’ve said these words to Aunt and meant them. Outwardly the yellow room holds more worth than the ring on my finger. It is a room fit for the lady of the house.
Which, apparently, is what I am again.
“The yellow room’s the prettiest, I’ve always thought,” Quinn murmurs when he finds me there later that afternoon. My unpacking has been distracted by the discovery of a book of zoological prints. “I hope you do, too. And won’t feel compelled to wander.”
I stiffen. “Quinn, I didn’t mean to fall asleep in Will’s room. But late at night, I am plagued…”
“Yes, yes. I know.” His eyes flicker. “You’re not the only one with ghosts.”
On the end table Lotty has left a tray with a fresh pot of tea to stave off the chill of the day. I prepare Quinn a cup, which he takes as he moves to the window, twitching the drape.
“Oh!” The book falls from my lap as I see it. My heart is pounding. I didn’t realize that this was my view. Through the frost on the glass, I can see the outline of the butternut tree.
“What? It’s only our swinging tree,” says Quinn.
“It’s the…shape. It has always reminded me of a witch.” I attempt a laugh, though the sight of the tree truly scares me.
Quinn frowns. “I’ll have the hired man chop it down. We’ll plant some weeping cherries there. Come next spring, you’ll have a view of pink blossoms instead of that crooked old crone.” He turns from the window to retrieve and hand back the book that has tumbled across the carpet. “What’s this you’re reading?”
“Animals of the Orient.” I shuffle through, looking for the page. “If I saw a rhinoceros, if there really is such a beast, I’d faint dead away. There, look.” I find it, with its terrifying one-horned head and splayed feet.