first, as custom dictates, so that her lonesome spirit will not look back and beckon anyone left in the house to follow her in death.
Lu has helped Bea and I with mourning clothing and the black dress is too short; my boots stick out from the bottom, but it’s the best we can do with short notice and little money. I find it apt that my fashion will be as disastrous as ever and if Emme’s spirit is there, I think it will laugh at me and the spectacle I make in my veil and yards and yards of ebony fabric.
The cemetery is silent and still, even more so by the soft blanket of snow falling from the sky. It turns our black clothing white and settles on my veil. In the middle of the dreadful preacher’s dreadful soliloquy, Joe turns his face up to the heavens and sticks out his tongue to catch the snowflakes and the mood is transformed from something dark and dreadful to something sweet and magical. Everyone, with the exception of the preacher, titters behind their hands and then laughs out loud; Dad with his chuckle I haven’t heard in ages, Bea’s soft giggle, Prue’s snort, Israel’s soft laughter by my side, and my own. I fling my veil back like a triumphant bride who is eager for her husband’s kiss and turn my face to the sky, letting the flakes fall on my eyelashes, my cheeks, my lips. Death will not have the victory, not today, not yet. We will remember Emme as she was; full of life and joy, the closest thing to a sister I have ever had, or will ever have.
Wherever Rose Gray is, she will not be redeemed. Not by me. Not by Luke, I fear. We will leave this place and vanish. There will be no records that we were ever here, that we ever existed, that we ever loved or lived or died. We will not be remembered, but we will never be forgotten either.
We will travel and we will live and we will love and someday when I am old and full of years I will tell my children the story of their mother and father and their legacy.
“Once upon a time,” I will say. “Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I was born…”
The end.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my family, from the parents to the in-laws to the sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews. You always believe in everything I do. Except for the detective agency.
Thanks to my sweet kids, Cora, Anna and Gianni. I love the chaos you surround me with.
Thanks to my other kids: Peter, Eddie, Marie, Calvin, Nate, Vic, and Konah, just because you taught me so much about myself and about teenagers. I hope I got some of it right.
Thanks to my fabulous Teen Forum, all two of them: Lauren and Joe. I love you guys and if you didn’t live a billion miles apart I would have to play match maker with you.
Thanks to my Slave Editors: Kelly, JJ, Heather and Heather, Mandy, and Michelle. Any mistakes are definitely theirs. Haha! I totally owe you; put it on my tab.
Thanks to Genesis for the most wonderful cover art ever. I love my artsy friend. You come in ever so handy.
Most of all thanks to my husband who loved me first in over-alls.
Shadows Falling
By Melyssa Williams
Prologue:
From the diary of Rose Gray
Death came to me in a cornflower blue dress.
1
The diary came to me in 1931 after most of the patients at Bethlem Royal Hospital had been transferred. It had been tucked behind a crumbling bit of stone in one of the bedrooms, and there was nothing but the plain red ribbon bookmarker trailing out, like a saucy child’s tongue stuck in the wall, teasing me. Thumbing through rather quickly, as my supervisor, Miss Helmes, would be along shortly to berate me for dawdling, I saw entries made in pencil, scrawled in uneven, childlike handwriting. There were no dates to place the journal, though the papers inside the red binding were yellowed, perhaps with age, and I was nearly afraid to handle it, and only the name on front to say who the author might be. I had never heard of the woman, Rose Gray. My curiosity at the diary could not be denied (I have always been woefully curious), and I pocketed it in my apron.
Would that I had not.
The nurses say, and so does Luke, that it is good for my mind to journal