5. “Lone Warrior” - Mindshift
“Lone Warrior” - Mindshift
Iwait until most of the guests, including Beck, have gone home before slipping away to the library. A person can only handle so much small talk before their brain cells start to deteriorate. Mine are on the verge of total extinction.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Lord Rosenbaum, and he and his wife left early.
But the party has given me an idea for a blog post, one on dinner customs evolving over time.
I’ve been running Wesbourne in Time for four years as a pet project.
The income that trickles in through the handful of sidebar ads helps cover the cost of keeping the site up.
The library is my favorite room in the house, for more reasons than the floor-to-ceiling walls of books.
It’s where my father spent the most time when he was alive.
If I stand close enough to the half-empty box of cigars on the mantelpiece, I can still get a whiff of his scent, that combination of moss and tobacco I would recognize anywhere.
A fire burns low behind the grate, hardly necessary with spring in full swing, but it lends a cozy atmosphere to the room.
The storm outside is raging, and claps of thunder shake the windowpanes.
I’m sitting at the giant rolltop desk that used to be my father’s, which has now become my own workspace.
More blog posts, fundraiser expense sheets, and board meeting agendas have been drafted here than I can count.
The clock says it’s just after eleven. That gives me a solid three hours to do research for this post. I’m excited to jump in, but before I can do more than wake my sleeping computer, a familiar ping comes from the other side of the room.
It’s my phone, but I can’t remember where I set it down. It’s not on my desk anywhere.
I debate ignoring it, but I’m afraid it’s Beck texting good night. I find the practice a little cheesy, but he thinks it’s important, so I go along with it.
I finally locate it on the fireplace mantle. It’s not from Beck. It’s from Maisie, along with a bunch of others sent during the party.
Maisie: Have you read it yet?
Maisie: I’m not going to let you forget, remember?
Maisie: Are you ignoring me?
Maisie: CELIA!!
Maisie: You need to read it! You promised!
Maisie: I’m not sure if I should be mad or worried that you’re not answering my messages but given your propensity to lose your phone I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not going to stop until you assure me you are READING THAT DIARY!
I completely forgot. Between my car breaking down, the disastrous ride home with Henry, Bea’s startling announcement, the dinner, and attempting to keep my sister from becoming another one of Henry’s victims, it drifted into the dusty and cobwebbed recesses of my mind.
It’s not that I’m opposed to reading it.
I wouldn’t be the director of the Historical Society if history didn’t fascinate me.
It’s that Maisie lives in a world where drama lurks around every corner, waiting to be discovered (or manufactured).
The diary is probably a semifictional account of the founding of Wesbourne, in which it’s revealed that—surprise!
—“Wesborne” should actually be spelled without the u.
But I know this isn’t fair. As melodramatic as Maisie can be, she wouldn’t make this big of a fuss over nothing. I now have a burning curiosity to know exactly what she discovered in that little book.
I retrieve the pages from my bedroom, where they lay forgotten in my bag. Back in the library, I settle into an armchair near the fire and text her back.
Me: I’m starting it right now.
Less than a minute later, there’s a reply.
Maisie: It belonged to Queen Helena’s lady-in-waiting. Yes, your 4th-great-grandmother, Helena. Start at the entry dated 16 May 1837. Prepare to have your world turned upside down.
Why didn’t she tell me this sooner? I would’ve blown off my meeting and the dinner party. Maisie knows Helena is my family’s last link to royalty.
A movement in the doorway catches my eye. I look over to see Henry leaning against the heavy, wooden frame, hands in his pockets and watching me. I glower at him.
“Escaping?” he asks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on. We both know you couldn’t leave that party fast enough.”
“Correction: you don’t know anything about me.”
“So you suddenly enjoy small talk?”
I ignore him and start riffling through the pages, looking for the date Maisie mentioned.
“That’s what I thought,” he says. “You’d rather peel off your own toenails.”
“You’re disgusting. And egotistical,” I tell him, still focused on the diary.
“Admit it. I’m right.”
“I won’t because you’re not.”
The thick Persian rug muffles his footsteps, but I sense him entering the room. “So this is where you spend your time,” he says, and I finally glance up.
He’s at my desk, running his hand over the smooth surface of my private sanctuary, seducing it right in front of my eyes. I can almost feel him dragging that same hand up my arm. Goosebumps break out across my skin.
Henry bends over as if he’s looking for something. “Where’s all of your stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“You know, pens and sticky notes and stacks of paper. Normal-people stuff.”
“In the drawers, where it should be.” I clear my throat. “Do you need help finding the door?”
He doesn’t move. “Nope.”
Since he apparently has no intention of leaving, the only thing to do is pretend he doesn’t exist. I turn back to the photocopies on my lap.
“Do you still think about him?”
He’s holding a framed photo of me and my dad, taken at our favorite spot in Herrington Forest, the emerald-green pine trees providing the perfect backdrop.
For my fifteenth birthday, he planned a special picnic for the two of us, complete with champagne and my favorite cheddar from Le Comptoir du Fromage in Paris.
We asked a stranger to photograph us. I can still picture her bright green souvenir T-shirt flapping in the breeze, Wesbourne across the front in big blocky letters.
Little did either of us know the brain tumor that would snatch him from me less than a year later was already forming inside him.
“All the time,” I whisper.
They say time heals all wounds. It’s a lie.
He’s been gone nine years, and sometimes I still come downstairs, expecting to find him in his dressing gown and slippers, reading the newspaper right here in this chair.
The shock of finding the room empty, even his scent gone, is enough to drag me under waves of grief all over again.
Henry’s eyes catch mine, and if he were anyone else, I would say concern flashes in them before he turns away. He pulls a volume of fairy tales from the bookcase and flips through it. “Do you still read these?”
“Not really.”
I look down before he can see the tears in my eyes. It was our favorite Sunday tradition: popcorn and fairy tales in front of the fire, my dad’s baritone changing for each character in the story.
My fingers twirl the hammered silver bracelet around my left wrist. In the center, two hands clasp a heart between them, a royal crown resting on top.
My dad brought it back from Ireland when I was ten.
I can still hear his velvety voice explaining that the heart represented love, the hands friendship, the crown royalty.
An inexpensive claddagh, easily sourced from any of a hundred different shops dotting the streets of Dublin, but still one of my most treasured possessions.
Henry continues his perusal of the room, lifting objects and fiddling with them like a seven-year-old hyped on sugar.
I let go of the bracelet and try to focus on the dates in front of me, looking for the entry from 16 May 1837, but my eyes keep straying to Henry’s fidgeting.
Watching him is like a scab you can’t quit picking at. When will he leave?
The room dims momentarily before the lamp beside me returns to its normal wattage.
Henry replaces the antique hourglass he’s been studying.
“I need to go. I don’t know what I’m still doing here, to be honest. Everyone else has probably left by now.
This room is just so interesting, I got sucked in.
Sorry for keeping you from . . .” He waves a hand at my lap.
“What are you doing, anyway? Are you working?”
If I could just get him to leave, I’d be able to focus on this diary and whatever secret it may or may not hold. “Yes, I’m working. Sort of.”
“It’s Friday night.” He lifts his wrist to check his watch. “Actually, it’s almost Saturday.”
“Great. I’ll be sure to ask next time I need the date.”
“What’s so important it can’t wait until tomorrow?”
There’s no way I’d be able to accomplish everything I do if I didn’t stay up late, but this would be beyond his comprehension. It’s not like he goes to bed early, but it has nothing to do with work.
“I promised my colleague I’d read this tonight.
” I finally locate the entry from 16 May and squint to make out the words.
The handwriting is tall and slanted—very common in the nineteenth century.
Fortunately, I’ve seen my fair share of old documents, or I would be having even more trouble deciphering it.
“What is it?” he asks.
“A diary someone donated to the Historical Society. Maisie thinks it will be life-changing, although I fail to see how.” My manners are too ingrained for me to demand he leave, but I’m strongly considering abandoning them.
The lamp beside me flickers once, then goes dark. Through the doorway, I can see that the rest of the house has lost power as well. Henry’s silhouette is still visible, the light from the fire dancing across his face.
He moves closer to the hearth. “Guess we should have anticipated that.”
I stifle a massive groan. I can’t ask him to leave now, so I may as well accept his presence.
Grabbing a throw blanket from the sofa and wrapping it around my shoulders, I move to sit in front of the fire and allow it to illuminate the pages in my hands.