by Jessie Olson
“I don’t remember,” she muttered a lie she knew he wouldn’t believe.
“It doesn’t matter,” he took the water glass and replaced it with a stemmed goblet. “That will make you feel better.”
Lizzie glanced at the clock noting the half hour before noon as she took a sip of red wine. She wondered if he was going to get her drunk to keep her there. Or if he was indulging her bad habit to win her favor.
“What do you want to know?” he moved to the other edge of the sofa. “I will be completely honest with you, Elizabeth. You can still leave me. At least give yourself the opportunity to know more than what Oliver told you or what you saw in a dream.”
“This isn’t about Oliver.”
“Yes, it is about Oliver,” Ben pulled the chair from behind the desk and placed it directly opposite her.
She took in a deep breath and let herself drink the entire glass of wine. His mood was better than it would have been had he not just come from a feeding. She saw the bright look in his eye and wondered if she had an endorphin rush. Was it simply a runner’s high or... she couldn’t bring herself to ask that question. It was difficult enough to form her mouth around the words pertaining to Lily. “You were Mr. Chester.”
“It was said I was Charlotte’s brother.”
“Paying flattering attention to Harriet Fulton?” Lizzie felt a surge of protectiveness over the glassy eyed portrait.
Ben looked toward the window briefly, emitting an irreverent laugh. “I suppose you could call it that,” the green slowly hardened to the gray.
“Why?”
“It was all part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
“The Fultons were already a distinguished family of good fortune when I was a farmer in Lincoln. They never gave up their loyalty to the British. Not during the Revolution and not even when there was another war forty years later. Only by that point, they had more money and more local authority. You know their history. I don’t need to tell you all the details.”
Lizzie made her breaths quiet and calm. None of these details were startling to her, but she felt a protectiveness claw at her heart. It was as if Ben told her such conniving details about Meg and Nora. “You wanted their money.”
“Well of course.”
“What was your plan?”
“Charlotte married Horace.”
“Then she killed him.”
“Yes.”
“And then you were going to marry Harriet?” Lizzie felt very sad. A small part of her felt she should go to the Fulton House immediately and tell someone.
“Yes.”
“Were you going to kill her, too?” Even with his hard stare, he was unable to answer the question. She looked at the empty wine glass and then his colorless eyes. “What were you going to do to Peter?”
“Many young boys didn’t survive to adulthood,” his voice had no expression whatsoever.
A chill resonated from the surface of her skin to the marrow of her bones. She never saw the vampire in Ben. Even when he took her blood. But now, as he told this story, it became very clear to her that there was a part of him that was cold and dead to the world.
“But Peter did survive,” Lizzie argued the history of her Saturday tours to herself. “He survived and had children, who had children all the way down to Gerard Fulton.”
“The plan changed.”
“Lily.”
“Lily was just a maid. Neither of us suspected the maid would be an impediment. That a girl… the bastard child of Margaret Fulton’s father would undo everything.”
“How?”
“We both fell in love with her,” Ben turned away.
“Enough to forsake the Fulton fortune?”
“In the end I would have given anything to be with her.”
“Why? What was so special about Lily? She laughed at you,” Lizzie said blankly. Ben jerked his head and stared at her directly. He was eager for her to say something else. She knew he wanted to test her memory. If it was her memory or just something she repeated back from Oliver. “The white roses.”
“The white roses,” the calm in his voice grew very quiet.
“They were supposed to be for Harriet,” Lizzie didn’t know if she should tell him the details of that wine drenched dream. She ached to tell someone, to know that it wasn’t just the coinage of a sick brain. “You followed her into the garden.”
He offered a knowing look. She couldn’t tell if it was amusement or disdain. “She was waiting in that garden… probably waiting for Horace. I didn’t care. I followed her. I assumed Lily was a… I thought she was an obedient servant who knew how to keep quiet about dirty deeds. I had every intention of taking her and her blood that night. Then she looked directly at me and laughed without any concern at all.”
“Did you take her blood?”
“Not then.”
Lizzie shut her eyes, wondering if any more thoughts that weren’t her own would suddenly surface. She opened her eyes back at the glass in her hand and contemplated if more wine would ease her into Lily’s conscious. It seemed important to remember that detail. She couldn’t reconcile it to what she remembered. There was nothing about vampires in those memories. Just… two men between whom she felt herself divided now.
“What about Charlotte? When did she fall for Lily? Did Lily laugh at her too?”
“You were right. If it wasn’t for me… Charlotte would never have paid any attention to Lily,” he waited again, as if she could add something to that part of the story. “Charlotte realized I was distracted from our purpose. She discovered I had the same interest as her husband. She sent me back to France to get it out of my system. She went after Lily herself. Her intention was to kill her, but she fell for Lily’s charm just as easily as I did.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t there. I know Lily cared about her. I know Lily liked… just as you do… the thrill of feeding. It wasn’t just a physical … Lily saw herself as a monster because of what Horace did to her. I think she saw something in Charlotte that made her feel less horrible about herself. But then… Charlotte killed Horace. Lily saw the ugly side of Charlotte and wanted something else.”
“You?”
“She went to Oliver first.”
“But she wanted to protect Harriet… from you.”
“Charlotte told her the plan. Charlotte never believed she loved the Fultons, least of all Harriet. Harriet treated her miserably. Maybe that was because Harriet knew how I felt about Lily.”
“Were you in love with Lily?” Lizzie asked a question she couldn’t remember forming in her mind.
“I thought she was just… I thought I could get away from it in France…” Ben looked at the bookshelves. “I never stopped thinking about her. How fearless she was. How she let me…I knew I would see her when Charlotte summoned me back to marry the daughter. I bought her presents. I bought her that volume of Byron you were holding.”
Lizzie caught the wine glass as it fell out of her hand onto her lap. “Did you woo Harriet?” Lizzie didn’t want more details about the book. The book was on the shelf, with its water smudged quotes scribbled on the inside cover. She would never have to look at it again.
“I pretended to. I liked it because Lily had to be the chaperone most of the time. I believed she had forgotten me. I knew about her and Charlotte. I knew she was sneaking out behind Charlotte’s back to see… Oliver.”
“She loved Oliver,” Lizzie argued as much to justify her present actions as Lily’s past ones.
“She wanted escape,” he looked at her. “He was a way out.”
“So were you,” Lizzie looked at Ben, wondering if he still thought of the shadows outside the front door and the promise of France and Prussia.
“I can’t tell you what she felt,” Ben swallowed. “I kept her secret about Oliver to gain her trust. I gave her those books. I promised I would leave Charlotte and take her away,” Ben’s voice was still cold. “I wanted to take her to Europe. She wanted to come with me. She
told me she loved me.”
Lizzie closed her eyes, feeling the tight embrace at the end of her dream. “You wanted to make her into a vampire.”
“I did,” Ben looked away. “But then… she changed her mind.”
“What?” Lizzie was startled to finally hear a detail that went beyond her dreams.
“She said she was afraid Charlotte would hurt Oliver if she ran away with me. She suddenly became very protective of that boy – more than she ever was of the Fultons,” his voice was still calm, but the disdain in his reference to that boy revealed the heart of his feelings for Oliver. Lizzie felt her stomach turn to stone as she dreaded the completion of the next few sentences. “Charlotte knew Oliver was her friend. I think she even knew his family disapproved of a marriage. She didn’t know he wanted to run away with Lily. She didn’t know… I told Charlotte that Lily was sneaking off to meet him. I sent a message to Oliver that Lily wanted him to come to the house. The boy couldn’t read. He had no idea it wasn’t from her. I knew he would find Charlotte instead. I knew because I asked Lily to meet me down at the river.”
“You…” Lizzie saw the book under the water again. She remembered Ben coming behind her and kissing her in the marshes. Her eyes filled with tears and barely had the voice for her next sentence. “She loved you.”
“I thought Charlotte was going to kill him, like Horace. I didn’t think she was going to change him.”
“But you…” Lizzie felt her whole body swim. “But you aren’t like that. You aren’t a murderer.”
“I was,” Ben didn’t unlock the eyes that stared at her. “I never pretended that there aren’t things in my past of which I am ashamed.”
“You deceived me,” Lizzie hardened her jaw as the swimming of her insides shifted into fear.
“If you didn’t remember Lily, who was I to tell you?”
“I did remember her.”
“In pieces. You didn’t remember her connection to Oliver without my help. You didn’t even know her name.”
“You didn’t tell me you wanted to kill Oliver.”
“No. I did not.”
Lizzie stood up quickly. She looked down at Ben, but decided to walk briskly from the room when the dizziness of her brain affected her balance. She went to the living room and the table where the white roses used to sit. She paced back and forth to consume the agitation of her limbs. She paused in front of the mirror catching the reflection in the shadows of the unlit room. She saw her brown eyes looking back, but all the other features blurred. She squeezed out the tears and rounded back to Ben, standing silently on the other side of the sofa.
“Did you know Oliver went after Lily?”
“Charlotte wasted no time telling me what she did. She told me that he went to see Lily.”
“You could have saved her,” Lizzie tried to rub the cold out of her arms.
“It’s possible.” Ben shifted his eyes away from Lizzie.
Lizzie walked through the archway back into the dining room. She looked at her bags resting in front of the buffet. She looked for her coat, not remembering where she left it. She needed to get out of there.
“Elizabeth…” he came behind her and after a pause dared to enclose her in his arms. The pace of her breath increased as he tightened his embrace and rested his chin inside her shoulder. “Don’t go. Stay with me.”
She took hold of his hand and then used the grasp to unravel herself. “You aren’t…” she allowed tears to be the answer to her confused emotions. “Why on earth would Lily come back to you?”
Ben dropped his arms and looked at the floor. Lizzie grabbed her bags and walked towards the door, hoping her coat was there. Ben suddenly took hold of her shoulders and forced her eyes to focus on his. “You are not Lily,” he said sternly. “You were. Right now you are Elizabeth Watson. What Lily did and what she felt has nothing to do with you.”
“Doesn’t she?” Lizzie raised her voice, dropping her bags and wrestling free from his firm grip. “I am still an employee of the Fulton House, cleaning furniture and protecting the name of that family. When I’m not there, I am essentially a servant to the hospital. I have her heartlessness with people who love me, when I let myself be loved. Maybe I’ve been running from it so long because Lily had such tragic consequences to the love in her life… and yet it didn’t really matter, did it? In the end I am with the same two men. I suspect if Charlotte were still on this planet, she would also be... The fact is, Ben, even though I didn’t know her name until a few months ago, I have been living Lily’s life for over thirty years.”
“No,” Ben took hold of her again.
“Ben,” she lost the strength of her anger as he pressed his lips to hers. She couldn’t resist him. She wanted him. She wanted to stay with him. She knew she should not. She kept her arms lifeless at her side and allowed his kiss until he pulled away. Lizzie shut her eyes and let the oxygen plunge into the depth of her lungs. “You aren’t telling me the whole story, Benjamin. Lily didn’t choose you. She went back to Oliver. She went to him and let him close enough to kill her. It’s not you.”
“Oliver is dangerous, Elizabeth.”
“So are you,” Lizzie took her bags to the door. She paused for a second, worried that her next step would be too final. She trembled on another sob and walked out of his apartment.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lizzie pressed her thumbnail on the edge of the plastic lid and watched it bend under the pressure. She took her next sip and went back to fidgeting her idle hands. She was trying not to think about… to not talk herself out of her offer to meet Oliver. Coffee was harmless. A public place, where she could consume a beverage and not feel awkward while he did nothing… except stare at her.
She glanced at her watch. She was early. Of course she was. She was the one who took off on 128 for two hours before texting him to mandate a location on her drive back. She didn’t have a book and didn’t think to buy a magazine. There were some well read newspapers, but she couldn’t be bothered with current events when so much of the past disturbed her present.
“Hi,” his warm voice coaxed her eyes away from her cup.
The pit in her stomach didn’t impede the smile that rose to her lips. “Thanks for driving here.”
“I imagine you don’t want to risk running into anyone, but … Beverly?” Oliver took off his ski jacket and sat. Lizzie liked his zipped sweater. He always looked like he was ready to hike up a mountain.
“I just needed to go some place less familiar,” Lizzie looked at the few people in the store. If she was trying to avoid anyone she knew, inevitably she would know someone. But neither the student bent over his laptop with headphones or the group of ladies discussing a recent novel looked familiar.
“Everything okay?” he reached across the table and took one of the hands prying at the plastic lid.
“I…” she met his eyes, knowing he already knew. He knew things about her without her having to speak a word. “I left Ben.”
She saw the smile he concealed very quickly. “I’m sorry, Lizzie,” his sympathy was genuine. “I imagine that was very difficult for you.”
“You were right,” Lizzie took back her hand and used it to lift the cup to her lips. “He didn’t tell me the whole truth.”
“Did you remember something about Lily?”
“I see so many things now,” Lizzie looked down. “More vividly than ever.”
“What did you see that made you so angry with Ben?”
“That he was there. He was in love with Lily, too,” Lizzie had nothing left in her red cup with which to fill the pauses. She took the holiday themed sleeve off the cup and started to tear apart the seam.
“What did Ben say?”
“I can’t… I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Lizzie looked at his dark eyes, feeling their familiarity and warmth. Lizzie glanced at the laughing book group and student still distracted by earphones. “Can we leave here?”
Oliver smiled and followed her lead o
ut of the store. Lizzie wasn’t sure where they could go. It was too cold for a walk. Oliver motioned to his Jeep. “It’s warm.”
Lizzie sat in the passenger seat and watched as he turned on the ignition but left off the headlights. “When do you go back to LA?”
“I have a flight booked for Friday,” he turned to her. “But…”
“What?”
“I’m on sabbatical.”
“You have a life there.”
“I could have a life here.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying things are…” he rested his hands against the steering wheel. “I have a job offer.”
“Your students…”
“There are students in Boston.”
“Oliver… this isn’t,” she felt a hard lump in her throat. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t want you to change everything simply because…”
“You know what? I was invited to attend a fundraiser for an environmental non-profit this Friday. I wasn’t going to attend. But I’ll stay through the week and you can come with me.”
“A fundraiser?”
“Would it be too much like work?”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie swallowed, not really worried about any similarity to the Mt. Elm gala.
“There’s dancing,” he showed a full out grin that charged the nerves in Lizzie’s stomach.
“Dancing is nice.”
“We can get dressed up,” he touched her hair.
“That sounds…” Lizzie let herself meet his eager gaze. He leaned closer and kissed her lips. Lizzie heard her mind say it wasn’t right. She walked out of Ben’s apartment only five hours ago. It was easy to lose those thoughts with the sensation of Oliver’s intoxicating touches. She remembered the thrill of his lovemaking at the Fulton House. She moved her hands to his waist and fingered the zipper of his jeans until the image of blue ink running under water flashed in her memory.
“I need to go home,” she gasped as she pulled away.
Oliver sat upright and caught his own breath. “We can go somewhere.”
“It’s too soon,” Lizzie’s voice trembled as she clutched the door handle. “I’ll see you Friday.”