An Ever Fixéd Mark (17 page)

“I don’t want to… I want to… not care. But I
don’t know how to not care.”

“It’s what I am.”

“Have they been recent? Even after you
became a doctor and did all that blood research?”

“No. The last one was in 1918.”

“You said you put someone out of his
misery.”

“I did.”

“What about the battlefield? Did you feed on
corpses?”

“I can’t feed on corpses. But it was a war…
there were a number of willing … I didn’t kill anyone by feeding in
the war. I was a soldier. That was a much more brutal way of
killing.”

“With no purpose,” Lizzie looked blankly in
front of her. “I don’t know what is real anymore. Or what is
right.”

“Do you think it isn’t right to be here with
me?”

“You didn’t… you stayed away. You ran away.
There must have been a reason,” Lizzie still looked ahead blankly.
She couldn’t look at him, even as she knew she should to see his
reaction.

“I was scared.”

“Scared you would kill me? Or scared that I
would think you were a psychopath and never want to see you
again?”

“I was scared for you…” he answered slowly.
“And scared that I would never see you again.”

Lizzie looked up and met his pained eyes.
She felt a surge of sympathy warm within her. “I don’t want to go
home just yet.”

“Okay.”

Lizzie pulled her hair back and wrapped her
watch around her left wrist. “Why me, Ben?”

“I told you, Elizabeth. I like you very
much.”

“But … all this for some mousy girl you met
at Springs High School and spent one night with fifteen years
later? I don’t understand.”

Ben stood up and went to
pull his keys from his coat pocket.
“I
think you need some breakfast. You just went running and still
haven’t eaten a decent meal since we got here.”

Lizzie met his eyes again. She felt her
stomach growl with the recognition of the truth of his words. “Are
you going to answer my question?”

“Why I chose you? I don’t think that
explanation is any different for me than it is for you,” he
shrugged. “Why are you here with me even though you know what you
know? Maybe it’s just because we like one another’s company?”

“Maybe,” she agreed to end the conversation
followed him out the door.

*****

Lizzie didn’t know how to talk to him as
they sat in the dining room eating breakfast. She ate breakfast. He
sat with a cup of coffee from which he never drank. He talked about
the activities of the past three days – walking in the gorge,
driving across the state border into Lebanon and Dartmouth, and all
the pine trees. Lizzie filled her plate at the buffet so she didn’t
have to talk and wasn’t even sure if she was completely listening
to him. She tried to empty her thoughts of their conversation in
the room. The reality of the situation was starting to wear off the
warm glow of infatuation.

Was that what it was? She found herself
asking that question. She hated sappy emotion. She hated to be all
girly and swoony. The last time she was such an idiotic fool. And…
really… that stupid love thing was always so messy. But this… this
wasn’t just messy. Was she really debating sappy emotion with
herself when there was a very real fact of danger hovering in her
mind like a bad cloud?

“Elizabeth?” he asked in a tone that made
her wonder how many times he repeated her name.

“Mm?” she swallowed another bite of
eggs.

“If we aren’t driving back to Boston, what
are we going to do today?”

“I don’t care,” she took another mouthful.
She saw the annoyance creep across his face.

“You don’t want to go home?”

Lizzie looked around the dining room. It was
empty but for one other couple at the opposite end. “What about
your brother?”

“I told you.”

“Yes, he’s like you,” Lizzie was careful
with her words, even in the empty dining room. “But how?”

Ben took in a deep breath. “He was changed
almost forty years later.”

“Why did he go to Springs? Did he want to
change careers, too? He went back to high school so he could go to
college and stay there?”

“
Oliver had a different
reason for going to Springs.”

“You don’t like talking about Oliver,”
Lizzie observed. “Did you have a falling out?”

“We have gone separate ways for a while,”
Ben tried to offer a smile.

“But he… well, he’s someone who knows what
you are,” Lizzie said sadly. “It must be lonely without him. It
must be lonely for him.”

“Actually, he is married and perfectly
happy.”

“To a… non-vampire human?”

“To a vampire,” Ben laughed. “They have been
together for just over ten years… which was the last time I spoke
with him.”

“But you are friends with him on Facebook,”
Lizzie remarked.

“We can see what one another is doing and
not have to speak to each other,” Ben still seemed
uncomfortable.

“Does he know about me?”

“No,” Ben said emphatically.

Lizzie watched him grip his coffee mug. His
fingers clung tightly around the ceramic handle. Lizzie scanned her
memories of Oliver to recall any acrimony between them at SRHS. She
could only remember him being there for a year. In that year, her
memory was mostly of the debate club. “You don’t want him to
know?”

“It’s not really any of his business,” Ben
loosened his grasp of the mug and tried to lighten his voice.
“We’ve gone our separate ways.”

Lizzie suddenly thought about Sara and how
that friendship turned to disinterest and latent bitterness. She
could understand Ben, even if he didn’t articulate what or who came
between them. Besides, Oliver was in California and unlikely to
cross her path again. “Have you told anyone about me?”

“
Like who?”

“I don’t know,” Lizzie bit her lip, her
annoyance with Ben shifting to annoyance with herself for acting so
stupidly girly. “Your friends at the clinic?”

“I don’t think they would … I keep to
myself, Elizabeth. I don’t have the circle of friends that you
do.”

“Aren’t you lonely?”

“I have my work.”

“I have work, but that doesn’t… it isn’t
enough,” Lizzie frowned. “Then again, I’m just a secretary
essentially. I’m not inventing cures for lead poisoning or
computers that do things I can’t explain in English.”

Ben laughed and reached for her hand.
“Elizabeth, in the six months since I saw you at the reunion, I
realized that keeping to myself isn’t enough. That’s why I decided
to do this. That’s why I came to tell you my truth. That’s why we
are here now. I don’t want to be on my own when there is an option
to be with you.”

She swallowed, overwhelmed and uncertain
what to say. She didn’t want to ruin it with a clumsy response or
ignore it with the chill of silence. “I…” she squeezed his hand and
breathed out. “Ben, of all the things you’ve explained in the past
few days, that is the most important thing you’ve said. We can stay
here for the rest of the week or go back to Boston. Wherever we
are, I want to spend the time with you.”

She saw his green gray eyes lock on her. She
felt a sudden chill across her shoulders, like the ghostly drafts
she felt in the rooms of the Fulton House. It ebbed away quickly as
the look of the green eyes warmed her. They were familiar, as if
she knew that stare from before and had been waiting for it to
return. As if she were meant to be sitting there across from those
green eyes all along.

Chapter
Thirteen

Lizzie sat beside Ben on the couch. She put
her bottle on the table in front of her, making sure it was very
close to Ben’s. She was aware of Meg and Nora looking in their
direction whenever a lull in the conversation lasted more than a
beat. She supposed it was a novelty. Lizzie never had a date to
anything, not even informal gatherings among friends. And now, for
once, she wasn’t the odd extra single.

Ben was telling Mark about his business.
Mark worked in pharmaceuticals and found interest in Ben’s medical
computers, something Lizzie still didn’t quite comprehend. She
probably now understood more about the science of vampires than the
science of the machine in front of which she sat each day for
hours. She was glad that Ben had something to talk about with Mark,
who didn’t mix so well with Alec.

Meg brought him to the evening of drinks
Nora suggested. Lizzie knew Nora wasn’t thrilled to have the
philandering professor in her living room, but was able to keep her
reservations quiet in light of the fact there was a new member of
their company. Meg stayed by Alec’s side, as if protecting him from
Nora and Mark. Ben didn’t seem much interested in striking up a
conversation with him either. Lizzie didn’t know if that was
because she had told him about Meg’s manic infatuation or if it was
because he was the professor guiding Meg’s thesis on vampires.

“
Have you ever been there,
Ben?” Lizzie turned her focus back to Mark and his question to Ben
about County Kerry.

“No,” he shook his head. “I’ve only been to
Dublin, I’m afraid.”

“The whole country is amazing,” Alec
startled everyone by entering the conversation. “You should go
back. Rent a cottage anywhere along the Ring of Kerry. Get a car
and explore the county.”

“Maybe I will,” Ben slipped his hand into
Lizzie’s palm.

“Good answer, Ben,” Meg nodded. “Otherwise
we would be here for hours while Alec tried to sell you on Ireland
over any other vacation on the planet.”

“There’s no other place like it,” Alec took
a sip of his Guinness.

“Yes, I know your poetic soul yearns to go
back,” Meg smirked. “I think you must have lived there before.”

“I spent two years teaching at Trinity,”
Alec looked at Meg.

“I mean in a former life,” Meg answered.

“I think Mark played for the Red Sox in his
last life,” Nora spread some cheese on a cracker. “And he can’t
seem to let go of Fenway Park.”

Mark laughed. “Sure, Nora,” he took a swig
of his beer. “What did you do in your last life, Ben?”

“He was a doctor,” Lizzie said absently and
caught the sudden glances of everyone, including Ben. “That’s what
I think. He understands a lot about physiology.”

“Oh really?” Nora laughed on her
cracker.

Lizzie felt the blood rise to her cheeks,
realizing the hole she just stepped into. Ben caught the laugh and
looked at Lizzie, kissing her gently on the cheek.

“I bet Nora was a matriarch of some
Victorian family,” Meg sobered Nora’s laughter.

“What were you Meg?” Nora retorted

“Oh I was a spinster, who died of a broken
heart.”

“And Lizzie?” Mark asked.

“I bet she broke the hearts,” Nora
winked.

Ben let go of her hand and picked up
Lizzie’s bottle. She watched him pretend to take a sip. She could
tell he wasn’t really swallowing anything. “I didn’t break
anything,” Lizzie looked back at Meg and accepted the bottle from
Ben to take a drink.

“Not that any of that is real,” Mark took a
handful of crackers and sat back in his chair.

“What? Reincarnation?” Lizzie found herself
attentive.

“Well, yeah… I mean, once you die, you die,”
Mark plunged a cracker into the cheese spread.

“That’s a depressing thought,” Meg
pouted.

“You don’t think it’s depressing to think
that you could come back here and have no idea you were alive a
hundred years before?”

“I don’t think we have no idea. What about
déjà vu? What about things that draw our attentions for no obvious
reason? I really do think Alec has some connection to Ireland,” Meg
argued.

“Yeah, his last name is McCaffrey,” Mark
muttered.

Lizzie thought of her conversation with Ben
on the way to Jack’s gig. She looked at him to see his reaction.
What would Mark say if she told him that Ben was perpetually
undying?

“Or what about Lizzie? That house she works
at on the weekends? Even she admits that there is something about
that house that she can’t explain.”

Lizzie looked away from Ben, annoyed that
Meg was using her in an argument with Mark, which was more about
her disinterest in Mark than about any belief about death. “Meg, I
don’t think I was one of the Fultons.”

“No… but don’t you think you were there when
it was a house and not just a museum?”

“It’s been a museum for over a hundred
years.”

“Precisely.”

“Meg, we all believe what we want to
believe,” Nora jumped up and headed towards the kitchen. “Can I get
anyone something else to drink? Ben?”

“No thank you, Nora,” Ben smiled and looked
at Lizzie.

“I think we are all drawn to things that had
something to do with when we were here before,” Meg maintained her
position.

“So, what… does that mean you liked
vampires, Meg?” Mark sneered. “Maybe you were killed by one in your
last life.”

Lizzie felt Ben’s arm go over her shoulder.
Lizzie watched Alec’s reaction to Mark. Lizzie didn’t think he was
the type to throw down a gauntlet and protect his wounded
girlfriend. Not that she could imagine Alec succeeding in any
challenge against Mark. She knew Ben was calm and collected. She
imagined this petty squabble was like a bunch of teenagers to him.
She liked his protective arm and wondered why Alec didn’t offer one
to Meg.

Nora reappeared quickly with another plate
of food. Lizzie smiled up at her and decided to spread some of the
tapenade on the sliced bread. “Thank you, Nora,” she leaned back
against Ben’s arm waiting to hold onto her. “You know I like the
idea of reincarnation,” Lizzie offered when no one spoke after she
finished chewing. “I like the possibility of getting a chance to
put things right.”

“How can you put them right if you don’t
remember?” Nora sighed, annoyed that the conversation was
continuing.