The Heart's Ashes (57 page)

An old man
hobbled from my bedroom, closing the door behind him.

“
David?” I rested my book on the coffee table.

“
Yes, dear.” He smiled, his weathered, rubbery skin crinkling
around his dimple.

“
What? What happened?” Not sure whether to laugh or frown, I
jumped up and ran a cautious hand over his leathery
cheek.

“
I’m going to close an account at the bank today—one I opened
a long time ago.”

“
Why do you have to be old?”

“
Because, my love—” his youthful teeth showed with his smile,
his sparkling emerald eyes unchanged by age, despite sagging
eyelids and grey brows, “—when I placed my possessions in the safe
deposit, I looked only twenty, and that was a good fifty or more
years ago.”

“
How do you look so real?”

“
Well, when you’ve been changing your identity for a hundred
years, you learn a few tricks.”

“
But, I can’t see any joins—even the baldness looks real.” His
cheek, as I tugged it, felt like a warm, deflated
balloon.

David laughed
softly, pulling my hand away. “Well, I wouldn’t be able to convince
a bank manager that I’m an eighty-year-old man if I looked fake,
would I?”

“
Guess not.” I shrugged.

“
Now, my beautiful fiancé—” he wiped his thumb over my cheek
and smiled fondly at me, “—you stay here and try not stress about
tomorrow.”

“
You know me,” I said, and he laughed.

“
Yes. I know you’ve been worrying about everything too much.
But it’s good to see you smile again.”

“
How can I not smile? Have you seen you?”

He touched a
hand to his back, crouching over his cane. “There is nothing
amusing about the elderly, Ara.”

I stifled a
giggle. “Except that you, who has never aged a day, play it only
too well.”

His hand shook
over the nob of the cane, his breathing becoming ragged, strained.
“Just you wait, dearie, why, when I was your age—”

I rolled my
head back, cackling as he wandered off down the path of a lengthy
monologue, his voice unchained from its youthful poise.

“
Will you be long, Gramps?”

“
No.” He stood taller and looked down at me. “Just have to get
something important.”

“
What?” I opened the front door for him.

“
You’ll see tomorrow.”

“
What’s so important about tomorrow?” I grinned
mischievously.

“
Meet me by the altar at noon and I’ll tell you.”

“
Okay. I’ll be there.”

“
You’d better.” He dropped a quick kiss to my cheek; I wiped
it away, cringing.

“
Ew. Your lips feel like sultanas, or. . . dried
apricots.”

David shuffled
out the front door, slowly. “Lucky we don’t have to face old age
then.”

“
Yeah, it’s scarier than an evil council of
vampires.”

“
Later, Ara.” He laughed, then switched into character again,
fumbling clumsily with the car keys as a boy rode past on his
bike.

“
Grandpa?” I called.

He looked up;
I pointed to his bowler hat rolling down the street with the
wind.

“
Oh, fiddlesticks,” he scoffed in an English accent. “We’ve
got a runaway.” He chased after the hat, raising his cane in the
air. “Come back here, you little scallywag…”

I shook my
head, leaving my hundred-and-twenty-year-old fiancé to stumble down
the street by himself as I ran for the phone. “Hello,” I
chimed.

“
Hi, how’s preparations for the big day?” Dad
asked.

“
Great. We spent all afternoon tying my hair in that stupid
hairstyle Emily likes.”

“
And how are the boys doing?”

“
Well, David’s gone to the bank and Mike’s polishing his
shoes.” I grinned at Mike, who offered a vertical thumb. “We’ll be
coming over about five, tonight.”

“
Good, good, that’s why I was calling.”

I folded my
arms, leaning on the wall. “Is that the only reason? Your voice
says otherwise.”

“
It does?”

“
Mr. Thompson, you are transparent, sir.”

He sighed
heavily.

“
Dad?” I walked into my room and shut the door.
“
Is
something
wrong? I mean, you sound kind of weird.”

“
I uh—I’m just happy for you, Ara. I get a little choked up
sometimes,” his voice deepened. He cleared his throat. “I’m all
right, though.”

I sighed,
blinking rapidly. “Dad, don’t do the proud-crying-parent-thing,
‘cause then I’ll cry and Mike will come running in wondering what’s
happening.”

He laughed.
“I’m sorry, honey. But I’m your dad. It’s my job to be sentimental.
It’s hard for me to see you growing up.”

I won’t
be
growing up, Dad, if only you knew that.
“It’s a part of life, old man.”

“
Yes, and I’m glad it’s a happy one—now you finally get your
knight.”

“
My
knight
?”

“
You know,” he said calmly, his voice filling with nostalgia
while I sat panicking on the other end of the phone, wondering if
he’d read my diary, “—when you were a little girl, you wished on
every star, praying for a knight in shining armour. I guess, in a
lot of ways, David’s been that for you, hasn’t he? I—I think, if he
hadn’t come along when he did, I’m not sure you would’ve been okay
again after you lost your mum.”

“
You’re right. I wouldn’t have.” I smiled, thinking about the
boy across the road—how he’d wait for me, a smile on his face, his
hair moving in the wind—unnaturally beautiful and unimaginably in
love with
me
.
“And he is my knight. It just surprised me that
you
said it.”

“
Why especially me?”

“
You know…” I said, “dads aren’t supposed to be clued-in on
their daughter’s lives.”

“
Well, I’m not like other dads. I’m a teacher, which means I’m
trained to know your business.”

I laughed.
Not all of it.
“Well, I’ll see you in a few hours, Dad. I better
go gather my things and put the luggage by the door.”

“
What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

“
Not sure. David said it was at four, but when I checked the
schedule it said one.”

“
It better not be one—you’ll miss your own
reception.”

“
I’m sure it’ll be fine, Dad.”

“
Okay. Well, we’ll see you soon, Ara-Rose.”

“
Love you, Dad.”

“
You too, honey.”

Chapter
19

Moonlight
filtered in through my open window in a calming blue, lighting the
wall where my dresser used to rest. My old bed stayed in place
after I officially moved to my new house, and I think Vicki was
reluctant to stow it in the attic again after my whiplash
turnaround when I suddenly decided not to go to Perth. But in
truth, it’s probably more that she’s secretly waiting for me to
come home.

I rolled over
and shut my eyes tight, searching for the link to the world of
dreams under this restless excitement.

“
Can’t sleep?” David sprung up suddenly and launched through
my window.

“
David!” I sat up. “You scared me.”

“
Sorry.” He smiled—his secret smile. “Well, it’s much easier
to get in here now without that desk in the way.” He jerked his
thumb to the empty space under the window.

“
What’re you doing here? You’re not supposed to see me ‘til
tomorrow.”

“
Well.” He looked at his watch. “It’s technically tomorrow,
so…” he let the vowel trail off.

“
Fine.” I groaned and sat up properly as he perched on the
edge of my bed, his weight barely dipping the mattress.

“
I have something for you.”

“
Is it a sleeping pill?” I asked sarcastically.

He laughed
through his nose. “No. It’s something very precious; something I’ve
kept hidden away all my life.”

“
Well, that’s better than a sleeping pill.”

He placed a
velvet bag in his lap, small, about the size of the novel on my
bedside, and reached inside to remove a silver box. It looked
heavy, for something its size, adorned with engraved roses and
twisting vines.

“
Wow. How old is that?”

“
About two hundred years. I kept it locked away safely so that
one day, when I found my one, special girl, I could give it to
her.”

“
Well, she’s a lucky girl. That’s a beautiful gift.
But...shouldn’t you be telling
her
this?”

“
Funny.” He shook his head. “But the box isn’t the reason I
had to go to the bank today. The main reason is this—” He wound the
mechanism at the base of the box then lifted the lid. As the gentle
chime of the haunting vampire song I hear in my dreams entered my
ears, David spun the box around fully so, in the dull light of my
room, I could see the delicate piece of jewellery
inside.

“
David? That’s so pretty.”

“
It was my mother’s—a gift from my father on the day of their
wedding.” He lifted the crescent-shaped bangle and pointed to the
pearl-coloured stone. “It’s a moonstone.”

“
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I whispered,
feeling a kind of magic in the dark.

“
Will you wear it for me?” he asked delicately.

Without words,
I rested my hand to the hollow between my collarbones, nodding.

David exhaled
through his smile, then cupped his mother’s bangle over my wrist,
his touch cooling. The band, only as wide as a finger, sat against
my skin firmly, with the moonstone at the centre.

“
Yours is the first hand this has touched since it was worn by
my mother over a hundred-and-twenty years ago. I’m told this bangle
represented everything in my father’s heart. From the day he gave
it to her, to the day she died, she never took it off.” He lifted
my hand and kissed it gently. “I can only hope it will mean as much
to you.”

“
David.” I choked back tears. “I—I can’t find words.” I
touched the bangle. “I love it, and I love you.”

“
I love you too, mon amour.”

I threw my
arms around his neck and breathed him in deeply. “Thank you.”

“
You are more than welcome.”

The need to
keep him with me, exacerbated by being in my old room, the place I
last broke his heart, filled me up with desires. “Stay with me
tonight?”

“
Sorry.” He pulled away, standing up quickly. “You know how I
like my traditions.”

I slumped back
on my pillows. “Only too well.” And there was no point arguing with
him when he spoke in that tone. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“
That you will.” He flashed a cheeky grin and leaped onto the
windowsill. “I’ll be waiting by the doorway to our
forever.”

The frost of
early spring seeped through the small crack in the base of the
window, while golden sun struck the bare white wall, parting the
cold with columns of warmth. Dust motes hovered in the light,
dancing around like today was a thing to rejoice, and for the first
time in my life, I agreed.

I threw the
covers back and tucked my arms under my elbows as the cool circled
my ankles, reaching up to spread goosebumps over my body, then
wandered over to look down on the day.

That boy never
could close a window. I forced it down, feeling warmer from the
mere absence of the breeze. Outside, the morning reflected off the
road by the school, while sunshine began to melt the last of the
cold. All down the street, leaves filled out once bare trees, and
new birds chirped to the song of their mothers. It looked as though
the world decided today could be spring, gifting me with a bright,
fresh, new beginning, but this time, one I couldn’t wait to
start.

I drew a deep
breath through my nose and leaned against the oak window frame.
Above me, the boys rustled around in the attic, obviously getting
ready for the big day.

I wonder if
David’s wondering if I’m awake.

Skittles’ bell
jingled as he ran across the yard, seemingly unfazed by the frost
on his tail and ears, most likely a result of falling asleep on the
roof again. I smiled then, wondering if Skittles kept David company
up there when he used to stalk me—before we met. Ha, vampires;
can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em. I chuckled to myself.

Dad looked up
and waved at me from under the tree in the yard, his smile as big
as the day, while he untied my white swing and repositioned the
rose-lined arch for the celebrant to stand under. When I waved, the
sudden sight of the oval moonstone on the bangle David gave me last
night caught my eye; I gently held my thumb and index finger
against the silver, twisting it so the light of day bounced off the
pinks and blues and purples of the stone.

I can’t
believe he gave this to me. I hope I don’t lose it or break it or
something. I think I’ll take it off right after the ceremony and
put safely back in its little silver box. He’d never forgive me if
something happened to it.