Infinite Loss (Infinite Series, Book 3)

by L. E. Waters

  I search for a chair and Lippard pulls one out for me. I pour into it as if I have no spine. “I don’t really know. I keep losing my bearings due to a great sickness and the moment I thought I recovered, I came to this time my valise and shoe were taken.”

  Oh, good, kind Lippard crumbles at once into sympathies for me. “That is terrible. How can I help you, friend?”

  “I have no bread to eat—no place to sleep. You’re my last hope. If you fail me, I can do nothing but die.”

  Lippard’s eyebrows draw close and the worry lines on his forehead crease. “I have just paid my rent this morning, and I have nothing left to lend you.” His color looks as green as mine. “As soon as I get this to print I will go ‘round to all your old friends and beg for charity on your behalf.”

  I grab his warm, outstretched hand. “Tell them that I am sick. That I haven’t a bed to sleep upon. That I only want enough to get me out of Philadelphia.”

  He nods and finishes his task. He comes back to me before venturing out. “My employers have allowed you to remain here until I return.” He wipes a river of sweat off his forehead, brow, and upper lip, even though it’s not so hot with all the open windows in the office. He staggers a bit as he fetches his coat and hat, but gives me a bright smile as he disappears into the stairway.

  The night approaches and all the men leave the office. I lay out chairs like Sartain has done and bring my coat around me as a blanket. Lippard shakes me awake in the grey hours of dawn.

  “Where have you been Lippard?” I rub my eyes as my stomach growls loudly, far too empty.

  Lippard displays two eagles and a half-eagle under my chin.

  “I thought you had deserted me!” I gasp at the funds he collected and take them in my empty hands.

  “I’m sorry to have left you so long. I went to all the publishers and most of them were closed due to the outbreak, cholera bulletins pasted on the doors and windows. The few I located gave to you graciously and even volunteered to house you until you mended. I was on my way back to you when I got ill myself. It was all I could do to make it back to my bed. I haven’t been well for weeks.”

  “I am so sorry to have sent you on such an errand when you are so stricken, but I appreciate your great friendship. What would have become of me without your assistance?”

  I put the money into my pocket and stand up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “First to buy some adequate shoes, then something to stop my begging stomach, and then the station.”

  “I will come with you.”

  “Are you sure you are well enough?”

  “As well as you. The two of us together will make one healthy man.” I laugh and we shuffle down the stairs together and make it to the train in double the normal time.

  I stare at my ticket as we wait for the train.

  “I think it is better that you go back to Muddy’s care in New York.” He studies my hunching frame. “I don’t feel good about you traveling in your depleted condition.”

  “I am heart-sick for Virginia,” I say, as he reads my eyes. “Richmond holds the only person that can revive me.”

  A baggage smasher runs up to me holding out my valise. “Mr. E.A. Poe? Is this yours?”

  I grab for it. “Where did you find this?”

  “It was left at the station.” He holds his hand out for a reward, and I put a few coins in his hands to his dismay. He kicks a stone as he walks away.

  Lippard asks, “Maybe you left it there all along?”

  I unbuckle the catch and search immediately for its most important contents, through the soiled clothing. “Ahhh.” I pull at the long hair above my ears. “They’ve taken them.”

  “Taken what?”

  “My lectures. I have been working on them for months. Now what will I read in Richmond?”

  The train pulls up and Lippard holds my hand to his chest and his arm straight on my shoulder. “I’m sure you will come up with something even better.”

  He gives a steady look to strengthen me. I hold on to his capable hand as long as I can before giving him a quick nod and forcing myself to move up the steps. He waves to me as the train pulls away, with the worried look a mother would give.

  Even though I convince myself that George Royster is a trick of a fevered brain, I still can’t help but turn and search the train for his big-lipped face. Once I see the train is mostly empty, save a couple and two women traveling, I’m able to catch some sleep in the comfortable chair.

  Chapter 43

  I check into the hotel having only a few dollars left of funding, which will have to get me through until I’m paid for my lectures. I should have taken the time to write Muddy and assure her of my safety, but with the revival from my soft train-rocked slumber, I can’t keep myself from going to Elmira immediately.

  I’m back on Church Street, standing in front of her stoic Greek revival on the top of the hill. The church, for which the street is named, chimes for the start of Sunday’s masses. My eyes follow the hill down behind it and I never noticed the graveyard before. I know that graveyard. It was not the one where Jane and Fanny lie, but where my mother is cheaply buried, without a headstone to celebrate her. Where Fanny once promised she’d take me whenever I would like only to never mention it again. I wonder if she even was put to rest under a beautiful cypress tree. I feel her energy around me now, which gives me strength to do what I’ve wanted to do for so, so long.

  I knock and the same servant opens the door, eyes wide with remembrance. I need not give my name and she motions me to sit in the parlor. I can’t sit but walk to the bottom of the stairs where I greeted her before. She rushes down as she did before, but this time with her feather hat, cape, and gloves on, still in her mourning colors. Her green eyes shine bright against all darkness.

  “Oh! Elmira, is this you!”

  “Edgar, it is wonderful to see you, but unfortunate timing.”

  My heart sinks. It can’t take such toying. Her servant fusses with Elmira’s hatpins, perfecting the way the feathers fall, as Elmira pulls her gloves tight.

  “Surely, you can change your plans for me since it has been too long since we’ve met and my time here is limited?”

  She brings her thumbed glove up between the slight gap in her front teeth and thinks a moment, but there comes a rapping on the door. Her servant opens the door to her three brothers. George’s fish face sends an impulse for me to run, but I stay my body, reminding myself of the delusion. They smile at Elmira at first but lose their toothy grins as soon as they spy me behind her shoulder.

  George’s dull eyes stare. “What is delaying you, Elmira?”

  She spins around to me. “Edgar, I insist we postpone our reunion until another day. I’m on my way to church, and I never let anything interfere with that.”

  Before I can even respond more than a simple nod, George takes her gloved hand and pulls her out the door. I replace my hat and follow slowly behind, but they pull her along at such a quick pace she nearly stumbles when she tries to check on me again. I wish I hadn’t sent my carriage ahead, thinking I would spend the day with her. My inexpensive shoes grow two large blisters on my heels by the time I return to the hotel bar with a persistent thirst.

  Glasses and many new acquaintances later, as my joyful companions become rowdy and excited in the height of our liberations, I see him. Fish-face, slinking into the barroom. By the time my balance recovers enough to turn around to address him, he is gone. I freeze and watch out the door until a heavy hand tries to return me to the merriment, knocking me off balance and sending us both careening, in slow motion, to the ground without any expected pain. Our laughter chases all the ghosts away.

  Unfortunately, the next morning the pain from that fall catches up with me, and every muscle, from my knees to my neck, ache and complain at each movement. I wait two days to return to normal until I venture out, like Tantalus, for another rejection from Elmira. In this pain-seeking fervor, I sit outside her door, waiting for he
r return. She marches up with her two children, one nearly grown, the other still skipping around the sidewalk, halfway through childhood. I search her first expression and I’m delighted to see happy surprise on her face as soon as she sights me. She brings her children up in front of her.

  “Say hello to an old friend of mine, Mr. Poe.”

  They stare at me with dejected resentment. I give them an overcompensating smile which they see straight through. The intuitions of children. “Nice to meet you both.”

  They check with their mother, who gives a prompting nod. Reluctantly, the young woman says, in the same smooth voice as her mother, “Pleased to meet you as well.”

  Her son watches me with such disdainful suspicion as only a child is allowed. The resemblances of Elmira’s exquisite features are apparent, but all I can see is the slight influence of their father, ruining their obvious beauty. While others, I’m sure, would say they’re an appealing pair, I fight revulsion upon looking at their faces.

  She pats them on their backs and they both run into the house, happy to escape me. We search each other’s eyes for a moment, looking for feelings hidden by acceptable manners. We start to speak at the same time.

  “You speak first,” I offer.

  She takes a moment and repeats, “I’m so glad you came back. I feared you’d take my religious devotion as rejection.”

  “You cannot get rid of me so easily.” I try my best to soften my predatory grin. Her coy smile tells me everything I need to know.

  She searches for a distraction. “Shall we go inside?”

  The idea of the nosey servant and meddlesome children keep me from agreeing. “It is such a lovely day. Would you join me for a walk?”

  She gives me her arm in agreement and I guide her along the quiet streets, not a care for where we’re headed. Having her within my arm gives me the courage of a scared child clutching a blanket.

  “I have to confess to you my intent before our superficial conversation proves the death of me, since I am not one for idle talk when matters of such passion linger beneath the thin surface.”

  She slows her pace but grips my arm tighter. “I’m listening.”

  “I have never been the same since you broke off our engagement—”

  “Oh, Edgar,” her words spill out as through they’ve been held far too long in too small a space. “How else could I interpret your neglect?”

  “Neglect? I wrote to you once, sometimes twice, a day. I fought my way home to find out why you deprived me so.”

  “But I did write you, even though I never received a word from you.” She grabs my forearms. “Someone must have interfered.”

  I should have realized it before. What fools her father and brothers must think of us to fall for such a simple plan. I squeeze her slender arms back. “I should have never doubted you.”

  “I only agreed to Alexander because I was in so much pain.” She leans in and presses her head to my shoulder, her hands rest gently on my swelling chest. “All these years I was sure you forgot about me.”

  Something hurt and hidden wells from the depth of my being and reigns triumphant throughout my body. After all these years, our separation wasn’t due to abandonment but the result of foul play.

  I pat her hand. “I have never, not for one moment, forgotten about you.”

  She lifts her head to look into my eyes. Oh, how those green eyes affect me! The very color holds some mystical gravitational power.

  The air is suddenly too thick to breathe. My heart forces itself to beat twice its normal speed and I struggle to fill my depleted lungs. I walk her over to a grassy knoll under a protective oak.

  “But I came back to you as soon as I could. You saw how destroyed I was upon seeing you and…him.” She glances to the ground. “Why didn’t you realize then how much I still cared?”

  “I was so angry with you and we were already engaged. What else could I do?”

  I lift her chin so I can see her eyes again. “If I had known the mistake I wouldn’t have left without you that night.”

  Her pain breaks with a small smile. “I saw you shortly after you were married, with your new bride, and a terrible jealously grabbed hold of me, practically compelling me to reach out to you. My property. But then I remembered that I was a married women with children and knew I could not alter the way our fate had fallen.”

  “But fate now has turned in odds of us. Granted us a second chance without betraying any of our promises.”

  The sparkle that turns in her eye is contagious. I want to gather her up in my arms and press her tightly within me. Instead, I reach for an item in my pocket. She stares down in gasped amazement as I kneel before her, giving her the little silver box I had engraved E.A.P.+S.E.R.

  She coos as her gloved-finger caresses it. “Just like our tree.”

  “I know this is quite sudden, but I don’t want to waste another day without you. We have been parted tragically and I have been denied the love I could only feel for you.”

  She opens up the little silver box to find a lock of my hair—the space where it was cut from still apparent on the left side above my ear, rendering my appearance unbalanced.

  “Will you grant me the happiness I have chased after all my mournful life and become my wife at last?”

  She brings her hand up to her mouth and replies with tears. “Why do we need to rush? We have so much time to catch up and heal our past.” She cradles my falling chin in her delicate hand.

  I fight the urge to lash out at her delay. Passions have no brakes and burn more tortuously than fire when they aren’t fed. “After thirty years, I’d hardly call this rushing.”

  She straightens and her chin rises to a refined height. “Do not misinterpret my requested pace as any deterrent, but I have children to think of and see no reason why I should make such quick transitions.”

  I start to watch the carriage pass on the street, suddenly aware there are others around us. “I can’t pretend that I’m not disappointed that my eagerness is not reciprocated. A love that hesitates, is not a love for me.”

  She brings my face back to hers. “I am assure you, I am eager, but there is no need to jump to a proposal the first day we reunite.”

  I grant her an unwilling smile. “Self-pity wants to carry me away from you and Richmond forever, but my heart is much more stubborn and unrelenting.”

  She holds my hand and all my organs feel displaced. “Thank heavens for that. I do not want you to leave.”

  We spend the rest of the day exploring the fallow fields around her house, even venturing into Ma’s graveyard. I expect her to change her mind every time we laugh uncontrollably and run about the graves like unknowing children, while reminiscing ghosts look painfully on. However, she stays true to her pace and gives me a small kiss on the cheek before I leave, but it satiates me enough that I can sleep that night.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

  Every day I call upon her, to her children’s disdain, and struggle to show her how we should be together indefinitely. Each day I’m rewarded with a longer, closer kiss. Weeks later as we share a kiss that brings back all poignant memories of our first kiss in the barn, so much so that, as I pull away I wouldn’t have been shocked at all if the fifteen-year old Elmira should stand before me. How time can dissolve away with the power of such love. She shares a knowing smile and takes out something wrapped in silk from her purse.

  She dangles the gold watch in front of my eyes, and I retrieve it to see what is engraved upon the gift.

  To reverse time…

  ∞ yours, Elmira

  She clasps my hand around it and brings it to her chest. “I am yours, Edgar. For always and forever.”

  I grab her up in my embrace, wishing I could press her inside me, our skin proving to be too thick a barrier. I want to hold her soul.

  I cry into her ear, “It is all I could ever want. We have already turned back time.”

  Chapter 44

  That night I write to M
uddy of our engagement to let her know our troubles will soon be over. As soon as Elmira and I are married, she will come to live with us in the grandest house she’s ever seen. I’m running late for my lecture, but I have time to promise her that I will be on my way back to New York at the end of the week.

  The lecture goes well. I answer the usual request to read The Raven along with the never ending line of signings, until a joyous face warms me with a genuine smile.

  “Do you still have time for an old friend?” Sartain asks, his cheekbones rounded with his tight grin.

  “Only for the most esteemed ones.” We slap each other on the back.

  “How long do you have to stay?”

  “I’m already gone.” I wink, as I hold the door open for us to escape.

  At the bar on the corner, the same bar I escaped my Elmira woes years ago, I tell him of my upcoming and much delayed nuptials.

  “You just might write some cheerful stories after all.” He searches for his cigar in his inside pocket. “She must truly love you to give up such a fortune.”

  I put my glass down in mid-sip. “What do you mean?”

  He pauses, hand still empty. “She hasn’t told you?”

  My blank stare answers him.

  “Far be it from me to be the one to share the news.” He sighs and finds the cigar with eager lips. He sends for another drink for both of us before my first has even kicked in.

  “I will leave this table at once if you don’t come out with it.”

  “Shelton’s will. He put in a stipulation that Elmira stands to lose three-fourths of the inheritance if she remarries to serve as a deterrent to widow-thieves.”

  “I had no idea.” I begin my new drink and search my memory of any hint from Elmira.

  He gives a long whistle. “Sure is a lot of money she’s saying goodbye to for you.”

  “How did you hear of this?”

  “Her brother George has been in a black fury over your engagement. He tells people you’re after her money, but folks have been saying there will be little money to take. Then of course he switches his story that you’re bent on destroying her, as you’ve done with…others.” Yet he raises his glass to me. “Forget about all that though, when you rise above others, they may look up to you, but dream of pulling you back down.”