Page 39 of Beneath the Poet's House

“I’m sorry,” Mia continues. “I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s just that, if the situation were reversed, I feel like you’d have wanted me to know. Especially considering the weirdness with which this whole thing started: seeing him at the Ath and the coffee shop, his overall intensity. I’m just trying to look out for you. We’re friends.”

Are we?Saoirse wants to ask.Does a friend dump all over another’s happiness at the very moment they’ve grasped it?But there’s still nothing but concern on Mia’s face, and Saoirse feels her frustration, her defensiveness, diminishing, then disappearing altogether. Of course Mia’s only looking out for her. How could she be so nasty in return? And Mia’s right; if Saoirse had known something like what this Josephine girl had said, she would have said something too.

“It’s okay,” Saoirse says. “I’m not going to say anything to him, but I’ll keep my guard up. Who knows, if there’s anything to tell, maybe he’ll relay it without me even asking. Until then, I am going to keep seeing him. I think it’s good for me. It feels good.”

They clean up and move back to the living room, where Lucretia and Saoirse talk about writing and take turns throwing a little mouse toy with a bell inside for Pluto. Mia plucks one of the leather-bound gold-leaf books from the shelves in the corner and thumbs through it, and Roberto lies on the settee and closes his eyes. Eventually, he stirs, stands, and yawns dramatically.

“Time for bed,” Roberto says. “If you two leave with me, I’ll walk you home. Any later, and you’re on your own.” The two women stand without argument and follow Roberto to the foyer, Saoirse trailing—and yawning herself—behind.

They leave with hugs and farewells. No mention of heart conditions, residual hauntings, or literary identity fraud. When she’s shut and locked the door and climbed the stairs, Saoirse checks her phone. Almost midnight. Too late, now, to be tempted to call Emmit, though that doesn’t stop her from wondering what he’s doing. After washingup, she checks her phone again and feels a jolt at the sight of a new text message. She opens the app and feels another, stronger jolt: the text is from Emmit, and it’s long.

... thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!

Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

Are Holy-Land!

I long to see you again, to kiss your face

To hold your hand.

I think it’s time for you and I

To slip between the gravestones

And back in time.

Though she knows the first part of the poem is Poe’s “To Helen,” a quick Google search tells her the last lines were composed by Emmit.Using another man’s words to prove his love to you,Jonathan whispers from her head.And you’ve somehow convinced yourself that the man isnota liar?

Saoirse doesn’t dignify this with a response, though Jonathan’s words linger longer than she’d like. Eventually, she forces them away, like a gust of wind dispersing a tower of chimney smoke. The thoughtthat clears her mind enough for sleep is that it doesn’t matter if Emmit Powell really is Willem Thomas from Virginia. Not if she’s going to keep seeing him.

For she, Saoirse White, carries a secret far larger than a duplicitous name.

Chapter 22

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