Ivy of Our Hearts

Thirty-two

"She used to take me to the lake," he said as we walked back to the cabin. The wind spun leaves in the air above us in a kind of dance.

"Nora," I said.

He nodded. "She'd wake me in the morning, and we'd pack everything to come down here." He took a deep breath, as if he smelled those summer afternoons spent with Nora, the freshness of the lake mixed with the fragrance of paint.

"You never left the woods? Did you go to school?" I'd wondered if little Phillip had been around other children his age while growing up.

"I didn't," he said. "Nora homeschooled me." That melancholic tone had returned to his voice. He'd been lonely growing up, even with Nora. "I guess she was afraid they'd take me away if..."

I touched his arm. He didn't need to say it. I would have said something like, "I bet she's watching over you now." But because he didn't believe in those things, I said, "You have a lot to remember her by."

"I do," he said. "Sometimes I think it isn't enough." We were almost to the end of the trees now, the cabin a few meters away. "Which is why I need you, Ivy," he said. "Manderley's great but she isn't a person. I need someone I can talk to, be with."

"You do have me," I said. Those words shocked me, like when I'd admitted to Nora I loved him. I kept these things hidden from myself somehow, and they spilled from my mouth when I least expected it.

Phillip laughed. My heart thudded along with his laughter. Heat rose to my cheeks. What a stupid thing to say to someone. As we reached the end of the trees, he stopped, and I stopped alongside him. Once we entered the cabin, there would no longer be the two of us. There would be four of us. He picked up my hand and lifted it to his mouth, brushing his lips against my fingers, he said, "I hope that doesn't change soon."

"No," I said, because those two letters were all I could manage together. My hand was ablaze near his lips, but the image of them coated with blood recurred in my mind. I pulled my hand from his grasp. "We should get back," I said. I kept both of my hands in my pockets as we went up to the cabin. I kept the hand he'd kissed balled up inside my coat.

***

"How did it go?" Margaret asked as Phillip and I tore off our coats at the door. The woodstove made the cabin warm. The warmness melted into my skin.

"He didn't follow us," Phillip said. "He threw his coat up on a peg near the door and sat next to Margaret, pulling her legs up onto his lap. "What are you reading?" he asked. She showed him.

I folded my coat up over my arm, pretending the way they sat together didn't bother me, although it did. How selfish I was when I'd already had my time with him. When he'd wanted to kiss me not Margaret.

"Manderley left you something," she said. "It's in the bedroom."

I'd meant to go into the room anyway to put my coat away. They'd distracted me. Phillip had distracted me. "Thanks," I said. I left them reading on the couch for our bedroom. I hung up my coat, as I did, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, the scorn on my face. I tried to change it into a smile, but it made my features appear forced. As if I wore a mask of my own face, the brown of my lips looked like it had been painted on. I couldn't have been any more pathetic to be so resentful of my best friend. I shut the door.

On my pillow, Manderley had left me a long, red ribbon. "Pretty," I said. I picked it up to put it in the drawer with her other gifts. When I did, when my hand touched the smooth fabric, a bout of emotions came over me, like being struck by a memory I'd wanted to forget. It came to me in fragments.

I dropped it and went to the wardrobe. I pulled out Margaret's jeans. If I were right, it would be in her left pocket. "Please be wrong," I said and shoved my hand into the pocket. "Please," I said. The strip of fabric in it was smooth against my fingers. Her ribbon. The one he'd tied to the tree. Our initials had been carved into its trunk. And the poem. It all came back to me. "Soon we will meet no matter rain or snow," he'd said.

I took out the ribbon and stuffed Margaret's jeans back into the wardrobe. My heart made a noise I'd never heard it make before. It bellowed in my chest, crying out. He'd stolen our hearts. He'd kept us for his own whims. I picked up the other ribbon and sat on the bed with both in my hands. The longer I held them the more I remembered. They were almost identical, except Manderley's had frayed edges.

All this time he'd kept us here. And I thought my feelings were true. I thought his were true, but the longer I held the ribbons the more I realized they couldn't be. I couldn't love him. I'd been such a fool. He'd tricked us. He'd casted a spell. And his kisses had been lies as well. The blood I'd seen on his lips had been my minds way of warning me that he was both an angel and a beast. Now we were trapped here.

I curled over; much like I had the first time I'd tried to escape him and sobbed into my lap. I'd never wanted my parents so much. I'd never wanted home so much. How foolish of me to be fooled by him. The star inside of me dimmed and went out completely, leaving nothing behind but a gaping hole that fought to consume me. I rose and wiped my hand on my sweater, as if I could wipe away where his mouth had been. I wiped and wiped everywhere his mouth had been. I wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I wouldn't let him know I knew.

He would never have my heart again. I would guard what was left of it.