Picture the Dead

reminder of his everlasting love for you?” I feel his exasperation pulse through every moment. I have no answer, save the tears that well in my eyes.

“If this is your game, then so be it,” he says levelly. “But remember, love isn’t a nightmare, or an empty bed, or a print on fogged glass. Love is flesh and blood. Don’t you see me? Because I’m right here, and I’m very much yours.”

Then he leaves, shutting the door firmly behind him. I’m pained to have led the conversation into such a fraught and stupid place. Now I’m alone with my view and a knowledge that no matter how lovely this room is, it won’t give me the peace I crave.

I press my forehead to the window.

“If I’m a ghoul, Will, it’s your doing,” I say under my breath. “Let me have my future. If you ever loved me, you’d free me.”

Of course, no answer.

Later, on my way to find Quinn and smooth his ruffled feathers, I pass the front coat closet. Curiosity shifts in me; I can’t resist.

A spy must trust his instinct.

I press my ear to the door. Nothing. But then I grip the knob and turn it. My wary eyes scan the shadowed winter cloaks and wraps. Everything is just as it should be.

I slip inside, closing the door behind me, and sit as I used to, with held breath and squeezed limbs. I shut my eyes the way Toby did. “I find my best thoughts in this closet,” Toby had said. As if his thoughts were loose, ripe apples he’d collected and hidden here.

Sparks and stars float across my closed eyes. Sightless, I can almost feel my twin again. The darkness is alive and intelligent, and I fancy that I catch a bit of Toby’s own boyish scent, grass and cotton. I’m not sure how long I am burrowed there. My hand crawls to find a jam pot from our stockpile. My mouth is suddenly flooded with the taste of strawberries from sweeter and happier days. I drift…

I’m startled from my reverie by voices in the corridor outside.

“Tut, tut I’ve been looking for you, Mr. Pritchett,” Aunt Clara exclaims. “You need to write that check to Gladwell’s so that I may place my order. We are much in debt there.”

“Don’t see why we need new wallpaper when the old hasn’t fallen down on us yet.” But Uncle Henry’s voice sounds enfeebled as always when bending to Aunt. “And this talk of debt is a tax on my health.”

“You’ve never concerned yourself about our debt before, husband. There’s no need to start now.” Aunt’s voice is deceptively sweet. “Anyway, it’s a passing vexation until Quinn pays off everything as he’d promised and sets us right as rain.”

Uncle Henry answers in a mumble, and he and Aunt part on a sour note as he storms off while Aunt patters away in the opposite direction.

Alone again, I wait a few more minutes so that nobody catches me darting out of the closet.

A spy hears everything and forgets nothing.

I had no idea Aunt relied so heavily on Quinn’s future earnings. And yet she continues to spend with foolish abandon why do we need new wallpaper? I’ll have to report on these silly extravagances that continue to flow from Aunt Clara’s whims and Uncle Henry’s henpecked pen.

A debt to Gladwell’s is news to me, too. Costs must be piling up. This private information is useful. Was it only chance that has drawn me to this closet? On impulse, I spin on my heel and return to the door. I place my hand on the knob and pull. But now the door won’t budge.

25.

“Don’t you see? Will can’t let me go.” I slide both prints, side by side, in front of Geist. “Sometimes I think he wants to drive me completely mad.”

The flicker in the photographer’s eye mortifies me. He must find me ridiculous, but I refuse to buckle. It took some conniving for me to slip into the city today on the pretext of a visit to Madame Broussard. Now that I’m here, I’ve made a pact with myself not to leave Geist’s house without his promise of help.

“But don’t you see, Miss Lovell? Any human hand could have ”

“I didn’t ink either photo. I swear it.”

Geist heaves up from his chair and folds his spectacles, slipping them into his breast pocket. “What do you want me to do?”

“Mr. Geist, you’re my only chance to free myself of Will. You yourself told me that photography can be a portal.”

“My child, we took your photograph. By your account, your sleuthing was successful. For you say” and now I detect the brushstrokes of impatience in Geist’s voice “that the heart inked onto your print led you to your locket, and then to one brother admitting that the other had been hanged in dishonor. You say Will’s spirit wanted your forgiveness, and that you granted it.” He steeples his fingers. “Your fiancé former fiancé is seven months dead. You say you’ve accepted that, too. What more is there to communicate?”

Under Geist’s eye, I stand poker-straight while keeping my eyes and voice true. “I’d accept everything if I felt at peace with it. But I don’t. Mr. Geist, every night, save one, I’ve awakened to feel a noose around my neck. Just as it might have tightened around his. I feel his rage.” Now I speak out loud my gnawing fears. “I think Will wants me to come to him. I think he’s trying to send me to the edge. And possibly beyond.”

Geist cocks his head. “Why would he do that?”

“Perhaps because if he can’t have me, then he doesn’t want anyone else to have me?” I’m embarrassed to speak of such intimate matters, and my composure is melting quicker than ice on a skillet. “I don’t even know what I expect you to do for me. It’s not as if you can offer Will’s soul for me to study like Turkish tea leaves.” My voice dips. “But something is very wrong, and I am sure that I’ll have no peace until I make it right.”

Certainly my sniffling hasn’t impressed either of us, but Geist lets me carry on for a bit before he steers me gently by my elbow from his sitting room to the foyer.

“Miss Lovell, look to your own heart,” he says as he wraps me in my cloak. “You might find that some of your agitation is self-inflicted.”

“Self-inflicted?” My throat scrapes the word in my throat. The exhaustion of all my sleepless nights hits me like a wave. “But I’m wrecked.”

“Yet I see you’re again betrothed, yes?”

“To Quinn, yes.” Under his hawkish eye, I fumble. “We’ve always been close.”

“You’re blushing.”

“No.”

“I’m not sitting in judgment of you, my dear. Merely observing. But let me offer this it’s natural to feel some guilt and uncertainty. You loved one brother, and now you love the other. Your heart might need time to catch up.” Geist takes my left hand in his, tapping the fourth finger where my engagement ring sparkles again. I flush. I’m not sure how to defend myself, or if I even need to, when he changes subjects. “Young Pritchett came to visit me last week.”

“Quinn did? Why?”

“He wanted to purchase the original photograph I took of your family. He said that he wanted to destroy it. Spiritualist bunk, et cetera. He made no bones about his mistrust of my profession.”

“Quinn thinks I suffer from delusions. And, yes, we have different opinions about your craft. Surely Quinn isn’t your first skeptic.”

“Quite so. Nor will he be my last.”