Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 49826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 249(@200wpm)___ 199(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49826 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 249(@200wpm)___ 199(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
Supposedly, they’d found a way through spiritual attachment to return and find the love they’d once lost. The only caveat was that the love had to be real. As the story goes, the spell can only work on star-crossed lovers, lovers who never got to fulfill their ever after dream together in this life but were given a chance through some offspring or close relative that bore a spiritual resemblance to them.
For my aunt, it had been me, and for Hal, his grandson. I’m not sure why they’d chosen me to be the one to hold the secret, and the only two other people in town who might be able to help couldn’t because their situation had been so different. Their attachment started when their other part was already dead; ours started when my aunt was still alive.
She’d introduced me to Hal just before she died after I’d been here for a week at her request. They’d sat me down after days of fun and laughter and told me this amazing tale. I’d laughed it off at first, of course; what nonsensical fairytales, I thought. But then Mrs. Horton had explained, and I realized that it was no hallucination being shared among the town’s people, not when I met Jessica and Garrett, who confirmed what the old lady was saying.
I’d been enticed, to say the least, my already fanciful nature lured by the prospect that this could all somehow be true. Maybe that’s why I’d been the one of the two of us who they’d chosen to share with. Nick’s more strong-willed, practical nature would’ve fought it tooth and nail.
Hal had said that with his doubts, we needed a contingency plan. That’s where the three months came in. In that time, Nick was supposed to get me with child, using his body and mine while under the spell and attachment of Hal and Jan. It was them who met in the night, them who bonded so fiercely that I still feel the lingering sting from the first time.
I wake up feeling the pains and knowing that they’d been at it most of the night into the morning. But I have no recollection of their coupling just flashes here and there. That’s why I know because I remember last night that we were coming to a head.
I’d been so lost in thought I didn’t notice the strain of music coming from above. I stepped out into the hallway as if in a daze, and my eyes followed the faint hint of yellow light going up the stairs. I knew that if I stepped into that light, if I followed the sound of the violin, that I would become her once again, that it would be Hal waiting up there for his lover.
I walked up the stairs slowly, the hem of my nightgown caught up in my hands. He was there waiting, the arm with the violin falling to his side at my entrance. His smile warmed my heart the way it did the first time we met. It was a day pretty much like this. I’d gone to the music study hall for some much-needed practice on the piano, expecting the place to be empty as usual.
I hadn’t heard the music of the violin, or if I had, I hadn’t noticed; it hadn’t registered. But then I burst through the door, and he was there. I stopped with my hand on the door, mouth hanging open not just in surprise but in awe. For a moment, with the light coming through the dusty windows to land on his golden hair, I thought he was an angel or, at the very least, a ghost.
His beauty was too otherworldly to be real, and the fact that I’d never seen him before only solidified my belief. I’d stumbled over my feet and into the room, and that smile that crossed his face had pierced my heart and soul to the quick. I lost time that day, not knowing how long I stood there staring at him while he watched me curiously.
When reality kicked in, I’d made my apologies and hurried to leave the room. “No, don’t go!” His voice, so crisp, so clear, and so sure, stopped me in my tracks once again. That was the beginning of our short-lived but very intense love affair.
It was a musical summer camp for the brightest and the best. Hal had been a dashing twenty-year-old to my then seventeen. Back then, in the late thirties early forties, those ages were not frowned upon; in fact, many of our fellow musicians were already married at our ages.
But alas, for Hal and I, it was not meant to be. Once my mother found out at the end of that summer, she’d sent me away. One night I was telling her about my longing for the boy I’d met and loved, and the next morning I was on a train to the other side of the country. In those first days, I thought I would die.