Page 79 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
The servants in the castle whisper about Cosmina, in the way that all staff do when they feel a mistress is not deserving of their master. Eventually, the servants’ tales reach the villages at the baseof the cliff. Some stories merely accuse Cosmina of attempting to poison me in order to inherit my riches. Other allegations are more wicked, full of black magic and conspiracies with the devil.
Ever loyal to their altruistic lord in the castle, the villagers decide I have been bewitched, unable to see the evil under my own roof. Hence, they take matters into their own hands.
One afternoon, while Cosmina forages in the woods for mushrooms and other ingredients for her latest brew, four men abduct her. They gag her and bind her in iron chains, and hurry on horseback to deliver her to the waiting pyre at the base of the mountain.
By the time I notice she’s been gone for too long, and by the time I run out to the parapet and see the plume of thick, black smoke curling from below, it is far, far too late.
With a cry of anguish, I mount a horse and charge down the mountain into town, hurling myself into the bonfire to untie my love from the stake, to save her from the ravenous flames.
But it matters not.
Cosmina is dead, mere ashes.
And as ever, I live on.
HELENE
On the drive back toSebastien’s, I’m so happy I sing along to the radio. He doesn’t say anything, but when there’s a break in the music and the DJ comes on, I see Sebastien smirking to himself.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“No really, what?”
He glances over at me. “You’ve always been, uh,creativein your interpretation of ‘in tune.’”
I can’t help laughing. I know it’s true. Katy banned me from karaoke a long time ago. We always wondered how a musician mother could birth one daughter with perfect pitch and another with the voice of a squealing cat.
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” I say.
Sebastien smiles. “You are.”
It’s the corniest thing. But the way he looks at me is so damn tender and sentimental I melt anyway. And let’s be honest—I’ve always wanted someone to say nauseatingly sweet things to me. Weonly pretend comments like that in movies are sickening because we never think we deserve them ourselves.
But I’m telling myself right now:I deserve this.
His gaze lingers, as if he’ll never tire of looking at me, and I smile back before poking him. “Eyes on the road, please. I don’t want to reenact my accident in the snowbank.”
Sebastien cringes, and I’m sorry I reminded him of what he considers a near brush with death. I lean over the gearshift and kiss him on the cheek instead.
He sighs, and there it is again, that heaviness he carries. It’s patently unfair that Sebastien has to shoulder all the burdens of our past. Even a fender bender sends his mind racing toward my demise.
From his journals, I can tell that Sebastien thinks the curse is his fault, that he inflicts the tragedy on me in every lifetime. But dying is the easy part; it’s the people left behind who suffer most.
I trace the face of Dad’s broken watch. In his last days, he wasn’t afraid of death. Mom, Katy, and I were, though. We were terrified of the emptiness of life without him. Terrified we lacked the strength to carry on without him to support us. Terrified of missing him so badly it would eat into us, afraid of making memories without him, afraid of the guilt of eventually moving on.
If the curse inflicts death on Juliet, it inflicts something equally bad—or worse—on Romeo.
But the thing is, Mom, Katy, and I survived. And we have great memories of Dad to hold on to, because he made sure that our family never missed a moment to enjoy each other, to throw ourselves into school plays (me) and swim meets (Katy) and folk music jams (Mom), to live the heck out of whatever life had to offer.
Admittedly, I lost a lot of that instinct when I grew up, but that’s part of what being New Helene is about. I’m reclaiming it.
And maybe that’s how I can help Sebastien, too. For as much as he’s endured, he ought to be rewarded with less suffering, not more.
I slide my hand onto Sebastien’s thigh and leave it there for comfort. “It’s going to be okay,” I say.
“How?”
