Godspeed (25 page)

“No!” Marielle screamed, falling forward toward the doctor, seeking something solid to hold on to. Quinn actually teetered and looked like he may collapse. Schuyler and Penn both moved quickly, Schuyler taking his arm and putting it around Quinn to steady him, Penn surprising us all by gathering Marielle into his arms and locking her into an embrace. The two held each other fiercely as they cried and I, struck completely dumb and frozen where I stood, watched as Quinn found the strength to raise both hands and fiercely push Schuyler away. He rushed from the room, down the hall, and we all heard his steps retreating toward the laboratory. The door slammed a moment later, and in that instant my heart demanded my body respond, at last, with motion.

“Don't,” Schuyler warned, catching me by the edge of the sleeve as I made for the door.

“But he—”

“We can't.” Schuyler's voice was overwrought, and I looked up to see his eyes reflecting tears in the dim, glowing light. “You want to, I know. But we can't.”

“I can't just leave him alone now—”

“That is exactly what you must do,” Schuyler whispered, reaching out to brush the tears from my cheek with the back of his outstretched hand. “It's what we must all do.”

“No, it's—”

Our argument was suddenly interrupted by another sound in the room — a sound that no one could possibly have expected, and that was impossible to believe.

It was the sound of the key case on the piano squeaking, as it ever did, as someone lifted it.

The first plaintive notes were struck before any of us could fathom what was going on; within moments of the end of the first measure of the haunted melody, I heard steps rapidly approaching from outside the room.

I looked at Quinn, and he at me—tears filled his eyes but never spilled over, as mine did—as we watched, transfixed. Lilibet was seated at the piano, playing a song for the first time for an audience: playing it in honor of the one who would never sit at the instrument again.

No one dared to speak or move, not even Marielle as Penn whispered her sister's name tenderly into her ear to explain the sight she could not see.

When the last note rang out, clear, and held for an eternity beneath the force of her foot upon the sustain pedal, Lilibet rose from the piano, closed the keys, and sank back down to the floor in the corner, where she took up rocking to and fro once more as if nothing at all had changed.

*   *   *

The morning of Jib's funeral was much too bright it, seemed; much too sunny and cheerful for such an unacceptable occasion.

It should be pouring buckets of rain from weeping heavens
, I thought.
Angels standing sentry and only just barely able to contain the whipping of grieving winds. It should be dark. It should be solemn. It should, by rights, be cold enough to snow.

I had pleaded my case long and hard to both Schuyler and Quinn to no avail; I would not be permitted to attend.

No matter how I tried to argue, each of them had separate, distinct, and equally unalterable lists of reasons why I could not go.

In the end, I was forced simply to watch as best I could from the partially obscured lookout of my attic bedroom window.

I saw enough.

I saw the endless line of horse drawn carriages, still favored by the Weatheralls despite the new trends in transportation; the first in the line bore a casket dark as pitch, intricately carved, and drew it down the stone path toward the mausoleum at the center of the cemetery.

It broke my heart, the sight of it; impossible still to believe that a life force as strong as Jib's could merely be extinguished, by any manner of illness.

I watched as they removed the casket from the back of the carriage. Schuyler and Penn served among the pallbearers; Quinn could not, I knew, without too many questions being asked. In fact, I noted that I could not even see him among the mourners, and began to wonder how far a distance he was keeping from the event for the sake of the rest of his brood: for the safety of the rest of us, including me.

As the casket disappeared from view, I finally moved away from the window. I sank into the chair, rocking slowly back and forth, as I imagined Marielle and Lilibet standing graveside, wondering if one would understand exactly what was happening and knowing the other could not bear to watch, even if she had the ability to see.

I cast my eyes up to the skies now, suddenly turned gray, as if the act of putting Jib into the ground had actually extinguished the sun; and in that moment, I realized it had begun to snow.

C
HAPTER
27

QUINN WAS FIRST BACK
to the house after Jib's service. The others stayed behind to have a meal with the family, to fulfill one of Jib's last requests.

The hour was late, and I imagined he'd just been out walking, as he was prone to do when he needed more room to think than pacing his laboratory allowed.

I was in my bedroom, still staring out the window into the dark when I heard the knock. This time, he actually waited for me to answer.

When I saw the look upon his face, it took all my strength not to immediately take him into my arms. He needed to be held — I was certain of it — as much as I needed to hold him.

Seeing him this way, none of my questions about his past mattered anymore; nothing but loving him mattered at all.

“I have a gift for you.” His voice broke as he spoke the words and finally entered the room. “From Jon.”

“Jon?” I asked, momentarily forgetting.

Quinn shrugged. “I never did call him Jib.”

My eyes filled again as I took the box and stared, unsure what to do.

“Open it,” he said. “Jon specified that no one was to wait to open them.”

I began to unwrap it and found inside a beautiful wooden music box.

“Try it,” Quinn instructed.

“No, I…”

“He would want you to.”

I shivered and turned the crank. A lovely song played, a waltz. The same waltz Jib had played on the piano the night I first met his beloved “Freak's Chorus”.

Before I knew it, Quinn had removed his coat and approached me. Then, all at once, his arms were around me, and we were dancing.

Eventually the music box wound down, and so did the motion of our bodies as we swayed gently, side to side. It was as though, for a moment, he forgot about everything and everyone else in the world but me. It was the moment I had lived for, and I thanked Jib in my heart for this, the real gift.

Finally, he stopped still and stared so intensely, it was more through me than at me. There was a look of passion in his eyes, for an instant, so strong and true I could barely stand the sight of it. It burned in me and through me with a power I knew that I could not control.

I felt his breath against my cheek as I closed my eyes. He was so close now I reveled in the warmth of his body, and I wanted nothing more than to learn, at last, of all the things that I had until this point in my life only imagined in my darkest, secret dreams.

I forgot myself completely and leaned closer to him.

His hand brushed against my face; first my cheek, then down over my chin. Next his fingertips traced along the sloping line of my neck and I heard him sigh a certain way — a sound I had never in my life heard a man make — and that immediately led me to want to know what other sounds a man could make, if he finally gave free reign to his passion.

That was when I made the mistake of a lifetime.

As his hand boldly moved from my shoulder, closer to my heart, I couldn't stop myself from whispering to him — and in so doing, I deprived myself of what I was sure would come in the seconds to follow had I but been able to hold back; his lips upon mine, at last.

“Quinn.” I breathed his name more than spoke it, and my heart raced to the point that I didn't know if it could stand the strain, but neither did I care. If he would kiss me, only once, I could close my eyes and die here, in his arms without a single regret but that I would never feel that kiss again.

The moment I spoke his name, his fingers met the cold metal of the pendant wired to my chest. He jumped. His eyes flew open and he backed away from me, fumbling for the door as his face betrayed emotions impossible to distinguish between hatred of me and hatred of himself.

“No,” he insisted, grasping for the doorknob and missing. “No.”

Tears formed in my eyes but did not fall. I again felt the shuddering of my heart as it fought the need to tick onward.

The look upon his face was a mixture of horror and disbelief at what he had come so close to doing. The pain in his beautiful blue eyes moved me to speak with strength and longing beyond any emotion I had ever known.

“Would it be such a horrible thing to discover that you were capable of feeling something, for someone, other than despair? Would it be so—”

“I can't.” He stood taller and cleared his throat. All emotion disappeared behind the statue's face again. “I am your physician.”

“Do you think I stay because you are my
physician
?” I asked, wondering how it was possible that after all this time, still, he did not see.

“You stay because my life depends upon it,” he blurted, not even realizing what he'd said until it was too late to take it back.

My eyes lit up brighter than the Christmas star, and I stepped forward, closer to him once more. “Quinn…”

“You stay here because you know you will die without medical attention that only I can give to you,” he corrected, but he knew it was too late: the words were hollow in our ears. “You stay because you want to live.”

“I stay because you are
why
I live. What is there for me beyond the walls of this house — what's more, beyond the confines of your arms?” I trembled, and my hands vibrated as I grasped at the front of his shirt. “Now that I have felt them around me in that way, for even the shortest possible increment of time—”

“It will never happen again.”

“Don't say that! Please don't say that.”

He reached out to take hold of my arms but stopped short of actually touching me. My tears spilled down, and his hand moved as if to brush them aside, but again, he wouldn't allow himself what
would surely be at least the physical comfort of my skin against his, not even in that smallest possible way.

“I am your physician,” he repeated.

“You gave me new life only to deny me the one that could ever truly matter,” I cried, and he turned paler than he'd been before, by far.

“I have done all I can to give you everything. I would stop at nothing to keep you alive. Nothing! If I could, I would give you
my
heart.”

“You speak literally, sir; but it is the figurative heart, the one which contains your emotions, that I need.”

He stared at me in utter bewilderment. Could my feelings really still be such a surprise to him?

Had he truly never noticed the way that I looked at him, the way I would hang upon his every breath? The way that my eyes took on new light and my cheeks brighter color the moment he entered a room?

“You cannot give your heart to anyone,” I whispered, far more bitterly than I had intended. “I would give up every day of the rest of my life in a single beat of this mechanical heart if you would only feel something more for me than pity.”

“Pity?” He appeared disgusted by the thought. “Is that what you believe I feel for you? Pity?”

“Are you capable of feeling anything more, for anyone still breathing? Or will you always belong only to the empty memory of a woman who never even loved you?”

The expression upon his face was unlike any I had ever seen. Such pain, such consuming and unimaginable agony — and I was the one who had caused it.

I wanted to disappear — no — seeing it, I wanted to die.

“Quinn, I'm sorry!” I raised my arm and reached out desperately, trying to grasp hold of him, but he was already moving away.

He wrenched the key, tore the door open, and then slammed it behind him with a force that rattled the window with such power I feared the glass would shatter. I crumpled down onto the bed, shaken and wracked with sobs. I heard the sound of that wretched mechanical clicking speed up, and I longed to rip the engine which drove it from my very chest and what remained of my broken heart along with it.

I cared not whether I lived or died beyond that moment. There was no life left for me without him, and I couldn't imagine that after what I'd just said he'd ever be willing to speak to me again.

Still, I knew I must try.

I drew myself up, pressed open the panel in the wall, and rushed down to the laboratory.

*   *   *

He looked up in shock as he watched me enter the room by way of the hidden staircase.

“How did you…”

“I know, Quinn. I know, as you heard, everything. Everything but why.”

“Why?”

“Why do you keep Orchid here? Why can't you let her rest?”

“I… I can't… I don't… ” he stammered. “You think it was my doing, keeping her like this all this time? What kind of monster do you take me for?”

“What kind of monster are you?” The words escaped my lips before I could stop them, and he reacted with the kind of uncharacteristic panic that can only accompany the fear of losing what you hold most dear.

“It was Schuyler! He wanted her to be preserved like that. He insists on keeping her here to torment me.”

I wanted to believe him, but Schuyler had been so convincing…

“You asked a question: why. Why is the question I have asked myself every day for so long; every damned day.” He moved toward me, trembling. “Why can't I just let myself love her? Why can't I let her love me?”

I stayed still, not wanting to break the spell.

“Would she hate me if she knew the truth, this Abigail Courage…”

I gasped, and he leaned closer to me, whispering in my ear.

“Yes, I have known for some time. Jon's parents can be helpful.”

He reached out and finally touched my face again. “Abigail Courage, the dear little maid that the Argents sent to Hell without reason.”

I closed my eyes and felt his cheek pressed against mine.

“This girl called Elsewhere, because wherever she went, she seemed to belong somewhere different.” His voice dropped, and I felt his breath against my skin. I struggled to turn, to look at him, but I was far too weak with emotion in this moment to raise my eyelids again.