Chapter Twenty-Six
Nolan
We land without fanfare on the brick walkway outside of a pristine colonial home. White lights twinkle from the landscaped gardens that sit perfectly symmetrical on either side of the entryway. A brass knocker on the door in the shape of a Venetian mask watches us impassively.
Harriet snickers. “The irony of this moment is not lost on me.”
“Irony?”
She gestures at the knocker. “You know. The movie? The book? The thing with the face on the door.” She twists her features into something solemn and I rub my knuckles over my grin, trying to hide my amusement. Her face wasn’t meant for frowning.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell her. She blinks, surprised. “You’ve never read Dickens?”
“A Christmas Carol? Aye, I’ve read it.”
“And?”
“And I thought it was boring when I was alive. My opinion hasn’t changed in death.”
Harriet scoffs. “Even though it turns out everything he wrote about is true? That didn’t impress you? Even a little?”
I roll my eyes. “The things he wrote in that book are hardly true, Harriet. Do I look like a flickering candle to you?”
Her lips twitch as she stares up at me. Her eyes look like they’re glowing in the reflection of the lantern hanging above us, her chocolate brown a bright and brilliant gold.
Maybe she’s the candle, and I’m the idiot drawn to her flame. She’s so damn beautiful.
“No,” she says. “You look like a surly sailor.”
“I believe the term you previously used was rugged.”
“A rugged, surly sailor, then.”
“Better.”
Harriet turns to the door, studying the knocker. “I would have thought someone cracking open your entire secret universe would be more impressive,” she muses.
“Secret universe?”
“The whole traveling through the past thing. Ghosts. Spirits.
Whatnot. Dickens knew something.”
“Ah. Yes. Well.” I clasp my hands together. “I always preferred The Muppet Christmas Carol version. There’s something oddly captivating about Miss Piggy.”
A laugh sputters out of her. “What a surprising man you are, Nolan Callahan.”
“I am a man with layers.”
“Apparently.”
Her amusement slowly evaporates as we linger on the front porch. I’ve noticed that the past gives her more time to come to terms with her memories than most. We never drop into the middle of one. We’re always given enough time for Harriet to ease her way into it.
“I suppose we should go in, then,” she says.
I shrug. “Or we could wait. I’m in no rush.”
Her shoulders fall. “No, we should. Best to get it over with, and all that.”
This memory is different. Harriet isn’t curious, or delighted. She’s bracing herself for something.
She knows where we are.
She knows when we are.
Footsteps sound behind us on the walkway and we turn to look.
Past Harriet stands at the end of the walkway, her hair twisted into some sort of sleek bun.
She doesn’t look much younger than she is now, maybe a handful of years.
But she does look more strained, stretched far too thin.
Lines that bracket either side of her mouth and an uncharacteristic dullness to her amber eyes.
The idiot with the phone trails two feet behind her, still preoccupied, still not paying her an ounce of an attention.
Harriet turns to look at him, frowns, then lifts her hand to the brass knocker.
She’s wearing fitted leather gloves. A jacket that’s tailored within an inch of its life.
There is no pink coat. No candy canes. No color.
She knocks twice and waits, firming her shoulders. She looks like she’s preparing for battle.
“Shall we keep an eye out for clues?” I suggest, watching with interest as the past version of Harriet bites at the tips of her gloves, whipping them off and cramming them in her pockets.
Her nails are bare, free of the polish she favors now, and it’s almost as jarring as whatever it is she’s done to her hair.
“This isn’t a trip for clues,” Harriet says.
“I know why we’re here.” The door swings inward, her mother appearing in the entrance.
She’s older than the train memory. Older, but no less dignified.
She greets her daughter with two air kisses against her cheeks, but saves her true enthusiasm for the man behind her.
A wide grin splits her face as she greets him.
Next to me, Harriet sighs. “This is the night I broke my mother’s heart.”
Harriet slowly grows more rigid as we follow her memory through the house. By the time the past version of herself is sitting down for dinner at a table overflowing with shiny silver dishes, she looks one touch away from shattering across the floor.
Whatever it is that happened in this memory for Harriet, it isn’t good. I reach for her, relieved when she doesn’t pull out of my grip.
“I’m here,” I tell her. “I’m right here with you.”
She threads our fingers together, gripping tight. “I know,” she says. She exhales a shuddering breath. “I know that,” she says again, quieter, and I think, maybe, that might be the problem.
That I’m here. That I’m going to experience whatever this memory is with her.
My magic bounds another restless loop on the inside of my chest. I’m unnerved by this silent and cold version of Harriet and my magic is reacting accordingly. It settles like pins and needles against the palms of my hands. An itchy restlessness at the base of my spine.
In the formal dining room, the five people staring dutifully at their plates have barely exchanged more than pleasantries since they sat down.
Cardboard cutouts of people playacting at love and family.
Her mother and father sit on both ends of the table.
Harriet and her sister anchor the other two sides.
The … fopdoodle with the phone seemingly surgically attached to his hand sits to Harriet’s left.
My forehead creases. “Well, this is certainly lively.”
Harriet shifts on her feet but doesn’t say anything. I busy myself by studying the room. Despite Harriet’s insistence that this isn’t a reconnaissance mission, I treat it like one all the same.
Fine china. Artfully arranged flowers. Woefully depressing and probably heinously expensive artwork. This place looks like a mausoleum pretending to be a dining room.
“I think I lied to you,” Harriet whispers as I’m studying some of the carvings on the oversize chandelier hanging low over the middle of the table. I can’t figure out if it’s a fox in distress, or a particularly ugly man.
The whims of the wealthy. I’ll never understand.
“How so?” I ask, distracted.
“I think I might be a bad person,” she whispers.
I stare down at the top of her head with a frown. She’s curled in on herself, holding my hand with both of hers in front of her body. “Ah, yes. A tiny woman who favors colorful sweaters and thinks candy is one of the primary food groups. You’re a proper villain, indeed.”
“I’m serious, Nolan.”
“As am I.”
She falls silent. In front of us, the conversation moves around Harriet as she pokes at her potatoes. It’s like she’s another vase on the table. No one asks her how she is. No one asks her opinion.
How sad it must have been, to be so lonely in a room full of family. “What if your opinion of me is wrong?” Harriet asks as her mother prattles on about something involving monograms. “What if my opinion of me is wrong?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But what if—”
“No,” I cut her off easily.
I don’t know how or why she’s gone from confident to discrediting herself at every turn, but I don’t like it.
I don’t like how she’s done her hair or the idiot at her side or the way no one seems to realize she’s sitting at the table.
I do not like this memory. “Are you about to leap across the table and stab your father with the serving fork?”
“No, but—”
“Perhaps set fire to the curtains?”
“No, but what—”
“They’d certainly deserve it. That pattern is atrocious.”
A small smile cracks through her turbulent expression. Then she releases my hand. “There are things you don’t know about me.”
“And there are things you don’t know about me.
” I nudge her shoulder with mine. “One overly formal dinner won’t change my opinion.
” Glass rattles on the table. Silence descends.
I didn’t realize how much the limited conversation was filling the room until it’s gone entirely.
My attention snaps from the Harriet next to me to the one at the table, gripping her fork with a white-knuckled grip.
She places it beside her plate, then folds her hands in her lap.
“It’s the right choice for me,” she says, her voice trembling at the edges. I watch as she physically gathers her courage, eyes flicking up to her mother and away again. She blows out a breath. “I know it might be a disappointment, but—”
At the head of the table, her mother laughs, caustic and sharp. “It’s not a disappointment, Harriet. It is a betrayal.”
Both Harriets flinch. Clearly, I missed a part of the conversation. “What’s happening right now?” I ask.
“I just told my mother I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
Shock grabs me by the back of my neck. I’d be less surprised if she told me she trained lions for the circus.
Or competed at one of those competitive-eating competitions the town of Annapolis seems so fond of during the summer picnic months.
If she told me she was crowned Queen of the Blueberry Pies, it would make more sense than this. “You were a lawyer?”
“I don’t like to talk about it.” She meets my eyes briefly. “I know it’s hard to believe. It sounds ridiculous when I say it.”
“Ridiculous isn’t the word I’d use,” I reply. Incompatible, maybe. Out of character. Harriet fits at the Crow’s Nest in a way that’s intrinsic. I cannot imagine her in a courtroom.
It’s too small for her. Too … gray.
“I only worked in law for a couple years.” She wraps her arms around herself, palms cupping her elbows. “This is the night I told my mother I intended to leave the role she secured for me at a prestigious firm. She, uh—she took it personally.”