They arrived the following afternoon with very little. Samuel’s wife, Alba, a tall, lean woman with broad, plain features, stood meekly by his side, fear and worry marking her brow. Their daughter, Celesta, was a mere slip of a girl who had her father’s slate-black complexion and noble African features. She inched closer to her father when I came out to greet them and stared at the ground, her shoulders an inch lower than they had been, as if she would disappear into the ground if she could. She was silent the entire time I spent talking to them and seemed incredibly withdrawn from what was happening around her.
Luna was waiting in the corridor. Despite the way she tormented Samuel the night before, she was excited about having them come and work for us. Celesta relaxed when she saw her there, especially when we showed them around the mansion and it became clear Luna was not another servant.
Despite this, the first few weeks with them were fraught with tension. Alba did not like Luna and did not hide it. Unfortunately, the feeling was mutual. Celesta seemed to shrink within herself daily, and whether it was because she knew we were not human, or because of a general fear of white men after what had happened to her, she was terrified of me and could barely speak in my presence. Only Samuel seemed happy to be there. He was still nervous around Luna, but that was purely because she could be so changeable.
One evening Celesta was sent by her mother to wait on us throughout dinner. When I saw her hands shaking as she poured a glass of wine for me, I told her she should return to the kitchen as we did not need her.
“Why did you send her away?” Luna asked as soon as she left the room. Luna had been in one of her dark, volatile moods for over a week now.
“Did you not see the way she was looking at me? And her memories—she couldn't stop shaking. It is most unsettling.”
She laid her fork down and glared at me. “Oh, poor Avery. How you must be suffering.”
“That is not what I meant and you know that!”
Now it was my turn to be in a bad mood, especially since a particularly unpleasant thing had occurred earlier on that day. Whilst Luna and I were in the throes of our lovemaking, an image of Master John entered her mind. This is something that had happened before, but over the past few weeks his nauseating face had entered her mind nearly every time we made love. So the two of us sat in silence, directing furtive, baleful glances at each other. To make matters worse, Celesta came back into the room, trembling and red-eyed from the telling off she received from her mother for not doing her job.
I sighed and did my best to pretend she wasn’t in the room, which seemed to be the only way to deal with her, as even a glance in her direction was apparently too much for her.
After a while, I noticed the sombre silence had become charged. Celesta was standing by the table with her eyes locked on Luna. Thinking she was tormenting the girl mentally as she had done with her father the night he came to us for help, my anger leapt to the surface and I was about to speak when I realised there were tears in Luna’s eyes and the reason for her bad mood became apparent. Celesta’s memories were affecting Luna too. How could they not? It also explained why Master John had been entering her mind so often of late.
I saw now that Luna was silently communicating with Celesta, showing the girl her past, the moment she knelt at the stream with the wickedly sharp rock in one hand, the herbs to abort Master John’s child in the other. She also showed Celesta that wild ride through the night that ended with me arriving in time to prevent that boy from killing Luna and Jupiter.
“You’re safe now,” Luna said. “He’ll never let anyone do anything to you and neither will I. You understand?”
Celesta nodded, probably too shocked to speak.
“Now go tell your mama we don’t need you here tonight.”
She nodded again and quickly departed.
The silence in the room was heavy until I broke it.
“Well, that was helpful. I am sure letting her see me rip apart and dismember those men will make her much more comfortable around me. And let us not forget the fact that they are not supposed to know what we are.”
“I’m not an idiot! I’ve made sure she forgets most of the details by the time she goes to bed, only my words will remain and the fact that you saved me.”
Silence descended on the room. After a few moments, I stood and came to stand behind her. I placed my hands on her shoulders. She reached for one of my hands and squeezed it. Despite my words, I was pleased because it was the first time I had seen her reach out to any of them, and I was relieved because I liked having the Morrisons at the mansion.
***
A few days later I returned to the mansion after a short visit to town. The Morrisons were in the kitchen.
“I just saw someone from your old home,” I said in an offhand manner. “He told me your old boss suffered a fall from his horse and was nearly trampled to death. In fact, they said he is crippled and may never walk again.”
I expected some sort of reaction, perhaps discreet joy at this news, for I certainly did not like the man. What I got instead was a clamp down.
Their expressions went blank and even their minds seemed to freeze over. Celesta, always uneasy in my presence, recoiled as if I had pointed a gun at her head. Samuel’s gaze slid guiltily away. Alba focused on the bread she was kneading as if her very life depended on it.
I gazed at them. It was obvious they knew a lot more about what had happened to their old boss and that it was much more than a fall from his horse. I was curious, but not particularly concerned. It would have taken me only moments to search their minds and discover whatever it was that had made them react in that way. But I didn’t. Why should it bother me if one of the Negroes in this town had found a way to pay that cruel man back for his sins? Besides, Luna walked into the kitchen then, and my attention was diverted.
It is curious when I look back at my memories and really look at the events that took place. All I saw that day was sunlight and joy. At the time, Luna walked into the kitchen, beautiful and resplendent in a blue gown with a high neckline, pinched waist, and ruffles along its bell-shaped skirt. I complimented her, she thanked me, I took her hand, and we left together.
Now when I look at it, I see so much I ignored. She looked dazzling, as always, when she walked into the room. She paused at the door, gazing at each of the Morrisons in turn. Samuel and Alba looked away. It was only Celesta who met her gaze, the smallest, saddest smile grazing her lips before she left the kitchen. I was oblivious to the tension, the hidden threat in Luna’s eyes as she gazed at them before I took her hand.
“You look beautiful, Luna.”
When she looked at me, her gaze softened and she smiled, surprisingly shy as if it were the first time she had heard those words from me. “Thank you, Avery.”
As we left the kitchen, she paused at the door to glance at Alba and Samuel one last time before she exited.
I was so blind, my attention only on the painful thorns that existed within our relationship. One in particular had to do with never having heard Luna say three very simple—but extremely important—words directly to me either out loud or mentally.
One night after the Morrisons had long retired to bed, we were in the drawing room and Luna was complaining about something Alba had said to her whilst I sat in the chair with a book, having learned long ago to not even attempt to interrupt her when she was in one of these moods.
She stopped abruptly and regarded me with ice in her eyes. “Are you even listening to me, Avery?”
I lay my book down and met her gaze.
“No. Perhaps it is old age, but I find that nowadays it seems to be harder and harder to listen to your thoughts.”
“Old age?” she hissed, taking a step toward me and tugging the book out of my hand.
“And why should I bother, anyway?” I continued. “Your mind was once like an open field, nothing was hidden from me. But nowadays whenever I venture there I find locked rooms and fences barring my way forward.”
“Keep on, Avery. You may just get that fight you’re so obviously itching for.”
She flung the book in my lap and made to walk away, but I took hold of her arm, pulling her back around to face me.
“Do you love me, Luna?”
At first her eyes widened with shock and then she glared down at me before wrenching her arm out of my grasp.
“How dare you ask me such a stupid question? Do I love you? I fought death for you.”
“Because I have never heard you say it. Even now, you do not say it.”
“I don’t need to say it!” She flounced to the door before rounding on me, her anger making her movements rough and jerky. “I have shown you a thousand times, in a thousand ways, what I feel for you. How can you not know what I feel for you? I live with you, give you my body and everything that I have, even though we’re not married. Yet you can ask me that?”
“Oh yes. The marriage thing—again. I would happily take you to a church and stand before God and profess my love. But even if a white man could legally marry a Negro woman, the same magic that keeps us from entering a human’s home without an invitation is the same that keeps us from entering a church. Even if we are invited in, we still cannot enter a church. Or have you forgotten this even though we have tried it many times? And let us not forget that I have suggested we go to Europe and marry so our union—”
“It doesn’t matter if we go to Europe and marry! A marriage between a white man and a Negro woman will never be accepted no matter where we go!”
“I am sick of hearing you whine about not being married, Luna because we are married. The ring on your finger, and even more than that, the blood, my blood, that runs through you, and the bond we have that transcends time and space marries us.
“I need to hear you say it.” I leant forward in my seat. “I can tell you a thousand times that I love you and not hear it ever said back to me. After all these years the silence starts to speak to me.”
“Yes, you talk and talk and say you love me, but in the same breath you can throw me away into the arms of another man.”
I stood up and moved to her, placing my hands on the sides of her face. She was rigid as a serpent, her anger pure and tangible like a third person in the room. “Do you love me, Luna? I need to hear you say it.” The last words were a whisper and I knew it sounded as if I were begging her.
She merely watched me, her thoughts shielded, her eyes cold and dark like the surface of a pond. I looked into its depths and I saw and felt no love there. After a few moments, she removed my hands from her face and walked out of the room.
I was left shaking.
She left that night and I paced the room in turmoil, reduced to tears. Did she love me?
When she returned, I was alone in the drawing room, my face in my hands, the tears wrung from me. At first I did not know she was there until I caught a glimmer of her thoughts. I saw myself through her eyes looking beaten and wretched, and a small part of her relented even though she was still angry.
She crossed the space between us, placed a hand beneath my chin and lifted my head so she could look into my eyes. Her reaction to the tears that had dried on my cheeks was more softening, but it also seemed to intensify some of her anger.
“Of course I...I love you, Avery. I’ve shown you that time and again, so never ask me that.”
Relief flowed through me. I pulled her to me, resting my head against her stomach and wept. For those hours here alone in the mansion, I had been so sure she didn’t love me. She exhaled and wrapped her arms around my shoulders and it was some moments before I realised that she, too, wept.
That was the first and last time she spoke those words directly to me throughout the course of our union. And although my heart was eased by them, it felt like a defeat of some kind.