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“I will not come closer.” The accent. The voice. Something inside me aches, reaching toward it.
But fear is faster. “Who are you?”
The man does not flinch, that frightens me more. Men who do not flinch have often decided they own the room. My fingers tighten around the letter opener.
“Who are you?” I demand again.
His hands remain lifted, “I am someone who loves you.”
A sob catches in my throat before I understand why. “No.”
“All right,” he says softly. “Then I am someone standing very still.”
The room tilts.
Fire.
Books.
A man with his hands raised. His face in shadow, I know this. I do not know this.
My mind is full of torn pages. He takes half a step forward and I raise the letter opener in response. He stops at once.
“Good,” he says. The word is strange. Not patronizing. Not frightened. Proud. “Good, darling.”
Darling. The word strikes something buried deep. A stage. A sickle. A laugh in the dark. A man covered in blood saying something absurd at exactly the wrong moment.
I shake my head. “No.”
His voice lowers. “Polar bears are white.”
The world stills and those words move through me like a key turning in an old lock.
Polar bears are white.
A workshop. Edward’s voice, Alcott’s eyes changing, Darkness smiling. A phrase thrown across horror like a rope.
Polar bears are white.
My hand loosens around the letter opener. The man steps just enough into the firelight for me to see his face. Older now, with lines at the corners of his eyes. Silver through his dark hair and a beard trimmed close along a jaw I have kissed a thousand times. Grief and love carved into him so deeply they have become indistinguishable.
Lazarus. My Laz.
The letter opener slips from my hand. It hits the rug without sound, and I press both hands to my mouth. “Oh.”
His eyes shine as his handsome face smiles upon me the hundreds times he has before, “Hello, darling.”
The library returns in pieces within the manor. Our manor. Lazarus’s library. My chair. My blanket. The book I was reading.
Thirty years. Home, and safe.
Safe.
A sound tears from me, not a scream and not a sob but something smaller. Worse. I clutch my chest and drop to my knees, hands shaking so violently I cannot hide them.
Lazarus lowers his hands. “May I come to you?”
I nod. Then shake my head, then nod again because I do not know what I mean and that frightens me most of all.
