by Lily Silver
“No, my love. No, don’t touch it.” He was bending over her, dressed in his beautiful clothing. The rich brocade he always wore for the nobles when he sang for them. He was holding her across his lap, and she was bleeding all over his fine suit of clothing.
The screeching voice in the background was familiar to her. She recognized it.
“You’re leaving me? You’re running away, after all I did for you? You ungrateful bitch. You whore . . .”
Marcie--Lady Marcella. She was shouting, accusing, calling Jessie horrible names. “Whore. You stole him from me. You bitch. You’ll never get to Paris. He was mine. He was brought here for my pleasure; he’s my troubadour, my consort. You whore, you stole him from me. You will not marry him--do you hear me--bitch--you’ll die first.”
Jessie was dying, gasping through the searing agony, struggling for each breath. Jessie’s chest was wet. She could feel the odd wetness seeping through her layers of clothing as the fabric beneath her hand turned crimson in a deadly bloom.
And he was holding her across his legs, holding her and weeping. Her troubadour was weeping over her, begging her to hold on, to not leave him. Another man knelt beside him and pulled the sharp thing from her chest. Oh, the relief, the searing pain eased just a little. Not much but it was enough, enough to let her breath a little more . . .
“I’ll always love you.” He was saying through his tears. Her Lex, her troubadour. “I’ll find you, I swear it. I’ll find you. If it takes forever, my soul will find yours.”
His face was fading. She could still feel his arms about her, she could still hear his sensual voice, but it was as if from a great distance. His face was hidden behind a dark veil. She could just make out his features beyond it.
If only someone would remove the heavy black veil from her face . . .
If only . . . she gasped and choked. Her breathing had become wet, rasping gurgles. The air was thicker, fluid, like water filling her lungs, drowning her . . .
Her name was Julianna. She gasped and tried to say his name.
“. . . . G-gas--Gaston . . .” She wheezed and then darkness surrounded her.
Gaston Devereaux. That was his name; her troubadour. All the ladies loved him. He had a way with the women of the court, a kind of magic that drew women to him when he sang. And he loved her; Julianna. Handmaiden, Lady-in-Waiting to the great house of Laurent. The singer could have any woman he wanted, and he wanted Julianna to be his wife. He wanted her . . .
And the Lady Marcella wanted him.
Chapter Twenty Six
“Gaston?” Jessie was speaking to him in perfect French. “M’aider, veuillez . . . Gaston . . . Ne me laissez pas.”
Lex hugged Jessie as she continued to plead in French. He understood her cries. Help me, please. Don’t leave me.
“I’m here, Jessie.” He whispered as he stood at the end of the exam table and held her limp body against him. He brushed a kiss across her brow and held her head cradled in his hand. His shouts brought a nurse, who checked her pulse and looked into her eyes and then left the room again to find a doctor. That was several moments ago. Apparently actual doctors were in short supply here at the mental hospital.
Jessie kept speaking in French. Lex answered her in kind and she quieted in his arms. She kept calling him by another name. Gaston. A name he remembered from long ago. It was his name in that other life, the one that had been stolen from them centuries ago. He couldn’t remember Jessie’s name in that past life or he would use it. He only recalled her face, her lovely face, and the unspeakable horror of her dying in his arms.
She stirred suddenly. It seemed like ages but her odd little collapse had to have been mere moments in real time. Jessie struggled in his arms and opened her eyes.
“Gaston.” She murmured in a perfect French accent. Her lovely green eyes opened, fixed on him for several moments and then she said it. His name. “Lex.”
“Lex!” Jessie gasped, her heart soaring as she realized she was still in his arms. She died in his arms as Julianna and she awakened in his arms again as Jessie.
A physician came in, followed by a nurse. “Ms. Kelly? I was told you had some kind seizure.” He moved in, as if to separate her from Lex as he tried to bodily insert himself between them.
“No. I’m fine.” Jessie replied, determined not to be manhandled by this stranger, despite his medical training. “I just had a panic attack. After all, my mother shot my father and when I came to visit her today she tried to stab me.”
The doctor stopped trying to come between her and Lex. He stepped back, as if suddenly remembering she was not one of his inmates here. He pushed his glasses up and assessed her silently. “Yes. Ms. Kelly, my apologies for the incident. Your mother was just transferred here from the Eau Claire jail last night. I didn’t realize she was deliberately dangerous. I was told the shooting was an accident.”
“By who?” Jessie asked. She sucked in her breath and gripped Lex by the biceps as she hopped down from the exam table. She could just guess who he would say.
The doctor, honestly Jessie didn’t care enough to learn his name, stepped back, as if sensing the anger rising in her. “The guards at the jail, for one, and your sister called to talk to me yesterday as well, before the transfer.”
“My sister has an agenda.” Jessie informed him as she headed for the door. “My father covered up my mother’s mental illness for the whole of my life and it cost him his. My sister is doing the same thing. She doesn’t believe psychiatrists are real doctors. Neither did my father. So, go ahead, let her snowball you into believing my mother didn’t mean to hurt my father. Or you can read the statement I plan to make to the police about this incident. She tried to kill me. She intended to kill me. It wasn’t an accident.”
“I realize that.” The doctor put his hand up in protest. “Ms. Kelly, we aren’t trying to cover this up, I promise. I just wanted to make certain you aren’t seriously harmed. Any time a patient physically assaults a member of the staff, another patient, or a visitor we have to make out an incident report. The attendants saw what happened. Your mother has been sedated and she is in restraints.”
Jack chose this moment to enter the small exam room off the nurse’s station. “Hey, Jessie. We need to blow this pop stand if we’re going to make the flight to LAX from St. Paul. It’s an hour and a half drive to St. Paul from here.”
“Young man, we were discussing your mother’s condition.”
“Yeah?” Jack scowled at the doctor. “Well, excuse me if I want to get my sister away before she becomes the second family member to be murdered by Mommy Dearest.”
Only Jessie could understand his callousness. It was a defense mechanism she shared with him, a way to cope with a woman whose love and approval was forever withheld and lost behind the psychosis that drove her mind. Jessie, too, had learned to harden her heart as a means of survival.
Jack held her gaze for a long, painful moment. His eyes said it all. He loved Jessie and he wanted to leave this place before he was forced to face the woman who had rejected them long ago for a second time in one day. “Let’s go.” The agony in Jack’s voice was like sandpaper rubbing against her heart.
“What did she say to you?” Jessie asked, stepping forward to touch her brother’s arm. “When you saw her, what did mother say to you?” Whatever it was, Jessie knew it had hurt him horribly.
Jack swallowed hard. He seemed to have trouble speaking the words that were all too familiar to them. “She said--“ He stopped, choking a little, and then he finished the sentence. “She said, ‘I wish I never had any goddamned kids.’ That’s what she said when I told her I was finished with her and her cruel games.”
“She’s a sick woman.” The doctor told them, parroting words their father might have said, if he were in the room. “She doesn’t mean it.”
She doesn’t mean it. She can’t help it. She doesn’t realize what she’s doing.
All their lives, Jack, Jessie and Michelle had been told that by th
eir well meaning father. When their mother turned on them, shouting threats of suicide or simply telling them they were unwanted and unloved-- their father made excuses. It was as if he somehow believed telling eight year olds that their mother didn’t mean all the nasty-wicked things she said to hurt them would make a difference.
Dad didn’t get it. Neither did this doctor. It didn’t matter if she meant it in her heart or not. The pain they felt was the same. A lifetime of pain that they couldn’t ignore or deny; it couldn’t be fixed with a band-aid or a trite, well-meaning phrase.
Yes, their mother was obviously very disturbed in her mind. Hopefully, she was in a place where she could finally get the help she needed. But the outcome was out of their control. Marcie would either get better with treatment or she would continue to live in her hate-filled, paranoid, vindictive world. Either way, she would do it without them.
Jessie looped her arm through Jack’s. She held her hand out to Lex, who came to stand at her side as his hand slid over hers, enveloping it.
“Oh, she means it, Doctor.” Jessie said firmly. “That’s the problem between us, you see. She means it, because she’s been telling us that same thing all of our lives. Now that we’ve just buried our father, we’re finished taking anymore of her abuse. If she comes to her senses and wants to apologize, then we’ll give her the opportunity. Until then, we’re finished here.”
The limo drive to the St. Paul airport was filled with silence. Jack retreated within, and Steve played a game on his iPod. Jessie sat beside Lex with her head on his shoulder. They had much to discuss, but not here, with Jack and Steve present.
Lex was quiet. He seemed to realize that conversation was not required between them.
The car ride down Highway 29 to the Twin Cities was somber as the day slumped into twilight. Jessie thought about her odd experience and tried to reconcile the past with Lady Marcella with the present with Marcie Kelly. Same woman in both worlds. Scary. This time, she wasn’t Jessie’s mistress, she was her mother. In both lives the woman exacted an oppressive power over Jessie. In the old one it was a legal power, in this one it was a much stronger emotional power. And in both times the woman wanted to kill her.
She snuggled closer to Lex, letting her head nestle just below his chin. “How’s your arm?”
He shrugged his shoulders and tightened both arms about her. “Hurts. It’ll be fine. I’ll have my doctor check it out when we get back to L.A.” He sighed. “A toothbrush?”
Jessie lifted her head to gaze up at him. She could just barely make out his face in the lowering light. Her mother almost killed her--again. This time, Lex intervened. Her mom could have killed him had she been able to pierce his heart. Jessie reached up to cup his cheek in her palm. “I don’t want to go to L.A.” She whispered, stroking his face.
“Where do you want to go, Sweetheart?”
“To Paris.” Jessie smiled at him. “I want to fly to Paris tonight and be married.”
“Just like we planned a few hundred years ago?” He had a smile in his voice.
“Yes, just like we planned.”
His lips found hers, and their souls were finally reunited.
Epilogue
Four Months Later:
Jessie walked through the fairway holding hands with both of her nephews as they headed for the next ride at Disneyland Paris. Her sister and brother-in-law were walking behind them, chatting happily with Lex’s parents. After being married in Paris, Jessie and the guys returned to LA to finish the Halloween shoot for MTV. Once that was finished she returned to Paris with Lex and they spent a leisurely month long honeymoon there.
Jessie and Lex decided to bring their families to Paris for a vacation to Disneyland for a Christmas present. Steve was with them, and so was Jack. Jack had just finished two months in rehab and was clean and free of drugs for the first time in years.
It was a grudging peace between Jessie, Jack and Michelle. Michelle finally accepted Lex into the family as she realized he was not the spawn of the devil her religious associates made him out to be. Jessie was relieved. She didn’t intend to court her sister’s favor but hoped they could have a tenuous semblance of family and perhaps repair the damage inflicted by the prior generation for the sake of the upcoming one.
Their mother faced the prospect of life in prison should she ever be deemed mentally fit to stand trial for manslaughter. At this point, it seemed doubtful the woman would ever be able to leave the state mental hospital where she had been committed to face the charges against her. She retreated completely into a world of fantasy.
At Lex’s insistence, Jessie had been examined by three different heart specialists in Paris. All concurred in their diagnosis; she did not have the heart defect previously discovered in L.A. last summer. Lex was not surprised. He believed by facing the traumatic event of her past life, facing the horror of her death and the betrayal of the woman who had inflicted pain in the past and the present one, Jessie had been physically healed. He showed her report after report of the same occurrence; people facing the trauma of a past life and encountering spontaneous healing of a physical ailment in this one, or rather ‘a scar on the soul from a past life that manifests in body of this life’ as he put it. Jessie wasn’t convinced of his interpretation of the situation, but her heart condition seemed to have miraculously disappeared in the months since she re-lived her death in Normandy centuries ago.
Jessie was just happy to be married to the man of her dreams, the man who recognized her soul from another life and who had patiently wooed her in this one.
Heartless was scheduled for a national tour in January. Jessie was regretting it as it would mean leaving the new home Lex had purchased for them outside of Paris, a 18th century villa complete with vineyards that they intended to cultivate again. At the same time, she was looking forward to another exciting concert tour, because this time Lex was coming with her.
Once the Heartless tour was over Lex and Jessie planned to return to their perfect little villa in France. Lex would write mystery novels and she would compose songs for the band’s next album as they continued the love affair that began nine hundred years earlier. Lex was right, they were two halves of the same soul, and their souls had been destined for a reunion.
The End
END NOTES:
The author would like to thank the following people for helping make this story possible:
John Stuttgen, lead guitarist and singer of Scofflaw. John was available to answer questions and offer advice regarding the Rock music industry for this book.
Alisha, criminal psychology researcher, for advice on the possible legal and healthcare ramifications of a suicide attempt that results in accidental injury or death of another.
M.G. Murphy, Editor, for help with the editing and proofing process. M.G. you are awesome!
Author’s Note: Many of the scenes in this story depicting emotional blackmail and threats by a mentally ill loved one are not contrived. They are based on actual events.
Living with a person who suffers extremes in behavior due to mental illness can be an ongoing nightmare. Health care professionals and public sentiment often expect family members to excuse the harmful behaviors directed at them because the afflicted person ‘cannot help it’. Thus, the family member is often left without an adequate support system--they are left to suffer alone. Yet studies show that enduring abusive behavior over a long period of time is not healthy for any individual. The constant stress of coping with mental illness, of being subjected to ongoing verbal and emotional abuse, manipulation and threats of suicide can take a heavy toll on the well family member. Depression, withdrawal from society and substance abuse are common coping mechanisms.
If you or someone you know is suffering in silence like main characters in this story, please find a qualified therapist to help you through your pain. Growing up with a mentally unstable parent is the same as growing up with a parent who is an alcoholic. The trauma of either can be lifelong and debilitating for surv
ivors, including mild forms of PTSD. Talking to a qualified health care professional is a step toward healing such childhood wounds. Finding a support group is also a step toward healing and hope.
If you or someone you know is in an adult relationship with someone like Jessie’s mom, please seek help. Do not try to deal with it alone. Spousal and partner abuse is a silent crime that often is hidden by afflicted family members. Manipulation, threats of suicide or abandonment and emotional blackmail are abusive behaviors.
Recommended books:
Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet T. Woititz,
Stop Walking on Eggshells, Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Love Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger
About the Author
Lily Silver lives in the Northwoods of Eastern Wisconsin, on the shores of Green Bay. She lives in a lovely old Victorian house with plenty of character with her husband, her German Shepherd and their three cats. Lily studied history at UW-Green Bay and has two degrees in that discipline. She enjoys writing historical romances with paranormal themes. If you enjoyed this book, send her an email. She loves to hear from readers.
Contact Lily Silver through her website:
http://lilysilver.webs.com
Free Serialized Romance at Lily’s website. The Gypsy’s Curse, bi-weekly excerpts.
Lily’s Historical Romance Blog:
http://romancinghistorylove.blogspot.com