Irritating? Competitive? Bossy?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
But she was also one of those rare people who never lost her child-like wonder. She zipped through life, always jumping toward the next experience, the next person she got to meet. A caffeinated puppy—not that she would appreciate the comparison, but it was true.
I had missed her desperately, I realized.
Chiara made living feel more . . .alive. The irony of that statement was not lost on me.
So, of course, she made a production looking for the scar . . . bending this way and that, darting sideways, tilting her head back and forth. It didn’t help that she was dressed in tight dark jeans and a gauzy light green shirt, dark hair piled haphazardly atop her head.
I supposed I should be appalled by women no longer wearing long skirts in this century, but trousers were one trend I definitely enjoyed.
She was utterly breathtaking. I hated that I noticed. That even after everything, I still ached to touch her. To feel the silkiness of her hair. To learn how comfortably my palm would fit in the arch of her lower back. To know the smell of her perfume.
Chiara, of course, was oblivious to me.
“I don’t see anything. What happens if I get close to it?” She walked across the room and wedged herself between the TV and window.
As with Tennyson, the scar reacted to her presence, eddying out of the way. As if Chiara’s movement through reality produced unseen ripples, like passing a hand through water.
“It drifted away from you.” I pointed to it now in the middle of the TV.
She pursed her lips, thoughts knitting her brow. “Can anyone else see it?”
Tennyson and Branwell, who had come up from the family shop below, shook their heads. The resemblance between the two brothers was there but subtle.
Whereas Tennyson reflected their father’s Italian ancestry, Branwell and Dante as identical twins were genetically rooted in their mother’s Scottish American heritage.
Branwell, in particular, looked ready to start a homestead in the woods with his thick bushy beard and man bun. Dante took the same body and face into international playboy territory. Dante, and his wife, Claire, were in Rome for the day.
Branwell’s wife, Lucy, was still asleep. At nearly eight months pregnant with twins, I understood she was exhausted all the time. I never knew the Branwell before Lucy re-entered his life. But apparently that Branwell was only a distant cousin to the smiling, content man I saw before me.
Marriage to Lucy obviously agreed with him.
I ignored the pang in my chest. The one that whispered that such contentment would never be mine. That I would be trapped forever in this half-life, cut off from all humanity—
I paused my slippery train of thought. I didn’t have the energy to throw a pity party at the moment.
Mentally, I took all that unwanted angst, stuffed it into a solid oak chest and tossed the chest into the middle of the deepest ocean. If I had learned one thing from all my time in ‘Lord School,’ it was compartmentalizing my emotions. British gentlemen were experts at such things.
I would deal with it all later. That was the joy of living a half-life. You had forever to get things done. Procrastination was your friend.
Silver linings.
I pushed on my finger again. Push. Pain. Bounce.
“What happens if you get close to it, Jack?” Chiara placed her hands on her hips, nodding toward the scar. “Does it open?”
I grunted. “Tossing a sacrificial ghost to the malevolent scar?”
“Wasn’t there a Marvel movie about that?”
“Focus, you two.” Tennyson sighed.
Right.
“To be quite honest, I dislike how it feels when I get close to it,” I said. “As I mentioned earlier, my ghost instincts don’t like it.”
