The Ghost of a Chance (21 page)

I let out a ragged sigh.

Alis looks at me and offers a small, sad smile.
 
"I fought back, you know.
 
I fought him off.
 
That’s why he left.
 
He
left before anyone saw him with me…"
 
She frowns slightly, glancing away.
 
Then her brilliant blue eyes flash.
 
"But I punched him, Darcy.
 
I never punched anyone before, but I had to get him away from me.
 
He was going to…"
 
Her body is seized by a long shudder; she
bites her lip, closes her eyes.
 
"When he had me on the ground,’ she continues, her voice as thin
and brittle as winter air, "I punched him, and he screamed.
 
He
screamed.
 
I never heard a sound like that before, not from him.
 
I think we were both surprised."

I pick up Alis’ right hand from her lap, notice the
way her fingers are curled and touching her palm, the skin stretched over her
knuckles discolored a sickly shade of purple.
 

"But before he left, he said…"
 
She chokes on the words, begins to
cough.
 
I hug her close against my
side.
 
"He said," she tries
again, squeezing her eyes shut tight, "that he was going to kill
me."
 
Her eyes, swimming with
sorrow, find mine, and I sink into them, my heart as heavy as stone.
 
"He said he was going to kill you,
too.
 
I know he’s threatened it before,
but this time…"
 
Her voice breaks,
the sobs wracking her body again, and all I can do is hold her, smoothing my
hand over her hair and back, telling her again and again, "It’ll be okay,
Alis.
 
It’ll be okay."

But Jason’s threats have frozen my fire.
 
My spine gone rigid, I repress a shiver,
with poor Alis weeping on my shoulder, huddled like a child in my arms.

Chapter Eighteen

"Are you sure you’re up for this?"
 
I pause, staring out at the pink-gold
sunset, pastel light daubed like brushstrokes on the snow.
 
Night will fall soon, and with it will come
Genevieve McLeery.
 

Inhaling deeply, I draw the curtains over the dining
room window and turn around to face Alis.
 
She’s seated at the table, her eyes pale with exhaustion, cradling her
head in her hands.
 
I watch her
worriedly.
 
"It might be—I don’t
know.
 
Upsetting?
 
Weird?
 
Definitely weird.
 
And you’re, I
mean—"

"I’m not a wilting Ophelia, Darcy," Alis
says with an arch of her brow, her mouth curving up, teasing.
 
"It’s been two days since…you
know.
 
And I’m bored and curious and
would like to be present, if you don’t mind.
 
I could use a distraction."

"Even if that distraction involves rapping on
tables and listening to channeled voices from the Great Beyond?"

"Hey, I played with a Ouija board when I was a
kid.
 
I’m not exactly a séance
virgin."
 
She points her chin up in
a show of mock arrogance.
 
"Once I
even communicated with the ghost of Emily Dickinson."
 

"Oh,
really
?"
 
I step away from the window and pull out the
chair next to Alis, then fall down onto the cushion with a soft laugh.
 
"And what did the venerable Miss Emily
have to say?"

"Not much.
 
How’s it hanging?
or something like that.
 
I think her genius was stunted because there
weren’t any dashes on the board."
 

"Ha!"

Alis’ eyes twinkle.

I grin at her, and my heart is suddenly full to
bursting: with wonder for her strength; with gratitude for the mischief in her
voice, replacing the sobbing and anxious murmurings that plagued her for the
past couple of days; with longing—always this longing—to be closer to her,
closer than two friends can ever be and still tolerate the insultingly
inadequate title of
friend.

Alis reaches for my wrist and encircles it with her
warm hand.
 
"What are you thinking
about?"

My pulse stills as I meet her calm, sea-swept gaze,
and I speak the truth, feeling daring and half-mad, sliding her grasp from my
wrist to entwine with my fingers: "You."

She blinks long and slow, her cheeks darkening to a
restless pink.
 
"Me?" she asks
softly, sitting back in her chair.
 
She
casts me a disbelieving look.
 
"There’s a dull topic."

"Not dull at all."

She scoffs.
 
"The dullest."

"Well…"
 
I lick my lips, heart banging at my ribs, blood hot as sunlight.
 
"Maybe I’ve mixed up the meaning of the
word.
 
If dullness is grace and courage
and kindness, compassion and wisdom and wit and…beauty…"
 
I face her fully, sinking into her
ocean-wide eyes.
 
"Then I must have
a really serious crush on dullness, because I can’t stop thinking about you,
Alis Baker."

"Oh…"
 
Lips parted, her hold on my hand loosens, and her chest rises and falls
with short, quick breaths.
 
"Darcy…"

I bring her palm—reverently—to my lips.
 
"Yes?"

She watches my mouth for a motionless, weighted
second.
 
When she speaks at last, her
voice is a whisper: "But how can we…
 
If Catherine is…"
 
She
frowns, swallowing, shifting her gaze to the polished surface of the
table.
 
Then her eyes rise slowly,
resting upon my necklace, the ring sparkling at the center of my unbuttoned
collar.
 

Heart stilled, I let go of her hand and clumsily
button my shirt.

"Darcy, it’s just—"

"I know."
 
My voice sounds empty, hollow; even my heart feels hollow.
 
I turn in my chair to fully face the
table.
 
"I know, Alis," I
murmur, rolling down my shirtsleeves agitatedly.
 
"I mean, it’s only been a handful of months.
 
Months!
 
And I loved her"—my tongue freezes in place, unable to shape
the words until I exert the full force of my will upon it—"more than
anything or anyone else in the world.
 
She was my world, Alis.
 
She was
everything, the only thing."
 
My
words have no sound, are made only of breath and heartache.

"Of course she was."
 
Alis rests a tentative hand on my
shoulder.
 
"No one would ever doubt
that.
 
Darcy, you don’t have to—"

"But how could I do this to her?"
 
I rub my fists into my eyes and then, seeing
spots, fall forward onto the table, my cheek cool against the oak.
 
It feels good to lie here, to let my limbs
hang loose when my heart is so shamefully exposed, hot and pulsing, triggered
now like an ear-piercing alarm.
 
The
peace is irrevocably broken.
 
I tilt my
head on the table toward Alis—lovely Alis—and am shaken to the core by the
tempest in her too-blue gaze.
 

"But how," I whisper, because I have to
say it, have to put it between us, this wedge or this bridge, at last,
"could I stop myself from falling in love with you?"
 
Despite my trembling, I hold her stare.
 
She looks stricken—with horror or pain or
perhaps something else.
 
I am too dizzy
and clouded to translate, too disquieted to think deeply.
 
Tortured, I go on: "It was the last
thing—
You
were the last thing I could have ever predicted, and I was so
cold and callous to you in the beginning.
 
I didn’t want you here.
 
I didn’t
want anyone here, only Catherine.
 
But
Catherine—"

Alis’ hand begins to gently stroke my head, and the
effect is calming and overstimulating, all at once.
 
I shut my eyes and my mouth and focus on nothing else but her
touch, a healer’s touch.
 
The gesture is
so simple.
 
And yet my shredded heart
begins to quietly, almost defiantly, mend.

"Darcy, you carry so much inside of you,"
Alis says in a low, steady voice, a voice I have never heard her use
before.
 
A shiver passes through me at
the cadence of it, its strength and authority.
 
Her no-nonsense nurse’s voice.
 
I
grimace, thinking,
And she reserves it for especially difficult patients
.
 

"It’s your nature to be private, Darcy, to hold
it all in, and I respect that.
 
But I
need you to know…
 
From the start, I
wanted nothing more than to help you.
 
I
didn’t come here thinking that I would—I mean, I was married.
 
Not happily married, but still married,
committed, and you were grieving, and it was the worst sort of circumstance
for…"
 
She lowers her eyes and
tucks her fidgeting hands beneath the table.
 
"I barely knew you.
 
I was
hired to take care of you, and was determined to do that, for Catherine’s sake.
 
She always worried about what might happen
to you if she died.
 
She cried to me
about it sometimes, Darcy."

Tears sting my eyes, and with a sigh that sounds
more like a growl, I sit up in the chair, turning my face away.

"I tried to soothe her, but she couldn’t be
soothed.
 
She was convinced that you
would lock yourself away, that you would shut out the world and box up your
heart.
 
She was terrified that you would
never laugh again, never love again."

I shake my head somberly.
 
"If that’s true, why is she still here?
 
Something is tormenting her, keeping her
tied to this place.
 
Or to me.
 
Why can’t her spirit rest and move on?"

"I don’t know," Alis says quickly,
sounding very small, no longer the nurse but the woman caught up in an
impenetrable storm.
 
She massages her
temples and then covers her eyes.
 
"I can’t figure it out.
 
And, God, I feel like I’m being torn apart.
 
I want to honor Catherine’s memory.
 
She, whether alive or a ghost…
 
Right now, she should be the only woman in your heart."

Dry of tears, numb from the inside out, I look at
Alis hunched beside me, and my chest resumes its dreaded, too-familiar
ache.
 
My hand shakes when I reach for
her hand, which she gives to me willingly, her gaze soft and pleading, a single
tear escaping from her eye.

"But Catherine
isn’t
the only woman in
my heart," I murmur, my throat raw from resisting this truth. "She
hasn’t been, not for weeks now.
 
Months.
 
Not since I fell in love
with you."
 
Eyes wide, heart
loosed, I say it, then: "I love you, Alis."
 

The moment, this moment, oppresses me: fraught with
fear and heavy with hope.
 
I hold onto
Alis’ hand lightly but firmly, as if it is a china teacup, a Fabergé egg.
 
The air in the room feels fragile but
sharp.
 
My eyes latch onto the
heart-shaped pendant at Alis’ throat, the necklace I gave her for
Christmas.
 
She’s worn it every day
since, worn it as faithfully as I wear Catherine’s ring…

Then Alis does an astonishing thing.

She leans toward me, her eyes hooded and dark, and
pulls her hand from mine, leaving my palm cold.
 
With deft fingers, and without ever breaking my gaze, she begins
to unbutton my shirt, her feather-like fingertips grazing my collarbones and
chest.
 
I can’t speak, mustn’t speak,
and have no words to speak, anyway.
 
I
stare into Alis’ wild blue eyes and feel myself falling, or flying, or
accomplishing both at once.

She stops with the fourth button and gently eases
the white fabric of my shirt off to the side, leaning nearer still, her jasmine
perfume wafting around me.
 
Then her
gaze drifts as she comes close, close enough to kiss, but she ducks her head at
the final moment to press her lips against the skin over my heart.
 
For a long time she kisses me there—there
and nowhere else—and that feeling overcomes me again, of healing, of rebellious
mending…
 

"Your poor heart," Alis murmurs against
me.

My arms shake, desperate to hold her, my mouth
craving her, even though it has never fully tasted her kiss.
 
"Alis…" I moan, and she draws back
from me, a strange smile on her lips, those lips that just left my skin, as she
brings together the two gaping sides of my shirt.
 
Her hands linger at my collar; I am keenly aware of them, warm
and gently tugging at the thin folds of cotton.