Authors: Beth Trissel
It seemed to take everything
Julia
had to tell Will this much.
H
e hes
itated to press her for more.
Instead, he held her to him, stroking her hair and kissi
ng the side of her damp cheek.
Tears even wet her ears.
“Shhhh...don’t weep so hard,” he whispered.
“I’m afraid I won’t
ever
see Cole again
.
He said we had so little time
––
and now
––
”
A sob broke her reply and she
slumped
in Will’s arms
as though she couldn’t go on
.
That must have be
en one hell of a dream.
Somehow, Julia was
reliving Cole’s death and the resultant anguish all over aga
in.
She seemed helplessly lost,
but W
ill knew she was still in there,
somewhere.
H
e had to find her.
He blotted her face again
and prodded her to another swallow of br
andy, trying not to let
his
jealous
y over this dead ancestor in
terfere with his all-out effort
to help her
.
“You still have me, Julia,” he soothed.
“But you think I’m nuts.
That hasn’t changed, has it?”
He couldn’t deny rathe
r strong, lingering questions.
“The difference is
that
I no longer care if you are.
I just want you.”
“I need you to believe me, Will.”
“I believe you truly think you’ve seen Cole.”
She lifted her tear-staine
d face, partly concealed in
the
eerie
half-light
, and fixed him with
swollen
liquid eyes.
“I’m looking at him now, only he doesn’t know. So I’ve lost him
.
” She gulped in a shallow breath.
“Forever.”
Will didn’t have to believe her
to be affected by her despair.
Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her back into him so tightly he feared he might crack her
ribs, but he couldn’t help it.
Then he
lightened his grip.
“N
o
,
darling.
You hav
en’t lost me.
I’m right here.”
“It’s not
the same thing,” she cried.
“I’ll make it the same, make it better.”
“How?”
He didn’t know, only that he must.
Tension seemed to be
Will’s constant companion
.
He
wore a path in the hall of his upstairs apartment
like an expectant father
while
Charlotte
fussed over
Julia
behind closed doors
, firs
t the bathroom,
and
then his
bed
room
.
Charlotte’s
comforting
presence was a buffer in the
emotional
storm
that had broken over them
li
ke a gale
.
Meanwhile, p
lay practice continu
ed unabated
downstairs
in an
up
swell
of voices.
Nothing stopped t
he indomitable Nora
who’
d crammed a script into
Father Seth’s hands and dubbed him
a temporary Hamlet.
The mild
priest
was no
match for her.
N
or
was
Paul
.
The sullen youth sat d
ully in one
corner,
unawa
re of having done anything wrong
, but unlikely to repeat his rash actions after the scolding Nora had given him
.
The threat of being banished
from
the play
appeared
to hold more terrors than another st
int in
Juvie
or prison,
for
which Paul
was
now of age
, u
nless
he wound up in a mental ward.
Will hated to send him to either
place
.
But what was he to do, chain him to a
tree like a misbehaving hound?
He only hoped the addled young man had learned his lesson.
Jon came
up
stairs
to see Will
while his wife helped Julia
freshen up
and ch
ange into one of Nora’s many
robes.
Deep concern lined the mature man’s usually congenial
face
.
“How’s Julia
doing?”
Will pivoted in his endl
ess march.
“Not as well
as I would like.”
“She had
a roughish time locked in the attic
.”
“It’s
far
mor
e than that.”
Jon gave a nod.
“Charlotte told me
about Cole
.
”
He and Will
looked around
as she slipped from the
bed
roo
m and quietly closed the door.
With her
white cap and colonial style
gown and apron
, she really did look
the part of
an old
-fashioned
,
devoted servant.
Her
pale blue
eyes
were anxious as
she
beckoned them
aside.
“Julia is
calmer
now
, but I’m st
ill un
easy over her,” she said
in hushed
tones
.
“
I’m not persuaded calli
ng a doctor will help, though
.
Her pain goes beyond the realm
of medicine.”
Jon listened
in silence
.
Will
strained
to be of aid,
wanting to reach Julia
as he had when he pounded up the steps to the attic
.
Only now,
her
confinement was of a far
different nature.
He despised this feeling of helplessness.
“What can
I do?
What does she need?
”
Charlotte regarded him steadily
.
“You, William.”
He blew
out his breath
in a
weighty
sigh
.
“I’m a great part of the reason she’s in
this state
in the first place
.
”
“
Y
ou are
also the cure.”
“She insists I’m Cole.”
“
B
e Cole
, then
.
”
He
looked hard at the normally level-headed woman
.
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
This
was the second time tonight
a fatal t
erm had been attached to Julia, and it
spooked Will
to his core.
“She’s
broken
.
Painfully like Ophelia,
”
Charlotte
said
.
He
winced at the all
too familiar imagery.
“
Hamle
t drove that poor girl
mad.
Do you
t
hink I’m doing the same
to Julia
?”
“Not inte
ntionally.
Circumstances
are
.
It always seemed to me
Ophelia went
down
without
much of
a
fight
.
Given half a chance,
Julia is far more resilient
.
She just aches to her marrow.”
Charlotte
reached into her apron where the waistband met her round middle
and pulled out a scrap of paper, yellowed with age and crumbling
at
the edges.
“Jon and I found this today
when we
shifted
some of the
furniture in
Cole’
s room
to finish painting
.
It was
lodged
behind
his dresser
bet
ween the furniture
and the wall.
I was saving it for you to read later, but you’d better see it now.
”
“
Gives you goosebumps
,
”
Jon added.
Will took the yellowed
parchment from her and ran his eyes over
the
old-fashioned
scrawl.
The writing
was barely legible and
stained with
dark
crimson blotches
––
blood
from two centuries ago
, he supposed
.
He looked
sharply at them
.
“
Cole wrote this as he was dying.
”
T
he two
nodded
in
grim
union
.
The hair on the back of Will’s
neck stood up as
he
softly
read
aloud
the last words of his dying ancestor.
“Julia
,
I a
m yours
always.
Wait for me
.
I will find
you
somewhere my love
––
”
The pen had slanted off the page after that.
For a
long moment Will
stared at the heart-rending message
.
“Julia Maury
never saw this
, did she?
”
“She couldn’t have.
The wind must have blown the scrap out of sight,” Jon said practically.
“But I think the girl
knew how Cole
felt
about her,
”
Charlotte assured him
.
Will didn’t totally ag
ree.
“Cole
would
have
move
d
heaven and earth to be with her, but I’m not sure he ever had the chance to say.
”
Charlotte shrugged wearily.
“Maybe not.
They w
eren’t together more than a few days
before his
untimely
death.
”
“No wonder he’s haunting the house, haunting her.”
Charlotte’s
eyes misted.
“
It’s a tragic tale.”
Again, Jon was sensible
.
“And not
one you can alter.
You’re worn out
, woman
.
There’s
no more you can do
here
tonight
.”