“My wife was pregnant once,” James said. “A long time ago. She named the baby Grace, but the baby died.”
Mrs. Jackson watched Sarah and Grace bonding, both smiling and laughing at each other as if they had always known this day would come. Mrs. Jackson leaned close to James and whispered, “I’ll start the paperwork. I think we can do this quickly, don’t you think, Mrs. Mills?”
“I do,” said Mrs. Mills.
Mrs. Jackson watched Grace nuzzle into Sarah’s neck. She looked at Sarah and the baby, at James, then back at Sarah and the baby. “How funny,” she said. She squinted at James, and he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back on his nose, Clark Kent style. “Henrietta,” she said, “do you see it? Except for his dark eyes, that blond-haired baby looks just like Doctor Wentworth.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“I guess it was meant to be,” James said.
“I think you’re right,” said Mrs. Mills.
James watched his wife and the baby, the Grace they had been missing, and his heart, though unbeating, flooded with love for that tiny blond-haired, blue-eyed girl. He sensed, as keenly as Sarah did, that that baby in her arms was their baby, the one they lost over three hundred years before. He knew it the way he knew vampires were real, along with witches, and werewolves, and ghosts in the form of reincarnations. Their daughter was home, the trio begun all those years before finally complete. After all, he reminded myself, crazier things have happened. And crazier things would happen still.
CHAPTER 9
“Hush,” Olivia said. “I need to listen.”
She sat on the edge of the bed in James and Sarah’s bedroom while she held baby Grace on her lap, the tiny pink fingers in hers. Martha stood to the side, her black flappers bob swaying in rhythm with her heavy-set form while she held her hands on top of Grace’s head and whispered Wiccan prayers. Olivia closed her eyes, her coin earrings jingling with each nod of her head, her body rolling to and fro, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her closed lids, focused on something only she could see. She leaned toward the baby, straining to hear, then nodded. When she sat stone still, a monument to mother and child, Martha stopped whispering. Grace watched them, her eyes wide like new-bloomed flowers.
“She knows who you are,” Olivia said. “She’s been looking for you.”
Martha nodded. “It’s true. This is the Grace you’ve been missing.”
Sarah knelt besides Olivia and twisted the baby’s golden curls between her fingers. The tears spilled freely down her cheeks. “I knew it,” she said. “I told James it was a girl. That’s why I named her Grace.” She saw James’s red-rimmed eyes, his fingers pinching the top of his nose keep the blood from streaking his face.
“If any man ever had a reason to cry, you have one now,” Olivia said.
“I don’t want her to be afraid,” he said.
“She’s not afraid,” said Martha. “You’re her father.”
He stepped tentatively toward the baby. He leaned over her, kissed the top of the gold hair that matched his own, except for the curls, which she got from her mother. When Grace smiled James couldn’t stop the tears, and the red flowed freely down his face. The baby reached her arms out, and James swept her up and held her close.
Sarah grasped Olivia’s hand. “But how can she know us?” she asked. “She was never born.”
“We always have knowledge, Sarah. Before we’re born, while we’re living, after our earthly bodies die.”
“That’s right,” said Martha, her southern accent soothing in its dulcet tones. “We’re always connected to our souls. Grace didn’t need to be born to know who her parents were. The three of you have always been connected one way or another.”
Sarah shook her head, her eyes wide as she stared at her daughter in her husband’s arms. “How did we end up at the orphanage when Grace did? I didn’t think coincidences like that really happened.”
Martha laughed. “My word, Sarah. After moving to Salem and meeting James and Olivia and Jennifer, after going through your past-life regression, after all you’ve been through, you still believe in coincidences?”
“Einstein said ‘Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous,’” Olivia said. “That’s the universe’s hand connecting you to Grace. Be grateful, Sarah. Your family is whole again.”
“I will always be grateful,” Sarah said. She kissed the top of her daughter’s silky gold hair.
James kept one arm around his daughter and slid his other arm around his wife. There they were, the triumvirate of Wentworths, reunited after more than three hundred years. Without a second guess, a single concern, Sarah knew they were right together, like the fluid statues of families where the lines lead toward each other, but then, when you step closer, you see the distinct shapes where before there had only been one. From one there were two. From two there were three.
“This is exactly as it should be,” Olivia said.
Everyone important to James and Sarah—Olivia and Jennifer, Howard and Timothy, Martha, Jocelyn, Steve, and Billy, even Jennifer’s new beau Chandresh—was in the wooden gabled house that night. Suddenly, a human-looking Howard stepped into the room.
“You guys are hogging the baby,” he said. “I want to hold her.”
When James handed him the baby, Sarah glanced at the night sky, checking the phase of the moon. Howard smiled.
“No shifting tonight,” he said. He looked at Grace, then at James, then Sarah. “She looks just like you, James. You, too, Sarah, with those wide eyes and curly hair. Is it true? Is she yours?”
“Yes,” James said.
“What a blessing. Congratulations.”
Grace held up her fingers, touched Howard’s salted beard, and laughed.
“What a good-natured temperament,” Howard said. “She’s nothing like you, James.”
James laughed. “She gets that from her mother,” he said.
Howard looked through the open door at Timothy, who was sitting on the sofa in the great room typing on the laptop on the glass table in front of him, his fingers flying across the keyboard at an inhuman speed, the determination evident in his narrow eyes and set mouth.
“Tim,” Howard called. “Come see the baby.”
“I’ve seen her.”
“Come on, Tim. Say hello.”
“I’m busy.”
Howard shrugged. “He’s still working on that vampire book.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea right now with Hempel on the loose, but he thinks…”
“I can hear you,” Timothy said. “Stop talking about me like I’m not here. I’m writing a vampire novel, that’s all. Everyone’s writing vampire books these days.”
“Except it’s really your autobiography,” Howard said.
“Who’s going to know?”
“Timothy’s right,” Sarah said. “Who’s going to know? I think it’s a great idea, Timothy. Everyone likes a good vampire story.”
She kissed James’s cheek and left him in the bedroom with Olivia, Martha, Howard, and the baby. She found Jennifer in the kitchen admiring the new stainless steel appliances and the granite island in the center.
“I love it,” Jennifer said.
“I wasn’t sure about such a modern-looking kitchen in a wooden house,” Sarah said.
“Don’t change a thing. It’s perfect, like your marriage to James—melding the old and the new.”
Chandresh came into the kitchen and kissed Jennifer’s cheek. It was the first time Sarah had seen them together, and she liked what she saw. They looked comfortable and content. She looked closely at Chandresh, his soulful, doe-shaped black eyes, his thick black hair—such a contrast to his white-blue complexion—pulled away from his handsome face in a ponytail, his high cheekbones, his shy, boyish smile. Mainly, Sarah noticed the way he looked at Jennifer, with complete attention, as though there were no one else around but her.
“You two look good together,” Sarah said.
&nb
sp; Jennifer blushed. “It’s easy to look good around this guy.” She punched Chandresh’s arm, so muscular and wide it bulged through his denim button-down shirt.
“You’re the one who looks good,” he said. As Chandresh stepped away, Sarah grabbed his arm.
“Did you meet James on the Trail of Tears?” she asked.
Chandresh nodded. “James hasn’t told you?”
“James doesn’t tell me much about his past,” Sarah said.
She looked through the bedroom door, saw James with Grace on his hip, and their eyes locked. Of course he heard her.
Chandresh nodded at James. “James should tell you,” he said. “But you should know I think your husband is one of the greatest men I have ever known. What he did for my family can never be repaid though I have forever to try. I am always in his debt.”
Sarah was moved by Chandresh’s words, and Jennifer looked at him as though this was yet one more reason to love this preternatural man. Sarah smiled because she understood.
Chandresh was intent on the conversation between James and Howard, who were huddled close in the bedroom. He disappeared into the room with them and shut the door.
“What was that about?” Sarah asked.
Jennifer looked at the closed door. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
A sense of foreboding flooded Sarah and she didn’t know why. She had a vague sense that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what, so she pretended it was nothing, thinking her instincts were pulling a false alarm as they sometimes did, and she went to Martha, who had taken the baby to the sofa in the great room to watch the fire in the hearth. Looking at her daughter content in Martha’s arms, Sarah decided Jennifer must be right. She was sure it was nothing.
After everyone said good night, after he put first his daughter to bed, then his wife, James sat at his desk in the great room looking out at the nighttime Salem sky. The world, that very same world that had been gloomy for oh so very long, was now all brightness and light. For years he thought he needed to justify the space he took, explain his existence, though he managed to quell that ache to a degree by teaching. Now, with Sarah and Grace there in the wooden gabled house with him, he didn’t need a reason to be. He just was. And for the first time in three hundred and nineteen years, that was all right with him.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against his chair, listening to his wife and his daughter breathe. He loved the sound, Sarah’s long, slow exhalations, Grace’s faster inhalations. Sarah was right. This was right. They were right together.
He wanted to forget his conversation with Howard and Chandresh. He had beautiful, precious things to consider now, and they were both asleep in their rooms. He tried to press Howard’s cautious words away, picturing Sarah’s full lips or Grace’s golden curls instead, but then Howard’s tense face flashed behind his eyes, foreboding as he stood near the bed and whispered.
“Hempel’s post tomorrow will name names,” Howard had said. He turned away, the fatherly love clouding his eyes. “Timothy is on the list. So is Jocelyn. But you’re safe, James. You’re not on the list.” When Chandresh joined them, he added, “I’m sorry, Chandresh, but you’re named as well.”
Chandresh put his hand on James’s shoulder. “You’re safe, James.”
“For now,” James had said.
For now.
James turned on his computer and pulled up Hempel’s blog, waiting for some inspiration about what to do when the reality of vampires became public knowledge. As he scanned the words they blurred inside his brain and the letters rearranged themselves on the screen into a single word: YOU. He felt a spotlight overhead, pointing at him like the word on the screen, yelling, “Here he is, the scary undead man hiding before your eyes!”
He tried to shake his paranoia away like water from his ears and he scrolled to the bottom of the page. No one will believe this, he thought. Real and unreal. Dead and undead. And the proof he wanted was right there in the comments which he read first with amusement and then with an odd recognition. What’s wrong with this picture, he wondered?
5 Comments
1. crazygurl4u
You lost your damn mind, Hempel. Who believes in vampires in this day and age with science and TV and everything like the internet and stuff? If there are vampires wouldn’t we see them? I don’t see how vampires can hide. They’re not supposed to be invisible or anything, are they?
2. annabellewayne
I bet you still look for the tooth fairy to leave a dollar under your pillow.
3. lvnlifelrg
Get a job, creep! You were fired from the News cause your an ass. Quit saying fake shit. No one believes you!
4. AimEE
Just because it doesn’t seem possible doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Would you believe me if I said I knew a vampire? He’s very nice, and well educated too. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.
5. crazygurl4u
Good God, AimEE! You’re as delusional as the freak who wrote this post. You know a nice vampire? Get your head examined, idiot.
6. annabellewayne
Who else is boneheaded enough to believe this?
7. Janie269
Zzzzzzz
CHAPTER 10
A December storm broke over Salem, swinging the skeleton branches of bare-backed trees, dropping buckets of snow here and there—along the wide lawn of Salem Common, on the roof tops, covering the wooden House of the Seven Gables, hanging icicles from the Salem Witch Museum and Witch House—leaving Essex County a winter landscape fit for a North Pole postcard. The bay was flat and gray, reflecting the blotted sky and heaving clouds. It was Christmas Eve, and everywhere was decorated with Santas and reindeer and snowmen. Christmas lights, red lights, green lights, blue and white lights, rainbow lights, brightened the storm-darkened streets.
Sarah sat by the diamond-paned window in the great room watching the snow fall. Cinnamon-scented candles burned on the kitchen counter, and pine wreaths with red glass balls decorated the walls. The Christmas tree—Grace’s first, and James’s too—stood tall and green in the corner near the kitchen, decorated with rainbow lights and garland. The whole house glowed comfort and warm. Sarah thought of her favorite holiday song, “Silent Night,” and she hummed it, the lyrics fitting her mood: “All is calm, all is bright…” She thought of Grace, asleep in her crib, her golden curls framing her face like an angel’s halo: “Sleep in heavenly peace…” Grace was so like her father. Sarah smiled, and when she saw her reflection in the window she laughed out loud. She could see her own joy reflected back to her.
Life doesn’t get better than this, she thought.
The cauldron had been removed, leaving a screened-off fireplace, and a low fire burned, sending warmth into the great room. She turned on the radio and holiday music filled the space, the mellow tones of Bing Crosby’s voice lulling her. She checked the basket beneath the Christmas tree and saw that she had wrapped all her presents, for James and Grace, for Olivia and Martha, for Jennifer and Chandresh, for Timothy and Howard, for Jocelyn, Steve, and Billy. She would see them all the next night, Christmas night, when they would gather together in the wooden gabled house to celebrate. She went into the kitchen and checked the apple pies in the oven, then stirred the soup on the stove, crinkling her nose and closing the lid as quickly as she could. She realized she would do anything for her husband. When she heard the squeak of the front door as wood scraped against wood, she smiled. No matter how many times she saw him again, it was special.
“Hello.”
“Hello yourself.”
She threw her arms around James’s neck and pointed up her chin. He kissed her, then brushed a few stray curls from her eyes. She took a step back, examining him, wondering.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I want to know how you know Chandresh from the Trail of Tears. I want to know what happened. And don’t you dare tell me another time, James Wentworth. I’ll scream loud enough to wake all of Salem if you tell me another time.”
Sarah wasn’t amused. “Is it something bad? You shouldn’t be afraid of telling me something bad. I’m not that fragile, James. Chandresh told me you helped his family. Tell me how you met him. Tell me what you saw on the Trail of Tears.”
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time.”
James sighed. “You win,” he said.
“I always do.”
He went into the kitchen and made a pot of her favorite tea, Earl Grey. She sat on the sofa, watching him while he moved easily through the slick, modern kitchen. He wasn’t concerned when she remodeled, and he wasn’t upset when the cauldron was removed. “My life is now,” he said when the workers arrived to carry the heavy black pot away. “I don’t live in the seventeenth century anymore. We could get rid of it all, Sarah, the house and everything in it, and it doesn’t matter. You’re my home now.” As he brought her some tea, cream and two sugars the way she liked it, she realized she was amazed by him. He was so strong in every way.
She sipped her tea while he paced the great room, to Grace’s bedroom, to their bedroom, and back. He often paced when he spoke about the past. Finally, he said, “What would you like to know?”
“How did you meet Chandresh?”
“Chandresh lived near me when I returned to the Smoky Mountains in the 1830s.”
“The Trail of Tears happened in 1838,” Sarah said.
“Yes.”
“I thought you were in London in the 1830s.”
“I was, until 1837 when I came back here. I returned to London in 1843.”
“That’s when you tutored at Cambridge and met Dickens.”
James nodded. “When I returned in 1837, I came here to Salem for a while, but it was too hard. I kept wandering to Danvers to see the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, and I’d go to the Old Burying Point to spit on Hathorne’s grave. Not that I told Nathaniel I did that, though I suspect he wouldn’t have minded very much.”
“You knew Nathaniel Hawthorne?”
Her Loving Husband's Curse Page 9