“You’ve been saying her name in your sleep.” Jacques knew nothing beyond the superficial. To him, Remi was simply his father’s widow. There wasn’t much that Ben kept from the man, but he kept the truth of his family and his past prior to Paris locked up tight. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust him. Jacques was the first friend he’d made in the glittering city, but there were parts of himself that Ben kept close and hidden. Jacques respected that, for he, too, had secrets better left unspoken.
“Have I?”
He nodded. “Hers, your sister’s, and your father’s. You’re a man haunted by many names.”
“Names and faces,” Ben agreed. His nightmares persisted during their travels, and there wasn’t much comfort in the memory of his father. Not anymore. All that was left to his dreams were faded recollections of a starry-eyed girl with rumpled hair and wrinkled dresses.
“Who is she?” Jacques leaned back in his seat. “Other than your father’s widow.”
“No one of importance.” Ben shrugged.
“No importance?” Jacques peeked out from one closed eyelid. He was like a bloodhound when it came to liars. “That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one. My mother’s third husband was no one of import, but you don’t hear me calling out his name in my sleep.” Jacques was no defeatist. He pinned Ben in place with his objection and held him there until he relented.
“She was a… friend.” Ben tried to keep the tenderness from reaching the confession, but Jacques was quick.
“A sweetheart, you mean.”
Ben pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. Finally, he spat out, “Yes.”
“And she married your father?” The pieces fell together for Jacques, and like a good game of cards, he found himself with a winning hand. Normally, he would delight, but the expression he wore showed his sympathy. “Your sour mood makes sense now.”
Ben lowered his eyes to the floor of the carriage. It was muddied from their boots, and the wood slats were thinning enough that he could see the faintest light slipping through them.
“Why your father?” Jacques pressed on. “I thought he was already a widower.”
Ben frowned. “It wasn’t her choice.”
“Whatever could you mean by that?”
“She wrote to me weeks before the wedding. About two months ago now.” The letter arrived on the brightest day of spring, and he’d felt such joy at first receiving it. He also remembered how much he admired her boldness and how quickly he plummeted into rage when the wedding invitation arrived. “It was the first letter from her in years, and she begged me to come home.”
Jacques, who never looked surprised, seemed utterly shocked.
“What?” Ben asked.
“And that’s the first I’m hearing of this?” Jacques’s incredulity hid the betrayal he must have felt.
“I was unhinged with grief and anger.” Ben glanced out the window again. The manor loomed, the structure coming clearer into view. “I wanted to forget. So I holed myself up with as much drink as I could get my hands on and sunk into Lilly’s bed.”
“I remember that,” Jacques said, scratching at his jaw. “Took nearly three days to sober you up and pull you out of her bed. You reeked, too.”
“You needn’t remind me.”
“This will be an interesting visit,” Jacques noted.
“This isn’t a visit to the theater.” Ben shook his head. “Remember, we’re not strictly here for my father’s funeral.”
“Right. Your sister, too.”
“I want to get to the bottom of these nightmares.” Ben nodded, crossing his arms. “After that and everything else to do with my father, we can leave.”
“Well,” Jacques sighed, settling into the seat, “if there are answers to be found, then maybe your sister will finally be at peace.”
If. That was the key.
It was the unknown ‘if’ that nagged Ben for years. Soleil had changed in just a few short months—happy and glowing one day, downright miserable the next. Sometimes, he caught her rummaging through old rooms and the attic, mumbling about money and needing more time. Their father had caught her on one occasion, sneaking off with a few stolen francs from his study, and sent her to her room for a few days. She stayed in there, hidden away—plagued by something Ben could not see. While he played with Remi and the others, his sister stayed secluded. He wondered why and what she could have been doing in there all the while.
If he was wrong about her death, and she had jumped as it was rumored, then why?
Even now, it didn’t make sense. He was reaching, he knew that. But why else would her shade haunt him for so long? Her ghastly reappearance was an omen, without a doubt. Perhaps it was the reason she’d followed him for so long, always hiding in the shadows of his room or his dreams. Every nightmare was her, reaching for him from beyond the grave as if to say, I didn’t do it.
“It’s a gut feeling, Jacques,” Ben said, rubbing at his tired eyes.
“Whatever you say, Monsieur Leone.”
“Enough of that.” Ben chuckled, grateful for the change of tone.
Seconds later, the carriage came to a stop. Ben wasn’t eager to leave the cabin yet, but as the door opened and Martin peered inside, he found he couldn’t hide. He climbed out of the carriage ahead of Jacques. His boots ground the dirt outside the manor as his eyes fell upon the familiar structure of his home. A crack of thunder sounded overhead at the same time, and a young woman with a head full of yellow hair appeared at the entrance. His heart nearly stopped.
A flash of blue-green against a pale, sullen face. The black mourning gown she wore accentuated her rigid posture, which tensed as they found each other’s gaze. She mirrored the great manor rising behind her, a portrait of melancholy.
Not as starry-eyed as she used to be, Ben thought.
Whoever Remi was, she was not the same girl he remembered. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, though he’d done well to keep it from his mind while they traveled. Fantasy was not the same as reality, and imagining Remi in any other way would have conjured sympathy; he didn’t want to feel anything.
Suddenly, his stomach coiled tight with nerves and the urge to look away. Instead, he held his eyes level with the young woman at the door, focused on her unchanging expression—a mixture of shock, fear, and something else. Her pale pink mouth twitched as if she meant to speak when a second figure burst through the door. At once, he recognized the brunette as Remi’s cousin, Elise. They were two sides of the same coin—where one went, the other was always close behind.
“Oh!” Elise yelped, her eyes widening. She quickly leaned toward Remi’s side and whispered something inaudible.
