by Keary Taylor
She doesn’t say anything else. She flips more pages, showing me more photographs.
The two of them at dinner. Jack lying on a couch. A peaceful shot of Iona sleeping. A trip to Florida. Countless images that reflect a perfect and happy start to a lifelong relationship.
The fall pictures slip into summer, and eventually into spring. I remember Iona telling me their first official meeting happened on April Fool’s Day.
Something unsettling sinks into me as we work our way backwards in time over the last eight months. It takes me a few more dozen pictures to realize what it is.
I glance at Iona once more, taking in the bird thin arms, the stick skinny legs.
And I look at the woman posing with Jack in front of some spring tulips.
It’s Iona. But the woman in the pictures has been steadily gaining weight as we flip back in time. The woman in front of the tulips has curves. She has hips, an hourglass figure beneath that thin jacket.
They almost look like two completely different people.
I’d wager the Iona sitting beside me is at least thirty pounds smaller than the Iona in the pictures. The one in the pictures from last spring is stunning, amazingly attractive. The one sitting beside me is certainly beautiful, but not healthy looking.
I’ve seen grief change people physically, when they’re too weighed down to eat. But that isn’t what this is. She started losing weight before Jack died.
I look at Iona’s face again, and something disturbing settles into my stomach. She only smiles wistfully at the images. She doesn’t see anything wrong like I do. It’s as if she doesn’t see the physical change playing out in the images.
The page turns once again, and this time I find an image taken from what looks to be down the hall from a front door. Iona stands sheepishly inside, a faint smile on her lips. Jack smiles at her, his forearm braced in the doorway, the other hand on his hip.
Both of them are dripping wet.
“Our first date,” Iona says with a smile.
Chapter Fifteen
IONA
“Why are you acting like this is such a bad thing that Jack asked you out?” Viola teased as she helped put the finishing touches on my hair while I finished applying my lipstick. “Have you not looked at the man?”
“Looks aren’t everything, Vi,” I said, glaring at her in the mirror, even though a smile was cracking on my lips. “You realize you have this habit of only looking skin deep?”
“But when it’s beautiful skin…” she trails off, letting me out of the bathroom to go find my shoes.
I look at the clock and realize it’s already 6:57. I swear under my breath and search around my room. Finally, I find the pink pumps half under the dresser.
“Want me to go stay with Cressida tonight, just in case you need a little…privacy later on?”
I grab a book from the dresser and throw it at my baby sister, hitting her in the shoulder. She laughs as she tries to dance out of the way, too late. “You need to stop! I really will kick you out if you don’t let up! You know I’m not like that!”
Viola held her hands up in surrender, laughing hysterically. “Fine, I relent, I’ll stop!”
“Thank you,” I said, annoyed, but not too deeply. She is my baby sister, after all.
“I promise I really am looking for a place,” she said as she followed me to the front door. “I actually have an apartment I’m going to look at tomorrow. Maybe I won’t be on your couch forever.”
I smiled as I turned back to her, for just a second. “You’re welcome as long as you need.” I pressed a kiss to her cheek before she shooed me out the door.
The weather was just as beautiful and warm as the day before. I stepped out onto the sidewalk, not even a chill in the air as the sun began to lower below the horizon. I waited for the crosswalk to change to go, and walked in my lightweight white dress with a pink cardigan to match my heels.
Just as I stepped back onto the sidewalk, I spotted him down the block.
A smile immediately pulled his face into a brilliant wonder as his eyes met mine. And I couldn’t help but admire him right back. He wore a black suit, perfectly tailored to fit him, his hair just as flawless as it had been the last two times we’d crossed paths.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am to not look like a fool tonight,” he said with a smile as I finished my walk to the spot where I’d told him to meet me.
“You may still end up looking like a fool,” I told him. “But at least you won’t be on your own looking like one.”
“You can be a feisty one, Iona Faye,” Jack said, extending an arm for me. I smiled as I looped my arm through his.
We ended up walking just two blocks before Jack ushered me into a fancy restaurant where he’d made reservations.
Casual conversations were easy for the first thirty minutes, talking about family and work. Jack had been born and raised in Toronto, Canada. His father had been a founder of the psychology program at some university there. But Jack decided he wanted to forge his own path, his own way, and decided to go to New York University to study, instead. He’d gotten his masters degree in psychology, just like his father. He was an only child, and then he lost both of his parents just after he graduated, and now he lived here, in West Virginia, with his own practice.
Easy and casual.
“Now, tell me something true,” he said as we were nearly finished with our main course. “Something deep and real. We can talk all night about the surface stuff. But I guess I kind of like to jumpstart things whenever possible. Tell me something real, Iona Faye.”
I looked up from my plate, thrown off by his deep and thought-prying question. I wiped the corner of my mouth with a napkin before setting it back in my lap. “Something real. Like everything I’ve told you about myself tonight hasn’t been?”
Jack shook his head. “That’s not what I mean,” he said, his eyes growing sincere. “Facts are simple. I want to know something hard. Because you have captured me, Iona.”
His serious confession threw me all the more. But there was a depth to his expression that hooked me and didn’t let go.
So I took a moment, reaching deep inside me, looking for something hard and true.
“I feel like the clock is ticking,” I finally said to him, leaning forward, resting my chin on my hand folded over the other. “Like everyone is watching me, wondering what is taking so long.”
“So long to what?” Jack asked, leaning forward so our faces were only a foot apart.
“To find ‘the one.’ To settle down and get married. I feel like everyone thinks I’m so old now and that they all think I’m two seconds away from missing the train.”
“Why?” he asks.
I shrug, leaning back in my seat. “My sister got married when she was twenty. Her kids are already nine, six and almost one. All my friends from school are married too, with at least a couple of kids. And here I am.”
Jack studied me for a moment, his eyes boring into mine. And suddenly I’m sure I can’t do this. Get involved with someone who picks people apart for a living.
“Do you want to get married? Is that the life you really want for yourself?” he finally asked.
I didn’t answer right away. My eyes fell to my lap, searching for the answer. There’s the one I think I should give, the one everyone expects me to produce. And the one that’s buried deep down. And the one that meets the middle ground.
“Someday,” I say. “I think that urge is going to hit me sometime. But right now…”
“Right now, what?” he encourages.
“Right now I’m happy just being me,” I confess. “Right now I’m happy to have spontaneity spring up at any moment.”
A smile cracked on Jack’s face and I could just feel it, the energy building in the air around him.
“That’s the real and the hard,” he said as he reached into his pocket, producing a wallet. He laid down some money and stood, reaching for my hand.
“Are we done eating?
” I asked, thrown by his sudden move to depart.
“Unless you’re still hungry,” he said. There was a spark in his eye, begging me to go live up to that spontaneous desire I just confessed to.
A smile crossed my lips, and I finally laid my hand in his, letting him pull me up to my feet. Without looking back, he hauled us out of the restaurant.
“Where are we going?” I laughed as he started running down the road.
“If I told you, it would ruin the surprise!” He laughed as we raced down the street.
Darkness had fully fallen on the night, but light from the businesses in the heart of town cast us in a dim glow. We raced past the ice cream parlor, alongside the library. Past my work. The sound of the train next to the river cut out into the night. And finally, we hit the far end of town, coming up to the intersection of Main and Alder Avenue.
A huge park sprawled out to the east, with a playground and a massive gazebo. Picnic benches sat along the pathway that meanders around the border. And here, at the edge, next to the road, there was a huge water fountain. A big round pool held a massive sculpture of a town founder with mountains sculpted around him, water cascading from them into the pool.
It’s an ugly sculpture, really.
“What are we doing?” I laughed, out of breath from our run through town. Concluding that this must have been his destination, I reached down and pulled my shoes off, my feet killing me from the dash on heels.
Jack reached into his pocket, and a moment later produced a small handful of change. He took a penny and placed it in my waiting palm. “Make a wish.”
I looked up into his face, and found excitement and wonder there. A smile crossed my face. Turning to the water, I closed my eyes for a moment.
I wished for something magical to happen that night.
Opening my eyes, I tossed my penny into the pool. I looked to my side to see Jack throw one in just a moment later.
“What did you wish for?” I teased him, taking one step closer.
“I’ll never tell.” He shook his head. Suddenly he reached out, grasping me around the waist and lifted me until my feet were touching the rim that ran around the edge of the pool. I wobbled, but he grasped my hand tightly so I wouldn’t fall.
“Tell me, Jack Caraway,” I said as I began walking the rim, Jack holding my hand. “What’s your true and dark and real?”
He looked up at me, the fun of the night growing heavy with my question of reflection. And the longer I looked at him, the heavier it grew.
“You told me about your future and your romantic life, so I guess here’s mine,” he said with a deep breath. “I’m a little afraid I might be cursed.”
My brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
He looked away, his expression growing distant. “I was engaged once,” he said. “Thought I knew exactly how the rest of my life was going to be, and it was a pretty damn perfect picture.”
“What happened?” I asked, my heart already breaking for him.
“She died,” he responded. “About a year and a half ago. We had been engaged for nearly a month.”
“Jack,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry. That’s so tragic.”
He shrugged and looked up at me. “Guess that’s all we can do when we think we’re cursed, right? Either accept it and be miserable, or look for a way to break it.”
There was a sudden glimmer in his eye, a mischievous flash. And suddenly he let go of my hand.
My footing immediately slipped, and one leg slid down and into the pool. With enough speed that I lost my balance and stumbled fully into the pool.
Immediately springing to my side, suddenly Jack was in the pool too, catching me before I fully tripped and immersed myself.
“You did that on purpose!” I bellowed, trying to get myself fully upright, my mouth wide with shock.
“A spontaneous slip of the hand!” he defended himself with a laugh, dodging out of the way as I sent a wave of water in his direction. Only he was the one to misstep this time, slipping on the slick tiles beneath our feet. He went slipping backward, falling completely into the water, a wave washing over his head.
Suddenly a hand wrapped around my ankle, pulling me, and instantly I was falling forward, landing right on top of Jack.
Sputtering and shivering, we half pulled each other up, half shoved and wrestled playfully.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he teased as he carefully helped me step over the wall and back out onto dry ground.
“You can pretend all you like,” I said, shaking my head, my wet and ruined hair sloshing trails of water all over the place. “But we all know that was every bit you.”
Jack squeezed my hand tight, pulling me closer to him. With his other hand, he reached up and tucked a wet strand of hair behind my ear. “Could you ever forgive me?” he asked quietly.
I looked into those gray eyes of his, searching for every intention there, and finding many things that pulled unexpected reactions from my body. The grip he had on my hand loosened and shifted to the small of my back. The fingertips at my ear slid down to my neck, and every nerve ending in my body sparked to life.
“I’ll think about it,” I breathed.
He leaned in just a little closer, and my eyes began to slide closed.
“I’ll walk you home,” he whispered instead. And my eyes flew open to see a soft smile on his lips.
He slipped his hand back into mine, and slowly, the conversation returned to light and easy, and we walked back to my apartment.
Chapter Sixteen
SULLY
“Here’s how this works.”
Iona’s eyes snap up to my face, the focus there taking a moment to return. She’s shaken, and I mean that literally. The hand that holds the pocket watch trembles.
“We are going to go into a quiet room,” I continue as I stand. Nervous energy is spiking in my blood and I’m too on edge to sit at the moment. “Sometimes the dead are overwhelmed by the world of the living, it’s best if we don’t over stimulate them.”
I crouch, swinging open the glass-faced door to the wood-burning fireplace. I grab some more wood, shoving it in. Ash falls to the hearth as I close the door once more. I stay down, crouched, my forearm resting against my knee. “I’ll take the personal item, all I need to do is touch and hold it. That opens the gate between me and the other side. As I told you, sometimes it takes some time to find them, especially depending on their willingness to communicate. Considering your…” I hesitate, “circumstances before he died, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Iona nods, and despite my stoking the fire, the temperature in the church dips.
It always does right before the gate is opened.
“Where is he going to be coming from?” Iona asks quietly. Fear has begun creeping into her eyes. Her skin is pale, she holds unnaturally still.
“They all say it is the same thing,” I explain as I stand. I tuck my hands into my pockets and walk to the window that looks out over the graveyard. “The afterlife looks just like our world. Everything is familiar to them, all the same landmarks, same buildings. Depending how strong their ties to individuals still living on the earth, they can still see us. Though…it’s hard to describe…but they’re separate. They say it feels different, disconnected from us. But they’re alone over there. The dead seem to each exist in their own world.”
“They don’t see each other?” Iona asks.
I shake my head.
“That’s awful,” Iona protests.
Once more, I shake my head. “None of them have seemed to mind. I think time doesn’t mean the same to them, so they don’t begin to feel lonely. But they do seem to be aware that they’re waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“None of us know,” I breathe, creating a foggy cloud on the window. “Judgment. To be reunited with loved ones. Something grand and epic. But they all say the same: they’re waiting for something.”
The silence in the room is deafening. For myself, t
his is the hardest part to swallow about death. Knowing there is some kind of afterlife, but even I only know so much about it. Every dead person I’ve spoken to tells the same tale. Even they don’t know what lies beyond limbo.
“The connection to the dead will stay stronger if you are touching me,” I continue. “You won’t be able to hear them, but I will relay everything said.”
I look over my shoulder. Iona stares at the floor, and nods her head. She’s still statue still, and looks as if she’s about to be sick.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask. “Sometimes it is better that we leave the gate shut.”
Anger flashes into her eyes and they flick upward to meet mine. “No,” she says with hardness. “I need this. I have to speak with him.”
We hold one another’s gaze for a long moment, and that feeling of wrongness builds in my chest. It tightens my throat. Clams my hands.
“Let’s get started, then,” I say. I cross the room, down the hall as Iona stands to follow me. I open the door, watching her as she follows, the golden pocket watch swinging through the air.
She steps into the dark room, standing awkwardly in a corner. I step inside, hesitating before closing the door.
“One more question,” I say, fighting the rising dread that swims in my blood. “How did he die?”
Iona’s eyes jump to mine once more, and something changes in her expression. “He was murdered.”
Chapter Seventeen
IONA
There’s been this look of dread and apprehension in Sully’s eyes since the moment he opened the church doors to find me. It’s been growing into something hard and cold moment by moment. But with my revelation, it solidifies into something heavy as the world.
“Sit down,” he says in something very close to a growl. He points to one of the two chairs set in the middle of the room.