An Ever Fixéd Mark (48 page)

“Too many.”

Lizzie saw the saddened expression in his
reflection. “Did that change after you… after Charlotte died?”

“Yes,” he looked at her.

“I never see her. Not once in my memories or
dreams.”

“You are lucky.”

Lizzie wanted him to finish his thought.
What was so painful about that vampire that he couldn’t tell her?
What did it have to do with Lily? What did she do to make him
eliminate her from this earth? What did it have to do with Lily’s
final choice?

She saw the pain on his face and in the sag
of his shoulders. She felt her own cruelty for pressing the issue,
for diverting him from his happiness. Happiness that he waited two
centuries to find again. Happiness she was about to take away.

“Charlotte told me you would come back,”
Oliver was looking at her, but his mind was somewhere else.

“What?” Lizzie felt a chill on her
shoulders.

“She told me about reincarnation. She was
obsessed with it. She always believed Lily would come back to me.
“

“To you? Not to her?”

“She told me Lily would come back to kill me
because I killed her.”

“No,” she shook her head fervently. “I am
not a killer.”

“She was wrong, Lizzie,” he knelt in front
of her. “I have karma coming at me from so many directions.”

“But Charlotte took your life and then
you…”

Oliver pried one of her hands away from the
mug. “Charlotte could only see hate and evil acts. I told you, she
was here too long. She had no perspective. She didn’t understand
forgiveness because she never gave any.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” Lizzie’s voice
trembled.

“I know.”

“I…” she tried to speak but Oliver pulled
her into a kiss to stop her words. He slid his hand under her
dress, burning against her thigh. She felt her mind slipping away
once more. She couldn’t do it. No matter how good it felt in the
moment, she knew the moments after would make her cry. She shut her
eyes and stopped moving her lips against his. He pulled away a few
inches without removing his hand.

“We can’t go anywhere,” his breath was warm
against her face.

She opened her eyes to meet his gaze. “I
need to go home.”

“It will take forever to get my car out,” he
touched her cheek with a gentle kiss.

“I’ll take the train,” she clenched her
jaw.

“Don’t go,” he moved his hand closer. She
grabbed it and pushed him away.

“
I can’t do this,” she
stood up quickly.

“What?” Oliver reached for her hand.

She shook it off and found her stockings on
the floor. “I can’t be with you, Oliver. Go back to
California.”

“
Lizzie, let’s talk about
this.”

“I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“Are you going back to Ben?”

“I …” she lost her breath over another sob.
“I need to be by myself.”

“
You are frightened. I
shouldn’t have told you what Charlotte said.”

“It isn’t about Charlotte.”

Oliver nodded slowly and went back to the
view of Boylston Street. “You still love him.”

“Of course I still love him,” she raised her
voice. “I never stopped. I don’t think I ever will.”

“Even though he lied?”

“We all lie,” Lizzie started rolling her
stockings up her legs. “Maybe in this life, Oliver, Lily finally
breaks free from vampires.” As the words left her, a strange cool
clarity seeped into her mind. “Maybe I came back this time to
release you.”

“Release me,” he repeated quietly to the
window.

“Maybe, Oliver,” she found her heels under
the chair. “Maybe you keep looking for Lily in all those women you
fall for. When they aren’t Lily, you lose interest.”

“But you ARE Lily.”

“I don’t want to live the life that Lily
didn’t finish,” she felt the confidence of her emotion. “I want my
own life.”

He left the window quickly and pulled her
tightly into his hold. She felt trapped beneath his strength. “This
is your life. It has always been your life, Lizzie. Maybe you don’t
know it yet. This is where you are meant to be.”

She let the tears form in her eyes, afraid
to make the slightest movement from the clutch of his arms. “I
want… I want to figure that out for myself, Oliver.”

“
You want to be alone,” he
dropped his hands and stepped away.

“I’m sorry,” she went for her coat in the
closet.

“I will wait Lizzie.”

“Don’t,” she walked out the door.

Chapter
Thirty

Lizzie took the straw out of its wrapper and
swirled it around in the ice water. She was accustomed to awkward
silences with Sara. They slipped into their conversation
frequently. It wasn’t much different from every other annual
meeting they had to catch up. Only this time, Lizzie carefully
ordered the salmon and was mimicking Sara’s sobriety. And yet there
was Sara, as skinny as ever, ordering a steak. How could she
achieve that after a fourth baby?

Sara was happy. Lizzie wasn’t going to
discredit the smile, even with the hint of sorrow about her dad’s
absence at the holiday. Sara may have lived in a cloud of reality
Lizzie didn’t accept. But the truth was, Sara was genuinely happy.
She may not know the thrill of a vampire’s kiss or bite. She would
condemn it if she would let herself believe in such things. But
Sara knew the thrill of a husband who loved her and children who
claimed her as a mother. She had a happy, normal life.

Was anything really normal? Most years she
looked at Sara’s smile and condemned it as ignorant. This year she
couldn’t help but envy it.

“It’s really too bad about you and Ben,”
Sara didn’t waste any time after the waitress set their food
down.

“It is too bad,” Lizzie took a sip of her
water. “I really… loved him.”

“Well, God never closes a door without
opening a window.”

“I suppose not,” Lizzie felt as though she
was trapped without any doors or windows.

“Is anyone else a possibility?”

“A possibility?”

“Lizzie,” Sara shook her head and took a sip
of her iced tea. “Before you know it, you will be forty. Don’t you
want to be married and a mother by then?”

Lizzie looked at her, uncertain what to say.
She didn’t want to get married. She didn’t want to be with anyone.
How could she explain that to Sara, who lived and breathed her role
as doting wife and mother? How could she tell Sara she had enough
of relationships, not just in this life but in two? “Not everyone
needs to get married to be happy,” Lizzie picked up her fork.

Sara laughed in disbelief. “You don’t really
believe that, do you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well what else … it’s not like you have a
career, Lizzie,” Sara shut her mouth and took up her knife to slice
the sirloin. Lizzie watched the juices run out of the meat and seep
into the potatoes. “How’s Jack doing?”

Lizzie’s eyes left Sara’s plate and met her
eyes. “He’s doing well,” she breathed out slowly, surprised
something Sara said could sting her so profoundly. “His son Zach is
starting to play guitar.”

“Kids are amazing,” Sara took a bite of her
steak.

Lizzie slid her fork into her salmon,
debating whether to indulge a jab or let the conversation fade into
the hum of other voices talking around them. If she was still with
Ben, there would still be an awkward conversation about marriage
and children. If she was still with Ben, she would be living with
him without a ring on her finger. If she was still with Ben… why
did she let the idea enter her mind?

“How is Josie?” Lizzie filled the silence
between the bites. She wasn’t able to leave the subject of
children.

“She is growing so quickly,” Sara’s sour
attitude brightened immediately to a smile. “She is such a joy. She
has been a perfect comfort this first year without Dad. Especially
the first Christmas.”

“I can imagine,” Lizzie looked at the pink
flesh on her plate. “And Ted?”

“He might be getting a promotion at the
bank.”

“Very good,” Lizzie felt the sharpness of
Sara’s comment about career and wondered if the inspiration for
pleasantries had dried up.

“Did you hear about Melissa Benson?”

“They found her body,” Lizzie stared at her
untouched food, wishing the conversation would revert to marriage
and children.

“They say it’s difficult to determine the
cause of death at this point.”

“It was raining the night she disappeared,”
Lizzie muttered the detail she heard several times in recent
months.

“I think it was foul play,” Sara put the
knife through her steak again. “She grew up in those woods. How
would she not know where the brook was?”

“Maybe she wasn’t in the right frame of
mind.”

“True,” Sara closed her mouth over her next
bite. “She was an unusual girl.”

“I didn’t know her very well,” Lizzie
breathed in slowly and looked directly at Sara. “I can’t say I
remember if she was unusual or not.”

“She used to date Kyle Granger. Jack didn’t
like him.”

“Yeah, well, Jack didn’t like pretty much
everyone in high school.”

“Kyle was into D & D and all that stuff.
Don’t you think he might have had something to do with it?”

“With Melissa?” Lizzie made herself raise
her eyebrow in alarm. She didn’t want to show she had any knowledge
whatsoever of why Melissa was not in her right mind the night she
fell and drowned. That she knew Melissa had her blood drained by a
vampire. That she tricked the vampire. “No, I don’t think Kyle had
anything to do with that.”

“But she was cheating on him.”

“What?” Lizzie lost the reserve of her
pretense.

“She used to sneak around with Ben’s
brother,” Sara looked at her. Lizzie wondered if her revelation was
really about Melissa or just an attempt to say she knew more about
the Cottinghams than Lizzie. Not that she had any clue about the
Cottingham boys or how they were connected to Melissa’s death.

“How do you know that?”

“She told me on the bus one day. She wanted
to know what I knew about Oliver and Ben. She mostly wanted to know
about Ben.”

“What did she want to know about Ben?”

“Just trivial stuff. I don’t remember. His
favorite color. His favorite food.”

“Why would she ask
you
that?”

“I assume she wanted to get on his good side
to impress Oliver. I don’t know, Lizzie. It was so long ago. That
was really the only time I ever had a conversation with her.”

“Did you tell Ben?”

“I don’t think it matters,” she hesitated
over her next bite and then set it down. “You know, I wondered if
Oliver might be a suspect. But he was already in Oregon or wherever
it was he went to college.”

“California.”

“Well wherever it was, he wasn’t still in
Coldbrook. Maybe she got all depressed because he moved away,” Sara
shrugged. “She didn’t understand why I didn’t like Ben.”

“Why didn’t you like Ben, Sara?”

“He wasn’t my type,” Sara said lightly. “He
always seemed… I don’t know… old. I suppose that didn’t bother you,
Lizzie. You always liked history and stuff like that. But Ben just
wasn’t that much fun in high school. Anyway, I’m kind of relieved
you aren’t seeing him anymore. He always made me
uncomfortable.”

“In what way?”

“Well, he was always there. Watching things.
He was weird, too. Just like Melissa. And Kyle Granger. I bet he
was into that D & D stuff as well.”

“He…” Lizzie began a thought and lost it as
the tears tempted her again. Why didn’t she remember Ben so well in
high school? Why hadn’t she paid attention to him if he was someone
she knew and loved in another lifetime? Why didn’t she recognize
him when she was the age that Lily was when she met him?

“It is too bad that she died so young,” Sara
concluded the topic. “But she is at peace now.”

“She is now,” Lizzie scooped up some rice on
her fork. Who was to say that Melissa Benson wasn’t going to come
back someday?

“You know, Lizzie, Ted’s cousin just got
divorced last year,” Sara slowly patted her lips with her napkin.
“He lives in Boston. I could give him your phone number.”

Lizzie breathed in and stopped herself from
rolling her eyes. She simply smiled and took another bite of her
meal.

*****

Lizzie held a small paper plate in her hand,
hesitating over the table of hors d’oeuvres. She picked up a few
vegetables and let her eyes wander to the window. She could see the
apartments across the street and a few buildings behind them. Just
a few streets over was Ben’s. It was the closest she was to his
place in nearly three weeks. Those three weeks seemed like three
months in a lot of ways. She ached to see him again, to see the
freckles under his green eyes smiling at her. She could tell him
she was missing something. A shoe. A hairbrush. And she did just
happen to be in the neighborhood.

Three weeks wasn’t enough. It was two weeks
since she walked away from Oliver. She wouldn’t open his message.
She left it amongst the other neglected messages of her inbox. The
confusion was still swirling in her brain making everything
unclear. The only clear thing was that she had to resist taking
every tempting piece of food off that table and scarfing it
down.

Lizzie heard a conversation swell as Davis
led some of his theater friends towards the table of food. She
didn’t have to turn to recognize the fact Will was among them. She
couldn’t face him. Not when Oliver’s teeth marks were still red
beneath her collar.

She found Andrew in the kitchen, stationed
with Davis’ martini shaker plus a table of food to stop her from
repeating her party habits. He was in a crowd of work friends.
Lizzie lingered by the empty kitchen table, contemplating a plunge
into the seven layer dip. She hoped she could hold it together for
just one more hour. A half hour. Then she could leave. If she
couldn’t… if she fell apart in the next ten minutes, she would run
to Ben’s apartment. She didn’t care. She needed someone who
wouldn’t think she was crazy or some pathetic loser who couldn’t
keep a boyfriend. But Ben… Ben wouldn’t want to see her. She was
worse than crazy or pathetic to him.