Four hundred years and the pain is still as fresh as when I first found him with the wound in his chest. Love doesn’t die or fade away; if it’s real love it will always be there. Though I’m now sixty instead of sixteen, tears still dribble down my cheeks, onto the grass. “I’m sorry, Henri,” I whisper. “I wish I could have saved you.”
I lie there until I hear Aggie’s voice. I open my eyes and for a moment I expect to see Alejandro lying next to me. There’s no one. I groan as I get to my feet and then limp out to the cleared path, where I find Aggie waiting for me with a look of concern. “I thought you’d gotten lost,” she says.
“No, I knew where I was going.”
“I remember this place,” she says. “I used to make out with boys here.”
“So did I.”
We share a brief laugh at this and then I take Aggie’s arm to walk back to the house.
***
It’s a laborious process for two old women—even two old witches—to clean up the house. I do most of the manual labor, having far more experience at it. I haul the broken furniture out to the ruins of the stable, where I pile it up to burn later.
Aggie focuses on tidying up the kitchen and then the library. The books too badly damaged or defaced she puts into a bin to be destroyed. I can only imagine how much this would pain Sophie. The rest Aggie puts into neat stacks to be boxed up.
On the second day of this, I see a man coming up the path. I take out my pistol, leveling it at him. The closer he gets, the more familiar his face seems. Though we haven’t formally met, I know this is one of the Devereaux clan. I shove the pistol back into its holster.
“It’s good to see someone cleaning this place up,” Mr. Devereaux says.
“Yes, it is.”
“May I ask your name?”
“Sylvia Joubert. My sister and I own this estate.”
“Oh.” Mr. Devereaux stares at me, probably trying to figure out why he’s never seen us before.
“We’ve been in America for a while. Once we heard the war was over, we decided to see what happened to the old place.”
“I’m afraid it’s in very bad shape.”
“I noticed.”
To my surprise, Mr. Devereaux bursts into tears. “I’ve failed you!” he wails. “My family has worked this land for centuries, nurtured it, but we could not stop the soldiers—or the tanks. Those metal monsters came rolling through here, flattening everything in their path. And the noise they make!”
I put a hand on Mr. Devereaux’s shoulder. “It’s all right. I understand.” I force a smile to my face. “You and your family are welcome to come back now. There’s a lot of work to be done to rebuild the place.” I motion to the vineyards. “We really need your expertise in the vineyards.”
“They’re a complete loss, I fear.”
“I fear that too, but we can replant.”
He finally smiles back at me. “Yes, we will rebuild.”
“That’s right. We’ll rebuild it to last a few more centuries.”
Mr. Devereaux and I exchange ideas for a while. His family has been hiding out nearby and he’s more than anxious to bring them back here. I have little doubt that Aggie will agree to give them the same autonomy as before in managing the estate. I can’t imagine that she will want to try living here again. For better or worse, Rampart City is our home now.
Once Mr. Devereaux leaves to tell his family the good news, I go inside to relay our conversation to Aggie. I find her still in the study, which is mostly cleaned up now. A painting stands in front of her. As I step into the room, she turns the painting so I can see it’s the portrait Mama had painted of us when we first came here.
“It’s hard to imagine we were ever that young,” she says.
“I know what you mean.” Back then we were just children, especially me. Now there’s only two of us left and we’re tottering old women. “What should we do with it?”
Aggie considers this for a long time. The way she stares at the painting, I worry she might finally figure out what Sophie discovered over two hundred years ago. If she does, she gives no sign. “Those days are over,” she says.
I nod to her and lay the portrait in the crate with the others to be stored. Before I close the lid, I look at it one last time. Sophie was right that we look nothing alike, but from the love in our eyes, it’s clear that we’re a family.
I shut the lid and then go back to work.
Also by P.T. Dilloway
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection, Volume 2: The Wrath of Isis: Dr. Emma Earl has destroyed the Black Dragoon and returned from the dead, but her greatest challenge is just beginning. In the last five novels of the Tales of the Scarlet Knight series, Emma faces off against a Russian gangster, an alien monster, and a gang of deadly assassins. She goes into the future to meet the next Scarlet Knight—her daughter Louise. But threatening that future is the return of the evil goddess, who this time may be too powerful for Emma to defeat.
Children of Eternity Omnibus: Samantha Young wakes up on the island of Eternity with no idea of who she is or how she got there. She soon finds the island is populated by nearly 50 other children who live under the strict 17th Century rules of the Reverend Crane. Thus begins Samantha's journey to find how who she is and who the children of Eternity are. Includes the entire series: Forever Young, Young Family, Young Hearts, and When You Were Young
Girl Power: When a supervillain's weapon turns Earth's greatest male heroes into its greatest heroines, they enter a whole new world. Can Apex Girl, Velocity Girl, the Mermaid, and Midnight Spectre come together in time to save the world?
Chance of a Lifetime (Chances Are #1): When Detective Steve Fischer investigates a robbery, he’s murdered by a gangster and injected with an experimental drug known as FY-1978. Thanks to the drug, Steve comes back—as a woman. Now Stacey Chance has to find those responsible and make them pay.
About the Author
P.T. Dilloway has been a writer for most of his life. He completed his first story in third grade and received an ‘A’ for the assignment. Around that time, he was also placed in a local writing contest for a television station, receiving an action figure in lieu of a trophy, thus securing his love with the written word. Since then, he’s continued to spend most of his free time writing and editing. In the last twenty years, he’s completed nearly forty novels of various genres.
In 2012, Solistice Publishing published P.T.’s superhero novel A Hero’s Journey, Tales of the Scarlet Knight #1. That same year, December House Publishing included P.T.’s flash fiction stories as part of the collection We Are Now. Also in 2012, P.T. created the imprint Planet 99 Publishing to publish the remainder of the Tales of the Scarlet Knight series as well as a variety of other novels, all of which can be found at http://www.planet99publishing.com.
When not writing, P.T. enjoys reading and photographing Michigan’s many lighthouses. In order to pay the bills, he earned an accounting degree from Saginaw Valley State University in 2000 and for the past ten years has worked as a payroll accountant in Detroit. Visit his website: http://ptdilloway.blogspot.com
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Page 120
