The Taker

there. I think I saw Tricia as my last chance.”

Lanny shrugs, an undercurrent of discomfort in her frown. Uncomfortable with too much honesty, Luke decides, whether she’s the one being honest or not. “What about you? Have you ever married?” he asks and his question prompts a laugh from her.

“I didn’t hide myself away from the rest of the world all this time, if that’s what you think. No, I came to my senses eventually. I saw that Jonathan would never commit to me. I saw it wasn’t in him.” Luke thinks of the man in the morgue. Women would throw themselves at a man like that. Never-ending come-ons and propositions, so much want and desire, so much temptation. How could you expect a man like that to commit to one woman? It was only natural for Lanny to want Jonathan to be faithful, but could you blame the man for disappointing her?

“So you found someone else and fell in love?” Luke tries to keep the hopefulness out of his voice. She laughs again.

“For a man who married in desperation and ended up divorced, you sound like a hopeless romantic. I said I was married, I didn’t say I fell in love.” She twists so that she’s facing away from him again. “That’s not true, exactly. I loved all of my husbands, just not the same way I loved Jonathan.”

“All of them? How many times have you been married?” Luke again gets the uncomfortable feeling he had in Dunratty’s, looking at the mussed bed.

“Four times. A girl gets lonely every fifty years or so,” she says, smirking, making fun of herself. “They were all nice, each in their own way. They took care of me. Accepted me for what I am, however much I could share with them.”

These glimpses into her life make him wish for more. “How much did you share with them? Did you tell any of them about Jonathan?”

Lanny tosses her head and shakes out her hair, still hiding her face from him. “I’ve never told anyone the truth about me before, Luke. You’re the only one.”

Is she just saying that for my benefit? Luke wonders. She’s trained herself to know what people want to hear. It’s the kind of skill you have to develop if you’re going to survive for hundreds of years and not be found out. All part of the subtle art of weaving people into your life, binding them to you, getting them to like you, maybe even to love you.

Luke wants to hear her story, to know all about her, but can he trust her to tell him the truth, or is she just manipulating him until they are safe from the police? As Lanny settles back into thoughtful silence, Luke drives on, wondering what will happen when they arrive in Quebec City, if she will disappear and leave him with only her story.

THIRTY-THREE

BOSTON, 1819

I had planned my trip back to St. Andrew with the enthusiasm customary for a funeral. Using a sack of coin from Adair, I booked passage on a cargo ship sailing from Boston to Camden, and from Camden onward, I would travel in a specially hired coach with a driver. The only transportation to and from St. Andrew had traditionally been the provisioner’s wagon, which brought fresh goods for the Watfords’ store twice a year. I planned to arrive in style, showing up in a handsome trap complete with cushions softening its hard benches and curtains over the windows, to let them know I was not the same woman who’d left.

It was early fall, and while Boston was only chilly and damp, the passes on the approach to northern Aroostook County would already have snow. I was surprised to be nostalgic for the snow of St. Andrew, the high, deep drifts and landscapes of unbroken white, the scalloped edges of pine trees peeking out from under thick coats of snow. As a child, I’d look out the frosted windowpanes of my parents’ cabin and watch the wind blow horizontal sprays of snow as fine as dust, and be grateful to be inside the cabin with the fire and five other bodies keeping me toasty warm.

So that morning, I stood in the Boston harbor, waiting to board the ship that would take me back to Camden in completely different circumstances than when I’d arrived: two trunks of beautiful clothes and gifts, a purse with more currency than the entire village saw in five years, and luxurious travel accommodations. I’d left St. Andrew a disgraced young woman with no prospects and was returning as a refined lady who’d stumbled across a secret provenance and lucked into riches.

Obviously, I owed Adair much. But it did not make me less sad about what I was doing.

While at sea, I hid in my cabin, still overcome with guilt. In an attempt to blunt my emotions, I sat with a bottle of brandy and, with drink after drink, tried to convince myself that I was not a traitor to my former lover. I was coming to present an offer to Jonathan on Adair’s behalf, a gift one could only dream of: the ability to live forever. Any man would readily accept such a gift-even pay a fortune for it-if it were presented to him. Jonathan had been chosen for admittance to an unseen world, to learn that life as we knew it was not all there was. He could scarcely complain about what I was bringing him.

Yet I knew that this other plane of existence came with a price. I just didn’t understand what that price was yet. I didn’t feel superior to mortals, as I didn’t feel like a god. If anything, I felt I’d left the sphere of mankind and crossed to a realm of shameful secrets and regret, a dark underworld, a place of punishment. But surely I was not entirely lost. Surely there was a chance to make up for one’s sins, for atonement.

By the time I’d arrived in Camden, hired the carriage, and started my solitary trip north, the idea of rebelling against Adair began to creep into my head again. After all, my surroundings were so unlike Boston that Adair seemed so far away. I bargained with myself: if, after arriving in St. Andrew, I saw that Jonathan was happy in his life with his overbearing family and his child bride, I would spare him. I could take the consequences on myself: I would slip away and make my own way in the world, because I could never go back to Boston without Jonathan. Ironically, Adair himself had given me the means to flee: I had more than enough money to get off to a good start. These fantasies were short lived, however; I couldn’t forget Adair’s warning to do as I was ordered or suffer at his hand. Adair would never let me leave him.

In this unhappy frame of mind, I steeled myself to roll into St. Andrew that October afternoon, to face the surprise of my family and my acquaintances for being alive, and their eventual disappointment at what I had become.

I arrived on an overcast Sunday. I’d been lucky that the season wasn’t as punishing as it could be and the snow along the route had been passable. The trees were bare against a gray flannel sky and the last leaves clinging to the branches were a dead color, shriveled and curled, like bats hanging from their roosts.

The church service had just let out for the day and the townspeople spilled from the broad doors of the congregation hall onto the common. The parishioners stood conversing despite the cold and the wind, reluctant as always to forgo companionship and return home. No sign of my father; perhaps with no one to accompany him, he’d taken to going to the Catholic mass for convenience. But my eyes found Jonathan immediately, and my heart rose on seeing him. He stood on the far edge of the common where the horses and carriages were tethered and was climbing into his family’s buggy, his sisters and brother waiting in a row for their turn. Where were his mother and the captain? Their absence made me anxious. On his arm was a young woman, white with fatigue. Jonathan helped her into the front seat of the buggy. There was a bundle in her arms-a baby. The child bride had given Jonathan something I could not. At the sight of the baby, I nearly lost my courage and told the driver to turn around.

But I did not.

My carriage swept into this scene, and was immediately an object of curiosity. At my signal, the driver pulled the horses up and, heart in my throat, I sprang from the carriage into the crowd that had gathered.

My reception was warmer than I’d expected. They recognized me, despite the new clothing and styled hair