Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Words Catullus wrote his mistress, Lesbia.
I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask.
I do not know, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.
That pretty much summed up the situation.
Chiara challenged and delighted and frustrated and made me so damn happy and so damn crazy all at the same time.
No wonder men had considered women to be witches in ages past. It felt like witchcraft, sometimes, how she kept me so unsettled.
I adored her stubbornness most of the time, but in this, she needed to seek some help.
I had spoken with Tennyson several times already this week, keeping him up-to-date on Chiara’s odd behavior. Her midnight stroll through the attic was the first time she had put herself in any real danger. But who knew what would happen next.
“She has had a minor problem with sleepwalking in the past,” Tennyson said about her episodes. “It will pass. We just need to keep an eye on her in the meantime.”
“And all the weird lightning references?” I asked.
Tennyson sighed. “We each have our demons, Jack.”
“Can you provide me with any insight? I’d like to help.”
“Uhm, I don’t want to trample on Chiara’s right to discuss this experience with you. It’s not entirely mine to share. But I can at least give you the bare facts, the information thatiscommon knowledge.”
Tennyson had then laid it out for me.
I better understood now her reluctance to talk about it. But . . . how could she possibly think that I wouldn’t have found out? It wasn’t exactly a closely guarded secret.
Chiara’s refusal to discuss it with me rankled. It was only a matter of time before her sleepwalking hurt her. I was trying tohelp. Did she not want to talk to me because I was a ghost? Was that it? Was she ghostist?
Well . . . two could play at this avoidance game. I stomped down the hall, trying to decide which room I wanted to haunt.
She found me in the library. I sat in a club chair angled in front of the barren fireplace, hands clasped behind my head. The library was one of my favorite rooms in the villa. A bachelor sort of room with dark paneling, leather furniture and stacks of books behind glass-front shelves. It seemed like the kind of place I would retire to after a long day to enjoy a finger or two of good scotch.
If such things were possible.
“Alright, your bossy lordship. Let’s call a ceasefire. How’s about you talk?” She glared at me, foot tapping, jaw clenching and unclenching, nostrils flared. “You can touch things now? You can move them?”
I rotated my head toward her. “Ladies before gentlemen. Lightning,” I prompted.
More foot tapping. “I don’t talk about that.”
Thatwas patently obvious.
I counted items on my fingers. “You’re sleepwalking. You’re putting yourself in danger. And now you’re littering this house with thunderbolts like you’re a Disney animator. I don’t see how talking about this will make things any worse.”
Silence hung between us.
I continued, “You’re standing there assuming I don’t know anything. But you have to know your brothers are not as reticent as you.”
Her face drained of color. “What are you saying?”
I played my trump card.
“I know.” I paused, letting the drama build. “I know why lightning haunts you.”
