The knob turns. I pause a moment. I’ve never been an intruder.
Darkness makes the furniture unfamiliar and adds to my sense of guilty otherness. I find the matches to light the oil lamp in the front hall. Aware of every creak in the floorboards, I carry it to the sitting room. If Geist had been here, I’d have brandished both my letters in a bittersweet victory. I’d loved Will. It had never been otherwise, despite his brother’s steady poisoning of my memories.
Quinn’s insinuations and lies had weakened me. Worse, they had eroded my trust in Will’s love. But now I’m frightened. Geist is my only confidante, but when I needed him most, he disappeared. Alone as I feel, I must heed his advice as never before.
Any consecrated space, Geist had told me. But not a church.
“And that makes sense,” I whisper aloud. Will hadn’t ever been much for ceremony. And certainly not Pritchett House, where he’d always escaped whenever he was angry with his brother. Geist’s own home is a sanctuary. Devoid of family members and memories, receptive to lost and searching spirits, it’s where Will had knocked.
I take care as I enter the sitting room. What faint sound there is comes from the two ticking clocks and my own shallow breath. I sit on the edge of my usual chair across from Geist’s, my eyes sweeping the shadows, my hands gripping the seat cushion. Hope is all I’ve got. Please, Will.
That last summer, Will used to watch me when I napped. I was always lazing away honeyed hours after our picnics by the pond. Stretched out and barefoot, my head crooked in the bone of my arm, my breath soft with salted air, and the faraway slap of the water setting the course of my dreams. I’d sleep long and deep. So careless with our time. Blissfully ignorant of how little we had left.
Will would observe me, sketch me, then tease me awake with a blade of grass twirled across my cheek. It’s the same sensation that passes through me now, with sun on my skin and a brush across my face as I settle back, relaxing my grip, and open my eyes to find the lamp gone out.
The figure is slouched opposite me in Geist’s armchair. I stare. He appears like a photograph slowly developing under my eyes. His shoulders are back, and his chin is tipped; his arms are crossed loose at the chest. A familiar position. He is here.
When I speak his name, his answering gaze on me is suffused in love and sadness. As Will’s image takes full hold, his lips part. As if to say something in return. His eyes are tender and know me a entirely. Then his hand lifts, reaches out, and sweeps across as if to indicate something…
Later, when I remember and relive and savor this moment, all I can conjure is the memory of my unabashed delight. Exaltation. Here he is, so real I could take his own dear face between my hands.
I hear my thin breath, but when I open my eyes I hadn’t realized they were closed Will is gone.
“No!” I inhale sharply, jumping to stand. Dumbfounded. But he was here. Was he here? If he was, he has slipped from the surface. I’m panicked, shocked by the moment, its power and its brevity. No, no, it’s not enough. Not nearly enough, after all that I’ve been through. After all my efforts in trying to find him.
Something in the room has shifted. A subtle nuance, but the moment dangles, teasing me as I work to solve it.
Of course. Both clocks have stopped.
I must stay calm. Will’s presence hums through me like a hymn. When I glance down and see the cat, I jump and scream.
“Psst! Scat!” The animal has been crouched motionless at the foot of my chair all this time. Was that what Will’s gesture had indicated?
“Psst!” I hiss again. “Shoo, cat!” It doesn’t move no, it’s not a cat, not a living thing at all. It’s some sort of object.
And yet…I’m sure it wasn’t here when I first came into the room.
I drop to a crouch, and my hands scoop darkness until my fingers swipe the cold metal of the buckle and clasp. Locke’s satchel. Yes, that is exactly what it is. I slide closer, unbuckle it, and withdraw its contents. Glass ambrotypes. My fingers count nine in all.
My heart beats with curiosity and fear. In a scramble, I find the box of matches on the mantel, and I relight the lamp.
“All right, William,” I whisper. “I know that that you’re here and that you’ve summoned me. Now. What do you want me to see?”
The light is dim illumination. I unknot my dark shawl and drape it over the back of the armchair. Then I arrange the table lamp to shine directly in front. I prop up the first image.
It is a drummer boy, not more than ten years old. An innocent.
In a different dress he could be one of Geist’s cherubs. I set the plate down and set another against the dark fabric. Here is a colonel or possibly a general, all bristling epaulets and waxed mustache.
Something has changed. The room has gone so cold my teeth chatter. My urge to leave this room is so violent it almost overwhelms me. I’m not sure I can reckon with the truth I might uncover here. But the motions of my body do not listen, and stay mechanical, working smoothly, capably. I exchange the general’s image for another. Fallen soldiers, sprawled in the long grass. It twists my heart. The Wilderness, perhaps? It could be any of the countless, unnamed battles.
In the end, what does the name or the place of death even matter?
The next image shows a line of young men. Six in all, but I recognize two. At one end, sitting on the ground, Nate Dearborn. Standing over him is a short, square man with a slack and bearded jaw and a bristle of dark hair, holding the defiant stance of the leader. Is this Curtis? Must be.
And there, second from the opposite end, is Quinn. His shoulders defiant, a tourniquet wrapped around his eye. I don’t need the identifying caption at the bottom of the plate to know that I’m looking into the eyes of the Raiders. All dead now, all but one. And William Pritchett is not among them.
On closer inspection, I see the date scratched in the bottom. July 10, 1864.
28.
I stumble from Geist’s. I have no money for a hackney, and the local trains have stopped running. All I’ve got are my own two feet, and the distance is long. It’s dark now, besides, and the night is further obscured by an icy spitting rain. Few travelers or carriages take up the road, and none that pass trouble themselves with me.
After one too many stumbles, I break the heels off my shoes as easily as snapping chicken bones. They’re ruined anyway, from the muddy gutters. I send the heels sailing into an alley. Good riddance. I’ll never wear heels again for the rest of my life.
Soon the roads widen and the spaces between buildings open as I leave the city behind. There are miles of darkness before me. I want to rest, but I push on, hurrying and then slowing to catch my breath before picking up pace again. After a while my legs ache with the desire to stop, and it is only my anxious energy that vaults me forward, onward, charged with no greater impulse than to run.
“Jennie!” The sound of my name slices the night and stops me cold. My skin is a thousand pinpoints of prickling dread. I’d convinced myself to fear neither the dark nor the journey, but his voice is a bullet ripped clean through my body.
Standing in the shadows by the bridge, he has been watching my approach. Waiting for me. I slow.
“Where are you coming from? Why did you leave the house? Jennie, you’ve missed everything. The entire dinner, even the baked Alaska, which was a splendid sight. By the time I left, they’d moved onto dancing.”