Page 11

Maybe this was it.

Maybe lightning had struck and I needed to move on now.

I rubbed a hand against my chest, attempting to dispel the knot around my heart.

“Maybe…if you are here…we could keep each other company?” I asked into the silence around me. “Maybe I could pretend I’m not so alone.”

Reading R.J. Wolfe’s journals certainly seemed like a better idea than wallowing in my own self-pity and self-imposed exile. I could drown myself in his worries and thoughts instead and give myself a break from the usual clutter in my mind that threatened to drag me down.

Oppressive quiet surrounded me and I exhaled sharply, eyes burning.

I turned on my heel and headed to the kitchen. I managed to put together some semblance of a breakfast—toast and eggs with tea—and made my way back to the study.

Nothing was out of place. That weird humming energy was barely there now. I took a seat and carefully slid the journal to the side. I added his picture, propping it up on a small stained-glass lamp. R.J. Wolfe’s smiling eyes met mine and the temperature dropped in the room.

“Cheers.” I lifted my tea cup to him and sipped.

I spent the morning like that—picking at my breakfast, draining pot after pot of tea, and reading his journals. His handwriting was nice, neat, and perfectly straight. Most of his entries were about the state of the castle, the headache that came with managing so much land and so many tenants. Fishing reports, crop yields, taxes, upkeep for the castle, several tirades about someone named Patty who would not—could not—deal with the mice living in his room.

I told him to use a trap, but he’s too tender-hearted. He said it would be cruel. I asked him how badly he wanted to sleep and he ignored me. I thought it was a good piece of advice. This is all mine now—the burdens, the weight. And the damn mice.

“You were a lord then,” I mused into the empty room. “You ran this place, didn’t you?”

When I finished with that journal, I went back for another. This one was dated two years before. Ten of them in total, all ranging from 1810 to 1820. After that, they abruptly stopped.

I plucked the very first one from the shelf, the red leather faded to a muted rust. The writing inside was more unsure, more hurried, pages and pages of anxiety and fear. He’d come into his lord status that year. His father, Murphy, was aging and unable to keep up with demands, and so a twenty-year-old R.J. Wolfe took his rightful place at Kilmorran.

Tucked inside the front page was a list of names and occupations. Housekeeper, groundskeeper, cook, kitchen maids, butler, footmen, and chambermaids. Each with their salaries listed and how long they’d worked at Kilmorran. A staff of fifteen ran this place and I glanced around, trying to imagine it as it had once been.

Ovens on before the sun even rose. Beds turned down each night. Carriages stabled with the horses somewhere on the property, footmen to drive you to and fro, balls and gatherings and society.

“What was it like?” I wondered. “Were you always so afraid?”

A book fell from the case, landing smack on the floor. I jumped at the sound, nearly spilling my teacup all over myself. Another journal lay on the stone, spine cracked open.

“Now you’ve decided to answer me? You’ve let me talk to myself for the last few hours like a lunatic?”

I knelt by the book and studied the dates. Four years later than the one I held now. I glanced around the room, skin prickling.

“Are you him then?”

Nothing. That cold air receded, leaving me rubbing the ghostly sensation of being watched away. I grabbed the journal and brought it to the desk. I skimmed one of the earlier entries.

Marlowe fell off a ladder in the barn. Broke his leg in five spots. I found his boys in the field trying to harvest something for dinner. I called the doctor, harvested half the field, and chopped the rest of the firewood until my hands bled.

And then another:

Boats were few today. So little fish this time of year. I know they’re hungry—I am too. Sometimes I look at the horizon line and wonder if there is anything else out there for me, or if this is all I will ever be.

I made it through half the journal before I started poking into drawers. I found a handful of old coins in a velvet box, their faces stained and smudged with age. Ledgers and files that dated back to the early 1900s. The small drawer on the lip of the desk was filled with baseball cards and I laughed, imagining some little boy or girl hiding their treasures away in here.

The rest of the desk resulted in little findings. An old ink pot and quill. Stamps from the ‘50s. A newspaper article about Kilmorran and its renovation projects. I moved to the bookshelves next, running my fingers over spines and the bottom of shelves.

Part of me had been hoping for a secret button or a false book that opened a hidden door. Nothing magical sprung out at me and for a moment, I imagined writing this room. What would I change? What would I keep?

I certainly would have added a secret door somewhere tucked within the paneling. Maybe it concealed an ancient set of stone steps that led to a remote beach tucked somewhere along the coast. Maybe a woman living here would sneak out at night to meet up with the man she loved hidden in the shadows.

As I imagined it, the scent of damp sea rock and musty air assaulted me. I felt the cool stone on my bare feet, on the tips of my fingers, as I walked down the steps. The thin cotton of my nightgown, the braid hanging down my back. The soft flickering glow of the candle in my hand. My heart drowning out the sea with each step I took, knowing each inch brought me closer to him.