Haunting Refrain

by Mary Marvella

  “But ..” He didn’t know what to say. He’d had little appetite since the argument with Sarah had begun. “Thanks.”

  He dug into the comforting meal and felt better. “I’ve been so confused. It’s not every day a sensible man has to fight someone else’s memories crowding into his head.” The eggs tasted better than any solitary meal could.

  “You and Sarah are involved in unknown territory and there’s a lot to sort through.” Sarah’s mom took his plate to the stove for second helpings. “I met Sarah’s ghosts, too.”

  William paused his fork in mid-air. “You saw her ghosts?”

  “No, but I was with her when she spoke with them. It was so strange watching things move about and hearing her speak to no one. The things Sarah said broke my heart.”

  Why hadn’t his mother been like this caring lady? “Ma’am, what did she do that upset you?” He took the plate she offered.

  “Some of the things she found in that old trunk held such sad memories. There must have been a lot of pain in Sarita’s life.” When she put her hand on his shoulder he felt the warmth all the way to his heart. What would he have done without her?

  Doc rose and left the room for a minute. When he returned William had finished the last bite of breakfast. “Here are copies of the pages we printed last night.” He used a red marker to circle the plantation location and handed the pages to William. “Stop in Creation Community General Store for specific directions. Good luck. Now I’m off to work.”

  Doc kissed his wife goodbye and headed for the front door. Will Sarah and I be together like this for a lifetime? Hadn’t they loved for life before? According to the diaries and Walter’s memories, they had. William wanted at least one more lifetime.

  He’d change clothes and follow Sarah’s trail. The place where Sarita and Walter had lived together would be the perfect place for a new start with his Princess. Maybe he and Walter needed to be there for William to make peace with his past life. God, that sounded strange, even in his head.

  ##

  The odor of decay escaping the house made Sarah’s stomach clinch. Even as she followed the porch, she turned a corner to study the side of the house, checking the floor length windows and French doors. The glass panes here remained unbroken.

  She couldn’t go inside yet. She just couldn’t. Using a set of wooden steps Sarah moved back down to the yard. Following her instincts she strolled to the remains of Sarita’s herb garden, fighting brambles. Long skirts would have made the trip rough. A rusty water pump stood beside an equally rusty faucet.

  Dandelions thrived beside Rosemary bushes. Sarita had planted those, Sarah remembered, crushing fragrant leaves and tiny blue blooms between her fingers. How had the carefully planted garden come to such ruin? Didn’t people understand the need for fresh herbs? Sarita had depended on them for healing as well as for seasoning meals.

  Sarah knelt and pulled handfuls of weeds surrounding her plants. She needed gloves and a trowel and week to clear the garden. Who was she kidding? She needed an army to clear the area. The morning sun warmed Sarah’s back, reminding her she couldn’t spend the day in the garden.

  Standing, she kneaded her back, then remembered her hands were dirty. She’d worked up a sweat and a thirst, too. Sarita wanted to use the water pump with its long handle, but Sarah leaned down to turn the knob on the faucet. Nothing happened. She could feel Sarita’s smirk, until she tried the pump handle. It broke in her hands.

  Fumbling in her tote she brought out a packet of baby wipes, her mother’s contribution. Wiping her face and neck she strolled past a dingy shingled shed. Near the house, directly in back a large square building stood, several chimneys rose above the shingled roof. The cookhouse, Sarita said. It looks very different from the way I remember it. It had been marked in Walter’s sketches, along with several barns. Only one large barn remained, but it had been built long after Walter’s time. She had stored the sketches in her car trunk, in a leather portfolio.

  Split-rail fences divided the acreage near the house into sections. Sarah could imagine Sarita and Baby riding across the fields, up to the iron fence on the hill. That is where Sarah headed, toward the tall marble statue she knew would be there. She trudged through a field of wildflowers and bushes. Plump, ripe blackberries looked good enough to eat. She passed them by. She saw a tall statue of an angel in the late morning sunlight.

  Sarita had never seen it. Trees cast shade over parts of the area. A voice urged Sarah to hurry. At a fast walk she neared the gate, which she forced open, cringing at the squawk of rusty hinges. She stopped to study the tombstones. She could barely read those of Walter’s parents and his brothers’ families. The grave markers had weathered, covered in vines and moss. Her lip trembled at the years of neglect of the memorials. She’d clear them later. She pushed through grass and weeds to the corner nearest the magnolia tree Sarita’d planted to shade her babies’ markers.

  Four small angels played beside two larger statues. Sarah bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. Could she bear to read the names on them? How could she not? Sarita recited the inscriptions on the bases of the angel statues, each cast and lovingly chiseled by their grieving daddy.

  The first angel smiled, holding her harp. Sarah pulled grassy clumps to expose the words. “Beloved daughter Genna Marie - Rest in the care of our Lord.” Genna had smiled often. She had laughed when her daddy played his violin, composing songs just for her. Sometimes he had plucked the stings as he made up stories to entertain her. Such a gentle, loving man, her Walter.

  Sarah could almost hear the baby laugh from the angel looking up to the sky, as if ready to fly. “Treasured son Walter David - So small - So loved.” Born too early, Baby David had lived only hours. For months after his death Walter had worked himself to exhaustion, then spent hours pouring his grief into his music. The strings’ cries echoed through the house.

  Sarah wiped her wet cheeks. Her tears or Sarita’s? Both. She could do this. Sarita needed this. The next angel rose up on one toe, ready to fly. “Matilda Katherine - Little Mattie – Miracle - Rest with your brother and sister.” Mattie’s namesake had bright, intelligent eyes. Curious about everything she had crawled early. The fever had stolen that and everything else, leaving Sarita and Walter weary and hurt beyond belief.

  Sarah knelt at the last baby’s statue. This angel sat elbows on knees, holding a dove. “Teresa Suzanne - Mama and Daddy’s heart.” Sarita touched the small stone. She hadn’t seen it before, since she hadn’t left the bed after the miscarriage. When had Walter carved this one? She hadn’t even been able to help him mourn this baby.

  Sarah looked up at the clear sky. She didn’t bother to wipe away her tears. How could a parent survive such loss? “I didn’t,” Sarita answered. Sarah looked toward where she thought she’d heard the voice, at the most beautiful statue of a woman so like Sarita’s miniature. The pink marble woman smiled down at Sarah, as if she knew a secret hidden from mere mortals. The base had been carved with roses and doves. Some marks were surely made by the slip of the chisel.

  “Sarita Rose - Beloved Wife, Angel, My Heart, My Soul.”

  Sarita had died only a week after the loss of little Teresa Suzanne. “How could he bear it all alone?”

  Sarah looked at the last statue. Her husband. “Walter David…”

  “You left me,” William’s voice sounded choked. He leaned on the gate. Tears streamed down his face. “Dammit, you left me all alone. You were not supposed to go first. You promised you would never leave me again.” Sarah knew the man was William, her William, but she had never seen him cry. It broke her heart. She stumbled to her feet and took a step toward him.

  “I never meant to, truly I did not.” She held her arms out to her heart, for he held her heart captive forever.

  Walter cried as William cried and William was scared to his soul. He had watched Sarah and wanted to go to her. What if she had sent him away again? He could barely move his tired legs. For the past two days he’d lived in fear tha
t he had waited too long to tell Sarah the truth. How could she forgive him? Why should she love him? Move, man. Walter made him take a step toward healing, then another. Go to her. She loves us.

  “Sarah?” He took the steps to close the distance. Sarah flung herself into his arms, filling the empty place in his heart again. “Sarah, my love. Don’t leave me again.” He buried his face in her hair, tangling his hands in the strands to hold her close.

  “I won’t, I won’t.”

  William felt Walter’s pain again. He moved to look into her face. “But Sarita left Walter and he could not live without her.” He cradled her cheeks. “Sarita, you promised me, then you left me.” His stomach clinched in pain. “You took my heart and my soul and left an empty shell.”

  Sarah looked puzzled, then she kissed him with such gentleness he was humbled. “Walter, my love, I did not want to leave you. Death gave me no choice. But I am here now and Sarah will not leave William. I will not let her.”

  William didn’t know if he was Walter or William at the moment, but the woman he loved had kissed him and he wanted her more that he had ever wanted anyone or anything. He tightened his embrace and touched his lips to hers. He kept his kiss gentle to tell her he worshiped her. Her lips were warm and wet and she kissed him back, offering what he needed most, love.

  Her voice sounded husky. “I will always love you, William. Never doubt that.”

  “You wouldn’t talk to me for days. You hit me.”

  Sarah laughed. “Poor baby.“ Her expression changed. Her smile faded. “You made me so angry. That didn’t mean I didn’t love you. I just didn’t like what you did. You didn’t trust me enough to let me help you.”

  He felt some of his fear shift. He hadn’t allowed her to know his weakness, his fears. “Princess, I don’t understand the love thing. You’ll have to be patient with me, teach me.”

  “Well, for starters, could we move away from the graves for a while?” She nodded toward the stone bench. “We could sit on the bench under the tree.”

  He had put the stones there to make a bench. Sarita had been weak after the fever took little Genna Marie before her first birthday and he had wanted to give her a place to sit while they visited the little grave. They had cried together, thinking this pain the worst they could feel. They had been wrong.

  She tugged on his arm. “I’m tired. Walking all the way from the house made me tired and Sarita’s pain wore me out.”

  He didn’t want to let her go, but he walked her to the primitive seat. They sat together. Her back against his chest her backside against his groin. He held her, absorbing her warmth. She had given him so much already as his friend who accepted him as he was, and as his lover who gave of herself, holding nothing back. He still had so much to learn, but she could teach him.

  “How long have you known?” Sarah asked.

  Just like his Sarah, straight to the point. The time had come for honesty. “I don’t know how to answer that question, Princess. For about a month I’ve had strange dreams about us, or at least people I thought were you and me.”

  She turned her head and kissed him. “Sexy dreams?”

  He returned her kiss. “Don’t interrupt, or I’ll never finish the story.”

  “I’ll be good.” She turned back and leaned against his chest. Could she feel his heart race?

  “The dreams seemed so real, more like memories, someone else’s memories. Anyway, when I read Sarita’s journals I knew things only her Walter could know. I didn’t want to know anything, so I looked for ways to explain how I could remember things I couldn’t have read.” He tightened his hold on the one person who could understand. Her warm hand comforted as she rubbed his arm.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, especially after you knew what was happening to me?”

  “Darlin’, the whole thing scared the hell out of me. I believe in logic. I live logic. You've been my escape from the world my parents built, a world with no tenderness or whimsy. Without you and your parents my life would have been sterile.” He buried his face in her hair, breathed in her wild flower scent.

  “After you found the journals things began to make a perverse kind of sense. The scientist in me resisted what my heart tried to tell me. What would you have thought if I had shared my experiences before you understood what I was going through? Could you have accepted the idea that I was seeing ghosts and thought I had lived before?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I think I’d have tried to understand, because my parents gave me the tools to dream and believe in magic. And you, my best friend, taught me more than you can imagine. You gave me the unselfish love of a brother. You were the son my parents couldn’t have. You were a precious gift, but you never seemed to realize that.”

  “Ah, my love. Walter and Sarita worked hard to get through to us. They must have thought we were slow.”

  “This had all been hard on you.” She pulled away to face him. Her tears had left dirt smudges. He had wiped many a tear from her pink cheeks over the years. “I forgot to ask about the visit to your mentor.”

  “It was a revelation. I had made notes about my reactions to the diaries and the memories of a man who had lived through battles and the pain of loss. Those pages held the reactions of a man whose soul lay bare and aching. While Dr. Mac read the pages I became fascinated by a set of photos of Kennesaw Mountain and was suddenly in the midst of a battle. I was Walter, fighting Yankee solders. Mac heard me and saw me fall wounded. Apparently Walter told him what was happening and exposed me.”

  “How did he react?”

  William laughed. “He loved the chance to observe something so unique and took copious notes and recorded what I told him. The scientist in him loved the hell out of it. He sent me home to tell you the truth, but you caught me unprepared.”

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just spill your guts and get it over?”

  “You should know me better than that. I was all set to plan my explanation and deliver it like a professor, in a logical, calm manner.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “You blew that by triggering a Walter moment.” He shrugged. “I plan things, but you pushed the issue, then left me before I could explain." His voice cracked. "I thought you hated me. I've never felt such pain."

  “I could never hate my William.” She pressed her soft lips to his and made him feel whole. “I’ve been thinking about what we need to do.”

  “About what?”

  “About using what we know. Some of the answers may be in the trunk. Sarita sent me here to find something important.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “I saw the graves and realized how much I lost the last time. We can’t risk losing each other.”

  “Walter thinks we should leave this hard seat and go back to the house.” William grinned.

  “He does, does he? Sarita thinks we should head back and have a picnic on the porch.” Sarah tugged at his hand.

  “Great idea, your mama packed a picnic lunch for us and it’s waiting in my truck.”

  Sarah rose, then reached down to help William up. “Let’s go, I’m starved.”

  For a moment they stood hand in hand, looking at the graves. She shivered as she reread the inscriptions. “Are they really our graves?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, I think so. I remember thinking I would rather die than leave you in the cold hard ground. You can’t imagine how often I thought of throwing myself in the hole with you. I tried to bury our family Bible one of the many nights when I’d had too much to drink.”

  “I know?”

  “How could you?”

  “Cousin Mattie told me.”

  “Cousin Mattie? Impossible.”

  “William, Cousin Mattie is one of my ghosts. She finally believes I was Sarita and you were Walter.”

  “Damn, you mean my cousin haunts your house?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? I told you about Mattie and Eloise, my ghosts. Oh that’s right. You don’t believe in gho
sts or reincarnation.” She laughed at the idea.

  “I hadn’t made the connection. All my memories were of you and me, I mean Sarita and Walter. Walter’s cousin Mattie has been next door all this time and I didn’t realize it.” He shook his head, smiling. “Sarah, mine, I think we need to say goodbye to our angels for now. We’ll come back.”

  Sarah watched William trace the letters carved more than a century ago. He touched the delicate face of each tiny statue. Tears filled her eyes as William poured some of the love he had bottled up. One day he will make a wonderful daddy. I can’t wait. She rubbed her stomach, wondering how she would look pregnant.

  William turned back to her. “Whatcha doing, Princess?”

  “I’m hungry and I only have one sandwich and a bottle of warm water and warm Coke in my tote. Didn’t you say Mama sent more food?”

  “Yep, let’s go back to the house.”

  Hand in hand they started across the fields toward the deserted house. Sarah stopped, pulling William to a stop.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “This morning I decided to face you and make you listen to me, even if I had to kidnap you.”

  “My parents spilled the beans?”

  “Yep, with printed directions and all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mattie and Eloise paced the attic. They hadn’t bothered to furnish it to suit themselves. Mattie pulled at her ear, deep in thought. “I can not believe Sarah and William have gone to the plantation. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Why not?” Eloise asked. “Maybe being where Walter and Sarita lived will let William and Sarah make up. It’s bound to bring back memories and show them what’s important.”