by Jaime Loren
“Come on, boy,” I said, pulling him around again. Once the horses were secured to a nearby tree, I went and knocked on the cabin door.
April appeared, and I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever seen her looking so drained.
My heart ached. “I just wanted to check on you.”
She folded her arms over her chest and looked down. “I’m still alive.”
Her words were like a slap in the face, but I managed to maintain composure. “Well, I’m heading up to the barn. So … if you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”
“Okay,” she replied, eyes down.
I stepped back as she closed the door, and my heart weighed heavy as I untied the horses.
I’d completely blown it. I led Shadow and Nutmeg back to the paddock behind the barn, and wondered how long it would be until April asked me to take her home.
I busied myself with sawing the tree, checking the fences around the paddock, mucking out the stables in the barn, and polishing the saddles. Two hours turned into three, and then four. The afternoon sun filtered through the barn windows as I lay in the freshly laid straw, carving a small horse from a piece of pinewood with my Swiss Army knife. It would take time for April to come to terms with everything I’d told her—if she came to terms with it at all.
Time.
Time was all I had now—and something April was running out of with every passing hour.
It was late afternoon when I heard a dog barking. I jumped to my feet and pushed the gate open, only to be greeted by Duke. “Hey! What the hell are you doing here, boy?”
There was only one way he could’ve gotten here, and that was with Henry. Duke beat me back to the cabin and skidded to a stop at April’s side as she stood at the door. Henry stood next to her.
“Henry?”
“I’m sorry,” he replied, holding his brown derby hat flat against his stomach. “I tried to call, but you weren’t answering your phone.”
I patted my jean pockets and sighed. “It’s inside.”
He stepped forward and embraced me. For the first time in almost three hundred years I felt like a child in my grandfather’s arms. I’d never been so afraid. April and I had only been in this position once before.
In 1766, I’d told her everything, but she hadn’t believed me. I’d set up a meeting with a Native American shaman, and had explained our predicament to him in the hopes he’d seen this before. I was willing to do anything in order to find answers. Curious, April had agreed to meet him, and as we sat by the fire that night after a meal, he’d ordered all the women to their tents with their children. That was the first sign something was wrong, considering neither of us was a danger to them. The second sign was when he’d led April to the other side of the fire. I’d stood up, but two strong hands had pushed me back down. April had asked me what was happening as they painted her face, and the shaman reassured us everything would be fine.
We should’ve run, there and then, because the next sign that something was wrong was when they slit April’s throat in front of me.
It turned out they’d misunderstood when I’d told them she always came back to life.
That was the last time I’d ever asked anyone for help.
Henry stepped outside the cabin.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
April stood taller. “I wanted to talk to him.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You could have done that over the phone. Henry’s eighty-nine years old. You didn’t have to make him drive all the way out here.”
“It’s fine,” Henry said, placing his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s not fine. I could have driven you to him, April.”
“And you could have found a way to tell him I was coming—let him know he’d better get his story straight.”
I stepped forward. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Well … I want to hear the facts from someone like me.”
“He’s an elderly man! How is he like you?”
“He’s human!” she replied with tears in her eyes.
A sudden tightness in my chest choked me of air. I stood, frozen and hollow.
Henry squeezed my shoulder, reminding me to breathe.
“Well,” I said, my throat dry. “I’ll let the humans decide whether I’m worth knowing then, shall I?”
April’s expression softened into a look of regret.
“Scott,” Henry said softly.
I shrugged him off. “It’s fine, Henry. Tell her whatever she wants to know.”
“I’m sorry,” April whispered.
I nodded, clinging to my last remaining shred of composure, and turned for the lake, my chest aching.
Chapter 16
(April)
My hands shook with nervous energy as I poured Henry a glass of cold water; his hand shook with old age when he reached for it.
After taking a sip, he lowered it to the small wooden table at the end of the couch. “I imagine you’ve had quite a shock.”
I placed the jug of water down next to his glass, but said nothing.
“You hurt the man just now.”
My stomach clenched. I know. I cleared my throat, hoping it would also clear the guilt. It didn’t. “He’s invulnerable.”
“He’s human.”
“He’s three hundred years old.”
“If I’m not mistaken, so are you.”
I shook my head and folded my arms across my chest. “He lied to me, Henry.”
He nodded. “He did.”
“You lied to me.”
“That’s true.”
“Was it your job to track me down each time and befriend my parents? Who love you, by the way.”
“Your parents are some of my dearest friends.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Your whole basis for forming a friendship with them was based on a lie! I looked up to you like a grandfather, and this whole time you’d known me since 1949!”
“1948.”
“Whatever! The point is I trusted you both—I thought he was my best friend.”
“He is.”
“I don’t even know him.”
Henry rose suddenly from the couch—a lot quicker than I’d have thought him capable. He reached out and grabbed my hand, hard. “You don’t know him?”
“No,” I said, my voice shaking.
He towed me toward the stairs. “Come here.”
I stopped before we ascended them. “Henry. You can’t walk up these.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He led the way, never letting go of me. He drew heavy breaths toward the top and gripped me tighter, but stayed true to his course. Once we reached the second floor, he pulled me to the wall of windows. “Look,” he said, then coughed.
My chest ached. “Henry—”
“Look at him.”
It was difficult to look at Scott. I wanted to ignore the magnetic pull I felt—the same pull I’d always felt with him. Duke stood beside him on the pebbled shoreline, both of them gazing out at the lake—the way Scott had last night after losing his temper with me.
“What do you see?” Henry asked.
I closed my eyes. “I see a stranger.”
His hands closed over my shoulders. “Do you want to know what I see?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “I see a man who has built houses for the poor, donated millions to charity, and worked in makeshift medical clinics in war-torn villages. He has studied medicine three times just so he can be more equipped to save you.”
My head snapped back to Henry. “He’s already a doctor?”
“Best one I’ve ever dealt with. Saved hundreds of men on the field.” His eyes met mine. “Including me.”
My heart stuttered. I turned my attention back to Scott, who picked up a pebble and skimmed it across the lake’s surface.
Henry moved closer to the window. “I see the man who jumped in front of five Nazi bullets to protect me. I see the man who barely spoke a word in the nine months we fought togeth
er. He responded to orders and gave instructions in the field, but as far as socializing went … he kept to himself an awful lot.” Henry shook his head and chuckled. “He could drink us under the table every single time we dragged him into a bar, though. None of us could understand why he was so withdrawn.
“He was the all-American boy—good looks, athletic, intelligent. He never sought attention, but he unknowingly commanded respect from those troops every single day. The other men looked out for him like a brother.”
I chewed my lip. Scott Parker was still the same man Henry had known back then, only he seemed livelier now than the man Henry described. I couldn’t picture him as the silent type. But … there had been times, when we’d been out with friends, that I’d caught Scott in a quiet moment. One touch of my hand had always brought him back from wherever his mind had wandered off to … I’d always assumed he was thinking about his family.
I stepped forward to stand next to Henry. “He took bullets for you?”
“He did.”
“You must have been …” I couldn’t even think of a word to describe it.
It was only yesterday that I’d been in Henry’s situation—but I’d fooled myself into believing someone could walk away unscathed after being hit by an SUV. It was a miracle. The car must have hit Scott in just the right position for him not to have been harmed …
But bullets? No one should be able to walk away from five bullets.
“Baffled? Shocked?” Henry asked. “Lost for words? I was all of those things, just as you would’ve been yesterday.”
The memory of the sound of Scott’s head smashing the windshield made me shiver. “I was devastated. For a moment after … he didn’t move. I thought he was dead.”
Henry was silent, but I could feel his eyes on me.
And if he was dead, I didn’t want to be alive anymore, I wanted to add. “What happened with you, exactly? How did he save you?”
Henry took a breath. “It was a chain gunner. It happened so fast. For a few minutes I thought Scott had simply knocked me to the ground and we’d both escaped.”
Henry pulled his shirt from his pants and lifted the side. The scar above his left hip was white. It looked as if someone had bitten a chunk from his side, then pulled what was left back together to stitch.
“I didn’t escape altogether, but I would’ve been ripped to shreds if it hadn’t been for Scott. He rolled off me and—” Henry gave me a sidelong glance, “he … took care of the gunner … then came back to me with a med pack. It wasn’t until he turned for some supplies that I saw the back of his shirt. Usually when a man gets shot by a gun like that, the bullet would tear a hole right through.” He patted his side. “But Scott’s shirt was torn and melted together with compacted metal. When I said something, he quickly pulled it off and threw it away without a word, then saw to my wound. For the longest time I thought I’d imagined it. Convinced myself I was in shock, and had been seeing things.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
He scoffed. “Who would’ve believed me?”
I sighed and nodded.
He shrugged. “The war ended. We all went home. But I couldn’t get the image of his shirt out of my mind, or the fact we should’ve been dead. It was a few years before I tracked him down in Old Town, here in Maine.”
A short laugh escaped me. “I bet he was surprised to see you.”
“I thought he would be—but I guess he was expecting me. You can’t do what he did and expect to walk away, no questions asked.”
I folded my arms and rubbed them. “I questioned him last night. He didn’t like it.”
Henry exhaled. “He knew you were on the right track.”
“That’s what frustrates me the most. He didn’t want me to know about our past.”
“I can understand his reasons, April.”
My jaw tightened. “So he’s allowed to know everything, but I’m not? I’m just as much a part of this as he is.”
“He’s not better for knowing it. You can’t live through what he’s lived through and come out okay. He was scared it would damage you the way it’s damaged him.”
I opened my mouth to argue that Scott didn’t seem damaged, but Henry cut me off.
“He was simply trying to spare you the pain.”
“But he had no trouble telling you all about me?”
“He didn’t tell me about you. Not right away. He knew that I knew he was … different … but he didn’t go into details.”
I couldn’t imagine how frustrating that would’ve been for Henry. I’d gone one night with frustration. Henry had carried it for years, with no answers.
“He worked in a bookstore in Old Town.” Henry smiled, caught in reverie. “Every day he used to watch you walk past on your way to work, trying to muster up the courage to talk to you.”
My stomach fluttered. I found it difficult to believe Scott would have trouble talking to any woman. “But he always seems so confident.”
“On the outside, yes. But when it comes to you, April, he’s like any man in love—terrified of rejection.”
A sickly feeling rose within me. I’d rejected him an awful lot these past few days. I swallowed my regret. “You must have stayed in Old Town for a while, then. I’ve seen photographs of the three of us together.”
“I was there just over a year before you died. I was the one who had to drag him from the road after you were killed.”
I glanced up at Henry, my heart sinking.
He was pale, his cheeks drawn and damp. “I never knew—” he paused, his voice thick with emotion. “I never knew a heart could break so painfully until I saw him that morning, cradling you.”
I quickly turned back to Scott, who was skimming another pebble, and pressed my palm to the window.
“You see a lot of misery when you’ve lived to be my age, but what Scott went through after losing you … And then when he started going on about leaving you alone when you came back—I thought he’d gone mad. When he reached his lowest, he disappeared. I didn’t see him for three years. But then one day he knocked on my door and gave me a box. He told me you were in Boston, and asked me to watch over you, because he couldn’t do it anymore.”
“What was in the box?”
“Your belongings. Photos, jewelry, a lock of your hair. Things dating back to the early eighteenth century.” Henry shook his head. “I’d thought him a miracle, but then I found out about you.” He crossed his chest.
“So he’d given up on me?” I asked, loss and disappointment cleaving me in two.
“He thought he was the reason you kept dying. He thought you’d be better off without him.”
“But none of my deaths have been his fault.”
“He felt responsible. You were hit by a car while running from him.”
“I’d just seen Sue-Ann in his bed—I wasn’t thinking straight,” I said.
He leaned back. “You remember?”
“Only a little. Mostly my deaths.” And a moment of bliss in a field full of lavender. I gazed out at Scott again. The lump in my throat grew as I thought of his reaction when I’d stepped into the path of an oncoming car on that rainy day.
Henry’s hand was hot on my shoulder. “He never touched her, you know. She’d snuck in while he was in the shower.”
I pressed my palm to my cheek, swiping away a tear. “I know that now.”
“He’s not expecting you to marry him. Or even love him. I think he’d be happy to live out the rest of his life as a virgin if it meant you were simply in his life.”
Heat radiated up my neck. I turned away. Scott had never even told his best friend we’d slept together?
“You might look at him now as the man who deceived you, but I know that’s not all you see,” Henry said. “He’s the best man I’ve ever known, and trust me—I’ve seen him at his worst. It’s an honor to simply know him.”
“But that’s just it—I don’t know the man who saved you. I don’t know the man who fought in World W
ar II—and it’s crazy that I can even say that out loud without being institutionalized.”
“It’s difficult to grasp, yes. But he hasn’t changed, April. The man you were with a few days ago at my house is the same man you see down there.”
Scott was now crouching down to talk to Duke, pointing out various things around the lake as if Duke understood full well what he was talking about.
“Talk to him,” Henry urged. “I know you’re scared, but so is he.”
I shook my head. “I—I just need some time. I need to think …”
Henry frowned. “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you sleep on it? Don’t make any decisions until you’ve had time to process all of this.” He turned for the stairs. “And don’t worry, the boy isn’t going anywhere.”
That was true. Scott wasn’t going anywhere, and I did need time. Only problem was, if those journals were anything to go by, it seemed that time had never been my friend.
Chapter 17
(Scott)
I picked up another pebble and held it tight. It was smooth against my palm, but it wasn’t delicate. It wasn’t easily broken. The pebble was hard—solid—and would exist for hundreds of years—if not thousands. Fine, orangey-pink lines wrapped around its grey form. The pebble’s only weaknesses were extreme heat, and water. Heat would destroy the pebble. Water would smooth it until there was nothing left.
April was my only weakness. She burned me with heat, but caressed me like water. There had been fleeting moments over these past three centuries when we’d existed together—me as water, flowing with her. But all too soon I was a pebble on the shore, watching her rush away again.
When Duke ran toward the cabin, my heart raced. Henry appeared around the corner and stood still. I looked for April, but Henry shook his head. I nodded, all hope leaching from my body. Birds squawked as they flew overhead, away from the setting sun. Duke sidled up to me again and licked my hand. I half-heartedly patted him before throwing the pebble into the lake. The water rippled in the dusk light, the waves dying before they reached the shore.
