An Ever Fixéd Mark (27 page)

“Are you okay, Lizzie?” Nora asked as she
looked over the menu.

“I’m just tired. And hungry,” Lizzie sighed
out.

“
Eat up before the wine
gets here,” Meg slid the basket of rolls towards Lizzie. “Does your
hand hurt?”

“Yeah, kind of,” Lizzie broke a piece of a
roll to dip in the olive oil.

“Here,” Nora slid an envelope over to
Lizzie. “Maybe this will make you feel better.”

Lizzie tore it open with her good hand and
slid out a card. She opened it, allowing a folded brochure to fall
in front of her water glass. Lizzie picked it off the table and
looked at the photos of an historic inn. “It’s from Mark and me,
for you and Ben,” Nora smiled. “I knew you had such a good time in
Quechee. You love old places. It’s in New Hampshire. I think it was
built around the same time as the Fulton House. “

“So you can entertain Ben with your comments
about moldings and wallpaper,” Meg laughed.

“Thanks, Nora,” Lizzie managed another false
smile. “That’s very thoughtful.”

“I thought you would like it,” Nora said
happily as her phone rang. She saw her husband’s name and excused
herself from the table.

“You guys have been so generous with this
birthday,” Lizzie looked at Meg. “All that work for the party…
that’s time you could have spent on … other things. I really,
really appreciate it.”

“What other things?” Meg said with honest
joy. “Nora’s just over the moon that you’ve got Ben. But I… I felt
like I was pretty shitty to you this year. I wanted to do something
to show that you really are important to me and I am so glad to
have you around. Plus, it was one helluva party.”

“It was,” Lizzie felt a genuine expression
of happiness escape her lips.

“34 never gets any credit,” Meg shrugged. “I
think it should be a big birthday for everyone. Especially when
they’ve had the year you’ve had. Running all those races – a half
marathon! Finding your soul mate.”

Lizzie looked towards the lobby where Nora
was talking on the phone. “Do you still believe in that… even after
Alec?”

“Soul mates?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course. I just try to convince myself
that Alec is in no way, shape, or form my soul mate.”

“So… what does that mean?” Lizzie took a sip
of water. “That you were with someone in another life?”

“Maybe,” Meg grinned. “Why?”

“But if… well say Alec was your soul mate,
wouldn’t you want to go into the next life and not see him
again?”

Meg breathed out, letting the sadness reveal
itself. “If Alec is… my soul mate, I’d like to think in the next
life he could improve himself.”

Crap. Lizzie shouldn’t have opened that
Pandora ’s Box. “But what if he just keeps repeating his bad
behavior over and over?”

“Then he isn’t good enough to be mine
forever,” Meg looked up as the waitress brought over the wine and
poured three glasses. “Alec McCaffrey isn’t good enough. And he
isn’t good enough to still be a subject of our conversations.”

Lizzie took a sip of her wine and darted her
eyes once more to the lobby. Nora was still on the phone. “Do you
really believe that it’s possible?”

“I don’t know,” Meg shook her head honestly
and lifted her wine glass. “Like Nora always tells me, it’s easy to
use fate as an excuse to not make an effort. But, there is a
comfort when you lose someone to think that you will meet them
again.”

“Yeah,” Lizzie nodded as she saw Nora head
back to the table.

“Mark says hi,” Nora slid back into her side
of the booth.

“Everything okay?” Lizzie looked to see if
her expression indicated any stress. Nora didn’t hide emotion as
well as Lizzie did.

“Everything is wonderful,” she beamed, still
the glowing newlywed. Lizzie focused her eyes so they wouldn’t tear
up. She was still as happy as she was on her wedding day. The
happiness Lizzie found that day was a distant dream, clouded with
all her thoughts about Lily.

“Thanks for the present,” Lizzie looked at
the envelope, wondering how she could bring herself to visit an
historic inn with Ben now.

“
You’re welcome,” Nora
acknowledged the waitress who returned with their salads. Then she
lifted her glass. “Happy birthday, Lizzie.”

Meg clinked against Nora’s glass and then
Lizzie’s. “Happy birthday. May this be your best year yet.”

Lizzie made herself smile and immediately
took a bite of salad. If she opened her mouth to any more words,
she knew she would cry.

*****

Lizzie knocked on the door to the gift shop,
certain she saw movement through the curtained window. “Lizzie?”
Paula opened the door.

“Hi Paula,” she entered the vacant gift
shop. Even though she often sat there without any customers, it had
a different feel on a day the museum wasn’t open. “I think I left
my phone here. Did anyone find it yesterday?”

“No,” Paula looked at her. “I didn’t see it
at the reception desk.”

“I remember taking it out to look at the
time on my last tour. Do you mind if I go upstairs and see if I
left it there? I looked all over the place and haven’t been able to
find it anywhere else.”

“Do you think you left it at the
restaurant?” Paula asked, making Lizzie scan her memory for any
time during her party when she might have used her phone.

“Nope,” she smiled, almost annoyed with
herself that she could lie so easily. “I even checked the pub where
we had drinks. I think this is my last hope.”

“I haven’t done a walk thru today,” Paula
explained. “If you want to look, go ahead.”

“I shouldn’t be very long,” Lizzie
emphasized the flirtatious as she started walking down the corridor
towards the great room. She followed the steps of her tour, but
decided the second floor was her destination. She didn’t really
know what she was looking for, or thinking she might see… or
feel.

She stopped in the guest room and lifted up
the shades. If Charlotte was a visitor, that was the room in which
she would have spent her time… with her lover. Lizzie looked at the
posted bed and its lumpy straw mattress. The coverlet was yellowed
and worn thin. From what? No one used that bed in at least a
hundred years. How could the fabrics be so worn? Lizzie knew the
answer had to do with dust and insects and air quality. It probably
wasn’t even the same coverlet that Charlotte would have seen.
Lizzie looked about, seeing more dust in the expanded sunlight. She
let herself touch the post at the foot of the bed. She closed her
eyes and breathed in slowly, wondering if something… something
might enter her mind. Did Charlotte really seduce Lily? Was there
really a Lily? Lizzie slowly sat on the mattress, forgetting her
disdain for the antiquated stuffing. She imagined a woman getting
dressed… but she knew the pulling of corset strings was her
imagination. It wasn’t a memory.

Lizzie heard movement from one of the
offices on the third floor… in the old servant quarters. Maybe she
could contrive a visit to Paula’s office. It wouldn’t be too
difficult. There was nothing about the converted space that
resembled where someone like Lily might have slept. She left the
bed and walked across the room. The dresser had a few hair pins and
worthless pieces of jewelry the curators thought made a display to
suggest a woman might walk in to get ready for dinner. In a glance
that lasted more than two minutes, the pieces looked old and
abandoned on top of the ratty lace that covered the mahogany. She
went to the dresser and pulled open the drawers she knew were
empty. The top drawer was swollen with humidity and required extra
effort to close. Lizzie added an extra push and looked up to make
sure she hadn’t disturbed the mirror hanging above it.

The mirror was old and had a murky
reflection. She could see the circles under her brown eyes and even
the last hint of pink dots inside the curve of her neck. Did Lily
look in this mirror and lament the teeth marks on her skin? What
did she look like? How could Lizzie know? No detail like hair color
surfaced in her memory. There would be no photograph in 1815 and no
portrait of a servant. Would Ben tell her? He said he recognized
Lily in her. Was that because she looked like her? Did she have
long dark hair and brown eyes? Were her cheeks rosy against pale
white skin? So many people fell for Lily… she must have been
prettier than Lizzie. How could Lizzie have been her?

She left the mirror and went towards the
window. She looked down at the grassy lawn, abutting the small
parking lot. Once there was a garden full of Margaret Fulton’s
favorite flowers, with hedges to hide the house from the street
bustling with horses and carriages. But that too wasn’t a memory.
She read that in an article by the garden curator in the monthly
newsletter two summers ago. The room, like its view of the outside,
was just a shadow of something that she studied for several
years.

“Did you find it?” Paula disturbed Lizzie
from the window.

“Oh no,” Lizzie returned to her pretense. “I
hope I didn’t lose it.”

“I could try calling you. Maybe we’ll hear
it ring.”

“No, I think this was a desperate attempt,”
Lizzie said in vague enough truth.

“So did your boyfriend like the information
about his ancestors?”

Lizzie swallowed and paused before trying to
speak without emotion. “I haven’t… it was a busy weekend.”

“Your friends threw a nice party,” Paula
smiled. “Did you take today off from the hospital?”

“Yeah, I took the whole week off to spend
time with …” Lizzie faded. “Especially seeing that I worked on my
birthday.”

“I would have given you the day off,
Lizzie.”

“And miss that cake? No way,” Lizzie
wondered what Ben did with the cake she dropped on the floor with
all the papers about his past. Her past.

“I’m sorry you didn’t find your phone.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Lizzie shook her
head. “Paula, we don’t know about any of the servants, do we?”

“The Fultons’ housekeeper, Annie. There was
a cook,” Paula didn’t mask her surprise at Lizzie’s abrupt topic
switch.

“But the maids… or a butler, perhaps?”
Lizzie added carefully.

“No.”

“Hm.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking about how
much dust there is here… and who had to clean it.”

“Sorry Lizzie,” Paula shrugged.

“Maybe they didn’t want us to know who they
were,” Lizzie sighed. “Maybe they were content being
invisible.”

Lizzie left the Fulton House without any
more tranquility than when she went there. She didn’t know what she
expected to see… or hear… or know. She knew that Charlotte was
real. That Harriet was fond enough to write her a letter. She could
prove that she married Horace Fulton. Her maiden name was Chester…
or maybe not. Maybe she changed her name like Ben and Oliver
changed surnames when they opened the mill. If Ben was right. If
she was a vampire. Why would he lie? Why would he tell her that
when she had absolutely no clue of the connection between him and
Charlotte? Why would Ben make up a story about Oliver being so
madly in love with Lily that he killed her twice? He had more
reason to not tell her. Lizzie wondered if he never saw those
papers if he would have told her.

He never liked to talk
about Oliver. Was that the reason? Was it the danger? But with the
danger came another truth. Oliver was in love with Lily. Did he
love Eloise, a fourteen year old orphan? Lizzie once thought that
Oliver gave her extra attention… was it really because she was
someone else nearly two centuries before? Then it wasn’t Lizzie.
Lizzie wasn’t a servant in the Fulton House… and yet… she was. She
dusted and cleaned the furniture. She led guests through the house
and talked about the owners as if they were revered gentry. She was
the closest thing to a servant that one could be in the
21
^st
century.

But if she was meant to relive Lily’s life…
why was she with Ben? And not Oliver?

*****

She shut off the ignition and took a glance
in the rearview mirror. She appreciated the lightness and red tint
of her new bob. It was a ridiculous impulse, especially when she
glimpsed at the receipt she signed. But she needed to do something,
anything to make herself not what she was. She breathed in and
looked away from the reflection, feeling the heaviness of her soul
weigh her down again. She worked so hard to change herself over the
past two years. She ran 13 miles after barely being able to run 1
mile. She lost weight. She lost the part of herself that hated how
she looked. Why did she suddenly feel the necessity to change it
again? Even if she was Lily, cutting and dyeing her hair wasn’t
going to make that part of her go away. It wasn’t the same as
losing 75 pounds. Lily and her tragedy would not go away with diet
and exercise.

She collected the other bags from her
mindless retail extravagance. It managed to pass the afternoon and
enough of the evening that she could hear the crickets as she left
the car. She turned onto the walk and saw him on the front steps.
Her heart leapt to her throat with the relief that he was there.
But the anger still lingered.

“What are you doing here?”

“You cut your hair.”

“Yes,” she couldn’t think of the million
things she wanted to say to him. The questions she wanted to ask.
The accusations she wanted to scream. All she could do was
wilt.

“Elizabeth…” he stood up from the steps and
touched her arm. “I wanted… here, this is for you.”

Lizzie set down her bags to take the small
package. She knew it was a book. She knew before uncovering it that
it was an old book. She turned the embossed cover to a title page
in small font indicating a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“Ben,” she breathed in a sob. She looked up and couldn’t stop her
eyes from releasing the tears she tried to hold back.