“She always protected me from Sienna. Sometimes she would lock or unlock doors so I could hide away. She made Sienna have bad dreams. Once she made the carpet curl at the top of the stairs and Sienna fell right when she had raised her hand to hit me,” Aimee said.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked. It was too dark. I could barely see her face and our words were hushed and more momentous somehow because of my vision being dulled by the late evening velvet of the New Orleans night around us.
“Grandmere said papa wouldn’t understand. She said not everyone can hear and feel Belle Aimée the way I can,” Aimee explained.
“Is she here with us now?” I asked. Goose flesh had risen on my skin. I thought of the purple room and the doll and the painting that now sat covered in a stained drop cloth in my studio.
“Belle Aimée is grand mere and grand mere is Belle Aimée,” Aimee said. I felt her Gallic shrug nudge me though I couldn’t see her movements. “She’s sleeping now. She said I’m safe and she’s very tired.”
Aimee laid her head on my shoulder. I draped my arm around her to pull her close.
Was I prepared to believe that the house had been responsible for what I’d seen and felt in the purple room? Did the spirit of Aimee’s great-great grandmother live on in the old house’s walls and had she inspired my painting, teasing and taunting and giving me nightmares until I was strong enough to reclaim what I’d lost?
The creak of the swing beneath us and the sound of the house sighing as its old boards cooled off from a hot summer day made me think it was possible. After what I’d been through, I had to believe anything was possible, even a fairytale ending for a story filled with shadows.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Belle Aimée as I held my step daughter close.
***
From the window, Jonathan La Croix watched his wife and his daughter as they sat together on the swing. It was well past Aimee’s bedtime, but the poignant reunion took precedence. His heart swelled as Chloe leaned down to press a kiss to Aimee’s forehead.
Later, he would hold Chloe and he and his wife would sleep together again, all his long lonely nights alone—wondering, aching, tormented with guilt and loss—forgotten.
Somewhere in the house a floorboard settled with a creak and a sigh and Jonathan smiled.
THE END
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IMPRINT: e-Book Fast Fiction
ISBN: 9781488740282
TITLE: LOST IN ME
First Australian Publication 2014
Copyright © 2014 Barbara J. Hancock
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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