The Last Killiney

by J. Jay Kamp

  * * *

  She didn’t know where he spent that night. She didn’t much care. She sat in her bedroom with the door locked and the corridor patrolled by servants sworn to keep Christian away, but still she couldn’t sleep. His madness preyed on her mind.

  Hour after hour she wrangled with herself, with her common sense and her fears. One thing was certain. That letter he’d received had driven him to drink. Whatever horrors its words contained had deepened the desperation he’d hurled at her…but was that an excuse for what he’d done? Was that justification to threaten her?

  He’d threatened her before. He’d never meant it. But then, he’d never actually laid a hand on her, either, much less kissed her. Vile, to think of enduring that again, and yet, in his mind, it was his right, wasn’t it? They were married. He was her husband. And should he come home in such a state the next night, and the next, drunk and pushed to his limits by the unknowable, mysterious death-wish he had…or perhaps receive another such letter…

  Next time he might not disappear. She might not even get the chance to scream.

  By the time dawn had lightened her room to gray, she’d set a candle on the hearth. She knelt before the single flame, wrapped in a blanket, and closing her eyes, she said Paul’s name. “My love, can you hear me?” she asked the silence. “Does Christian really mean what he says? Or does he need me more than ever? My love, what should I do?”

  She waited in the chill to hear Paul’s whisper, for his answer to fill her like the yellow sunshine streaming over the soot-streaked rooftops.

  As ever, there was no reply.