same to others?
“I am desperately sorry for everything you’ve been through,” I say. “And I wish I could have been there to go through it with you. When I saw Cordelia today . . . I told you that my mother took me away after a breakdown here when I saw a ghost. It was Cordelia. She tried to drive me away then, and my uncle . . .” I swallow.
“Your uncle died,” he says softly.
I nod. “Cordelia told me to stay away from you. After my breakdown, I blocked her exact threat, but some part of my mind remembered and kept me . . .”
“Kept you away from our house. Kept you away from me.” His lips press to mine, and when he pulls back, he stays there, looking into my eyes. “Cordelia did everything in her power to keep you from me, but now she’s gone, and no one is ever going to keep me from you again.”
“She did everything in her power to take me from you. To take away everyone you cared for, everyone who loved you. I might not be able to make up for all that, William, but I’m certainly going to try.” I take his face in my hands. “I will not leave. I promise you that. Whatever it takes, I will always find my way back to you.”
“And I will always be here for you to find.”
He lifts me, and carries me upstairs and lowers me onto the bed, already bending to kiss me and . . .
The room fades. It doesn’t disappear as it always has. It’s a gradual transition. I see him bending for that kiss, and I strain up to meet it, and his bedroom disappears, and another appears, superimposed over it. The last thing I see is William’s eyes going wide as he sees me fading.
“Bron—”
That’s all he manages. And then he’s gone.
When I land on the master suite bed, I’m not concerned. I run to my own room, close my eyes and try to return. Nothing happens. I feel nothing happening, like ramming my head into a solid wall where before there had been a curtain.
I solved the mystery. I freed the ghosts and banished the killer and lifted the shadow from William’s life. I accomplished my task, and so the way has closed.
The stitch has broken, and I’m on the wrong side.
37
I can’t get back to William. I’ve tried, and I’ve tried, and I’ve tried. A month has passed, and the only thing that’s changed is that I spend less than half my waking hours trying to return.
The ghosts are gone. Eliza Stanbury no longer walks my halls. Teddy Wakefield no longer slips from my closet.
Some shameful corner of my soul wishes I’d never set their spirits free. Wishes I’d left them in limbo if it meant that passage stayed open. Yet even that’s pointless. If I hadn’t stopped Cordelia, she’d have killed me and then taken her brother.
I don’t allow myself to think that William is dead and gone in my time. He’s alive in his, and that’s what matters. He pens me notes, an avalanche at first, whereupon we devised a code for communication. To ask a question, he places two coins in a box. If I take both, the answer is yes. One, it is no. We’ve tried more complicated systems, but they fail, so we’re left with this. I can only remove or leave what he offers.
He knows I’m desperately trying to return. So he writes, and he leaves me pouches of coins, and we pretend this is temporary. When autumn comes, he knows I must return to school, and so he’ll wait. For how long? I don’t know.
Yes, actually, I do.
I’ve found the records of his death. I had to for my own peace of mind. William Thorne the Fifth dies at ninety-three, an astounding age for the time. He dies unmarried with no heirs save a second cousin who inherits his estate.
So yes, William waits for me, and I long to tell him not to, but I can’t. I’m not certain it would matter anyway. He hadn’t planned any other life before I arrived. He has his manor house and his horses, and he’ll be, if not happy, at least content.
I am not content.
I’ve tried every way to get back. I’ve curled myself into that bedroom floorboard space as if I can pull forth whatever magic it retains. I’ve stood in that wall gap where I returned the last time.