Timeless

by Amanda Paris

  “I’ve been reading about marriage rituals,” he said hesitantly.

  Uh-oh, I thought. Here we go again. I concentrated hard on the noodles.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked casually, searching now for imaginary chicken in my box.

  “Did you know that it is customary to give your fiancée a diamond ring?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Yes, I am aware of the tradition,” I answered, trying to keep my voice casual.

  He moved more quickly than I expected, but then he always did. It was part of his training as a knight, I guess.

  He took away my chopsticks and then removed the take-out box, laying it beside his on a nearby end table. Lifting me from his lap, he placed me on the couch. In a flash, he was on one knee, holding my left hand—the really greasy one—and slipping the largest diamond I’d ever seen onto the third finger.

  “Emmeline, will you marry me?” he asked, a heartbreaking smile on his face.

  My speech was temporarily suspended, and I knew my jaw hung slightly open. I forgot for a moment that this ring would cause huge difficulties with Aunt Jo and no end of gossip at school. I wanted to savor the moment.

  “Damien, I don’t know what to say,” I began, stunned. That was true. I was totally speechless.

  “You don’t like it?” he asked, a frown on his face.

  “Like it? No, I don’t like it,” I said.

  His face fell.

  “I love it!” I squealed, throwing my arms around his neck. I was pretty sure my lips were as greasy as my fingers felt and that my breath smelled like an eggroll, but I didn’t care. It was the happiest moment in my life.

  “So the answer is yes?” he ventured tentatively.

  Too overcome for words, I just nodded my head in assent.

  “So, I think we should tell your Aunt Jo now, Emmeline,” he said when my initial euphoria subsided.

  My face must have given me away.

  “Why can’t we?” he asked.

  I sighed. It as an old, familiar story, and I was so tired of saying no.

  “We can, Damien. Of course we can,” I assured him.

  I’d hoped to squeeze out at least another month before I had to tell her. He just didn’t understand; he only saw that he wanted to be with me always. No amount of explanations about modern life was going to change that.

  “Let’s tell her now. Tonight,” he urged.

  “Tonight?”

  I gulped. It had been such a perfect evening. Why ruin it?

  “Tonight,” he said firmly.

  ****

  Overall, Aunt Jo took it better than I’d expected. She didn’t look particularly surprised, and she allowed Damien to finish his speech. He’d insisted on asking her for my hand in marriage, a route I thought quaint but ill-advised. I was sure Aunt Jo would say no on the spot.

  Instead, she looked at us both and smiled.

  “Emily, dear, is this what you want?” she asked gently.

  “Yes, Aunt Jo, it is,” I replied, too stunned to say more.

  “Then there’s nothing more to be said. I’d like you to finish high school first, of course, but you’ll be eighteen before then so you can do what you like,” she said, a tone of resignation in her voice. Damien beamed. It had gone exactly as he’d expected, and that annoyed me a little. But I was grateful that Aunt Jo hadn’t forbidden us to see each other or banned Damien from the house, an outcome I’d worried about.

  Something still didn’t seem right, though. I knew Aunt Jo cared about me, so why didn’t she say more? Or was I just looking for problems where none existed?

  When Damien finally left that night—he was now, as my fiancé, allowed to stay until midnight—I knocked on Aunt Jo’s bedroom door. Filled with antiques, her room looked much like mine did, minus the posters I had pasted over the rose wallpaper. Her lavender scent, always soothing to me, permeated the room. To come into Aunt Jo’s bedroom was to enter another time.

  I poked my head around the door.

  “Can I come in?” I asked tentatively.

  “Sure,” she said. She was sitting up in bed reading her monthly Ladies’ Home Journal, a green mask plastered on her face—one of her Saturday night rituals.

  I smothered a smile. This was an image I’d remembered from my childhood. I came often to her room as a little girl, homesick at first for Colorado and the friends I’d left there. We’d had lots of bedside chats, but not, I realized a little sadly, recently. There was a time when I’d had no secrets from her. She’d always been a good listener.

  “Aunt Jo,” I began, “about Damien…”

  “Hmmm? What, dear?” she asked, stroking the Duchess, who lay contentedly in her lap.

  “Damien?” I repeated a little louder, wondering if she’d heard me.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, putting away her magazine.

  “Are you really okay with this? You took it much better than I’d expected,” I began, uncertain of what I wanted to say.

  “Emily, if you’re happy, that’s all that matters. I can’t really say I’m surprised. You two have been very close since he arrived,” she said nonchalantly. She looked as if she was going to start reading her magazine again.

  “That’s all?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it. Surely it wasn’t going to be this easy.

  “Yes, that’s all,” she answered, smiling as much as she could beneath the hardened mud that promised to take years off her skin.

  I came in further and sat on the side of her bed. Something was definitely up.

  “I’m not buying it. You always have an opinion, Aunt Jo, even if you don’t always give it,” I said.

  “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you. Now out with it. Tell me what you really think. I can take it,” I said with more bravado than I felt.

  She sighed.

  “Emily, I’m going to tell you a story,” she began, a faraway look coming into her eyes.

  I pulled off my shoes and curled my feet under me, ready for a bedside chat. The Duchess, bored with us, climbed down. She had better things to do than listen to our human chatter.

  Aunt Jo smiled, but not for me. I knew she remembered a different time.

  “When I was a little girl, my sister—not your grandmother but my other sister—was the oldest. She and I shared this room,” she began, her eyes growing misty.

  “She was so lovely—she looked much like you do, Emily,” she continued. This surprised me. To my knowledge, I didn’t resemble anyone on either side of my family.

  “No,” Aunt Jo said as if reading my mind, “she didn’t have long red hair or green eyes, but there’s something about the shape of your face, the way you walk. You remind me of her.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk about her, Aunt Jo. What was her name?” I asked.

  “Edwina. There was Edwina, Miriam, and me, Josephine. It was our baby brother, Sam, who called me Jo. He couldn’t say the whole name,” she said, stopping for a moment. I knew she was remembering her brother, the great-uncle I’d never met who’d died years before in a car accident.

  She fell quiet for a moment and then resumed her story.

  “Edwina had blonde hair and dark blue eyes like sapphires. She had pale skin, like you, and she was so elegant and tall, the very image of Grace Kelly. She had her pick of the young men who came by the house. Edwina dated several young boys, usually all at once. She was a great flirt. She was also my father’s favorite. No young man was good enough for her. Because Edwina didn’t seem to prefer any of the young men she dated, this presented no problem at home. Daddy never paid too much attention to anyone taking us out, so long as it wasn’t serious.

  But everything changed when Richard moved to town. He had an angelic face, with curling lashes and baby blue eyes. I can still see him in my mind, standing on the front porch to ask our father for permission to call for Edwina. With Richard, I knew it was different immediately. Edwina acted like a woman in love. She used to dance around our room, planni
ng the outfits she’d wear for him. Though she was just seventeen, she knew her own mind. When he asked her to marry him, she planned to say yes.

  Richard asked my father for her hand, though they’d only seen each other for three months—and then it was just once or twice a week, when he came to take her dancing. He began to attend church downtown with us. We went every Sunday then.”

  Aunt Jo looked a little contrite at this. We hadn’t been to church together in over a year, not since my mother had passed away. Damien insisted that he and I attend Mass, horrified that I didn’t take religion as seriously as I had in my past life. He didn’t understand that there were other choices, growing up as he did with only one church available in the thirteenth century. I knew I’d likely convert sometime in the next year to make him happy. I didn’t think Aunt Jo would be too upset at this. She’d always regarded religion as an expression of a larger faith in God; the details, she’d once told me, were less important to Him than to us.

  “When he came formally to ask my father for her hand,” she continued, “I thought I’d never seen such fireworks. My father threw him out of the house, threatening to kill him if he came back. Edwina pleaded, begging him to change his mind, but he wouldn’t. She didn’t a say a word to him, which was very unusual for her. We should have suspected something was amiss, for Edwina had a terrible temper. As it turned out, she was just biding her time. She left in the middle of the night without a word to any of us, even me.”

  Aunt Jo’s voice broke then, the tears making trails in the green mask. I reached over, putting my hand over hers and squeezing it for comfort.

  “Did she marry him?” I asked gently.

  “I don’t know. We never saw her again,” Aunt Jo finished on a sob. I could tell she still felt upset about it, even fifty-five years later.

  “You mean, she never came back, never wrote or called?” I asked.

  “No, nothing,” Aunt Jo said, wiping her eyes and the rest of the mask off with her handkerchief.

  We both fell silent, alone with our own thoughts. I could imagine how sad my Aunt Jo must have felt, first to lose a sister, then a brother, and finally a fiancé. Though I knew what loss felt like, Aunt Jo had had more than her fair share.

  “I see the same determination in your eyes, Emily. If you feel for Damien what Edwina did for Richard, then I want you to be happy. I won’t stand in your way, even though I think you’re too young to make this decision. If it’s what you want, then I support you. You’re all I have, Emily. I don’t want to lose you too,” she said, crying into her handkerchief.

  I felt overwhelmed with the enormity of her love. Except for Damien, she was all I had too.“Don’t worry, Aunt Jo. You won’t ever lose me,” I promised, hugging her.

  By this time, we were both in tears, and the Duchess had crept back in, jumping into my lap and purring softly. She might find us boring, but we were still her family.

  “Enough!” Aunt Jo said. “This old woman has to get some sleep. And you probably want to start planning your big day, though I hope you’ll take my advice, Emily, and wait a little while at least,” she said, sounding more like herself.

  We both laughed, wiping our eyes. I assured her I was in no rush.

  “Will you make your dress, Emily?” she asked. I knew she wanted to see me sewing again. It was something that had once made me happy.

  I thought for a moment. It would be a huge undertaking. I hadn’t made even a simple dress since Mom had died. And to make a wedding dress…it would be a time-consuming project. But then I knew, suddenly, that that was exactly what I wanted. I had the ivory dress from the mall, but I wanted to make the exact gown I’d been wearing when I last saw Damien in my dreams, to recreate our past life and relive it with a happier ending.

  “Yes, Aunt Jo. I think I will,” I finally said.

  “Promise me one thing, dear,” she said, looking more serious now.

  “What’s that?”

  “At least finish high school. And I don’t want to see him whisk you off to New Zealand or England or wherever his family lives, at least not yet.”

  “Okay,” I agreed readily, happy to oblige. “But you know,” I continued, “Damien doesn’t have anyone either.”

  Aunt Jo looked thoughtful at this.

  “That may be, but he’s just become the luckiest person I know,” she said.

  I smiled at this, putting my arms around her. I was grateful for her support. I was also glad that she hadn’t mentioned Ben. I knew that she liked Damien, but I also knew that she’d always prefer Ben. He’d been in my life too long for her to change loyalties now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "Following"

  Whatever we inherit from the fortunate

  We have taken from the defeated

  What they had to leave us—a symbol:

  A symbol perfected in death.

  T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

  The red BMW convertible tore into the school parking lot, nearly running over Angela Rossi—not that I could say I would have complained much about that. The black-haired girl got out of the car, looking neither to the right nor the left, and passed by everyone as if she didn’t feel their eyes fixated on her. She could have been a model. Damien and I exchanged looks, but I shook my head, not feeling the strange tingling that would have told me she was a witch. We were both relieved. It wasn’t Lamia, though I didn’t know who she was.

  Though she looked nothing like the stepmother from my past life, with her long dark hair and strangely golden eyes, I had the oddest feeling as she brushed past me—not the same as I had for Ramona, though. I attributed it to apprehension; lately, any stranger aroused my suspicions, and I’d had several false alarms since I’d brought Damien from the past.

  To Damien’s credit, he didn’t look twice at her. He’d assured me on more than one occasion that other girls held no appeal for him, and the car didn’t send him drooling as it did most of the boys in school.

  She’d been introduced to us in second period by my English teacher as Kirsten Lowe, also a foreign student from Quebec. I immediately became wary but ignored the feeling when she smiled, sitting beside me and extending her hand. It was a very formal gesture, but I was touched. The feelings of apprehension I’d had dissipated, and I decided I was worrying too much. Besides, wouldn’t Ramona have seen this and warned me of any danger?

  It had been a long time since I’d brought Damien over, and I thought we were likely safe by this time. Damien had found me in a week. Surely Lamia would have located us by now, weeks later, if she’d come through.

  Kirsten also looked completely different, though I knew that didn’t mean much. Lamia had had dark eyes and was taller, I thought, than Kirsten. Damien hadn’t recognized her either, and though she spoke with an accent, it was not similar to Damien’s. Hers was definitely French, corresponding to her story that she was from Quebec.

  She attracted most of the boys in school. I did think it was strange that she’d enrolled in school a couple of months before summer, but then she’d explained that her school in Quebec had been on a different system. She had cousins, she said, who lived nearby. I didn’t know them, but then we’d had many new families move into town over the past few years—overflow from the developments building up around Daytona. So that didn’t mean much either.

  Kirsten was immediately popular, despite her early aloofness in the parking lot on the first day. She gravitated to me and Damien, but even that made sense since she and Damien were the only two foreign students at school. I was glad for a friend anyway. I almost never saw Annie, often with Zack and therefore with Ben. We’d grown apart after the fight.

  I was happy to have a girlfriend to chat with again. Kirsten fully supported my relationship with Damien, which had become the talk of the school.

  When I’d come to school engaged, with undeniable proof on my left hand, I caught everyone staring at us—everyone but Ben, who continued to keep his distance and almost never looked my way. We formed t
he subject of everyone’s lunchtime gossip, but I didn’t care. I missed Annie, whose opinion I did care about, but I knew she also felt that I’d shut her out. She was also hugely loyal to Zack, and he was definitely on Ben’s side. The fight had divided everyone. Most sympathized with him, blaming me for causing everything. I was glad to have an ally, someone who didn’t judge me.

  For the most part, Kirsten’s class schedule coincided with mine, and we quickly became inseparable. Damien and I still spent all of our free time together, of course, but I usually tried to include Kirsten on a least one outing that Damien and I had during the week or on the weekend, especially if we went to Daytona. I confess that I loved to feel the wind in my hair when we took Kirsten’s convertible.

  After getting Damien settled, I promised not to use my power again except in cases of emergency. True to my word, I hadn’t cast any spells, but there were definite downsides. For one thing, the Saratoga constantly acted up—I forgot to fix it before agreeing to give up my powers. But I didn’t have to drive too much now. Damien took me most places, having eventually found Dmitri another job when he no longer needed a driver. He’d been driving on his own now for over a month.

  Aunt Jo was also glad I’d made a new girlfriend. Even though she wouldn’t pry, I knew she wanted me to have friends outside of my relationship with Damien.

  Damien tolerated Kirsten’s presence reasonably well, though he often rolled his eyes when she wanted to come with us to Sugar Hill, where he would’ve preferred that we spend our time together alone. Since I was virtually Kirsten’s only friend, I felt compelled to invite her over.

  We spent the last months of the school year like this. June approached, and everyone was happy to get out of school for the summer. Most of us had summer jobs, and I’d applied to work again at a local drugstore just a block from Aunt Jo’s.

  Damien told me I didn’t have to work, arguing that he had plenty for both of us, but I liked to earn my own money. We weren’t married yet, and I knew Aunt Jo could use the income too.

  Damien still couldn’t believe that women worked, but he’d been remarkably open-minded since arriving in March. And I explained that I also enjoyed my job. I’d worked together last summer with Ben, and I was looking forward to working there part-time again. I would spend the rest of my time at Sugar Hill with Damien when I wasn’t designing my wedding dress, which I wanted to be a surprise for him. I needed the summer job because I wanted to save up to order special Belgian lace for my veil.