by Rumer Haven
“We’re connected, you and me. We are because they are.”
“They are? Are they here?”
Stroke. “Of course. They’re here because we are.”
“Why are we here?”
“This is where I found the watch.”
“So you didn’t always have it?”
Stroke. “I didn’t always have you.”
“Why do you need me?” Margot asked breathlessly. “Why bring me here?”
Chloé’s hand stilled. “Don’t you feel a wholeness? I’ve missed class to spend afternoons here. With the watch but without you. Something draws me here, but something else has always been missing.” Chloé breathed heavily, and she passed her tongue across her lower lip. “You and I,” she said, “we arrive here together, each empty wells. And now we fill each other.”
Her hand traced down the track of Margot’s spine, settling at the small of her back, where she pressed the heat of her palm. Feeling a pulsation as her pelvis yearned to yawn open, Margot rolled her eyes to the side to refocus; as they adjusted to the shadows, she drew her face away from Chloé’s slightly.
“But don’t you feel it?” Chloé asked.
Margot could just barely discern cushions in the dark recesses of the niche, resting between stumps of burned-down candles. Golden embroidery glinted against deep red where light strained to reach.
“Don’t you feel it?” Chloé repeated as she leaned to close their space again, the pillows of her breath warm against Margot’s face.
With her eyes on the cushions, Margot imagined lying on them, layers of fabric peeled off until she and her friend were skin to skin. “What is this place?” she whispered. “What do you do here?”
“Nothing but seek answers, same as you.” She raised her other hand to clasp Margot’s face, rubbing her thumb across her cheekbone.
Still, Margot stared at the cushions. Their crimson bled over her sight, making something stir within. The oversized pillows were ripe as raspberries; she supposed she could suck the juice of sensuous delights from them in a haze freeing her of thought and expectation. Maybe that was how Chloé made more sense of her sense, how she tapped into it more lucidly, by just letting go of the reality right around her and yielding to pleasure in whatever form it came. Maybe Margot could do the same, then, if Chloé would show her how.
Yes…
So tired of thinking, Margot needed feeling…friction, connection…the feel of fact not fiction, something authentic and tangible that she could touch and taste and smell if only she’d finally and truly let go…
Margot’s fingertips clawed the sandy stone beneath her. Her mind dizzied, verging on euphoria as she nearly winced with want—for Chloé’s lips to press on hers, for her hand to slip from her face and slide over other curves. How she desired to succumb to that hand…
Until the sensuality searing through her turned to nausea on a dime. She couldn’t let go, couldn’t forget all that had been said, all that had occurred, and what it could mean. Yet she had to.
She broke from Chloé’s hold. Breathing heavily as she avoided her eyes, Margot said, “I don’t know whose watch that is, or if he has anything to do with these stables or Charlotte. And I don’t care.”
Chloé’s unoccupied hands slapped her thighs. “How can you possibly still doubt it? After all that’s happened to you. All I’ve shared with you? How can you still run from what’s so obvious?”
“It’s not obvious. It’s a series of coincidences strung up on a fraying thread.”
Chloé snorted in incredulity.
“And even if there’s something more,” Margot said, “why do I need to solve it? I need to get my own shit together before delving into others’ lives, who aren’t living!” She was at her feet and laughing nervously, exhaling bursts of air through her nose to expel the fusty scents from her lungs. “No, it’s like you said with Esther, this is all stuff I have to deal with in my own time.”
Chloé leaned back and folded her arms.
“I don’t know if you have that kind of time.”
Chapter 17
Charlotte’s Web
“MARGOT. MARGOT!”
On hearing the echoing, metallic voice, Margot retreated from the bedsheets and arms enveloping her. Her ears snapped as though on a descending airplane, and she coughed deeply from her chest. She might’ve fallen from the stool she came to feel beneath her had it not been for a firm grasp on her shoulders.
“Margot, are you here?”
“’Course I’m here.” Steadily, she regained her breathing, and, pressing her eyes closed, she then reopened them to electric light. Rand’s reflection appeared in the bathroom mirror.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, fine. Saw so much more this time.”
“This time? When did you—”
“What happened?” Chloé asked from beside her.
“Hm? Um.”
Margot swayed slightly, not fully emerged from her stupor.
“Your message might remind you?” Chloé knelt to pick the dream diary up from the floor, then placed it in Margot’s lap, open to a page.
So then they are no more twain, but one flesh
“You wrote it with your left hand,” Chloé said.
Rand yanked off the black trash bags taped to the windows against daylight. “This is inexcusable. What do you think you’re doing?”
“I can help her.”
“How is this help? I don’t know where you took her before, but I won’t have this nonsense in my house.”
Chloé flared. “She asked for this!”
Freaked as she was by Chloé’s insinuations, Margot had indeed broken down and offered her friend one last chance to find the answers—but on her own turf and following her own rules. Rule number one: no unsolicited contact.
When they’d returned to a silent flat and seen the door to Rand’s bedroom was closed, they had assumed he was still resting and set to work as quietly as possible. As it was, after his nap, he’d gone for a walk around the neighborhood himself when Margot hadn’t come back yet, restless and hoping he’d run into her. The cemetery had been his first stop, but they’d long since left it.
While Rand hotly debated Chloé’s methodologies, Margot rocked on her stool and recited:
“A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.”
On the last line, she threw her head back with a wild smile. Rand got to her before Chloé, swiftly wrapping his arms to hold her steady.
“Margot, darling, I don’t understand. What have you done to her?”
“Do you have anything to drink, s’il vous plaît?”
In stern silence, Rand wrapped an arm beneath Margot’s armpits and hooked another under her knees to hoist her upstairs to the living room. Delicately placing her on the sofa, he went to the kitchen and returned to hand both women a glass of red wine. A few sips helped to ease Margot from her catatonic state, and on seeing the way her flatmate frowned at her friend, standing beside her at the ready to show her the door, she stood and walked to them on her own power to explain.
“Rand, I know this sounds insane, and I have my doubts too, but we need to give her benefit of another. We have to—”
“Why the urgency with this?” Rand still looked at Chloé. “She’s been making progress and needs to overcome all this in good time. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
“But it must,” Chloé said. “This night.” She cocked her head at him. “We lament how people sometimes expire so unexpectedly. ‘Before their time,’ we’ll say. Yet when two souls are connected—living in different times, yet at the same time—are they born together in their separate lifetimes? Then what do you suppose happens when one of them dies? Does the other as well? Are their life spans the same, or do their years expand and contract within each other’s? I don’t know, do you?”
; “Outrageous. I’ll sooner have you leave than upset her with this New Age drivel.”
“And close me out like Gwen?”
“What?” Rand and Margot asked in unison as their faces snapped toward her.
“I understand you’ve been acquainted with la Dame Grise, no? Lady Grey.”
“Not personally, no,” Rand said, his lips in a taut line.
Chloé smiled. “Are you certain? Perhaps she’s right here.” She rolled her wrist toward Margot with elegance.
“What?” they again exclaimed. Margot sidestepped a few inches closer to Rand, commensurately farther from Chloé.
“What have you told her about Gwen, Margot?”
“Nothing! That you were dating, but—”
“You didn’t need to say anything,” Chloé said. “She came to me.”
Margot edged back toward the sofa. Rand’s fists tightened as he glared and mechanically followed to sit beside her.
Chloé sat in the chair across the room, gripping its arms with whitened knuckles. “There was a time when I phoned you, Margot, about arranging a time to meet for our first project. You were indisposed—in the bath—and Gwen answered your mobile, you see.”
“Bitch,” Margot whispered. She looked at Rand. “Well, why would she do that?”
“Damned if I know,” he replied. “She was probably concerned about you. I told you she was.”
“Gwen didn’t explain to me why, just that she was answering on your behalf. I sensed something in her voice and asked if I might quickly drop off some course materials for you. I was only ten minutes away.”
And so, Gwen had allegedly given her Rand’s address and met her at the main door to the building, though didn’t let her past the ground-floor foyer. It had been enough of an entry for Chloé to attain a strong feeling for the space, however; she’d shivered and commented on “these musty haunted houses,” and Gwen had been quick to pick up on it.
“How do you mean?” she’d asked, yet Chloé simply shrugged with a casual smile.
“I then searched through my bag, realizing I’d foolishly brought the wrong papers,” Chloé said. “I begged her not to tell you I’d come, that my error would embarrass me too much, and I would instead try calling you later.”
Another day when Chloé had called, Gwen answered again. Like déjà-vu, Margot was in the bathtub, so Chloé had made another excuse for dropping by. Gwen let her into the unit that time.
“She was worried about you, as was I,” Chloé told Margot. “She wondered if I might know what to do. She’d never met you before, so felt knocking at the door would be inappropriate.”
Because answering my phone isn’t.
Chloé had therefore crept toward the bathroom door herself and listened to Margot churning the waters and muttering curious things. She’d then made her way back up the hall toward Gwen, stopping at Rand’s bedroom door to rest her hand on the molding and briefly peer inside.
“She’s fine,” Chloé told her, though had clearly been distracted by something she’d sensed within the room. “We’re preparing a presentation for class, and she’s reciting.”
Gwen hadn’t bought the flippancy. “What was that look for?”
“Pardon?”
“What do you see in there?”
“Rien du tout. Nothing.”
“No,” Gwen had said, grabbing Chloé by the wrist. “Please tell me. Do you see something, too?”
In this gesture, Chloé had seen what she’d been so sure she’d heard on the phone the first time: desperation. Gauging Gwen carefully, she confessed that she had felt something, always could in certain places.
Rand shook his head. “How dare you take advantage of her. She was in a real state.”
Margot looked at him with a question at her lips but swallowed it.
Chloé eyed her. “You see now why it’s something I can’t explain to people.” To Rand she said, “It wasn’t my intention to exploit Gwen’s frailty, but I had to gain Margot’s trust. And not even I realized what value Gwen could provide, what it was that surely drew me to her in the first place. It was her terror that seemed to compel me then.”
Rand narrowed one eye with a faint smirk as he nodded, though Margot couldn’t decipher what he appeared to comprehend in Chloé’s words. The lowered shades rustled and scraped against the open windows.
“We went for coffee just around the block,” Chloé went on, “to talk about it further. She was clearly distressed and needed someone to listen, someone objective who wouldn’t judge her. That was when Gwen told me what Rand saw in his bedroom.”
“What Rand saw?” Margot asked. “You mean her.”
“No.”
Margot looked at him again. “Why does Gwen lie like that? About me, you.”
He sat silently, staring at the floor.
“I mean, Rand? Can you believe this?”
“I think he can.” Chloé looked to him with frozen eyes. He lifted his face to meet them, his own appearing hardened to glass.
“Rand?” Margot shoved her face into his line of sight. “Look at me.”
He did. Eventually.
“Does Gwen have a problem you haven’t told me about? Has she…” Margot’s gaze darted around the room as conclusions came to her. “Has she been going through the same thing I have? The visions, the depression, to the point of lying to cover it—” She couldn’t stomach his expression, its sorrow, its…
Humiliation?
Her mind shifted tack. “You are the one who saw it.”
Rand’s cheeks were ablaze as his eyes looked back toward the carpeting.
Chloé spoke in his silence. “I think he’s embarrassed to have you know, Margot. I think he would have told you otherwise.”
Margot kept shaking her head. “That’s why you wanted to talk about… Well, needless to say, it was enough to scare the crap out of Gwen, wasn’t it? So it really is why she wouldn’t stay here anymore.”
“That,” Rand began, his finger seeming to excavate his broken voice from his knee, “and that I won’t leave.” His nail scraped more fervently, unearthing more words. “That I don’t stay in spite of her but because of her.”
“Who, Gwen?” Margot asked.
“Rand,” Chloé said, “it isn’t her. You must know that.”
He sank his face into his hands as Margot marveled over the many and various “hers” surrounding him in his life, all so dramatic in their own way and feeding on his kind heart.
If it isn’t me, it’s Gwen, and before either of us, it was… “He thinks it’s his sister, doesn’t he?” she asked Chloé.
Rand didn’t emit a sound, but Margot could see his compressed lips tremble. She laid her hand against his spine to feel his muscles shudder there as well.
Chloé merely repeated, “It isn’t her.”
Margot tasted the salty tang of a tear that had dripped to her lips. “Well. It isn’t me either.”
Tick-tick-tick… The hands regulate my heartbeat. They measure out time in unison as it also appears to stand still, if not wind back to when both our hearts allowed themselves to rest, to skip beats when also pulsing for another’s touch.
Lips brush my forehead and move down the bridge of my nose in slow succession until…
“How can you be so certain?” Chloé asked. “This presence is attached to you, and I feel your connection to this place.”
“Because Rand saw her before I even came here,” Margot said. “And I’ve seen her! Through a window from another room. She’s not attached to me.” When Chloé knit her brows, Margot clapped a single note of rejoice as she said it again. “She’s not attached to me!”
Rand looked up in confusion.
“It isn’t me, Rand. It’s this house. Lady Grey is Charlotte. She may have sent me a sign before I came here because she knew I was coming. Maybe she was trying to warn me away or something, but I did come here, and that’s when the shit really hit the fan.” Seeing his expression didn’t break, she went on. “It’s exactly
what you accused Chloé of, of taking advantage of Gwen when she was vulnerable. I’ve never been more vulnerable in my life than this year, when I lost sight of what I want and whether I can even do anything about it.” She looked at Chloé. “If there’s a ghost in this house, it’s tapped into my weakness and become stronger for it.”
“Have you met with Gwen since?” Rand spoke up, directing his stony inquiry at Chloé.
Margot couldn’t follow his thought process but imagined he might be eager for any sort of update on his estranged girlfriend, if perhaps Chloé had seen her more recently than he had.
“A couple times more, when Margot was at class,” she answered. “She felt better, I think, after speaking about it all, and decided that going forward it needed to be sorted with you, Rand.” Flickering a glance at Margot, she added, “Just you.”
“What’s that look?” Margot asked.
“She doesn’t hate you, you know, for sharing Rand’s attentions. She knows it’s only temporary and soon you’ll return home.”
Margot felt herself flush. And then what, they’ll get back together? Their break is only as temporary as my visa?
Rand remained quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “My, she confided a lot in you. Didn’t she.”
“It’s what women will do when pushed to a limit. It didn’t take long for Margot to confide either.”
The heat in Margot’s cheeks and chest deepened. “You’re rather charismatic. No doubt Gwen felt so, too.”
Chloé’s upper lip twisted into a sneer as she inspected her nails, though a tremor in her fingers betrayed her cool composure. “Eh, well. I don’t suppose so, but you’re kind to say it.”
Margot wasn’t certain she’d intended it as the compliment it was taken for, but she let it go and concentrated instead on the window as a curling eye floater drifted across it.
“How does she do it, then?” she asked herself.
“Pardon?”
“How does Charlotte take possession of me like that, showing me her world through the mirror… And that day I had my eye exam…I was on the sidewalk, not even in the house, but it was like I was moving through her life in a completely alternate dimension.” Her voice trailed off, but the others didn’t speak. “That’s what I saw. That is what I saw just now, in the mirror. I climbed the same staircase, and those shapes I saw in the mews, it was the bedroom furniture.”