Chapter Nine
Lenora
“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”
I reread the line, a favorite of Eliah’s and think how often he would lay his head in my lap and ask me to read it for him. This specific poem by Poe. The book falls open to it without assistance from me and sits in my lap.
Beneath my cheek, the wood doesn’t move. No scratching. No rustling. The silence within that breaks me a little more with every passing hour.
There have been many.
More than I kept count. My limbs ache. My back throbs. The stiff chair is as unforgiving as the chill of the wood numbing my cheek.
But I stay between my boys.
Where I have always belonged.
Ames on my left.
Eliah on my right.
Where they should be.
“I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! Yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!”
A tear escapes and runs down Eliah’s new bed.
Marcus wouldn’t give me the key that unlocks the boxes. I believe it’s for the best, but I ache with the need to see them. Just once more. Just for a second. I wouldn’t touch, but I would like a lock of their hair. I never thought I would need such a keepsake, but I miss the satin slide of each strand through my fingers.
Would they still smell the way they did? Ames of sweat and soap. Eliah of paint and sunshine.
I’m not crazy.
I know they are dead.
I know what lies inside will not be my boys.
But maybe.
What if there is a chance…?
“Linny.”
It’s only that they have never called me Linny that keeps my heart from lunging up my throat.
In the chapel doorway, Marcus waits. A solid figure embraced by shadows. Almost ethereal in his paleness.
