asked you to leave.”
“Believe me, I’m trying. I’m really trying. I know you want me gone.”
“I do.”
“It’ll happen. It has to, right? Maybe if I tap my heels three times . . . ?” I try for a smile, but he only frowns, and I realize I’m about a half-century too early for that joke. “I’m sorry. I’ll just . . . I’ll go wait in another room.”
He steps aside as I pass, giving me a much wider berth than needed.
When I reach the door, he says, “Do you expect me to believe that?”
I turn. He has his arms crossed, face once again unreadable.
“Believe that I can’t find the way back?” I say. “No, clearly, I’ve been lying in wait for two hours, hoping you’ll run in and say you’ve made a terrible mistake, fall at my feet and declare undying love, thank your lucky stars that I didn’t disappear into the ether again.”
His face hardens. “You don’t need to mock—”
“Don’t I?” I say, my temper rising as I step toward him. “I came to the stables to apologize. That was all. I made a promise, and I broke it, and I wanted to say I’m sorry. You didn’t need to be cruel, William.”
“I—”
“I’m talking now. Yes, this is your house, but since I can’t seem to leave it, I’m going to talk, and if you feel the need to flee”—I step aside and wave—“the door is there.”
His mouth sets, and he steps back, arms crossing in answer.
I continue, “You say you believed I was a phantasm. Is it possible I believed—still cannot help believing—the same of you?”
“Me?” He sounds genuinely indignant. “That is ridiculous.”
“Is it? I told you things of the future, which must have come to pass. Yet you never offered the same.”
He sputters. “How would I—?”
“You could have left me a message. Hidden something for me to find in my time.”
“How? Pry up a floorboard?”
“The point is that if you believe I’m not real, then it makes sense that I’d believe the same of you. That I might have”—my voice catches, in spite of myself—“been convinced of it by others.”
His face darkens. “You told others about me?”
“My uncle died,” I say. “He was . . .”
I stop myself before mentioning the circumstances. I’ve already heard William’s opinion of ghosts and those who see them.
I continue, “In the aftermath, I made the mistake of confessing that I’d had . . . inexplicable experiences. My mother—”
“Your mother,” he says with a scornful snort. “Of course.”
“My mother and two . . .” I search for the word appropriate to his time, predating Freud and the birth of psychology. “Two doctors who treat diseases of the mind determined that I’d suffered a breakdown. I spent the rest of my summer in a hospital.”
“They confined you to a lunatic asylum for telling them about me?” His voice rises, outrage mingling with horror.
“In my time, it’s not an ‘asylum.’ It’s a hospital where people go to rest and receive treatment. Humane treatment. Medication and therapy—talking, lots of talking.”
He still doesn’t look convinced. We’re at a time when mental treatments were far from benign and reserved for those so affected they couldn’t function in normal life.
“You were not mad,” he huffs. “Anyone could see that. Yet you allowed them to convince you that you were?”
“I allowed them to convince me you weren’t real,” I say. “Which shouldn’t be so shocking, considering you’ve apparently convinced yourself that I’m not real with no outside influence.”
“How is that the same?” he snaps. “I had to invent some reason why you never returned. You chose not to return. You chose to let others convince you—”
“I didn’t choose anything. I was fifteen, William. My uncle had just died, horribly and traumatically. My mother rushed to Yorkshire and found me babbling about time travel and a boy who lived in this house two hundred years ago. Naturally, she presumed I’d had a breakdown. The doctors agreed.”
He shifts, uncomfortable now but still searching for a rebuttal.
“How do you think that felt? I wasn’t a child, permitted imaginary playmates. I was old enough to know better, and yet somehow I didn’t. In my mind, you were real, though I logically realized you couldn’t be. They shamed me for what I saw. Now, you shame me for allowing that.”
“I—”
“No.” I swipe a hand over my cheek, hot tears scorching it. “You say I chose not to return. Yes, yes, I did. Part of that wasn’t a choice. My aunt stopped spending summers in