Her Dear & Loving Husband

by Meredith Allard

  Finally, he asked, “So how do you like living in Salem?”

  It took her a moment to find her voice. “I’m getting used to it,” she said. “It’s so different than Los Angeles where everything is going a hundred miles an hour, the people, the cars, the lifestyle. Even Boston, where I’m from, is busier. It’s an adjust-ment, small town life where it’s quiet and slow. You can hear the birds sing here.”

  “Do you like to listen to the birds sing?”

  “I do. Sometimes in the morning I make myself some tea and sit on the porch and listen to their songs. I’ve tried to whistle along, but they squawk and fly away. Wait…” Something Jennifer had said was tapping just outside her thoughts. She reached out to touch James’s arm. He didn't pull away. “When you saw me the other night you called me Elizabeth.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Jennifer asked me if I knew who Elizabeth was.” When James stared ahead, not at all forthcoming, she asked, “Who was she?”

  “My wife.”

  “You’re married.”

  Sarah struggled to keep her voice steady. There it was, that thing she sensed all along that must be wrong with him. Of course he didn’t mean anything by his attention. He was being polite. She was new to Salem and he was showing her around. How could I be so foolish, she wondered? How could I mistake simple courtesy for attraction? She wanted to run away and hide behind the plentiful trees, taking her hot pink cheeks with her, not leaving until he was too far to see.

  “Not anymore,” he said, shaking his head. “Elizabeth died. It was a long time ago.”

  In the softness of his tone, in his stilted words, Sarah could hear his truth. Maybe that was why he was caring one moment and aloof the next. It would explain a lot, his love for his dead wife. But if he still loves Elizabeth, Sarah thought, then there’s no room in his heart for me. Her first instinct had been right, she decided. She had no business being interested in any man right now.

  He was going to say something, but by then they were at her house.

  “This is me,” she said.

  She looked up at James’s face and saw the longing in his eyes, such a contrast to his melancholy. With any other man, that look would have meant he wanted to kiss her. But James didn't kiss her. He stood there, looking into her house through the open door, then looking at her as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t remember the words. Finally, he asked, “Would you like me to come in? I can stay awhile, just to make sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m all right. It happens sometimes.”

  “What happens, Sarah?”

  “Nothing. Really, I’m fine.”

  Though he didn't look like he wanted to leave, he nodded, said good night, and walked away. She stood outside her door, watching as he continued alone down the dark-night road. As handsome as he was, or as drawn to him as she felt, she did not know what to make of him. Once she was inside she drew a hot bath and lingered in the frothy bubbles. When she went to sleep she hoped for a happy dream. Please God, she thought as she lay her head on the pillow, tonight I need a happy dream.

  I am at a wedding. It is a wedding from long ago, centuries past, a simple affair with family and a few close friends. This wedding looks nothing like the elaborate celebrations of today with the white taffeta dresses, multi-layered cakes, and lavishly decorated halls. At this ceremony the Pilgrim-looking guests are smiling, joyful even. Suddenly I realize, as my heart thuds a Baroque tune in my chest, that this must be my wedding. Everyone is beaming at me. My wedding outfit is simple, brown-colored silk, but I feel beautiful. Someone, the groom’s father, is wealthy and has paid for the feast, which everyone is anxiously awaiting. They shan’t be disappointed, the father of the groom says. From an imported punchbowl we shall drink spiced hard cider. We shall eat fish chowder, stewed oysters, parsley-flavored mussels, roasted game birds, red pickled eggs, succotash stew, bearberry jelly, and rye bread. There is maple syrup candy, nutmeats, and Indian pud-ding, too, he says, with dried plums and West Indian molasses. He smiles at me with the greatest warmth.

  “The Indian pudding is always the best part of the meal, Daughter,” he says. “You cannot end a meal without Indian pud-ding.”

  I also have my bride cake, a rich spice cake saturated in brandy and filled with dried fruits and nuts. I think people are happy we are getting married, but they are looking at the table with longing and I can tell by their distracted eyes that they are consumed with gluttonous thoughts of the food.

  Finally, I see him, the man I am marrying. He is handsome as always, his fair hair spilling out beneath his hat, and though he is faceless I know he is smiling, happy this day has come. We are married with the beginning wispy traces of winter in the air, after the harvest months when our family and friends from the farms in the village can attend. The magistrate recites the wedding vows, and we say our part. I am wearing the ring my new hus-band has given me, and he is wearing mine. Rings are not a popular tradition at this time, and many where we live believe adorning oneself in any way is vain and sinful. Still, my new father-in-law has bought the thin bands for us because he wants all to see that his son and I are connected to one another forever.

  “The round bands represent eternity,” my new father-in-law says, “and your love will span eternity.” His eyes are brimming with joy for his son and me. I think my new father-in-law is not only rich but also kind. I can see where my husband’s empathy has come from.

  “I shall never leave you ever,” I say to my husband. He pro-mises me the same.

  I look at him and know he is generous and loving. I know that he would do anything for me, this day and always. I am blessed.

  CHAPTER 6

  James heard Jennifer’s high-heeled footsteps tip-tap down the hall. Without knocking, she walked into his office, flipped on the lights, and closed the door behind her. He didn’t look up, his pen poised over his notebook, his eyes glued to his book.

  “Good evening, Professor. Haven’t seen you in a few nights.”

  “Been busy. Midterms coming up, you know.”

  “You always have an excuse. You need to get out more.”

  He leaned his head against his chair. “People have been saying that a lot to me lately.”

  “It’s true. You wall yourself off like you’re a leper or some-thing.”

  “Leper?” He mused over the word. “I never thought of it like that, though I suppose it’s not far from the truth.”

  “You’re not contagious.”

  “I can be.”

  Jennifer walked behind his chair and put her hands on his shoulders.

  “Fishing for husband number three, I see.” He smiled, some-where between amused and perturbed, as he shrugged out from under her touch.

  “As a matter of fact I am. Are you biting?”

  “Me bite? I don’t bite, remember? Besides, I’m too old for you.”

  “I’m thirty-four, so I’m older than you.”

  “That’s a matter for debate.”

  She watched as he pulled his wire-frame eyeglasses from his shirt pocket, and she laughed when he put them on.

  “Still going for the Clark Kent/Superman look, I see. I like it. It’s sexy.”

  “Actually, I was going for the Professor Henry Jones/Indiana Jones look. I thought it was more appropriate.”

  James looked out the window at the heavy night sky, smelling the storm dropping from the east. The dark clouds matched his somber mood and he welcomed the rain. “Thanks for helping me find Amy,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do after Drew moved away. It’s been too long—I can’t go back to doing things the old-fashioned way now.”

  “You and my family have known each other too long and you have done too much for us. You know we’ll help you however we can.”

  “Your family helped me first. You always leave out that part of the story.”

  “We’re just glad you’re back in Salem. You’ve been away too long.”

  James still stared outside,
lost somewhere in his thoughts. “Are you sure we can trust her?” he asked. “Amy, I mean. I know you wouldn’t have asked her if you didn’t think so, but you can never be too careful.”

  “You worry too much, James. I’ve known her family a long time and she’s kept a lot of secrets for me. Her mother is in my coven. Everything is going to be fine.”

  Outside the raindrops splattered the window in a pattern of blots like a Rorschach test. He smiled when he realized the pat-tern he saw was long curls and full lips. Jennifer stood silently, leaning her hip against his desk, her arms crossed over her chest as she watched him.

  He looked at the time on his cell phone and saw he had five minutes to get to class. He knew from his haphazard thoughts about Sarah that he would have trouble concentrating on the lecture that night. He stood from his desk and paced the ten short steps of his office, his eyes closed, his mind heavy. Since he walked Sarah home a few nights before he had been struggling to make sense of it all—what he had said, what she had said, what any of it meant, if anything. Yet no matter how hard he tried to understand, everything around him seemed confused. Even the familiar sights in his office, his desk, his computer, his books, looked foreign, like archaeological artifacts uncovered from some long-ago culture.

  That beautiful dark-haired, sweet-eyed woman had managed to undo all the careful forgetting he had done. It had taken him years to get to the point where he didn’t walk around feeling weighted down by the past. He had walled himself off from nearly everyone and everything, going from work to home and home to work, except for his occasional clandestine meetings with Amy, keeping busy so he wouldn’t be consumed by his history. Now, since he had seen Sarah, he found himself sorting through the memories because he couldn’t ignore them anymore. They were pinching him, pecking him, forcing him to pay attention. Now, he was flipping through them as though he were pasting them under their proper headings in a scrapbook—scenes he wanted to remember and others that were still too painful. If he were being honest he would admit that the memories were mostly good, only the bad were oh so very bad. He scolded himself for coming back when he should have stayed away. Forever. What was he looking for? His wife hadn’t been there for a long time and she wouldn’t ever be there again. He told himself he should sell the house to the Salem Historical Society and leave. Forever. But he could still feel her in the pots and pans lining the kitchen shelves, in the furnishings in the great room, in their bed. And though he knew he shouldn’t come back to Salem, he did. As long as he felt connected to her there he would return whenever he could. And now there was Sarah, and he didn’t know what to do about her.

  He thought about the first moment he saw her. He hadn’t expected anything out of the ordinary that night, but he awoke with a start, pinpointing her quick, light footsteps near his front door. Usually his neighbors stayed away since they thought his wooden gabled house was haunted. And in its way it was. He heard the dry crunch of autumn leaves, so he pulled aside the curtains, raised the blinds, and focused on the shadows outside. When he saw her he thought he was dreaming. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, expecting her specter to vanish, but she was still there. Only she was not a ghost or a phantom meant to haunt him. She was human, and she looked exactly as he remembered with her dark curls, her chocolate-brown eyes, her thoughtful expression, the full lips he wanted to kiss whenever he looked at her…

  “She’s so like Elizabeth,” he said.

  Jennifer sighed. “I know you miss her, but you need to accept the fact that she’s gone. It’s been a long time.”

  James grabbed his keys and his book bag. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “I know this sounds crazy, but it’s her voice, her face, her hair. Everything about her is the same. Even the way she looks at me. And she became so frightened after I told her about the Witch Dungeon Museum.”

  “But that’s just it. You keep scaring her. The last thing any girl needs is to have a hungry old fart like you jumping out from the shadows of a creepy house. Or telling scary stories while walking her home in the dark. You need to play nice if you want to get to know her.”

  “I’m not hungry, and my house isn’t creepy.”

  “But you are old.”

  Jennifer walked to the window. She stood there awhile, not speaking, watching the watery Rorschach blots hit and slide from the glass.

  “Did Sarah tell you why she wanted to see your house?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You should ask her.”

  “But you know.” James put his hands on Jennifer’s shoulders and turned her to face him. The sound of the rain made a quick-time tapping, matching his impatience for the information he guessed she knew. “Tell me.”

  “She said your house looks like the house she’s been dream-ing about.”

  “She dreams about my house?”

  “And a man.”

  “What man?” He felt the blood under his skin quicken. “What man, Jennifer?”

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  James grunted in frustration. He locked his office door, and Jennifer followed him into the hallway. He walked to the elevator, pressed the down button, and waited.

  “You should tell her,” Jennifer said.

  The elevator dinged, the door opened, and they stepped in-side. He waited for the door to close before he spoke.

  “I’m not telling her anything. She’s scared enough of me as it is. I don’t think I made a very good first impression. Or a good second impression, for that matter.”

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Jennifer said. “I’ll tell her.”

  “No!” He said it with such force the steel elevator walls rattled like an earthquake had shaken Salem. He dropped his voice to a firm whisper. “It’ll frighten her too much, especially after the way I treated her.”

  “You should give her more credit than that. I told her I was a witch a few days after I met her and she didn’t mind.”

  “You didn’t tell her everything.”

  “I told her enough. She needs to know, especially if you want to get to know her.”

  “She doesn’t need to know.”

  When the doors opened onto the first floor, James brushed past Jennifer, out of the library, across Rainbow Terrace and Col-lege Drive to the North Campus where his classes were held in Meier Hall. Somehow, despite his internal turmoil over Sarah, he managed to talk coherently about William Wordsworth and his 1804 poem “Intimations of Immortality.” He was amused by the title, and the theme, that age causes man to lose touch with the divine. He didn’t tell his students how true that might really be.

  CHAPTER 7

  The next night James found Sarah in the library, huddled over one of the study desks, a stack of books beside her. She was so in-tent on her reading she didn’t notice him when he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Hello, Sarah,” he said.

  Her head jerked up and her mouth opened. As he looked at her lips all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss her, but she didn’t look like she wanted to be kissed just then. He pressed the idea aside, though he didn’t want to.

  “Jennifer can help you,” she said, turning back to her book. “I’m on my break.”

  “I don’t need help. I just wanted to say hello.”

  Sarah smiled. It was the same smile he remembered, full, soft, joyful. Again, those lips. She leaned back in her chair and watched him, studying him, as if she were trying to decide which James she was going to see that night, the calm, courteous one or the one who jumped out from the shadows. Her face softened and she didn’t seem annoyed, so he hoped she had settled on the first possibility.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “What are you reading?”

  Her hand went to her cheek and she shook her head. “About the Salem Witch Trials. They really were dreadful, weren’t they?”

  He glanced at the book over her shoulder. “I know a lot about that time. Let me help you.”

  She looked at him, her ch
ocolate-brown eyes taut in concen-tration, staring into his, as if she were trying to see his whole truth. But he didn’t want her to see his whole truth. He wanted to be near her too much. He had to strike a balance, appearing available without giving everything away. He didn’t want her to run from him.

  “All right,” she said.

  He picked a book from the stack and flipped through the pages. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you already know.”

  “I’ve only just started reading. I know they were about false accusations.”

  “Madness. The Salem Witch Trials were about madness.”

  His fists clenched and his jaw tightened. He made a conscious effort to relax his muscles so he wouldn’t appear tense and make her nervous again. He reminded himself to breathe.

  “Madness can take many forms,” he said, “and each one stems from fear. Madness implies that things are abnormal, and if things are abnormal then you cannot predict what will happen no matter how hard you try. When madness consumes everyone everywhere there is nowhere to go to find sanity.”

  He looked at her, worried about her reaction, afraid again he had said too much, but she didn’t seem concerned. Instead, he thought he saw a glimmer of something long forgotten in her dark, wondering eyes. Or perhaps he only wanted to see it there.

  “But how did they start?” She leaned toward him, and he had to struggle to stay focused while enveloped in her sweet scent—strawberries and cream. He couldn’t get close enough. He pulled his chair forward until it was touching hers, and he turned his head so his mouth was near her ear. He could have sat that way all night. If only they were talking about something else. But he had offered the information, and she wanted to know, so he was compelled to tell her.

  “During the 1630s over fifteen thousand Puritans journeyed from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a time known as the Great Migration. The Puritans who settled Salem were a stern, sober, complicated people who believed in conformity, the Bible, and God, in that order. When they brought their strict Calvinist religion to the colonies they also brought their hatred for witches. They believed in original sin, certain they were born sinful, and they were consumed with worry over the state of their souls. They believed in Predestination, where God decided if you were saved or damned before you were born. Their only hope was to live a pious life and pray that God’s decision would swing their way in the end. It was troublesome for them, not knowing if they were saved. When Judgment Day came they wanted eternal salvation as a reward for their earthly toil and trouble. It was hard to live here…” He waited for the words to straighten themselves out in his mind. “It was hard for those who didn’t share their strict religious views.”