Two days after Sam left, Gabriel hadn’t improved in the talking department, but he was making a slight effort to not roam the forest so often. He made it clear that he was not interested in conversations, but he didn’t object to my sitting and reading in the same room as him.
We were both sitting quietly when I finished my chapter, my arbitrary timer to go stir the spaghetti sauce I was making for dinner. It was bubbling, so I lowered the heat, but not before it sprayed onto my shirt. I put it on low, then headed upstairs to change.
I was just going to put a different shirt on, but I had a closet full of clothes I never wore, including a lot of pretty summer dresses. I was going through some bright and vibrant ones when I spotted my beige lace dress. When Embry saw me in it last year, he stopped mid-sentence and said I looked like Annabelle. At the time I thought he meant I looked like a doll, but now I knew it was his first love he confused me for. I didn’t want to make Gabriel sad, but I decided it was time to try and get some answers. I was going to put the dress on and hopefully convince Gabriel to talk to me like he would her.
The dress itself resembled a lot of my other summer dresses, but there was something about the lace detailing and the unassuming color that made words like romantic and vulnerable come to mind when I looked at myself in the mirror wearing it. I left my hair loose, like Annabelle did in her portrait, then walked slowly down the stairs, taking my time so that if Gabriel happened to look up, he would see me and get the full effect.
It took me until I was on the before last step to realize he was no longer in the library, so I gave up my slow, elegant walking and was going to grab my book and go read on the balcony when I felt it happening again. I barely had enough time to sit down on the couch before slipping into the seventeenth century…
“I’m glad you came,” Annabelle said when she found Gabriel in the parlor, looking out to the grounds. There were men working the field, animals grazing and a million things he could be seeing through the window, but every time Annabelle looked out, all she saw was the past. Running through the tall grass with Embry and Gabriel while her mother called after them, warning that she’d be sorry if she ruined another dress in the mud. Annabelle had always pretended she couldn’t hear her. More than anything, she could close her eyes and see the scene of years ago now, when Gabriel had brought her to the edge of the field, acutely aware of her parents watching them, and asked her to marry him. Her father had consented already, of course, but Gabriel had asked like her answer meant more to him. Like as long as she said that she did love him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, then nothing could ever be wrong in the world. It was because of that memory that she tried her best not to look out at the field, or to ever close her eyes.
“She was beside me when Embry extended your invitation, and she admitted she would love to meet you and take a walk in your gardens. They’re still the talk of the town, I’m afraid,” Gabriel explained why he came, as well as why he brought his laughing lady-friend.
“You didn’t want to come.” She understood, of course she did, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
“Would you?” he asked instead of denying it.
“Gabriel…” she fumbled for words, but it was the hurt in his eyes that stopped her, not the anger his tone had implied.
“I am glad to see you’re well and happy. Your daughter is beautiful and my condolences about your husband, but this is the last place I want to be right now.” He was talking in a harsh whisper, each word cutting into her.
“I deserve that,” she said, bowing her head before looking up into his eyes.
“Don’t. Please,” he told her, holding her gaze for a moment before turning away and avoiding her.
“You left. You were gone, and it took a year before I believed them that you weren’t coming back. I would have waited until the end of time…”
“Then why didn’t you?” he cut short her excuses.
“What you made me promise before you went. I told you I couldn’t, that ours was the love stories were written about, that I would spend my life loving you whether you came back or not… but you made me promise that I would find someone else, get married and try my best to be happy, so I did.”
“With my best friend?”
“With the only other person in the world who understood my pain. I made a promise I had to keep, and Embry was the only man I knew who would let me spend forever finding reasons to talk about you.”
“You loved him.” He wasn’t buying her excuses.
“I did. I do. I’ve always loved Embry. You and he were like my brothers when I got here, you took me in as one of your own and I can’t imagine my life without the two of you. But I fell in love with you and death wasn’t going to change that. I would have married Embry and had a family and pretended to live happily ever after, but I have never, not for a second, stopped being in love with you.”
“I came back,” he reminded her. “And you still left.”
“Embry was like a brother to you, and I knew the only way to mend what I had broken was to leave.”
“And what if I would have chosen you? Did I not have a say in deciding which relationship I needed to mend?”
“You loved me, which made it the hardest thing I have ever done to leave, but I knew you needed Embry. I was just going to go while you two forgave each other, but then…”
“You got married.”
“No. When I left there was no room in my heart for any others. I met someone and discovered things about myself, things that make it better for everyone if I stay away.”
“I can’t imagine anything about you that would make me not want you here,” he contradicted himself, but the way he reached for her, then had to remind himself not to, told her this most recent statement was the truth, not the first one.
“It was safer for you with me away.”
“Then why did you come back, Belle? To drive me crazy, wanting someone I can’t have, loving someone I can’t even touch though every part of me is aching for it?” he asked, reaching out for her, then dropping his hand midway to her face, making her have to close her eyes and take a deep breath to regain her composure.
“It wasn’t safe for us anymore, and I had nowhere else to go,” she admitted, the tears filling her eyes this time.
Gabriel didn’t even take a moment to determine whether or not it was proper, he bridged the distance between them and took her in his arms. “I won’t let anything hurt you,” he promised.
“I told Embry, but…I didn’t come here to tear you apart, or start anything. It is going to take every ounce of willpower I have to stand back, but I need my best friends right now. I need to raise my daughter, to make sure she’s safe and happy. This is the only place where I could think to do that.”
“I’ll do whatever you need me to.” He kissed the top of her head, understanding there was a lot more to the story she wasn’t sharing, but after waiting years, he figured he could wait and be there for her until she was ready…
I woke up in the library, expecting Gabriel to be there, kissing my forehead, but I found the sun had set and I was alone. I hugged myself and walked to the kitchen, where the spaghetti sauce was still in a pot on the stove. I turned the heat up again and boiled some water for the pasta, wondering if Embry knew Annabelle hadn’t loved him. Or at least had chosen Gabriel. In a way, it made sense that I knew so little of this love triangle. Embry was the only one who answered my questions about his friendship with Gabriel, and he wouldn’t want to admit he fell in love with his best friend’s fiancée.
I set two places at the table and had just put the sauce on the noodles when I turned away from the stove and saw Gabriel in the doorway, staring at me. I was confused until I remembered I was wearing the dress.
“The spaghetti is ready,” I said as if I hadn’t noticed his gaze, bringing the plates to the table.
“I came back inside and you were asleep, so I made the rounds,” he said, looking at me more than he had since we got here, purposely turning away before drifting back. “This sleeping in the middle of the day, are you having trouble sleeping at night or is this place boring to you, or…”
“I’m getting memories,” I admitted.
“From your childhood?” he asked.
“From my ancestors.”
“It could be dreams that you’re making up,” he dismissed me before hearing what I saw.
“The other day it was Annabelle coming back to town with a baby. She wanted Father Brown to baptize Margaret,” I said, getting a reaction from the priest’s name.
“And this time?” he asked in a way that made me think he didn’t want to know.
“Do you forgive Embry for being in love with Annabelle because you know you were the one she really loved, the one she would have chosen if she could?” I went where I definitely wasn’t supposed to.
“This is not something I want to get into, Lucy.” He looked down, but wasn’t completely shutting me out. He stayed at the table.
“Okay, then tell me where you went? I’ve been going over everything I knew about Annabelle and I assumed you both loved her, she dated both of you, then there was a big fight and she left…but you left for a year to make her go to Embry.”
“Does it matter?” he stalled.
“It might.” After all, I wasn’t asking for these dreams, so they had to have some purpose.
He sighed, and I thought he was going to tell me to eat quietly, or leave. Instead he answered my question, “My brother had left searching for an adventure. He was supposed to return by a specific date, but hadn’t yet. My mother was terribly worried and begged me to find him and bring him home, so I went off to do so.”
“I never knew you had a brother,” I stated, realizing I didn’t know much about him, or Embry, before they showed up. I was still surprised to have seen Embry with a family, and made a mental note to find out what happened to those descendants; whether he was looking after them as well.
“Patrick. He was three years younger than me. A dreamer, but also the nicest, most innocent kid you’ve ever met.” He smiled, shaking his head and remembering him.
“Do I want to know why it took you two years and you never wrote home?”
“I found him, if that’s what you’re asking. He had settled with a small community in New York. He had a girl, Katherine, that he fancied…he promised me he would come home once he finished building the church. Then he wanted to bring the girl to meet my mother.” I wanted to press him for more details, ask questions, but he had never shared a story about his past, and I was worried he might stop if I reminded him I was there. “I wrote home to let them know I found him and would bring him home soon, but letters took forever to get around back then, and it was common for them not to reach their destination. I figured I would help out with the church, so we could leave faster, but fate had other plans.”
“You didn’t finish it?” I asked, figuring the church was the part of the story he would be the least attached to.
“No, we finished it. You can still visit it if ever you find yourself in Sleepy Hollow…”
“With the headless horseman?” I couldn’t help myself.
“That’s a story, written in the 1900s, and set a hundred years after I was there,” he argued.
“You’re saying there is nothing supernatural about Sleepy Hollow, no headless horsemen?” I verified, slightly disappointed. I found it hard to believe The Gifted exist, but magic and fairy tales don’t.
“I’m saying he wasn’t in Sleepy Hollow when I was,” he said, waiting for me to interrupt again, but I pressed my lips together. “The headless horseman is fiction, but Washington wasn’t completely off in suggesting something supernatural was at work in Sleepy Hollow. Within a couple of weeks of the church’s completion, all eight of us who had helped build it had died of seemingly natural causes and faultless accidents, without warning, after having been in perfect health.”
“Patrick…” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“He drowned the day before we were supposed to leave. I wouldn’t have suspected anything if it weren’t for all of the others.”
“When you say all eight of ‘us’…”
“I got sick. So sick that no one understood how I survived. I know some people are immune to certain viruses, but this wasn’t an immunity. I got sick, I was fading away, and I slipped into a coma. Katherine, who was taking care of me, swore I died, but it was winter, there was a blizzard, and it was days until she managed to go and get the priest. By the time they found me, I had made a full recovery and was as good as new.”
“That was the first time you died,” I understood.
“I promised Annabelle I would come back to her,” he said simply.
“Which is why you believe she’ll come back to you?”
“I was brought back to life so I could be with her. It stands to reason that she will come back too,” he agreed, implying he wasn’t sticking around to keep me safe, but rather protecting me so he would have something to do while waiting for Annabelle’s return.
He said it with a finality, letting me know it was not up for discussion, and he was done sharing. He got up and went outside, so I cleared up the table, did the dishes, and realized there were worlds of questions I needed to ask Embry that I had never even considered before.