Page 20 of This Haunted Heart

The horrors of my past tried to burn through my mind despite my best efforts to shove them down, to refuse to look upon them. Dwelling on any of it always induced a heartache that was too difficult to recover from. I’d be bedridden before I managed it.

“Through the summer,” he said instead, “then we’ll see.”

I shut my eyes against the burn of threatening tears. My past was a dark, decrepit, parasitic bedfellow strung with wrongdoings and woes. Memories whirled behind my lids. I didn’t allow myself to focus on any one of them. My vision blurred. I blinked to clear it, but one tear escaped.

He caught it on my cheek with his thumb and showed it to me. The little drop pooled there on the pad of his finger, small and sparkling instead of inky and rotten like it should have been.

“Finley,” he said to the teardrop, then he made a fist, trapping it in his palm.

I worked my throat. “That’s your name? Truly?”

“It is.”

If he was lying, he was very good at it. I didn’t know any Finley. I probed his face, his scars, his haunted eyes with another long look. I didn’t know this man. At times there was something in his voice and his gaze that felt recognizable, but I didn’t know anyone by such a name. And, if I was being honest with myself, I’doftenmistaken others for a young man from my youth. It happened even when they were the wrong age and the wrong height. Finley was taller and broader, but I was always finding bits and pieces of the one I’d loved in the glances and laughter of strangers, in smells and books . . .

Even in small cigarettes left on my windowsill while a stranger broke into my safe.

No matter how hard I’d tried to get away from all that, my past was always catching up to me. Even in the voice and eyes of this pirate.

As the Concord undulated along, I realized there was something here I did recognize. I knew this farming town: the small shops, the bakery, the Quaker meeting house. It had flourished since the last time I’d come through here two decades ago.

“We’re near Light Lily,” I whispered, reflecting on the mire I’d lived in from ages 10-18 and the horrid land baron whose family I’d been forced to serve by desperate parents who had too many mouths to feed. They’d put me in service the moment I was old enough to carry a pot of water and knew how to keep a kitchen fire burning. Unbeknownst to them, they’d handed me over to work for a monster.

“Welcome to ghost country,” Finley said.

An eerie wind entered the cabin, and the temperature plummeted along with my stomach.

My heart took off at a gallop. I clutched at Finley’s arm. “Ican’t be in Light Lily.”

“You already are,” he said.

Frantic, I shook my head. “It can’t be so.”

He turned to me, sliding a firm arm behind my back. “We’re just passing through,” he said in that somberly soothing way I’d grown accustomed to before he robbed me and showed me his devil side.

My stomach churned. I stared at my lap, refusing to take in the sights and smells of a disastrous youth. “We have to turn back.”

His hand slid under my hair, gently squeezing the back of my neck. The pressure was exquisite. “We’re not turning back.”

“No—”

“Rynn!”

“I cannot go any farther!” I shouted, and my voice broke. I was scared to look out the windows, frightened the monster would appear right there, ready to hurt me again. “There is a covered bridge through the mire here . . .”

“We’ll be upon it soon,” he said evenly. “It’s the quickest way, then you can put Light Lily behind you.”

“If I even lay eyes on that bridge, I swear to you my heart will stop in my chest!”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because I’m rotten! I’m a vile woman more serpent than you will ever be! No harpy in hell is worse!” When I opened my mouth to say more, my voice cracked. I wanted to shout my apologies for all my wrongdoings at the sky, but my throat tightened around the words fighting for purchase on my tongue. I could say no more.

I burst into tears.

His gaze narrowed on me, expression hard and unreadable. “Going around the mire instead of through it would add many miles to our travels.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over my weeping. “We’d have to stop at an inn and wait to secure a ride with another stage.”

“Yes! We must!” I croaked. “I’ll behave!”

---