Page 49 of The Dearly Departed

Maybe Jane Eyre, I thought, looking back to the woman on the window seat, if only to catch a glimpse of what it was like to be in her mind.

“And who’s this?”

The man came to stand beside me. He was short, like my father. A little less than a foot smaller than me. He sized me up, surely wondering what I’d been doing with his significant other in a dark room—alone.

Nothing I wanted to do—that was for sure.

Because if I had my way, I wouldn’t have been wearing this mask. I would’ve introduced myself and gotten her name. I would’ve begged for the opportunity to know her name and her favorite color, just to adopt it as my own. And though I’d never before desired any experience with a woman before, I would’ve gladly had her be the first.

That couldn’t happen here though. Not when I needed to find Leonard and talk to my father, and I considered that a blessing. Because I didn’t know this woman, and it would’ve been highly uncharacteristic and insane to lose my mind over a stranger.

But then why do I feel so sad?

“Someone who found me before you did,” the woman muttered as she untucked her feet from beneath her bottom.

She swung them over the edge of the seat and slid each one into a high-heeled shoe, but not before I noticed her toenails painted a glossy black.

She was about to stand, and without caring what this guy thought of me, in a rare moment of gentlemanliness, I held out a gloved hand to help her to her feet if only for the opportunity to hold her hand.

The man beside me scowled as she thanked me, laying her palm in mine, the contrast nearly startling. Against the black leather, her skin appeared as white as snow, and her hand was so much smaller that, in the blink of an eye, I was twelve years old again, holding Anna’s hand as we walked back to our foster home from the bus stop down the street.

She’s not Anna, I had to remind myself, even as I wondered if there was any chance that she could be.

Maybe, in another life, she was.

And maybe we could’ve found ourselves together once again in adulthood, and maybe the broken pieces of our shared past could’ve come together to create something beautiful and whole.

But hope and fantasy were pointless in a world of cruel, harsh reality, and once she was on her feet, I pulled my hand away, out of her grasp, and back into my pocket, along with the ancient memories of a girl who had needed me to save her … and I had failed.

The woman was taken aback by the rapid shift in my demeanor, her smile faltering, but only momentarily. She stood between the other man and me, our bodies forming the shape of a triangle. She was taller than him but shorter than me, and while I was sure her heels helped, I was also sure she surpassed his height barefoot.

Now, Leonard was a short man, even shorter than Dracula over here. My adopted father stood at a modest five foot three, but it was the love he held for us and everyone he’d ever known that gave him the height of the tallest tree. However, this man beside me now … he was small, and I wondered what it was that he needed in his life to make him feel big.

Something in his eyes told me it wasn’t love.

“They’re about to bring out dinner,” he said, addressing only the woman before us and not at all me.

She nodded, then turned her attention back toward my masked face, her gaze lingering for a moment before she asked, “Are you staying to eat, Doctor?”

A foreign warmth was injected into my icy veins at the nickname. And although I had no intention of eating—it would require me to take off my mask and reveal my true identity to these people and everyone else—I still couldn’t stop myself from nodding with the hope that I could hold on to this feeling for just a little while longer.

And it was the greatest reward to see her full lips curved in a polite, albeit shy, smile.

Besides, even if I didn’t have intentions of enjoying dinner, I did have all intentions of staying.

For Gerald, yes, and for whatever he knew about Leonard.

But there were other reasons too. New ones.

Ones I’d never known could exist for me before. Ones I wasn’t ready to put a name to but recognized plainly as I followed her into the dining room like a lost, helpless puppy, willing to do anything she said just to see her smile brighten her face once more.

But those reasons were instantly forgotten the moment my eyes fell over the large space, containing three long banquet tables.

Because there, at the head of the one in the middle, was Gerald Crowley.

And beside him was the last person I had expected to see.

The one man I thought could never betray me.