yet,” Genevieve says, her voice sad and almost wistful. “That came after.”
“After what?” I ask.
“You’ll see.”
When Cutter leans in to kiss the woman, she turns away and we see her face.
It’s Genevieve.
I look at the ghost and back at the woman. “You were with him?” I ask.
She nods. “We dated. At first, he was charming and kind, but then his true nature began to emerge. There was a darkness there that—well, I never felt for him what he felt for me,” she says. “And when I fell in love with another, I knew I had to end it with him.”
It seems we’re about to see the moment they broke up. The Genevieve at the table says something too softly to hear, and Cutter stands, knocking the table over as he does and startling everyone around him. I jerk back, nearly knocking into a man walking by, but he doesn’t see me.
That’s when I realize no one can see us.
We can’t interact with the past, only observe it. “Are we in your memory?” I ask.
Genevieve cocks her head. “We are in a bubble of time.”
Sure. A bubble. Got it.
Cutter screams at Past Genevieve. “You bitch. I loved you and you’ve betrayed me. You’ll pay for this.”
She stands up from her chair, tears running down her cheeks, as a waiter approaches to comfort her.
The ghost Genevieve walks back to the door. “Come. There is more to see.”
We walk through and this time we arrive in the living room of a beautiful home. Past Genevieve is on the couch while a young girl plays with a doll by the fire. A tall, handsome man with kind eyes sits at a piano and plays for them.
Ghost Genevieve smiles and walks to him, her ghostly hands reaching out to touch his cheek. “Oh, Lawrence.”
I feel tension buzzing in the air, and I know something terrible is about to happen.
Past Genevieve senses it too and looks up from her book, her face frozen in fear. “Juliette, go to our secret place, now! Hide and don’t come out, no matter what you hear!”
The little girl looks up, confusion written on her small face. Even with the tension of the moment, I am struck at the similarity of our features.
The man stops playing and looks at Genevieve. “What is it, mon amour?”
She gives the man a knowing look with terror-filled eyes. “He’s coming.”
Juliette seems to understand something serious is happening and does what she’s told, clutching her doll as she runs. She flees the room just as the window by the piano shatters and Cutter leaps through, his eyes deranged.
Lawrence begins to shift, his body contorting as he turns from man to wolf.
I squeeze Dr. Livingstone’s hand as I watch. “My grandmother, her name was Juliette.”
It’s an inane thing to say at this moment, but my mind is moving slowly, catching up with all the insanity that is happening.
The man-turned-wolf leaps at Cutter, sinking his teeth into Cutter’s leg, but in one fluid move, Cutter grabs the wolf’s head and twists its neck.
A loud snapping sound reverberates through the room and it is deathly quiet for a moment before Past Genevieve begins to scream. She holds up her hands and a white light shoots from them straight into Cutter.
He falls back, letting go of the wolf, who shifts back into a man and lays on the hardwood floor, his neck unnaturally bent, his eyes open and empty.
Ghost Genevieve watches in silence, her eyes filled with the pain and horror of it all.
Cutter wrenches Past Genevieve from her husband’s body and plunges his fist into her chest. In one move, he pulls out her still-beating heart, just as he did with Maria. But instead of eating it, he takes it with him as he leaves through the window from which he came.
A few moments later, Juliette comes creeping out from her hiding place, her doll clutched against her chest, and when she sees her parents dead, she falls to her knees and sobs.
Ghost Genevieve kneels in front of her child, there but not, unseen but seeing all, and my heart breaks for them both. For this whole family. For my family. My grandmother, who I never knew but only heard stories of. For my mother, for Genevieve, for all the women in my family who have suffered because of Cutter and his monstrous ways. For the legacy I’d always thought was tainted by our own unhinged minds, but was instead a product of a hateful, scorned lover from the