Marks of the Past - 29

Epilogue

“You got to live here for a week?” Lexi breathed, her face lighting up as she stepped into the entranceway to James’s mansion. 

“Get used to it,” I replied, smiling just a bit. “Cause this is where you’ll be living now too.” Her grin was certainly worth re-entering this house despite all of my protests. I hadn’t wanted to come back, not when every room reminded me of James. 

But I couldn’t let the manor go to waste - especially because it belonged to me now. 

That’s right - James - for some odd reason - had a will, and in it he’d left me the majority of his belongings. 

“Leila,” my mom began when she noticed my clenched fists. “If this is too overwhelming-” 

“It’s fine,” I lied through gritted teeth. 

Two weeks had passed since the Shadows had smuggled me out of prison and the only thing we’d succeeded in doing was clearing my name - which had technically been due to James’s will. The patrolmen had only agreed to release me because if James had written his will to me, surely I couldn’t be his murderer. It wasn’t good reasoning, but my mother pleaded for my “insanity” and I was no longer allowed to be questioned. 

To the rest of the world, I was James’s lover who’d lost him to a terrible murder and in the process lost my mind as well. I was willing to let them believe it. 

“This is insane,” Chelsea breathed. “Even when my family was rich, our place was half the size of this.” All of the Shadows seemed to be having a similar reaction - gaping at the huge entrance hall and the portrait of James and his parents that hung on the wall. 

The first thing I would do was tear it down and burn it so I never had to see those eyes again. 

“You guys have been here before,” I pointed out. 

“Locked in the dining hall,” Nik reminded me. “There wasn’t much to see in there.” I couldn’t disagree - the dining room was just a small fraction of the house. Even I hadn’t been in all of the rooms. 

“Where do we go first?” Liam asked, practically bouncing up and down. 

“Are there any off-limits rooms?” my mom revised, sending me a worried look. “We need bedrooms.”

I thought for a moment. “Let’s leave James’s room and his parents’ room alone for now. Maybe we can clean it out one day … but for now, I think the guest wings will do fine. Everyone can probably have their own space.”

Truth be told, all of us could probably have two or three bedrooms - and there were a lot of us who’d be living in the house. 

I’d asked Nik if he and the Shadows wanted to return to their cottage in the woods or the safehouse, but he shook his head. The Shadows had taken one last trip to their home in the woods and gathered their belongings to bring to James’s mansion, where they planned on staying until my mother kicked them out or they found a life elsewhere. Which meant for the time being, I had to deal with Nik, Jonah, Chelsea, Rave, and Kyle. 

Noticeably missing was Simon, who I’d been informed was actually planning to stay in Miryir. He wanted to continue helping people, according to Chelsea. There wasn’t a reason why he couldn’t do that here in the Republic, but I think he didn’t want to deal with the girl’s anger. I’d have to send him letters at some point in time, just to thank him for his help. 

I kept my own room since a part of me longed for its familiarity. It was untouched - the servants had been dismissed as part of James’s agreement unless they wanted to continue working in the mansion. I wasn’t sure any of them would come back, which was fine with me. 

After a quick tour around the house, the others resolved to make a large dinner in the kitchen. My mother took the twins shopping to buy some new decor - specifically to replace anything that screamed James. I know my mom wanted me to go with her, to get me out of the house. She knew that if she let me alone, I’d probably explore the rooms I’d specifically warned the others to avoid, like James’s mother’s office, his father’s office, and the room with the weird experiments. 

She was right, of course.

It took me a little while to find James’s room since I’d only been inside of it once and I’d entered through a window. 

The room was so much more beautiful in the dying light and I had no trouble believing James had grown up behind its walls. White walls, silk curtains, and a lush carpet screamed wealth - but there were hidden parts of James’s life too. The bed sheets were still rumpled as if he had been in a hurry when he’d woken up. Pasted on the wall beside the bed were intricate drawings covered with numbers - measurements of sorts. The floor was littered with tiny gears and screws that hadn’t been there last time. 

I stood in the doorway for a long time, afraid that if I stepped foot in the room James might appear behind me, alive and whole, and chastise me for snooping. 

Though I knew at some point in time we would have to clear out the room, I was hesitant to let anyone else take the job. None of them had known James the way I had and it felt wrong to let them glimpse his personal life when it’d been hidden from even me. 

Inhaling deeply, I took a step. And then another. 

The window seat was covered with tiny gadgets that looked a bit like a grappling hook, though the cord was way too skinny. I picked it up carefully, testing the weight and pulling on the cord. It was stiff - stronger than it had any right to be. 

It seemed like the room didn’t have enough air anymore so I flung open the window. 

You have no right to be in here, part of my mind argued. 

Yes, but he left it to you. And wouldn’t James prefer you to search it rather than the others? the other half pointed out. 

I decided that my only job right now was to find anything private and hide it from my family and the Shadows. James’s family deserved that much, right? I owed them for taking me in, it was the least I could do. 

“You look busy.” 

The voice nearly made me jump out of my skin. I spun wildly, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there and instead grabbing one of the various trinkets scattered across the desk I was searching through. The object happened to be some sort of odd stick made of metal, but my mother pushed it down gently without a second thought. 

I relaxed just a tiny bit, embarrassed to be caught so vulnerable. “Sorry.”

Her eyes were filled with worry - worry for me and the person who I’d become. “Come, let’s talk.” Not a request - an order. 

I followed her as she carefully stepped over all of the inventions and made her way to the balcony. The night air was cool against my skin, yet not freezing - the sign of an oncoming spring. 

My mother was silent as she gazed out over the city, admiring the view of the city. I waited for her to speak but she said nothing. Finally, I took the bait. 

“I thought you were going to get furniture.” 

She gave a small smile. “And I figured that you would probably end up alone in these rooms. It’s not a job for a single person.”

“You didn’t go to buy furniture.” 

My mother sighed. “You’re more important than furniture, Lei. Besides, this is your place now so you should get a say in what color the couches are.”

As much as I felt honored that she wanted to check in on me, this was something I was pretty sure I would have to face alone. 

“You miss him, don’t you?” she asked. 

“Who?” Mark? James? My father? 

A smirk formed on her lips. “You know who. The boy who left you his family estate, who tried to save your life.” And in the process, lost his own. 

I shrugged, voice shaking slightly when I spoke. “I … I guess I do, even if I shouldn’t.” 

“And why shouldn’t you miss him, Leila? What’s stopping you from mourning his death?” 

“I’m not sure that he was a good person. I’m not sure if we were ever even friends.”

My mother fell silent at that, though I could sense her mind working - gears turning as she searched for an answer. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“That he wasn’t a good person or that we weren’t actually friends?”

“Both.”

Another shrug. “I guess I didn’t really know him that well, y’know? Until now, I never knew that he liked tinkering. We never really discussed his hobbies or anything. So it feels wrong to mourn someone who I didn’t know even the simplest things about.”

My mom nodded, still pondering. “And why do you think he was a bad person?”

“He wasn’t bad,” I argued. “It’s just … we both did things to each other that we weren’t proud of.” 

“When he came to take us, he was very polite about it. He told us that we could see you if we followed him, but we had to keep quiet to not draw attention. And when he locked us away, he kept us well fed and entertained.” 

“He still kidnapped you,” I reminded her. 

My mother sighed. “James crossed an ocean to find you, Leila. And you were by his side in the end. If that’s not friendship, I don’t know what is.”
I wouldn’t know. My only ‘friend’ growing up had been Mark, and even then we hadn’t really been friends. I’d tolerated his presence and he’d used me. 

“It’s okay if you miss him,” my mom said at last. “The pain isn’t going to go away just with you ignoring it. If you let it, the pain will tear you apart until there’s nothing left but guilt and regret.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. 

“Have you tried … speaking to him?” her voice was cautious, almost inaudible. 

I shook my head. “If I tried, there might have been repercussions.” Or maybe James wouldn’t want to talk with me, and I think that scared me more. 

“Good,” was all she said in response. “Don’t lose yourself in regret, Leila.”

And then she turned and disappeared back through James’s room. She paused at the door, sending me a final worried look. “Dinner is ready when you are.” And she was gone. 

I let out a shaky breath, resolving to at least finish half of James’s room tonight. 

I’d begun making piles of contraptions to keep and junk to toss. It was hard to figure out what each invention was supposed to do, but eventually I discovered a leather notebook filled with entries of each piece of equipment and its purpose. Most of the dates were recent - in the past few days or so as if he’d been expecting his death, expecting me to find this journal and read it. 

In the margins, he’d tried his hand at poetry too. I could imagine him sitting on the window seat, gazing outside absentmindedly as he doodled whatever thoughts came to mind. The verses were all pretty terrible and cheesy, but they made me giggle and the journal went in the keep pile. 

The delicious scent of a roasted dinner caught my attention, sending my stomach growling. I finished sorting a tiny drawer and screws and gears before standing to leave when something caught my eye in the back of the journal. 

A drawing. 

His journal had a fair amount of illustrations, mostly of inventions and all kinds of diagrams I couldn’t even begin to decipher. 

But this one … this one was a person. Me. 

It wasn’t a wonderful drawing, probably from memory. The ink was splotched in a few places but he’d capture my scowl and the way I stood with my fingers clasped behind me - two things I’d never noticed that I did. 

I sucked in a breath before ripping out the page. 

Slowly, I made my way to the desk and pulled a pen from the holder, testing the ink before scrawling a small message onto the back of the drawing. 

The next thing I knew, I was on the balcony, a candle in one hand and the drawing with the note on the other. I took the flame to the paper and watched it burn, the warm breeze sending the ashes spiraling. 

I might have used my magic just a little bit, ripping open the seams of the world just the smallest amount for the ashes to pass through the world beyond. James would get my message. 

I will live my life for the both of us. 

James may not have been my lover - may not have even been my friend. But we’d been two people whose lives had ended up intertwined. He’d lost his future because of me. 

Now I would be the one to give it back.

Author's Note

Well, this is the end. Marks of the Past was an idea I'd been sitting on for a pretty long time when I finally decided to write it but I hadn't really come up with a plot, which might be evident through bits of the plot that I changed halfway through. Overall, this story was a really interesting one for me to write. In each new project I try to choose something to work on, and this one had a lot of worrying about proper character motivations, character flaws and a plot that actually had some unforeseen twists. Although there is a lot of this story that I didn't anticipate, it was a really fun project for me so I hope you enjoyed.