“Is he visiting the graves, or what?” Maisie asked.
“Not graves, just one particular one. He spends hours sitting next to the statue of Corinne Lawton. As far as I can tell, he goes there every day and . . .” Ellen hesitated, as if she were wondering if she should go on.
“And what?” Adam asked, his ears pricking up at the mention of an unsolved mystery.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, it felt wrong for me to be there. Spying on him. I should never have said anything.”
“But now you have,” Iris prompted, “so spit it out.”
Ellen shifted Colin to her hip and began to bounce him. “Emmet sits there talking to someone.”
“That’s kind of crazy,” Peter said.
“No, what’s crazy is I could have sworn I heard someone answer him.” The group fell silent, each looking from one to the other until all eyes fell again on Ellen. “I don’t know,” she said again and shrugged.
Colin suddenly warbled out some very happy if indiscernible sounds. His face lit up, and he pointed at the climbing tree. “What are you looking at, little man?” Ellen took the hand he had pointed with in her own, giving it several rapid-fire kisses. He laughed. In the next instant, Colin’s attention was captured by the sound of a bicycle’s bell.
THIRTY-SIX
Next to the statue of Corinne Lawton is an empty seat, expressing her family’s sentiment that Corinne’s fate in the afterlife would depend on a conversation between her and God. Corinne had been born into one of Savannah’s leading families, and spent many years as a patron of the arts. Long after the point when most women of her age had already married, Corinne fled to Italy, where she finally found her true love, an Italian painter. Upon learning of the impending nuptials, her family followed Corinne to Italy and forced her to return to Savannah. They found a “suitable” husband for her, and so her wedding was planned.
On the morning she was to marry the man her family had chosen, Corinne’s body was found floating in the Savannah River, her wedding gown billowing up around her.
Her memorial is replete with imagery, not expressing her family’s grief and regret as one might expect, but instead seeking to demonstrate how Corinne’s death had been her own fault; they had done all they could to bring her back to a respectable life.
The rejected headdress she was to wear in her wedding lies at her feet, and her back is toward the cross and the archway that, for them, symbolized the gate of paradise. The outrageous audacity many people can demonstrate, believing themselves to be the arbiters of the will of the ineffable’s secret heart.
I doubted if Emmet knew the significance of where he sat, or he might not have become so accustomed to plopping down there. Then again, knowing Emmet, he might have taken great delight in keeping God’s seat warm. “So tell me,” Emmet said as he joined Corinne, “what lies did you tell about this lovely lady?”
Truth was Corinne counted among the few of Savannah’s historical figures whom I had not maligned in one way or another during my years leading the Liar’s Tour. I had felt a kinship for the fallen bride, no, more than that, a sisterhood, that prevented me from making Corinne a target. Emmet reached up and placed his palm against the cool marble, caressing Corrine’s cheek, then folded his hands in his lap and waited for me to answer.
“Corinne’s story is sad enough as it is without tossing lies on top of it.”
“I’d say that is true of the lives of most people.” His face lost all animation, taking on its own stone-like and inscrutable expression. “Your family is having their annual picnic today, you know. The one you told me you enjoyed so.”
Yes, I had loved the feel of the hot sun, the smell of the grass, the shade from the live oaks, the sips of champagne Oliver always sneaked me when Iris pretended not to be watching.
The enjoyment of these things was no longer possible for me, as even though Mercy Taylor’s memories lived on in me, I was not Mercy Taylor. I was the line. Of course I had known the Taylors would gather today in Forsyth. The only Fourth the family had ever missed was the one following Ginny’s death.
My desire to see the family had been so intense, it overwhelmed my better sense. I rationalized I deserved one last look, a chance to see them together and happy one last time. That Colin saw me and seemed to recognize me told me this was indeed the last time I’d dare give in to the temptation.
“I too have been invited.” Emmet looked at Corinne. “Perhaps if you would consider being my date? No?” Emmet’s lips tried to curve up into a smile, but the effort faded the second he turned back to me. “The others haven’t picked up on the little tweaks you’ve made to the flow of time, but they have noticed you’ve shifted the boundaries of the line further out.”
I nodded. It was true. I shifted the edge of protection out to include the realm of the Fae. I couldn’t undo the horrors perpetuated against the Fae by the witches who created the line, but I could make sure that now the Fae enjoyed equal protection. Of course, my actions were not entirely noble. I had done what I did for Mercy’s sake. Now Colin need never face losing his father, even if Peter did again learn of his parentage. There would be no more changelings causing heartbreak on both sides of the divide. There no longer was a divide. The realm of the Fae and of mankind might not be one, but now they were close enough.
I was about to answer Emmet, to explain why I had done as I had, when he threw his hands over his face. “How could you? How could you leave me and not take your memory with you?” Emmet said and began rocking back and forth. “Even Emily you have granted peace through true death.” He looked upon Emily’s demise as a boon. To me it had been the only option. The woman had used her magic to draw the line into human form. A form she nurtured in her own womb in anticipation of the day she could bring about my demise. She had declared war on me and all those I had loved. Had sending her once and for all to her grave been self-defense, a casualty of war, or murderous revenge? Maybe a bit of each. God would be my judge. Emmet shook his fist in the air. “You grant her peace, but me you have deserted, leaving me with nothing but this pain, this sense of loss that will never fade.”
“I haven’t left you. Not really. And your pain will fade. All pain does in time.”
He pulled back his hands from his eyes and looked at me. “You lie.” He stood up and drew closer. He reached out for me, letting his hand pass cleanly through. “Why did you not steal my memory of you? You did it for the others. Why did you leave me the sole person to feel your absence? I am left with nothing but grief, and I cannot even share it with those who loved you.” His fists clenched at his sides. “They don’t even remember loving you. For them, you never existed.”
That he still saw me in Mercy’s form made acceptance harder for him. Over time I would have to change my image so he could find a way to let go. That change would not come easily, for either of us. I had spent millennia simply as the line, but the two decades I’d spent as Mercy Taylor felt more real to me than the thousands of years before Mercy. I had lost a friend; I had lost myself.
Heavy tears fell from his eyes, mixing themselves with the sandy soil at the base of the monument. “For everyone else, you spin pretty lies.” For
the first time, I heard anger in his voice. The lives I’d created for those Mercy loved were not lies, only alternative truths. Were it possible for their reality to be observed from the outside, the observer would perceive the still-healing cuts and grafts I had made. Sooner or later, though, all wounds would heal, and the history I had written for them, this chance for happiness I could afford them, would live on as the only story they had ever known. “For me, you leave nothing. Nothing but this void.” He pounded his chest with his fist.
“Mercy never did exist. Not really.”