“Thank you. I’d ... feel better having you here.”
“I’d have done so weeks ago if you’d allowed it.”
“I shouldn’t have been so stubborn,” I say. “I’m sorry. I thought I had something to prove.”
“It’s all right. We’re both a little proud. A little stubborn. I think it’s time to be done with all that, don’t you?” He takes my hand, the warmth of his touch grounding me. “You were very brave tonight.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You thought so quickly.”
“It was so strange,” I say. “Time seemed to slow down.”
“I’ve had that sort of thing happen to me before, as well. My little brother fell from the stone wall by our cottage when he was five, busted his head on a rock. There was so much blood. It was just a surface wound, but I thought he was dying. Still, I stayed calm and did whatneeded to be done, just like you did. Everything slowed to a crawl—as if time was giving me momentary grace to think. To act.”
“It’s such an odd thing, isn’t it? Time. I often wonder if we’re only imagining its passing—whether we’re all still bumbling around in the past somewhere, replaying our scenes like a cinema film.” I think of all the places I’ve been with Weston, where the others we encountered seemed just as full of life and vitality as the people in our time. “It would be a form of immortality, wouldn’t it?”
He hums in agreement. We sway back and forth for a few moments in silence, listening to the cicadas sing. I see the parlor curtain twitch, and spy Pauline’s baleful eyes glaring out at us. The curtain quickly drops back into place.
“Beckett?”
“Hmm?”
“They already think we’re an item. My cousins. We might as well be, don’t you think?”
He laughs, a low rumble. “You’ve had too much wine, Sadie. We’ll see how you feel after you’ve sobered up.”
I allow my head to drop against his shoulder, the tension between us melting, at long last. My eyelids begin to grow heavy. At some point, I feel myself being lifted and carried, then hear the squeak of a screen door and the slam that follows. I’m nestled somewhere comfortable and warm, covers pulled around me. The click of a light, and then the darkness wraps me in silence.
The dream feels real ... so real that I smell the scent of sage, wafting toward me on a fitful breeze. I hear waves crashing against a shore but can’t see their source. I look around, trying to get a sense of time and place. Perhaps I’m in France, or Italy, somewhere in the Mediterranean—places I’ve only been to with Weston in our nocturnal ramblings through the past. I walk along a sandy, narrow path, my feetfloating above the ground. A woman stands in the distance, silhouetted against the dusky sky, her long skirt buffeted by the wind. As I near her, she turns. It’s young Marguerite, but something is terribly wrong. Tears run freely from her eyes, a look of anger and immense pain lashed across her face. Her dress is stained crimson and a bloody knife lies at her feet. She points past the edge of the precipice she stands on, beckoning me to look. I come closer. The sea crests in satiny waves to the shore, its sound a soft whisper in my ears.
Where the smooth sandy sides of the dunes give way to the rocky escarpment below, a woman’s body lies broken, her long copper-colored hair streaming in the breaking tide. It’s Aunt Claire. Marguerite’s mouth opens in a bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter 21
September 6, 1925
I wake with a gasp. My head pounds like a drum, and my cheeks are wet with tears, the horror of what I just witnessed imprinted on my retinas. The dream was too real. The sound of Marguerite’s scream. The blood on her dress. The unnatural twist of Claire’s neck, her open eyes—those brilliant blue eyes. An angelic face I’ve only ever seen in photographs and in my visits to the past.
But Claire died of the measles.
Didn’t she?
I wake fully and realize I’m in the library. Beckett must have carried me here last night, after the fire made a mess of my room. Morning sunlight streams through the tall windows. I stretch, stiffly, the sound of conversation filtering to me from down the hall. My cousins. Memories of last night descend—my argument with Pauline. Marguerite standing before Weston’s flaming portrait. Me and Beckett, on the veranda, swaying back and forth in the porch swing. I’d wanted to kiss him.
Outside, there’s a hollowthunkas if something heavy has been dropped on the floor. “I have everything, Pauline. Carry Katie for me, would you?” They’re leaving. Pauline must have told Louise we argued. I could stay here, pretend to be asleep until they’re gone. Or I could go tell them goodbye, as I should.
With a resigned sigh, I go out to the hall, still in my stained apron and housedress. The terra-cotta pot and its uprooted palm lie on the floor, dirt scattered across the floorboards. Louise hadn’t even bothered to clean it up. Pauline greets me stiffly, Katie squirming in her arms, suitcases at her feet. “Beckett is bringing the car. We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“I’m sorry we had harsh words last night, Pauline.”
She looks down at the top of Katie’s curly head. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have been so crass.”
“You all can stay the rest of the weekend, if you’d like.”
“That’s all right. Louise wants to get home to her nanny, and I didn’t sleep well at all last night.”
“Was your bed not comfortable?”
