Dark Secrets Box Set

by Angela M Hudson

  “I missed you today,” he said, tucking a flower behind her ear.

  She angled her cheek into his touch. “Maybe I should sleep more often then, so we can see each other.”

  “I’d like that.”

  The girl rolled on to her back then, looking up at me as she did, but when our eyes met, freezing me in place, she just smiled like I was a ghost—a spectator who had no bearing on life. The boy didn’t notice me at all, or if he did, made no attempt to acknowledge me.

  “What should we do today, Jase?”

  “How ’bout that flight I promised you,” he said, cradling her head between his forearms, looking down so lovingly at her smile.

  “Maybe. But, for now, I just want to lay here.”

  “Your wish, Ara-Rose, is my command.” He pressed his brow to hers for a second, then swept his lips past it in a delicate kiss, while the joy of obvious love mixed with the simplicity of summer, melting the world outside their circle to a soft, white light.

  “Jason?”

  “Yes, sweet girl?”

  “When are we going to tell him?”

  “Soon.” He nodded to himself, contemplative. “I have everything planned for our departure.”

  She plucked the flower from behind her ear and stared up at it. “It’s going to kill him, you know.”

  “I know.” Jason rolled onto his back, the two of them lying cheek to cheek, their feet facing opposite directions. “And I know you love him.”

  “I love you more,” she said, turning her head to smile at him.

  His face split into the biggest, cheesiest grin. “I know you do. But I love hearing you say it.”

  She turned her head again, looking up at the tree. “It’ll hurt though—to miss him.”

  “I could make you forget.” He sat up a bit, leaning on his elbow to look down at her, and I almost answered for her. She wouldn’t want that. She wouldn’t want to run away with him—forget David.

  But inside, I felt the sun go down, felt the world around me grow colder. This scene didn’t belong to me. It had already happened, and I was just watching from a place neither time nor want could change a thing.

  “Can you make it go away for forever?” she asked.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “How? You can’t just erase a memory permanently. How do you do that?”

  “Do you remember the dream you had when I changed your hair color? How, when you woke up…” He smoothed his fingers over her hair and a vibrant blonde trailed behind them. “Look in the mirror.”

  The ceiling looked gray under the cloud of dawn. I pressed my palms to the mattress beside my legs, grounding my thoughts with David’s deep, restful breathing.

  It was just a dream.

  It wasn’t the memory of days gone by. Just a dream. But repeating that like a mantra in my head couldn’t make the warmth of sunshine leave my cheeks, and as I touched the ends of my hair, seeing yellow in my periphery, my mantra did nothing to ease the sudden rush of blood to my head.

  I jumped out bed and ran for my mirror, stopping dead before I even reached the dresser. “No.” I squeaked, combing my hands through the golden lengths. “No, no, no…”

  “Ara, what’s wrong?” David rolled up a bit, his heavy eyes pushing his brows high.

  “My hair.” I looked back at the mirror. “Does it look lighter to you?”

  “Hm.” David’s sweet scent filled my breath before I felt his arms on my waist. “Nope. Still the same beautiful chocolate it’s always been.”

  “I had a dream,” I said with wide eyes. “Golden hair.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s your subconscious mind adjusting to the idea that you’ll stay the same forever,” he said, his cheeky grin warming the room.

  “Very analytical, David.” But what he could see—the face, the hair, the frame of this girl he loved—was something so different to the gold-haired traitor staring back at me. It felt like we were in different worlds right now. He stood behind me, a calm smile across his lips, thinking I was just having a ‘moment’, while the true me—the girl who loved David—had been kidnapped, taken away and imprisoned somewhere beyond that looking-glass.

  I would never love Jason. I certainly would never love him more than David. It had to have been a dream. Nightmare.

  “Come on.” David wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Come back to bed.”

  I walked beside him, touching the ends of my blonde hair, willing it back to brown, but it wouldn’t change. “David?”

  “Yeah,” he said, falling softly on the pillow beside me.

  “I—” I wanted to tell him about the dream, but the words stuck down my throat. “Are you sure my hair’s not blonde?”

  He swept his long fingertips across my scalp, his cool touch making my eyes flutter and close involuntarily. “I’m sure. Must’ve been some dream, huh?”

  I nodded, tucking my hand under my cheek. A dream. That’s all it was.

  My mind wanted to go down the path of wondering if things happened and I couldn’t remember them. But my heart belonged to David. No matter what my dreams might say. There was no way I’d betray him that way. The very idea made me insanely mad. So mad that, when the sunlight touched David’s hair, lighting his ear, his cheek, then his sleeping smile, I was still awake, afraid to let myself drift away again.

  * * *

  An old man hobbled from my bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  “David?” I laid my book on the coffee table.

  “Yes, dear.” He smiled, his weathered, rubbery skin crinkling around his dimple.

  “What happened?” I jumped up, not sure whether to laugh or frown. I ran a cautious hand down his leathery cheek; it felt like a warm, deflated balloon.

  “I’m going to close an account at the bank today—one I opened a long time ago.”

  “Why do you have to be old?”

  “Because, my love”—his youthful teeth showed with his smile, his sparkling emerald eyes unchanged by age despite sagging eyelids and gray brows—“when I placed my possessions in the safe deposit, I looked only twenty, and that was a good fifty or more years ago.”

  “How do you look so real?”

  “When you’ve been changing your identity for a hundred years, you learn a few tricks.”

  “But I can’t see any joins in the mask, even the baldness looks real.” I lifted the bowler hat.

  David laughed softly, pulling my hand away. “Well, I wouldn’t be able to convince a bank manager that I’m an eighty-year-old man if I looked fake, would I?”

  “Guess not.” I shrugged.

  “Now, my beautiful fiancé”—he swiped his thumb along my cheek and smiled fondly at me—“you stay here and try not to stress about tomorrow.”

  “You know me,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Yes. I know you’ve been worrying about everything too much. But it’s good to see you smile again.”

  “How can I not smile? Have you seen you?”

  He pressed a hand to his back, crouching over his cane. “There is nothing amusing about the elderly, Ara.”

  I stifled a giggle. “Except that you, who has never aged a day, play it way too well.”

  His hand shook over the nob of the cane, his breathing becoming ragged, strained. “Just you wait, dearie, why, when I was your age—”

  I rolled my head back, giggling as he wandered off down the path of a lengthy monologue, his voice unchained from its youthful poise.

  “Will you be long, Gramps?”

  “No.” He stood taller and looked down at me. “Just have to get something important.”

  “What?” I opened the front door for him.

  “You’ll see tomorrow.”

  “What’s so important about tomorrow?” I grinned mischievously.

  “Meet me by the altar at noon and I’ll tell you.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “You’d better.” He dropped a quick kiss to my cheek.

  I wiped it aw
ay, cringing. “Ew. Your lips feel like sultanas, or… dried apricots.”

  David shuffled out the front door slowly. “Lucky we don’t have to face old age then.”

  “Yeah, it’s scarier than an evil council of vampires.”

  “Later, Ara.” He laughed, then switched into character again, fumbling clumsily with the car keys as a boy rode past on his bike.

  “Grandpa?” I called.

  He looked up; I pointed to his bowler hat rolling down the street with the wind.

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” he scoffed in an English accent. “We’ve got a runaway.” He chased after the hat, raising his cane in the air. “Come back here, you little scallywag…”

  I shook my head, leaving my hundred-and-twenty-year-old fiancé to stumble down the street by himself as I ran for the phone. “Hello,” I chimed.

  “Hi, how’s preparations for the big day?” Dad asked.

  “Great. We spent all afternoon tying my hair in that stupid hairstyle Emily likes.”

  “And how are the boys doing?”

  “Well, David’s gone to the bank and Mike’s polishing his shoes.” I grinned at Mike, who offered a vertical thumb. “We’ll be coming over at about five tonight.”

  “Good, good, that’s why I was calling.”

  I folded my arms, leaning on the wall. “Is that the only reason? Your voice says otherwise.”

  “It does?”

  “Mr. Thompson, you are transparent, sir.”

  He sighed heavily.

  “Dad?” I walked into my room and shut the door. “Is something wrong? I mean, you sound kind of weird.”

  “I uh—I’m just happy for you, Ara. I get a little choked up sometimes,” his voice deepened. He cleared his throat. “I’m all right, though.”

  “Dad, don’t do the proud-crying-parent-thing ’cause then I’ll cry and Mike will come running in wondering what’s happening.”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry, honey. But I’m your dad. It’s my job to be sentimental. It’s hard for me to see you growing up.”

  But I wouldn’t be growing up, if only he knew that. “It’s a part of life, old man.”

  “Yes, and I’m glad it’s a happy one—now you finally get your knight.”

  “My knight?”

  “You know,” he said calmly, his voice filling with nostalgia while I sat panicking on the other end of the phone wondering if he’d read my diary, “when you were a little girl, you wished on every star, praying for a knight in shining armor. I guess, in a lot of ways, David’s been that for you, hasn’t he? I think if he hadn’t come along when he did, I’m not sure you would’ve been okay again after you lost your mom.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t have.” I smiled, thinking about the boy across the road: how he’d wait for me with a smile on his face, his hair moving in the wind, unnaturally beautiful and unimaginably in love with me. “And he is my knight. It just surprised me that you said it.”

  “Why especially me?”

  “You know…” I said. “Dads aren’t supposed to be clued-in on their daughter’s lives.”

  “Well, I’m not like other dads. I’m a teacher, which means I’m trained to know your business.”

  I laughed. Not all of it. “Well, I’ll see you in a few hours, Dad. I better go gather my things and put the luggage by the door.”

  “What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

  “Not sure. David said it was at four, but when I checked the schedule it said one.”

  “It better not be one—you’ll miss your own reception.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine, Dad.”

  “Okay. Well, we’ll see you soon, Ara-Rose.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  “You too, honey.”

  21

  Moonlight filtered in through my open window in a calming blue, lighting the wall where my dresser used to rest. Everything in my old room was gone again, except my old bed, which stayed in place after I officially moved to my new house. I think Vicki was reluctant to stow it in the attic again after my whiplash turnaround when I suddenly decided not to go to Perth. But, in truth, it was probably more that she’d secretly been waiting for me to come home again.

  I rolled over and shut my eyes tight, searching under this restless excitement for that link to the world of dreams.

  “Can’t sleep?” A man launched suddenly through my window.

  “David!” I jerked upright. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry.” He smiled—his secret smile. “Hm, it’s much easier to get in here now without that desk in the way.” He jerked his thumb to the empty space under the window.

  “What’re you doing here? You’re not supposed to see me ’til tomorrow.”

  “Well.” He looked at his watch. “It’s technically tomorrow, so…”

  “Fine by me.” I sat up properly as he perched on the edge of my bed, his weight barely dipping the mattress.

  “I have something for you.”

  “A sleeping pill?” I asked playfully.

  He laughed through his nose. “No. It’s something very precious; something I’ve kept hidden away all my life.”

  “Ooh, that’s better than a sleeping pill.”

  “I’d have to say, I agree with you.” He placed a novel-sized velvet bag in his lap and reached inside to remove a silver box. It looked heavy, for something its size, adorned with engraved roses and twisting vines.

  “How old is that?”

  “About two hundred years.”

  “Wow, so it’s older than you.”

  “Yes.” He smiled warmly. “I kept it locked away safely so that, eventually, when I found my one special girl, I could give it to her.”

  “Well, she’s a lucky girl. That’s a beautiful gift. But shouldn’t you be telling her this?”

  “Funny.” He shook his head. “But the box isn’t the reason I had to go to the bank today. The main reason is…” He wound the mechanism at the base then lifted the lid. As the gentle chime of the haunting song I once heard in my dreams entered my ears, David spun the box around fully so, in the dull light of my room, I could see the delicate piece of jewelry inside. “This.”

  “David, that’s so pretty.”

  “It was my mother’s—a gift from my father on the day of their wedding.” He hooked a fingertip under the crescent-shaped bangle and lifted it, pointing the oval stone. “It’s a moonstone.”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I whispered, feeling a kind of magic in the dark.

  “Will you wear it for me?” he asked delicately.

  Without words, I rested my hand to the hollow between my collarbones, nodding.

  David exhaled through his smile, then capped his mother’s bangle over my wrist. The band, only as wide as a finger, sat against my skin firmly with the moonstone at the center. “Yours is the first hand this has touched since it was worn by my mother over a hundred-and-twenty years ago. I’m told this bangle represented everything in my father’s heart. From the day he gave it to her, to the day she died, she never took it off.” He lifted my hand and kissed it gently. “I can only hope it will mean as much to you.”

  “David. I—” I choked back tears, fingering the bangle. “I love it, and I love you.”

  “I love you too, mon amour.”

  I threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

  “You are more than welcome.” He patted my back, and I let out a breath of excitement, knowing that in only a few hours I’d hold him like this again, but we’d be husband and wife.

  “Stay with me tonight?” I whispered in his ear.

  “Sorry.” He pulled away, standing up quickly. “You know how I like my traditions.”

  I slumped back on my pillows. “Only too well.” And there was no point arguing with him when he spoke in that tone. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

  “That you will.” He bowed once and leapt onto the windowsill. “I’ll be waiting for you at the doorway to our forever.”

>   * * *

  The frost of early spring whispered in under the open crack of my window, traveling with the golden sun as it struck the bare white carpet and parted the cold with columns of warmth. Dust motes hovered in its light, dancing around like today was a thing to rejoice, and for the first time in my life, I agreed.

  I threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, tucking my arms under my elbows in an attempt to block out the chill. “That boy never could close a window,” I said to myself, wandering over to wedge it tightly down in its frame, feeling warmer from the mere absence of the breeze.

  Outside, the morning sun reflected off the road by the school, slowly melting the last of the winter. All down the street, leaves filled out once bare trees, and new birds chirped to the songs of their mothers. It looked as though the world decided today was spring, offering me a bright, fresh beginning, but this time one I couldn’t wait to start.

  I drew a deep breath through my nose and leaned against the window frame, watching my dad down in the yard. He unfastened the rope swing from the old oak tree and placed the garden arch in its place, then looked up, his smile as big as the day, and waved.

  When I waved back, the sudden sight of the moonstone bangle David gave me caught my eye. I gently pinched it, twisting it so the light of day bounced off the pinks, blues and purples of the moonstone. This bangle was older than me, older than David, and though his mother wore it as a token of his father’s love, I wasn’t so sure I could do the same for David. Knowing me, I’d either lose it or break it. It would be better if I took it off right after the ceremony and put it safely back in its box. He’d never forgive me if something happened to it.

  My eyes flicked to the silver case, sitting in all its ancient glory by my bed—a reminder that David and I came from separate worlds; so many decades apart, yet somehow, so connected. I’d never actually heard the song inside the box before, so it seemed strange to me that I knew it enough to have heard it in a dream. It gave me little bumps up my arms just thinking that maybe David and I were more connected than we realized, as if maybe we’d known each other in a former life or something.