Eternal (21 page)

Yellow light seeped through the crack between the double doors. I fell into it, pushing it wide open.

And the sight I beheld shocked me so badly, all I could do was gape and gasp for the breath to scream.

“Wren!”

My eyes snapped open. Realization struck that I lay in my bed, in my own room.

In Jeremiah’s arms.

Trembling, I searched his face, trying to grasp what had just happened.

“You were having a nightmare.” He brushed a lock of damp hair away from my face.

Exhaling raggedly, I reached up to touch the energy I perceived as his face. He was really with me. He was safe. I sighed and burrowed into the safe haven of his embrace.

“What did you dream?” he asked into my hair and drew me closer.

“I…was trying to…find you,” I muttered, grappling for the hazy details of my nightmare. My pulse still raced and I clung to Jeremiah, gripping fistfuls of his shirt as if I could somehow hold onto his soul that way.

“You’re safe, now,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“Don’t leave me.”

He remained silent for what seemed like an eternity before he reiterated his promise. “You’re safe now.”

Twelve

A month later, my life at school relaxed into the easy senior year every high school student anticipated. Although I didn’t extend Laura, Holly, Frank and Waylon’s friendship with me to include after-hours phone calls and hang out time, they considered me a part of their group.

Waylon had kept my secret about Jeremiah and, because of that, I bonded with him in a way I hadn’t with the others.

Even Briar had stopped cornering me by the lockers and glaring at me in the halls. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or suspicious.

But I chose not to dwell too much on it. I was so happy with Jeremiah, I didn’t want to think about unpleasant things. Like Briar.

During gov-ec class one morning, I mindlessly took notes, when suddenly, Jeremiah’s unmistakable energy moved over my hand. My pen began to scrawl across the paper and I gaped as he wrote a message through my hand.

One long word formed on the lined page of my spiral bound notebook.
Iloveyou.

I deciphered the odd, florid scribble and a slow smile crept across my face.
I love you, too, Jeremiah.

* * * * *

Thanksgiving came and went and while everyone else geared up for Christmas, I spent my afternoons with Jeremiah. On warmer days, we sat on the roof. On colder days, I bundled up and joined him in the attic where we could be alone, out of earshot of Mom and David. And far away from Ella’s curious eyes.

Each moment I spent with him, I fell more and more in love with him.

Sometimes, we walked hand and hand in the woods surrounding the house, talking about his life and mine. Despite the century and a half that separated our lives, we found our experiences were not all that different. Both of us felt pressured by expectations. Both of us knew tremendous guilt over the deaths of others and lamented that our feelings weren’t understood by our parents. Each of our lives had been altered by events beyond our control.

The more we talked, the more I loved him and, while we often sneaked kisses behind the dilapidated barn, Jeremiah never made a move to take our relationship any further. I didn’t push him, but I couldn’t help wondering about his reluctance. He came from another time and even though I knew he found me attractive and that he respected me, it was obvious he wanted me as much as I wanted him.

In Jeremiah’s day, women were not as open about their wants and needs. And as I walked with him now through the orchard, my gloved hand entangled in his, I glanced up at him, amazed as always at how the setting sun’s rays shone through him. Times like this reminded me of the intervening century existing between our physical lives, of the fact that he was a ghost. Although I’d accepted it, I couldn’t deny the stark reality.

“Do you miss it?” I asked.

He cut his gaze at me and his eyebrow arched. “Miss what?”

“Life.”

His hand tightened around mine. “Not really,” he said thoughtfully. “At least I didn’t until you came along.”

Joy and despair warred inside me at his words.

“Do you wish I was alive?” he asked.

I stared. Not a day passed that I didn’t wish he attended school with me, that we could go on dates together, or do the other things boyfriends and girlfriends my age did together. And yet, as a ghost, we shared a closeness I could never know with a mortal man. In some morbid way, I longed to be like him, without the world intruding, forever free of the bonds of earth and other people, in a world where only the two of us existed.

And even though, only last summer, I would have gladly exchanged places with Kira, Jeremiah’s presence in my life gave me an appreciation for living I’d never realized before.

“I love you just the way you are,” I said, meaning it. A chilly breeze lifted my hair and swept it across my face. I brushed it away.

A tiny smile toyed with his lips. “Exactly what is it about me that you…love?”

Despite the cold, heat blazed in my cheeks. How could I confess that I loved the fact that I possessed him all to myself, that I found his paranormal existence darkly alluring?

“You aren’t like any of the other guys I’ve ever known,” I told him. “The others are all so immature.”

He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “If my ciphering is correct, given that I was born in 1844, I would be well over one-hundred-fifty years old.”

I laughed, staggering playfully against his arm as we walked. “That’s not what I mean.”

His expression turned serious. “The time in which I lived had a great deal of influence on my character.”

Sometimes, I found it easy to forget he’d lived in a time before cell phones, iPods, laptops and cars. I inhaled the fresh, cold air. We’d talked a lot about how we were alike, inadvertently avoiding the differences between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.

“Some of the things you take for granted were things we struggled to have,” he continued. “Food, for instance. Cash money. Most of the things we had were made here at home. It was a rarity to pay for an item in currency.”

“How’d you get things?”

“Barter. We traded goods for services.”

“But your family was…wealthy.” A squirrel darted past me and climbed up the trunk of a barren tree.

“A man’s wealth was measured by the property he owned.” His gaze warmed as he looked at me. “But there are some things that never change.”

“Like what?”

“Love.” His eyes dropped briefly to my lips and then lifted once more to my eyes.

Despite the winter chill, delicious warmth settled on the back of my neck. “Did…did you have a sweetheart?”

He gave me a smile of mock reproach. “Did you?”

“Touche.” I stepped over a fallen branch that Jeremiah easily walked right through. “Of course I’ve dated. But that was…before…before the accident.”

He grew quiet as if collecting his thoughts before he finally spoke. “Wren, I truly think the reason you didn’t have suitors after your accident was because you didn’t want any.”

“What do you mean?” I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. I’d assumed boys didn’t want to date me because of my appearance.

His fingers laced tighter with mine. “You’ve closed yourself off to the rest of the world.”

“Not to you.”

“I’m dead.”

“Jeremiah!” I cried, shocked he would say such a thing.

“I’m…safe,” he corrected, cutting his gaze at me.

I wanted to be angry at his presumptuous accusations but he spoke the truth. “It’s because of you that I am able to face the world every day,” I told him. “Because of you, I’m able to make friends again. You’ve healed me.”

He gave me a wistful smile. “Don’t you see? You’ve healed yourself.”

I returned his smile. “If that’s what you need to believe,” I joked, although his words touched my soul. “Your turn, Ransom. I bet the local girls just ate you up.”

He pursed his lips. “There were two or three with whom I exchanged letters. Nothing serious.”

My shoulders sagged with relief.

“At least, not on my part,” he added.

I didn’t want to hear any more about girls liking him even though I’d been the one who’d brought it up. I surreptitiously changed the subject. “What was school like for you?”

Jeremiah seemed grateful that I had dropped the girlfriend talk. “For the most part, I was educated at home by tutors. In the case of my law studies, I trained under a local attorney.”

“A law degree is difficult to get nowadays,” I said. “You have to go to college for years and then pass the bar exam.”

Jeremiah snorted. “I’ll wager there are a good many more laws now than were during my lifetime.”

But my thoughts traitorously returned to the idea that he may have kissed—or even done more—with other girls before me. Then again, I’d always been the one who pressed him to go further. What must he think of me?

“People married and started families earlier,” he said. “Had I known you then, we would already be married.”

My stomach turned a somersault at the idea of being Mrs. Jeremiah Ransom.

Wren Ransom.

The thought of it warmed me straight down to my toes.

I would be eighteen in a few months. Before I’d moved to Columbia, I’d never entertained the idea of being married, especially as a teenager. Marriage had always been something that might or might not exist for me in the far, far future. But Jeremiah made me suddenly want it more than anything.

“Marriage is really just a legal document,” I ventured. “If I’m committed to you and you’re committed to me, can’t we just declare ourselves married and live together as man and wife?”

He laughed. “You would marry me? A ghost?”

Serious, I stared. “In a heartbeat.”

He stopped walking and turned to face me, holding both my hands in his. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Trembling, I held his gaze, squinting so that he appeared more solid. More real. “Yes, I do.”

His forehead furrowed. He seemed so…torn.

“You told me so that night in my room. You said that if you were in body, you would make me…your…wife.” I heard my own voice. It sounded miserably desperate and some part of me knew I grasped at anything to keep him with me. For the first time since I’d met him, I realized how utterly selfish I acted. “Jeremiah…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t press you.”

He opened his mouth to speak but, instead, he took my hand and began walking again. Although we held hands, the red, Tennessee sunset glowed visibly through his transparent body, sometimes so brilliantly that it obliterated him from my view altogether and I only had the ethereal feel of his hand to confirm his presence next to me.

As we neared the rusted iron fencing surrounding the Ransom family plot, he stopped again. “What about school?” he asked.

Oh my God.
He was considering my offer to commit to him. My heart soared. “None of that has to stop. I can still go to college.”

His eyes searched mine. “What about children? Don’t you want children?”

I shook my head. “I want…you.”

His black expression softened and he touched my face, gently caressing the scar everyone else avoided. My heart fluttered wildly as I took a step toward him.

“Wren,” he said carefully. “I can’t be everything to you.”

“But you are.” My earlier joy came crashing down around me with sickening force. “Don’t…don’t you…love me?”

“So much I would do anything for you.” He slipped his hand around my waist.

My first urge was to beg him to stay with me forever but I didn’t. Instead, I moved even closer, relishing the effervescent feel of his energy around me. “Then, kiss me.”

* * * * *

“Help me!”

The desperate voice rattled me awake. I bolted upright in my bed.

“Wren?” Jeremiah asked sleepily.

My response froze on my lips. Standing at the side of my bed, was the woman I’d seen in the hospital—the woman who’d died.

She lunged toward me. I scrambled backward, half-climbing over Jeremiah who’d obviously been sleeping next to me.

“What is it, Wren?” he asked.

I pointed. “Don’t you see her?”

He peered into the darkness. “See who?”

Distraught, the woman came even closer. Her mouth moved eerily but no sound came out. I shook.

“What is it? What do you see?” Jeremiah demanded.

My gaze darted back and forth between the woman and Jeremiah. “A woman. Can’t you see her?”

Jeremiah stared at me as if I’d lost my mind but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the woman’s ghost. Her mouth moved in a silent scream. Her arms gestured wildly.

I forced myself to regain some semblance of calm. “I can’t hear you,” I told her.

Stricken, she gaped and then she pointed to the ceiling.

I bit my bottom lip in confusion. “I can’t understand you. I’m sorry.”

Her round face reddened and twisted furiously before she vanished with a little pop.

I exhaled roughly.

“What did you see?” Jeremiah asked. “Were you having another nightmare?”

“No.” I drew the covers around my chilled arms. “I saw a woman.” My gaze found Jeremiah’s. “I’d seen her before. She died a few weeks ago.”

“What did she want?” He rose from the bed to search the room.

“That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Did she threaten you?” he asked.

“No. But she was mad about something. More like…frustrated.” I racked my brain. What could she have wanted from me? The last time I’d seen her, she was refusing to go to the Light and begging her husband to help her son.

Shaken, I settled back down in my bed. There was nothing I could do right now. I couldn’t very well trudge downstairs, awaken David and tell him a woman who’d died on his watch had appeared in my bedroom.

Apparently satisfied the spirit was gone, Jeremiah returned to bed. He slid under the covers beside me and folded me into his arms. I inhaled, breathing in his familiar scent.

“What do you think she wanted?” I asked softly.