His Haunted Heart (13 page)

“About what?”

“He’s not cleaning the stalls properly.” I answered my mother.

“Maybe that’s because he’s too busy chatting up our dear Delilah.”

Every head popped up at attention at my mother’s words. June excused herself at once, mumbling about something in the oven. I swallowed against the feeling of déjà vu in talking about Rebel. I’d hoped for his name to never grace our conversations again—at least in respect to my wife.

“You’ve been talking to Rebel.” I couldn’t help the accusatory tone I took with her. I was accusing her. It fit. Delilah blanched and squared off her shoulders.

“I went outside yesterday to get some fresh air and he approached me. The
conversation
was no more than four sentences.”

I turned my glare onto my mother. I prayed this was a case of her overdramatizing events.

“He’s also been watching you Delilah. I’ve seen it.”

“Watching me what?”

“A few times I’ve seen him looking into your bedroom window.”

Delilah clutched the opening of her shirt tighter together.

“What did he say to you?” I demanded in no soothing tone. I slammed my fist down with the words and everyone at the table shuddered, including me.

I thought Delilah would buck against my words and shout at me—maybe throw something. That was the spark I’d always loved in her.

Instead, I found her frozen across the table from me. She personified an animal in the pivot of a kill. Her chest moved in shallow burst with breaths of fear.

I was no better than her parents had been to her.

Disgusted with my behavior, I bolted from the table and went to the stalls, determined to push my disapproval onto the man who deserved my pointed words and anger.

“Rebel?”

He came out of the stalls from the other side. He hadn’t been working, the smell of tobacco lingered in the air in a cloud around the back entrance.

“Yes?”

“These stalls need to be cleaned and you need to go pick up more feed. The appearance of this place is deplorable.”

“I’m doing the best I can. What are you going to do, fire me?”

His sneer was laced with malcontent.

“It was my grandfather’s contract. I’m sure we can find a way to break it.”

“Come on, I don’t do that bad of a job. Besides, your wife seems to enjoy my company—even more than Marie.”

Anger pooled in my chest and flooded my veins. He was lying, that I was sure of. There was no sign of guilt in Delilah’s eyes. The expression she pointed at me when I’d shouted at her for speaking to Rebel was that of a wife betrayed.

“You tarnished Marie. She could’ve been content here.”

“Content? That’s what every woman wants, contentment.”

“Stay away from my wife.” I ground out the words, pouring in as much contempt and threat as I was able to. “And clean out the damned stalls!”

Rebel didn’t budge. He had defiant down pat.

Scrubbing a hand down my face, I made for the house. Before anything else, I had to figure out a way to get Delilah to forgive me for jumping down her throat. It wasn’t her fault the sludge was watching her.

My fists clenched and relaxed with each step. I had to get control over my home. Before Delilah came, everything was calm and quiet. Marie haunted me only from a distance and only as the woman I’d almost married.

Rebel had done his job and kept his mouth shut before she came.

I’d reached out to help the helpless Delilah and threw my home into chaos.

I took three deep breaths before opening the door and finding out how many apologies would be necessary to redeem myself.

“Porter!” my mother screamed from the kitchen. I busted through the swinging door to find June and my mother, on the floor, hovering around Delilah.

“It just happened out of nowhere. She won’t speak!”

They cleared, each focused on their own task. When they did, I got a look at what was happening while I was too busy with petty concerns.

My knees hit the floor first as my body crumpled at the sight. There were scratches, no gashes—three or four on each of Delilah’s arms. She was unconcerned with them. She had her arms crossed, hugging her knees to her chest, much like she had when she’d been in the bathtub. Along with the blood on her arms, red rivulets ran down her mouth and chin from her nose.

“What happened?” I screamed at no one and everyone. June and my mother jumped at the booms, but Delilah never budged. Her eyes were glazed over and she stared at something behind me.

“She was helping us bring in dishes. And then it was like…”

“Something threw her against the wall.” June and my mother had taken to finishing each other’s sentences.

“Something can’t just throw her against a wall!”

June tried to gently shove me out of the way to attend to Delilah, but I was having none of it. I scooped her up, blood and all, and carried her to our bedroom. We’d had the most wonderful night of my life and second by second, it was being ruined by forces beyond my control.

“I’m going to clean your face, love. Is that okay?”

She was oblivious to my words, maybe to my presence. Her eyes remained downcast while her chin quivered. I’d never seen a more pitiful sight.

There was no aggravation that could rival a foe that no one could see.

“Delilah, sweetheart, look at me. There’s no one else here. I won’t let anyone or anything touch you again.”

Not knowing what to do and having few options, I got a cloth doused with frigid water and pressed it to her face, not for cleaning her up, but for breaking her out of this fugue state she was in.

She gasped out of nowhere, as though she’d been drowning and had finally surfaced. She clawed at me, grabbing the waist of my trousers, bringing me closer to her. I smoothed her hair and attempted to soothe her with my voice.

“I’m here. Nothing is going to harm you.”

An hour passed before she would allow me to clean her up. The blood coming from her nose was nothing compared to the bubbling red liquid that continued to come from the slashes to her arms.

“We have to call a doctor, Delilah.”

She shook her head, refusing the suggestion.

“Delilah, please,” I begged. Maybe it was the sympathy in my heart. Maybe it was the heightened emotion of the entire afternoon. I’d never succumbed to begging before.

The light in my wife’s eyes had dimmed, and that was enough to bring any man to his knees.

She squeezed my hands. The first of what would be many tears began to stream down her face. A sob was the first sound she’d made since the incident.

“Please tell me what happened. I can’t help you if I don’t know what did this to you.”

After sucking in a deep breath, with her back straightened and her shoulders back, she told me.

“Marie.”

Out of pure relent, I dropped my head into her lap and took advantage of the position that hid my face. My first instinct was disbelief. Marie had never hurt anyone in life, other than me, but that was more of a betrayal than purposefully inflicted damage.

“I don’t understand, Delilah. I just don’t.”

“You don’t believe me.” Her voice had taken an aloof tone.

Grabbing onto her calves, I pulled myself up to look at her in the eyes. “I believe that you think you saw her.”

She huffed out a rebuttal. “She doesn’t look the same.”

I breathed out a sigh of relief. This was all some mistake. Her observation did nothing to solve the issue, but at least we could chalk the whole thing up to her imagination.

“What do you mean?”

She stood, knocking me off balance. Her fists were clenched in anger behind her back.

“I mean she was older. She was thirteen, maybe fourteen. Her hair was longer. Her dress was not that of a child anymore. It was the dress of a teen. She had a white ribbon tied around her hair. She—she spoke to me.”

Chapter Thirteen

Delilah

Porter didn’t believe me. Not only was it apparent in his face, but his eyes never told a lie. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

The closeness, the surge of emotion, which had grown in my heart was one-sided.

I’d trust anything he said to me as complete truth.

Maybe that was my folly in life—I was too trusting.

“What did she say?”

I turned around briefly to find him now sitting on the bed, on the very edge with his face buried in both palms and his elbows resting on his knees. His thumbs massaged his temples. I was the headache he just couldn’t get rid of.

Mentally, I congratulated myself on making it this far.

“She said, ‘He’s mine.’”

“Who was she talking about?”

I rolled my eyes at the always informed Porter asking me the stupidest question. There was no reason to dignify such an obtuse question.

“Me or Rebel?”

That question, however, was worth answering with a fist.

I didn’t dare face him. My tears would only refute my answer. “You seem so determined to make me something I’m not—maybe someone I’m not. Ask yourself this, Porter Jeansonne. If I was loyal to people who neglected me most of my life, why would I become disloyal to the one person I’ve ever loved? Do not speak to me about Rebel ever again.”

I steeled myself for his rejection.

“Delilah. I just don’t…”

I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t’ bear to hear the words. I’d traded one prison for another. At least at The Plots I’d be free to choose my poison. Here, I faced rejection—the house and its ghosts rejected me, and the knife that cut the deepest was that this man who’d saved me would never love me.

I’d become just like his mother. My happiness would be found in cake and ham instead of the people around me.

“Leave me alone, Porter—I beg you.”

The words were constrained in my throat, but I forced them out anyway.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

I snorted. “Don’t worry. I won’t bleed anymore. And I promise not to see anymore ghosts—or at least tell you when I do. I’ve been alone all of my life. I can handle alone just fine.”

He didn’t move immediately. It took every ounce of strength I could gather not to collapse or just give in to the urges in my heart to cry.

Maybe I didn’t want love after all.

“Please.” His small plea annoyed me even more. Why would he want to stay?

I said nothing. My throat wouldn’t allow it.

Minutes later, the click of the shutting door told me he’d gone. I slid along the wall to the floor, into a crumpled mess of tears and chest wracking cries into my thick skirt so no one would hear. I bit into the precious fabric and let the act take the brunt of my pain. I’d thought those days were long gone—the days where I hid my cries from listening ears and took solace in solitude.

I was wrong.

When all my tears were gone, I pulled myself up off the ground and tended to my wounds which were, in lieu of all the blood, superficial and resembled scratches more than cuts. I still hadn’t figured out why my nose was bleeding.

It didn’t matter. I could say that Marie shoved a crawfish claw up my nose and he wouldn’t believe me. If I was smart, I would’ve really made the story extravagant.

If he wasn’t going to believe me, the least I could do was have a laugh at it.

After a bath and a change of clothes, all filled with lingering whimpers, I decided to go in to the library to be alone. Porter was at his desk. He didn’t even blink an eye at my presence, which was fine with me.

The ghost and I were the same—he could pretend neither of us existed.

A stack of books I didn’t recognize sat on the couch. I fumbled through them, choosing one I’d never seen before with green leather binding. After retrieving my blanket from the arm of the couch, I tucked myself into a space between two bookcases. I didn’t feel safe sitting anywhere my back was exposed.

It was a terrifying thought that your enemy was not only invisible to everyone around you, but could appear and attack without warning.

Resting my chin on my knees pulled against my chest, I didn’t allow myself to get completely engrossed in the words though I desperately wanted to.

My stomach rumbled with the setting of the sun hours later. By the time the night came, I’d finished two of the books from the couch pile. I wondered why I hadn’t seen them before. Maybe Porter had brought them home from the city.

Calling this house home brought unwarranted tears to my eyes again. The events of the night before and the day that followed barreled down on me, making me face it all.

For the first time in my life, I’d slept safe and sound in the inviting embrace of a man I thought would only ever tolerate my presence, yet seemed to genuinely care, only to have all of that unravel in a matter of a morning’s time.

I wished he were there with me.

“Can I come in?” A knock on the door startled me.

Had I said the words aloud?

“It’s your house.”

He sighed, already aggravated with me. Even I was aggravated with the tone I’d taken.

“Why are you sitting there? Come sit by me. I can’t stand this distance.”

He sat down on the couch and opened his arm for me. I debated with myself. Being alone and frustrated was, in a disturbing way, my comfort.

It was futile. I was already under his spell.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my ear after I sat next to him.

“I’m not a liar.”

“I know. I think you’re the only person in my life who always tells the truth. I want to hear everything.”

We stayed there through the night. I told him everything about Marie, even speculating that the touches I’d felt here and there were her, trying to get my attention. And when those didn’t work, she found other ways. I had my own hypothesis about the reasons for her appearing to me older and older, but I kept them to myself.

His face had gone completely white when I asked the same of him, to tell me everything about Marie.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“I am. If we work together, maybe we can come to understand why she’s attacking me.”

Porter took my hands in his and shrugged before beginning. “Our marriage was arranged since I was a boy. Marie moved into the cabin near the back of the property after her parents died when she was eighteen, right before Christmas. We were to be married the following spring. I insisted we get married right away, but she was determined to have a spring wedding. She hated this house and said it was so depressing during the other seasons. It would be more like a funeral than a wedding. I showered her with gifts, trying to feed her insatiable wants. She loved the city, but after a few visits, I grew concerned about the hold it had on her. Marie began demanding things from me, money, clothes, and more every day. I was in a business meeting once and from the window of the room, saw her exiting a renowned voodoo shop. The woman in there had given her some concoction to keep her young looking. Of course, the first treatment was free. After that the price was too extravagant and we quarreled almost daily about her demands on me. I grew to detest her presence. Her voice was like the scream of an owl in my ears. I spent more and more time away from home—more and more time away from her.”

The absence of his warmth was instant as he removed his arm from around my shoulders and wrung his hands together, gathering the courage to continue. It wasn’t easy to hear the story of a woman who’d been promised to him as a boy. Porter deserved someone who appreciated every gesture of kindness he willingly gave. The only thing I would ever think about demanding from him was his heart.

His knee bobbed up and down.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him pull that move.

“I came home on the morning of her nineteenth birthday, just a week before our wedding. We’d been fighting and I’d left angry. I searched all over the house and couldn’t find her. My mother had gone to town with June. I finally…” His voice broke off. “In the pond. She was in the pond, face down. I tried—I tried to get in and save her, but it was much too late. Three days after the funeral I was rummaging through my desk for the keys to the cabin, when I found the note.”

Whatever the note contained, the thought of it brought him to tears. He stood and separated himself from me.

This man who held the reputation, even with his mother, of being a stoic and unfeeling kind, was broken. He had scars that ran so deep they couldn’t be seen by the eye.

Some scars are too devastatingly beautiful for the world to see.

“Where’s the note?”

My question caused him to stiffen in place. He was a statue and I was powerless not to look at the art of him. For a brief moment, I wondered what our marriage would look like if I wasn’t who I was and he was free to be who he was without constraint.

Would he and I have met in the streets of the town?

Would he have even given me a second look?

“I will show you one day. I promise.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it had been a long day and my head had been pounding for hours.

Doubling over, I wrapped my arms around the backs of my thighs and rested my forehead on my knees. I was cold again. The scratches on my arms had made themselves known little by little throughout the night. They screamed at me to heed their call.

“I’m such an imbecile. There’s aspirin in the kitchen and you’ve got to be starving.”

I looked down at the lines on my arms. I’d felt them, but hadn’t looked at them since the incident, not wanting to see the face of Marie when I did. The lines were raised from my skin, angry.

I yawned so many times from the moment he dragged me from the library to the kitchen that tears flowed to the edge of my jaw, dropping off onto my blouse.

The rest of the early morning was a blur. I remembered eating and taking some pills from Porter, but that was the end of my memory.

~~

A note was left between the two doors of my wardrobe. I saw it the next morning after I’d woken alone and cold in the bedroom that was ours in name only.

Porter had ridden to town to handle some business but would be back as soon as possible.

He still didn’t believe me.

If he did, he would’ve recognized that the times when he was gone were the only times when the ghost of his un-beloved visited me.

My sleep was haunted by visions of the ghost of Marie and the note that seemed to be the core of Porter’s disbelief about why she would haunt me.

I needed to find that note.

Bounding down the stairs, I noted the position of the sun in the sky, and realized it was much later than I’d thought. Porter may have been back any minute.

I took the key from the drawer where I’d found it before. As soon as I touched it, the gnarling of guilt gripped my insides and tried to sway me away from intruding on his privacy. The need to know more about what was my sworn immortal enemy was stronger than guilt. It was a matter of self-preservation. And while Porter was proficient in saving me from my parents and the cesspool of a life I’d been living in, this was one thing he was incapacitated in protecting me from.

I had to protect me.

And I had to make sure that the devil of a woman didn’t turn her wrath on this man that I now loved.

I thought that was what marriage must be.

That is what I would make it.

Two people protecting each other.

My hands shook while I placed the key into the tiny lock and broke it free of the clasp. Inherently, I knew this was the place that held everything I needed to know about Marie and her insistence on tormenting my life after so many years of hovering harmless in Porter’s.

It was as though I’d brought her to life.

Marrying me had been a catalyst that Porter hadn’t bargained for.

I unfolded each piece of paper, one by one, careful not to bend or tear the delicate pages. Porter’s birth certificate was there, along with our marriage certificate and my birth certificate. I hadn’t even realized he had that one. All the things I didn’t know about my own life troubled me and stirred worry in my heart.

I stared at the paper for more time than I was allotted by my husband’s absence. My eyes were glued to the blank line next to Father.

“He gave it to me when you and your mother were making dinner. The night that I came to meet you.”

Porter’s voice made me jump and I dropped the small treasure chest-like box onto the floor, smashing it to pieces.

I squatted down and began to pick up the pieces, not knowing what his reaction would be to me snooping around. I didn’t have to wait long.

“You’re shaking.”

His arms snaked around my waist and pulled me back from the mess. His breath was warm against my neck. It caused my shoulders to shake in shudder.