I often thought about her devotion to Mr. Brighton and how it must have saved her. When he died, she grieved, but she hadn’t been empty. She was full to the brim with happy memories and pleasant mementos. Mr. Brighton had watched over her even after he was gone. Their love had been a lasting, tangible wall between her and Alexander Jericho.
He hadn’t been able to claim her completely because her heart had been completely claimed by a pilot with a ready smile and a swaggering walk, years before.
When I went back to the front room, the postman stood by the window. He watched as Michael climbed the hill toward the inn.
“They say this inn is haunted. Have you ever seen a ghost?” the man asked with crinkles around his eyes.
I had seen and felt so many things. I didn’t know how to reply. I only handed him the violin and tried to smile. My lips curved upward easier than I thought they would. I wasn’t haunted anymore.
A bandage high on the back of my neck covered where my tattoo was gradually being erased by laser treatments my parents had offered to finance. I was letting go. One step at a time. And the people who loved me were happy to help once I’d reached out to them.
Michael came in the door of Stonebridge, easily holding its solid weight.
The postman nodded at Michael as he passed. He was probably already focusing on the next pickup, the next delivery. I watched as the violin was carried away.
They lost Tristan at sea. Truth was, none of us had ever actually had him.
Michael placed his hand on my back when I joined him at the door. Calm and easy. Everything with Michael was like that. As easy as breathing or kissing in the rain. We watched the postman take the steps, his movements quickening with every riser. A mail truck waited at the curb. He put the old thousand-dollar violin in the backseat before he sank behind the wheel. The last I’d seen, the Zhu had been beginning to warp. When and if Tristan’s parents opened the case, they would find a violin that looked as if it had been drowned at the bottom of the sea.
I didn’t regret the damage. It seemed fitting. Tristan wouldn’t have wanted us to be forgotten, and our relationship had been so like the warped Zhu—beautiful, amazing, but damaged beyond repair.
Gravel spun beneath the tires as the truck with its precious cargo drove away.
I turned and went back to the music room. I wasn’t afraid of the piano anymore. I played it often. Sometimes music communicates more thoroughly than words. I sat down on the shiny bench. I felt Michael come to stand in the doorway. From the corner of my eye, I noticed him lean against its frame—easy, relaxed, there in ways that Tristan had never been. Down to earth. Real.
I began to play a song I’d composed in my head over the summer without even touching an ivory key. My instrument had spoken to me even when I had stopped speaking to it. The notes began tentatively, then crested to stormy crescendos before gentling again in progressive movements of sound that healed and empowered.
I played for myself, for Michael and even for the Tristan who had never been. The beautiful, poetic boy I’d created in my head when the violent, obsessive boy became too much for me to face. The Tristan I had loved and lost was a figment of my imagination, but he still inspired my song.
When the tide receded, maybe Michael and I would walk to the jetty where our futures weren’t written on the sand, but, rather, in the clasp of our hands. I would tell him about a girl who had loved an imaginary boy. And, later, I would tell my parents everything.
I wasn’t afraid of disrupting their peaceful lives anymore. They loved me. And love makes all the difference.
…
I walked upstairs later that afternoon. The climb was part of the decision, every step considered and executed. One after another. I didn’t have an audience. No one would know if I gave up and turned around.
No one except me.
I didn’t turn around.
Maybe I even enjoyed the climb.
The hallways of Stonebridge gleamed. I’d dusted and vacuumed and polished every inch, every corner. The carpet runners were smooth. The wood gleamed. There was hardly a mote to be seen in the rays of the setting sun that illuminated my path.
Like Michael, I’d come to love the old place. We’d reclaimed it from its dark past.
We had cleaned everything suspicious from Stonebridge. We’d burned the masks in a midnight bonfire on the beach. Mrs. Brighton never questioned the missing portraits. When she was able to climb the stairs, she never mentioned the empty hall where the masks used to hang.
Now the halls were filled with Mrs. B’s treasures. Musical instruments. Photographs of her travels framed on the walls.
We’d mailed the Vodou book to Hannah for safe keeping. She understood supernatural secrets we would never understand. And she treated them with the reverence and care they deserved. Vodou wasn’t evil, but a corrupt man had twisted it to his dark purpose. I trusted the book with Hannah. She was powerful, but she was also careful.
I paused on the second floor at the master bedroom. I’d helped Mrs. B. move her things back to her old room. It was a sunny room overlooking the beach. I looked in the open door at the photograph of Alfred Brighton on the table beside the bed.
Sometimes “I’ll love you forever” is a powerful promise full of grace and beauty.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes it’s a desperate grab at a transient moment of belonging. Tristan had never been strong enough or fast enough or smart enough for his parents. I understood how that had shaped him now. His urgency. His impatience. His need for me to prove unending love and devotion.
I moved on. When I came to the spiral stair that wound up to the east turret, I remembered seeing Michael for the first time on the landing illuminated by lightning. The door opened easily for me now. I crossed the room. Opened the wardrobe. Took the package to the bed.
My fingers were healed, but they shook. I had made it to this moment, but I was afraid.
The brown paper came free. I folded back Tristan’s “Lydia Li.”
The note that fell from the folds of paper wasn’t entirely unexpected. I opened it with a flutter in my heart both familiar and new because it was gentler, tempered by time, but also deeper somehow because I recognized more time would pass, and the flutter would eventually become nothing but a memory. Tristan, the guy who always quoted someone else’s words, had written his own words on the page this time.
Dear Zhu,
The world spins too slowly for me. I didn’t want to leave you. Not for a second or an hour, much less days, weeks, a whole summer apart. I’m sending you the book so you’ll remember our promise. Remember. Always.
For a brief second, a pang tightened my chest because he’d signed it “Your Shanbo” instead of Tristan. I somehow wanted to see the bold scrawl of his real signature one last time. But then I allowed that pang to ease. I let go of the desperate need to find him in the dark that he’d always inspired in me even before he was gone. He’d promised me forever, and he’d meant that promise even though forever wasn’t in his power to give. Even though he had trouble dealing with the minute to minute of everyday life.
I hoped all the darkness I’d defeated at Stonebridge meant that I would have dealt with Tristan’s darkness, too. My breath might catch at the way he’d pressed his pen so deeply into the paper to write “Always,” but I’d learned to face my fears this summer. I’d learned to push back.
I carefully folded the note closed, placed it on the bed, and picked up the book I’d been afraid to see. It was familiar, but strange. Different seen though eyes that had widened and changed. Tristan’s difficult relationship with his parents didn’t excuse how he’d been with me and others like Brad. There was never an excuse to hurt, to threaten.
It would have been enough to open the package. To let the ghost of Tristan free to dissipate into the reality of a world without him. Time marched on. But I paged through it anyway. I read the story of The Butterfly Lovers again. Tristan had longed to be loved with a need so
bottomless it made us all hunger along with him. And how what he’d really needed was to be free—free from impossible expectations and demands he could never meet no matter how perfect or brilliant he became. His violin, Shakespeare, The Butterfly Lovers had all been his way out. He’d wanted to escape. The problem was he’d wanted to take me with him whether I wanted to go or not.
I didn’t need to be Zhu nearly as much as he needed to be Shanbo. I was okay with myself, my family, my life. I was okay with me.
The warmth of finding someone who was okay with me, too, was like a hug that never left me. Michael’s sunshine would go with me to Brice Conservatory. He didn’t want to control my future. He was just happy to be a part of it. And I would be glad to be a part of his, too. I liked that we just were without any pressure of having to give up ourselves for each other. We both had school. Dreams of music and engineering to follow. But we had each other now, too, and Brice was only an hour away from Stonebridge. There would be weekends, holiday breaks, and long, sunny summers to look forward to, and the pleasure of thrills that came with no danger at all.
Where we choose to be matters as well as whom we choose to be with.
When I came to the last page, the elaborate illustration of the lovers turned to blue butterflies rose from the book as if to take to the air. The delicate paper wings trembled beneath my sigh as I finally said, “Goodbye.”
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About the Author
Barbara J. Hancock lives in a cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her many rescued pets and the guy who lured her into the wilderness with promises of lots of peace and quiet for writing. To this day, the Appalachian wildwood is the best gift she’s ever been given. Her favorite pastime (besides animal rescue) is bringing darkly romantic stories to life by firefly light.
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