Page 4 of It's You
Then, in one agile motion, he moved to her side and stared straight ahead.
In the darkness, she felt his trembling hand reach for hers. A pulsing thrill shot through her young body at the touch of his hot, taut hand. She ran her fingers gingerly over the wiry hairs on the back of his fingers and glanced up at him, but he was still staring straight ahead at the stage, clenching his jaw with determination. He shifted his hand to lace his fingers through hers, pressing his palm to hers. Flush, entwined, and finally still.
And you belong to me.
Time started again.
The once-hushed sounds of the play surrounded them.
When Darcy looked up at Jack, he turned to meet her gaze. His eyes were dark brown again, but unaccountably grieved. He held hers gently, desperately, almost as though he would never see them again. Keeping his fingers woven through hers until the last possible second, he only shifted her hand to his arm when the time came for them to step on stage together.
That was the first time she heard the words in her head, in Jack’s low voice, soft and true.
For what is bound cannot be broken.
“Darcy?Darcy, are you with me again?”
Darcy’s eyes fluttered open slowly. She looked up at the light on the ceiling, where the doctor had told her to concentrate as she’d achieved a trance-like state.
“Umm…” She blinked, trying to get her bearings.
“Darcy? Can you sit up for me?”
Taking a deep breath through her nose, Darcy sat up slowly, bracing on her elbows for a moment before turning toward the doctor. Her feet met the carpeted floor as she faced Fanny.
“How are you feeling?”
“I think hypnosis works,” Darcy replied.
Fanny nodded. “Yes, it does.”
“That was more intense than my usual dream.”
“Did you see anything new?” asked Dr. Canard. “Anything to help explain why you’re holding onto that night so tightly?”
Darcy’s shoulders slumped, and she shook her head.
“No,” she replied, the trance-like version of that night a carbon copy of the one that had claimed her dreams for almost twenty years. “It was the same. The same night I’ve relived my whole life.”
Dr. Canard cocked her head to the side. “‘For what is bound cannot be broken.’ You repeated that over and over again as I was waking you. What do you think that means?”
Darcy gathered her jacket and purse onto her lap, scooting forward on the couch to say goodbye. “I have no idea, Fanny. But someday, no matter what, I’ll find out.”
2
Three days later, Darcy adjusted the multicolored flower ruffle of taffeta that exploded out of her shoulder strap into her neck and chin. It looked ridiculous and itched like crazy. She readjusted the bustle in the back of the bridesmaid dress and pulled up the embarrassingly low-cut décolletage up for the tenth time, clasping a bright orange bouquet of tiger lilies in her gloved fist, wishing she were anywhere but here.
“Maybe someday, Cousin Darcy.” The bride, Honoria, sighed loudly, giving Darcy a sympathetic glance before touching the diamond comb in her blonde hair and fixing a photo-ready, can-do smile on her erstwhile cheerleader face.
Darcy ground her back teeth together, holding her tongue, checking out the huge merengue that was her cousin. Covering a swelling baby bump was one thing, but covering it in yards and yards of white tulle was something else. Honoria looked ludicrous, but it was little comfort against the humiliation of her words in front of all the other bridesmaids.
Maybe someday?Darcy was thirty-five years old.More and more, it felt like maybe never.
Darcy turned back to the doors in front of her that swung open into the packed sanctuary as the organ played the first few notes of the “Wedding March.” She took her steps slowly—step-together-pause, step-together-pause—and well practiced after two decades of acting as a bridal attendant for various cousins and friends. She had even been a bridesmaid in some of her cousins’ second weddings, as she was today.
Step-together-pause, step-together-pause.
She caught her brother Amory’s eye in a pew toward the back, and he winked at her, then raised his eyebrows and cringed at her dress. She stared straight ahead, biting the sides of her cheeks to keep from smiling.
