Chapter Fifteen

The Heart Remembers ©2009

Chapter Fifteen It had been nearly a week since the episode with Kathleen and I had begun to think that perhaps the Preston’s had sent her away. As curious as I was as to what may have happened to her, my thoughts focused mainly on Elise. I had only seen her several times since the incident and she was always in the company of her father. She would send me a furtive wave when he wasn’t looking, her face sad, and I wondered if perhaps he suspected something about my involvement in Kathleen’s strange behavior and had ordered her not to associate with me until he decided my fate. Seth had made it all too clear that the whole subject about that night with Kathleen was closed to discussion so I was left with only questions and the worry that my days at the Preston’s were numbered. Then one afternoon as I was cleaning up some hay that had fallen off the truck into the driveway, I sensed movement out of the corner of my eye from one of the upstairs windows in the great house. I looked up to see a familiar figure in a white dress staring forlornly at me as I swept up the last bits of straw and placed them into my wheelbarrow. It was Kathleen. I glanced around to make sure no one was watching and waved shyly. Kathleen appeared to be trying to open the window. I grew extremely nervous and wanted nothing more then to just grab my tools and hurry back to the safety of the stable, but Kathleen had managed to open it and was beckoning me to come closer. “I can’t!” I mouthed, keeping my voice low and exaggerating the movement of my lips. “Your father or Seth might see me.” “I need to speak to you Daniel. Please just come and talk to me for two minutes!”

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I gave a quick glance towards the stables, and cursing like a sailor under my breath I ran over to the window. Kathleen was actually leaning out the window in what looked to be a very precarious position. The second story window wasn’t very high but there was a rose bed directly beneath it adorned with large rocks, which could easily cause serious injury in a fall. I glanced up and to my horror saw Kathleen crawling out onto the window ledge backwards and trying to hook her foot into the wooden rose trellis that was attached to the house. “What are you doing? Get back in there! Dang it Kathleen. I’m already in enough trouble with Seth and maybe your father too. If you don’t go right back in that window, I’m leaving and I’m not looking back to see if you break your neck!” “And if I fall, I’ll scream and Seth will come running and see you anyways, so quit standing there gawking like a stupid fool and help me down. Hurry up!” I cursed my rotten luck and started to climb the trellis to help her. “Get off the damn trellis Daniel! It won’t support the both of us. Just don’t let me hit the rocks if I fall and grab me when I get close.” Kathleen was almost within arm reach now and I held the wobbly wooden trellis steady. I glanced up to see if she was within reached and flushed red as I realized I could see up her dress. I looked away quickly despite the fact that only a week ago I had seen her lying naked in the moonlight. When she was about shoulder high, I grabbed her around the legs and she awkwardly wrapped her arms around my head obscuring my view and throwing me off balance. I tripped over one of the rocks in the rose bed and we both fell to the ground. Thankfully neither one of us was hurt. Kathleen stood up dusting off her dress.

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“Do you know where the old servant’s house is near the woods behind the back pasture?” she said hurriedly. “Yes.” “Meet me back there whenever you get a chance. Tell Seth that you’re going to walk one of the horses or something. I need to speak to you. Please don’t disappoint me Daniel. You’re the only friend I have and father has basically made me a prisoner in my room until he figures out what he wants to do with me.” “I started to protest and Kathleen placed her palm against my mouth. “Daniel, please don’t abandon me like everyone else. No one will know…I promise.” Her beauty was overwhelming, her presence intoxicating. I couldn’t say no. It was as if she had some kind of magical power over me. The power to make me do things I would never otherwise consider. Decisions that could cost me my job, make my father ashamed of me, possibly ruin my relationship with Elise, and I felt completely helpless, unable to offer any resistance as she manipulated me like a puppet. I simply nodded my head and gazed at her beautiful face in utter amazement. “Come as soon as you can,” she whispered, and kissed me on the cheek before hurrying off. I glanced up and saw that her window was still wide open. Cursing my rotten luck for the tenth time that morning, I quickly scaled the trellis with my heart pounding like a drum and closed it. I tidied up the rose bed as fast as I could, grabbed my tools, and hurried back to the stable. Seth was greasing the hay truck. “I gotta take the truck to town for new tires. Did you get all the straw cleaned up?” “Yup.” “Okay. Take Apollo and Ginger to the back pasture today and let them graze. And check the fence line back there…all of it.

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Count how many rails have been damaged by the horses rubbing against them so I know how many need replaced and I’ll get the order in when I come back. Check for dry rotted posts too. There’s writing paper and pencils in my room. Write it all down so you don’t forget. And don’t be wandering off with Elise if she shows up while I’m away. Mr. Preston has been in a foul mood since Kathleen…well…you know.” I finished my few remaining chores in the stable as Seth left, then walked Apollo and Ginger back to the rear pasture. Counting the weakened split rail fence sections proved to be quick work and Seth had told me that after I finished that, I could take it easy until he came back, but to stay busy if Mr. Preston happened to show up. I made my way back to the old house at the very rear of the property. The house was built of stone with a cedar shake roof and looked like something out of a fairy tale. It had once housed servants and even a gardener, but for some mysterious reason which was never explained to me, Mr. Preston had made additions to the main house to house the servants and abandoned the old house which was in remarkably good shape. I wondered why Seth stayed in that cramped room at the rear of the stables when this house, which had always been reserved for the full time help who worked on the estate, stood vacant. There was a small algae filled pond next to the house with a park bench sitting at the edge. The house itself stood at the edge of the woods, which Seth had informed me stretched for miles behind the estate. Kathleen emerged from the woods and walked towards me. I had given up trying to figure out her many moods and mysterious behavior and simply braced myself for whatever was about to happen. “You came,” she smiled and touched my arm, sending a shock through my entire body. Being around Kathleen was different than being around Elise.

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The Heart Remembers Elise calmed me, made me feel warm and fuzzy inside; made me fantasize about my future with her. Kathleen fascinated me. Elise was incredibly beautiful, but Kathleen’s beauty was unparalleled, every feature exquisite, her body long, elegant, and graceful, her dark hair a glorious wave of silken glory. I could never be completely at ease around her. Emotions and feelings raged inside of me jockeying for supremacy in a never-ending battle I had ceased to understand. At times she could speak to me in a soothing voice, gently teasing me, toying with me and I almost felt hypnotized as if I were falling under a spell. Other times, just being next to her I felt exposed, uncertain, defenseless and vulnerable. At times it felt as if I were standing at the edge of a perilous cliff. I loved Elise, wanted her more than anything in my life. I knew where I stood with Elise; at least I thought I did for the most part. But Kathleen brought out emotions in me I couldn’t even begin to understand. One minute I would grow lightheaded just thinking about what it might be like to place my lips against the hollow of her neck, the next moment I would be wishing that I would never see her again, that Mr. Preston would send her away to some far off school where she could distract and bewilder other boys, that it would just be Elise and I…no drama, no games. Things would make sense. “You’re going to make me lose my job one day. You do realize that, don’t you?” I said, unable to take my eyes off her elegant fingers, which were still on my arm. “Nonsense. Father likes you and Elise would throw a fit if he fired you, and Elise always gets her way with my father. I’ve paved the path for Elise’s happiness with my inappropriate behavior. Now all Elise has to do is what she always does; do and say the right things and my father will grant her every wish because he doesn’t want another disappointment like me. I’m the bad sister, Daniel. But I suppose you already know that. “You’re not bad,” I mumbled. “You’re just different.”

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The Heart Remembers To my surprise, Kathleen hugged me tightly. Every sense in my body went on full alert and I could feel the subtle swell of her breasts against me, her breath moist against my ear, her body molding to mine as if she belonged there. I stood there motionless, unable to speak, in a daze. She finally pulled away and I could see that she was crying. “What’s wrong?” “I’m just so sick of my life Daniel. Father has locked me in my room and he’s making plans to send me away. I’m not sure where. Maybe a school, maybe even a hospital. He’s fed up with me. He doesn’t want me making a spectacle of myself. God forbid, sullying the reputation of the venerable Preston’s. He’s afraid that I’ll…that…Oh God, I can’t even tell you. You don’t know anything about me, about my past, and yet you’re the only person I can talk to besides Elise.” Kathleen sat on the ground and began to weep loudly. I had never seen her vulnerable like this and was uncertain what to do. I sat beside her in the grass and put my arm around her. She leaned her head against my shoulder and we sat there quietly for several minutes. There was nothing I could say. Kathleen was an enigma to me; as mysterious and unreadable as a map of some far off world. Somehow, she had developed some kind of bond with me, unwelcome at times, but still there nonetheless. And I knew in my heart that I couldn’t abandon her if she needed me, that every second that she spent with me was linking me to an enigmatic personality that I might never come to understand. A relationship that bewildered me with a girl who could be both flirtatious and mocking in the same breath, who could make me abandon all common sense with a few words, whose mere presence was so thrilling to my adolescent mind that I knew that just to be near her might prove disastrous to the relationship with the girl I hoped would fall in love with me and marry me one day. I was helpless.

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The Heart Remembers My life had entered a realm of new emotions and responsibilities that would affect not only me, but the people that I loved and hoped to love. To know what to do next, I needed to understand and the only person who could help me was sitting next to me. “What happened the other night Kathleen?” I asked softly. She sat there silently for several minutes and I didn’t push her to answer. Finally she spoke, her voice shaky and weak. “I have spells sometimes Daniel. I know I’m awake and I can see things, but it’s like being in a dream where I have no control over my actions. Sometimes I’ll go months without having one and sometimes I’ll have several in one week. I remember bits and pieces of what happens, but never everything. It’s been like this since my accident. The doctors don’t know what it is exactly but say it’s caused by the trauma that I received to my brain when I was a little girl.” “Do you know when one of these spells is about to happen? Can you feel it coming?” “Kind of. My mind will start to wander and I’ll have a hard time focusing on things. Sometimes my vision gets blurry. But sometimes it happens when I’m asleep. Those are the worst ones because I wake up and it’s almost like sleepwalking. I never know where I might end up. The thing is Daniel is that I’ve always been rebellious in nature because of my father and all his damned rules since the injury and when I’m in the midst of one of these spells, it seems to magnify what my father would term inappropriate behavior…like the other night, wandering outside in the dark naked. In the past two weeks I’ve had several spells. I’m convinced that father believes that I am slowly going insane and that he will one day commit me.” Kathleen touched my face and turned it towards me. Her personality was so chameleon-like. I could never get used to it. I never knew what to expect from her. In the short time that I had known her, I had never seen her so vulnerable.

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The Heart Remembers “Please don’t let them take me away Daniel. You and Elise are all I have left. I’ve lost everything else.” Large tears had pooled at the corner of her eyes and I struggled to think of something to say. What she was asking of me was impossible. I was just a boy, with little money, no contacts to anyone outside of our small town. “I’m not sure there’s anything I can really do Kathleen.” “Just be my friend Daniel. I can tolerate being sent to another school, but I’m not insane. I don’t deserve to be sent to a hospital. But father is terrified that I will embarrass the family and he’ll do anything to keep that from happening again.” “Again? You mean like the other night?” “No. If a naked romp around the estate were all that I did, my father could live with that. The servants and Seth are paid well and know enough to keep quiet about my behavior. But there are things that have happened in the past that you’re unaware of Daniel. Terrible things that I can’t talk about. A past I can never forget. Those are the types of things that my father fears enough to have me committed.” Kathleen wrapped her arms around me and held me tightly. For the first time in my life I felt almost at ease around her. I wanted to protect her. Whatever had happened in her past didn’t matter. She was free-spirited, wild, but her actions didn’t seem to really hurt anyone. She didn’t deserve to be locked away in a hospital. “What are you thinking about right now Daniel?” “I don’t know. Everything I guess. What you just told me about your spells and your father, Elise, a bunch of stuff. Mostly about what could be so darn terrible that you can’t even talk about it. Was it a boy?” Kathleen grew visibly pale and released me, sitting up straight. She frowned and rubbed her eyes tiredly, then stared at me blankly shaking her head.

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The Heart Remembers She laughed unexpectedly and just like that her personality seemed to change from a vulnerable scared young girl to a calculating young woman who was assessing my every movement and making secret plans to confound me. “So it’s not enough to just be my friend. You want to hear the dirt like everyone else, is that it?” I stared at her in amazement, her eyes smoldering. She was clearly upset. No, I mean…well…yes. You want me to be your friend but you keep all these supposed secrets so I never really know what you’re thinking about or where you’re coming from. I mean friends don’t do that. They tell each other everything.” “Ohhh. So that’s friendship, is it Daniel? So if I ask you something personal, then you’ll answer me because you’re my friend and I have a right to know. Is that how it works Daniel?” “Ye…yes,” I stammered. “Sort of like that.” “Ok then. Now that you’ve taught me the preliminary rules of friendship etiquette, let me go first since ladies always go first. But lets just add one addendum to the friendship rulebook. We each only get one question for today because this house, although it’s far from prying eyes, has a bad history for me, but it’s the only spot on the great Preston estate where I can come to have a private chat with my friend, so I’ll tolerate the nasty memories for a while longer while we discover one deep dark secret about each other. Agreed?” I nodded. I had once again reached one of those moments where I wanted nothing more than to just be as far away from Kathleen as possible. But it was too late. Her vulnerable demeanor had been replaced with something far uglier. An expression of disgusted abnegation filled her face, yet somehow there was a sense of wicked triumph there too. “Are you ready Daniel? One question.” I nodded silently, knowing she would not go easy on me.

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The Heart Remembers She lay back in the grass on her back and stretched out her long tanned legs, never taking her eyes from mine. Slowly she began to unbutton the top few buttons of her dress until I could see her bra. A gleam of sweat had appeared above her lip. She licked her lips, her eyes mere slits as she watched me. I sat there mesmerized, too stunned to move, almost unable to breath. I knew that what I was seeing was a woman who knew the power of her beauty, who could wield it like a deadly weapon. She was a master of the power of seduction and I, desperate for any knowledge of love was no match for this temptress. She had only to strike the killing blow. “Tell me Daniel. If I take off my dress right now and tell you that I want you to make love to me, are you willing to forget about your love for Elise for a few hours?” My morals and the shame I felt as I nodded my head yes, fled the battlefield. I was betraying the one thing I prized the most, the love of a wonderful girl who had nothing but goodness in her heart, and even though my perfidiousness was only in thought and no action had actually taken place, my faithlessness was complete. I hated myself. I tried to force myself to hate Kathleen who was smiling triumphantly as she buttoned up her dress after hearing my answer, but I couldn’t hate her. She had never had any intention of making love to me as she lay there like a siren luring me to my destruction. It was all another game. She had repaid my curiosity with a vengeance and made a mockery of the love I felt for Elise. As badly as I wanted to hate her for exposing my potential treachery, I couldn’t. I didn’t understand why and this upset me almost as much as my betrayal. “It’s your turn Daniel. Remember, only one question. Choose wisely.” I pondered what to ask for a moment.

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The Heart Remembers I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to ask something that would hurt Kathleen as much as she had hurt me by showing me that I wasn’t the nice boy who I thought I was. She had mentioned a secret…something terrible…something she could never forget. She smiled and in that instant I knew that she had already read my mind, that she knew exactly what I would ask her, but that she didn’t care. I could feel her eyes boring into mine, daring me to ask the question. “What is this terrible secret you were talking about earlier?” She laughed, her smile flashing white in the afternoon sun, her hair waving in the breeze, gloriously beautiful like no other woman alive. “I killed a man.”

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