Page 30 of One Last Secret

I wish I could have met Elias. Perhaps if I knew him personally, I might have a more intimate understanding of Victor and maybe know where he might have gone, assuming he left of his own accord and wasn’t taken by another.

I reach the entries near the middle of the journal, around the time my sister would have arrived. I actually hesitate before reading further. A part of me, I suppose, is still frightened of what I might find.

You feel guilty for what you did to Annie.

I flinch at the memory of that uncalled-for and utterly untrue accusation. Dr. Strauss never even told me what it was I was supposed to have done to her.

That’s because you slapped her immediately after she said that.

I turn the page fiercely, determined to forget that hateful woman.

Annie isn’t mentioned directly at first. It’s not until around a month after her disappearance that Victor mentions the arrival of atruly beautiful woman, perhaps even a goddess,who instantly captures Elias’s fancy.

That sounds like my sister. She had a gift. Men would indeed fall for her on sight, as though by her very presence she cast a spell on them.

I read further. Victor’s mentions of Annie grow longer and more involved. It’s clear that Elias isn’t the only one captivated by her. A few weeks after the first entry, he leaves a long love letter to her, praising her assomething that transcends reality, a fairy princess in whose presence I am lucky to bask, whose favor I am lucky to enjoy, though such favors are never as much as I wish for, never what I long for. Oh that just once she might look on me with the same love with which she gazes on him!

Poor Victor. I feel sorry for him. Annie was not an unkind woman, and I am sure she never teased Victor or led him on. She always preferred older men as well, so it’s not a surprise to me that she fancied Elias, especially if Elias was the dominant partner in his pseudo-romance with Victor.

But I feel for Victor. I know what it’s like to live in the shadow of such light, to hate it as much as you love it, to wish that you could possess it, that you could drive it away, that you could belong wholly to it, that you could erase it from existence if only to breathe without suffocating.

I gasp and sit bolt upright. I stare ahead, disoriented for a moment. My thoughts have run completely away from me. What have I been on about?

I sigh and turn the page again. Annie remains in the entries for about three months before a final entry. I do find it odd that she’s never mentioned by name. Perhaps Victor simply preferred to use his pet name for her.

The Fairy is departing today. She told me this morning over breakfast. She hasn’t told Elias yet. She doesn’t want to see him when he finds out. I can’t blame her. He’s grown steadily more cruel to her. The love he felt for her in the beginning has twisted into something rotten. He would never hurt her, and when I tell her this, she assures me that she knows, but she can’t stay here anymore. It’s not good for her or for him.

I feel a touch of sympathy at that. Poor Annie. To have fought so hard to find a place where she could feel safe and loved only to learn that love doesn’t always last, nor does it always guarantee safety.

Behind that sympathy, I feel a touch of cruel satisfaction. I hate myself for it, but I am beginning to resent Annie for leaving the way she did. All these years I had to live with the fact that she might be dead, and now I find that she was alive, that she took a lover and had friends, that she built an existence without even doing me the courtesy of sharing why she was shattering mine. Knowing that the life she tried to build without me failed is a pleasantly bitter pill.

Would you rather she had been kidnapped or murdered?

That thought is enough to banish my cruel thoughts and replace them with guilt. I won’t allow myself to feel that way again. I won’t let resentment motivate my actions. I keep reading.

She joined me in the cove today, not the large one but the hidden one that only I know of. She could not give me all I askedfor, but she let me gaze upon her beauty unhidden. I tried to put this beauty to canvas, but I could not. I lack the talent to capture the true essence of what she is. So I wept on her breast, and she held me while we said our tender goodbyes.

I would blush at the reference to my sister’s nakedness, but I am more interested in the first sentence of that paragraph. There’s another cove! One only Victor knows about!

Hope springs within me. Perhaps Victor is alive after all.

It is late, and the world is black as pitch, but I cannot rest. I must find this cove!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I skim the rest of the journal, looking for any reference of the cove. The entries revert back to their youthful exuberance upon Annie’s departure. Victor either moves past his feelings quickly or chooses not to confront them again.

The change in Elias, however, is notable. Victor writes that his mentordies the day he wakes and finds his Fairy has flown.Victor even shows a little remorse for their tryst, writing thatI would tear the heart from my breast that I might never have stolen even a drop of what wasn’t mine.

Quite romantic, really. He might have made an excellent poet had he chosen not to pursue the visual arts. No mention of the cove, though, and that’s what really matters to me.

The entries continue. Elias isa shell of himself, no longer angry and no longer passionate. He changes his behavior toward Victor, treating him likea son more than a student.Victor is grateful for his affection but fears that Elias has lost all that makes him who he is.

The entries continue in a similar vein until the final entry. Victor never records any mention of Elias’s suicide. He also never mentions his hidden cove or how one might find it. I sigh in frustration and prepare to look through the rest of the papers in the desk when my eyes fall to the inside of the journal’s binding. There I find, scrawled in ink, the following.

1.Go where the fairies bathe

2.Walk to the treasure

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