by Lorena
It took a special kind of person to understand Giselle. There weren't a lot of those around back then, and I'm sure that there aren't a lot today. I used to count myself as one of that camp. And I wish I never did.
Giselle was sister number twenty and seemed to have suffered from the worst kind of middle child syndrome. She was plain--too plain, especially when compared with her other sisters, which happened very often. Quatre came from a family of stunners, and any little fault, when scrutinized under such high standards, tended to get distorted till what would normally be considered plain suddenly became ugly, and Giselle was, in brief, regarded as ugly by several. Her face was too round, her eyes a bland shade of brown, her hair an uninteresting mousy brown hue. She was short and average in build, with no special traits or details that would've endowed her with some degree of interest and thus raise her in the eyes of the rest of the world as a Winner daughter.
She was, in every physical sense, sunk rather deeply in people's estimation.
She was the only Winner daughter who wasn't courted by anyone, male or female. Save for Iria, who remained single having chosen her career over marriage, Giselle was the only one who never settled down. Even her youngest sibling, Quatre, was married. We're about to celebrate our seventh year anniversary in a couple of months, as a matter of fact.
Giselle was an unremarkable cook and an unremarkable conversationalist. She chose dull books to read and duller programs to watch. People couldn't stand to be more than five minutes in her company, and I'm afraid I was one of them. If I'd ever lingered, my sacrifice was largely done for my lover's sake and no one else's.
She worked a bland job in a bland shop selling bland clothes. She was a stock person and was never allowed to be anything else but. Nobody trusted her with the till, and if things had stayed the same now, nobody still would trust her.
Perhaps the only remarkable thing about such an unremarkable person was the fact that none of these things seemed to affect her one bit. She was universally overlooked or held in contempt by those who were too sensitive to her presence, but neither diminished her good humor and her readiness to serve. She coddled everyone, particularly her sisters and her brother--cooked for them, sent them cards, surprised them with homemade presents, cleaned for them, helped them with just about anything. She loved being with her family and friends, and she never once grew tired of what she did.
More than once, she'd had the horrible experience of being insulted or criticized in her face and before people she knew, but she merely took everything in with a huge, comical grin and an eager nod before blurting out, "No, I'll never be as good as anybody else, but I'm happy being your friend."
The long and short of this was that Giselle was slow. Too slow, in many people's eyes, which tested everyone's patience a good deal. Conversations often flew over her head, and no matter how many times one would repeat himself, Giselle still wouldn't be able to grasp much. She'd be waved off impatiently, dismissed with angry retorts by frustrated friends and acquaintances. She'd try to understand, but she failed much more often than she'd succeed. No one knew how she'd managed to escape her father's exacting standards when her mother was selected--some had theorized that she must have been a genetic accident or that a procedure must have been botched in the lab.
So imagine--plainness and slowness all lumped together in one package--one shouldn't be surprised, therefore, about Giselle's unpopularity. What mattered where her heart lay? As far as the world was concerned, she was ugly and stupid, and that was the end of it.
She lived alone--in a small bungalow tucked away beyond the city's borders--almost as though purposefully hidden from the rest of sophisticated society, shunned by those who would've done themselves a great deal of good by being her friends. Visits from family members were few and far between--an astonishing fact, yes, considering how large her family was.
But never once did she complain about her usage. During our visits to her, in fact, she'd say, "I'm glad they're happy" in her usual simplistic manner, her grin broad and almost bewildered as she served us some bland pie and tea.
Giselle had taken to me rather well, which, I'm now ashamed to say, bothered me to no end. But Quatre was very fond of his sister--a great deal more than the others, if truth be told, largely because of her deficiencies. He sympathized with her and bore her quirks and humor with such magnanimity as could only be found in Quatre. He loved her and doted on her, and by default, I loved her, too.
But perhaps not as well as I should've.
Quatre and I, both during our courtship and our early days as a married couple, dropped by Giselle's house, often staying for the weekend or for at least three days at a time. These visits cheered her up, naturally, and we were often spoiled and treated to non-stop chatter about the smallest, oftentimes silliest things.
My husband could bear with this. He was used to her, after all. But I couldn't do the same. I'm naturally withdrawn, and loud people and loud situations always sent me shrinking into my comfortable little world of calm silence. I detested loudmouths (and still do) and in fact had gotten into several fights with my own sister whenever I felt that Catherine was being annoyingly loquacious, and I was forced to turn around and tell her point blank to shut up. She'd even hit me once when I used sarcasm to get my point across. I had to sleep in the hay for almost a week as Cathy was much too upset to forgive me so easily.
With Giselle, however, my patience was always worn thin.
And one of the things that she always asked me to do was to read to her, and bringing a book from my library during visits became a given. At first I couldn't understand why she'd ask me to do this for her--she could read, after all. She'd read books from cover to cover. Granted it always took her weeks to finish a book of three hundred pages, she still managed to do it.
I'd read to her after dinner or after lunch, and she'd be sitting before me, watching me in rapt attention--eyes wide and fixed, mouth hanging a little slack, hands clasped tightly on her lap, head tilted slightly as though she were listening for sounds nobody else could.
I'd read a chapter at a time. It was a slow, painstaking process since the next chapter wouldn't be read till our next visit, but it never once bothered Giselle.
"It makes me even more excited to see you two again," she said, enunciating her words a little slowly as she usually did in regular communication. "It's like a soap opera, isn't it? Very exciting!"
But what seemed to fascinate her the most was the fact that I was reading to her. No, I don't think she'd felt anything for me more than love between a sister and a brother. But she was in awe of me, and for some time, I could never truly understand why.
"Your eyelashes are really long," she'd once noted, pointing at my eyes with a pert smile. "When you read, they form shadows on your eyes, and your eyes look even greener--like a forest, almost."
My eyelashes were just eyelashes to me. They kept the dirt out, and that was an end to it as far as I was concerned. And I hated it when people picked my face apart. It drew way too much attention to me and parts of me that I hardly ever cared for (and for which I certainly didn't feel inclined to begin caring).
On another occasion, she chirped, "I love the way you read. You have a slight accent that I enjoy listening to."
I'd told her before that I grew up in Europe and, having had no home to claim as my own, I'd wandered around enough to absorb just about every accent there was, tainting my speech with an odd inflection that I never really liked and in fact tried to hide. But Giselle loved it and used to humor herself by asking me to pronounce certain words over and over again. It frustrated me--humiliated me sometimes--and more than once I'd actually raised my voice at her to make her stop asking me to perform like a circus animal. And it was all that Quatre could do to step in and mollify me, but I'd be sulking for a while afterwards, and Giselle would follow me around like a punished dog, her tail between her legs.
After what was perhaps my tenth blowup over this, I flat out refused to read to her on visits even though Quatre had made it a point to bring the book with us. After lunch or dinner, I simply excused myself and went out for a brisk walk, leaving the two siblings to bond.
"What the hell's wrong with you?" Quatre once demanded, flinging my book at me once we were safely beyond earshot (he'd followed me out of the house and caught up with me on the road). "My sister asks you to do just one thing--one thing, for God's sake--and you act like a bratty little snot-nosed kid!"
"I'm tired of being treated like a trained monkey, Quatre!" I retorted. "If she wants someone to read to her, why the hell can't she ask you? You're her fucking brother!"
"She doesn't want me, you fool, she wants you! You, you, you, you, YOU! Does someone have to spell it all out for you or tatoo it on your thick forehead?"
I threw my arms up and started flailing around in the middle of the road--thank God it was a small, largely abandoned road in the middle of nowhere.
"Why me? I hate being observed, I hate being told my eyelashes are pretty, I hate being sliced under a fucking microscope for someone to analyze!"
Quatre fell silent for a few seconds, and I could tell that he was merely struggling to calm himself down. It had nothing to do with whether or not I'd gotten through to him. His face flushed, rage contorting a normally gentle facade--he gritted his teeth to keep more hurtful words from flying out and finding their mark.
"You don't get it, do you?" he simply hissed. "She's trying to connect with Trowa Barton the same way she's been trying to connect with every single damn person on this planet. She's trying to do this the only way she knows how. Does it make you uncomfortable? Too damn bad, Trowa. As far as I'm concerned, you've always had an upper-hand in this, and if you can't deal with people who don't meet your standards, don't come running to me crying because frankly I'm sick of seeing my sister getting treated no better than a freak."
"I'm uncomfortable, Quatre. I've always been uncomfortable when she makes me do things for her."
"Why, because she's stupid and she asks you to do stupid things for her?"
"I don't like being made the center of attention, okay?"
Looking at Quatre's face, however, told me that he wasn't at all convinced in the same way that I'd convinced myself to believe what was largely a face-saving lie.
He shook his head. "Oh, boo-hoo. I'm weeping."
Then he sighed heavily, running a shaking hand through his hair, the anger still there though definitely lessened. "Fine then. I don't care. Do what you want--go sulk or brood or pout if it'll make you feel better."
We didn't speak to each other for the rest of our stay that time, but I did resume my duty and read a chapter on our final evening with Giselle. She didn't seem to find anything amiss in my reluctance and in fact urged me to explore the area since it was largely old, undeveloped country with nothing but trees and dirt roads and an occasional bungalow or cottage or run-down shack scattered across a wide area--perhaps the only indicators that there was life in that godforsaken place other than Giselle.
She was a great walker and took a lot of delight in losing herself in her environment, and we'd come to expect her to leave her home after tea and not reappear till dinnertime. And once we'd all settle down at the table, she'd be gushing over new territories she'd just discovered, new houses she'd spotted, new people she'd just met, and so on. It seemed to be the greatest source of enjoyment she had aside from our visits. And so she constantly pushed us into doing the same.
It would be another six months before we'd have the opportunity to see her again, and when we arrived, we found ourselves staring at a woman we barely recognized.
Giselle had lost weight--an alarming amount, to be more exact. She'd dwindled to a virtual shadow of what she used to be, sending Quatre and I into a panic. But she laughed us off, calling us silly geese for fussing over her and then refusing to discuss anything further.
In truth, she never displayed any signs of illness or fatigue. She welcomed us and spoiled us both with the same energy and cheerfulness we were used to seeing in her. We tried to speak to her, manipulate the conversation in so many different ways so as to get something from her, but nothing came for our pains. She spoke to us in her usual simple way, without the artifice that I'd long been used to seeing in just about everyone I met.
But I could tell--and so did Quatre--that there was something else there. And one evening, while lying in the darkness in our bedroom, we both conspired to find things out.
As Quatre was on holiday from work, we were slated to spend two weeks with Giselle as her home was a welcome refuge from the rest of the world--one that Quatre so desperately needed. And it didn't take long for us to discover the truth.
It was the third day of our stay, I think, when Giselle went out for a twilight walk, and I took it on myself to follow.
We walked for about a mile down the winding gravel road that connected her house with whomever else lived in the general vicinity. I kept my distance, creeping through the trees that flanked the road and obscured it from view in places. After a while, she presently made a sharp turn to the right and hurried off the road and up a narrow path that led to a small, abandoned cottage. I stared at it in surprise as she walked up to it with an air of familiarity and confidence that told me that she'd been there before. None of the windows or the doors was boarded up. I didn't think that they really needed to be, the house being much too secluded to be guarded from vandals.
I hid behind a tree and watched Giselle walk up to the front door and enter without a problem. She must have figured out a way to pick the lock, and a quick scan of the nearby windows revealed a broken pane of glass near the door, and I nodded my understanding.
"What the hell are you doing in there?" I muttered as I bounded up the path. The house looked terribly unstable, and I was afraid of Giselle stepping on rotten planks and sinking into the floor, never to be seen or heard from again.
I slipped inside and found myself in a gloomy interior, with the furniture all intact still and caked with cobwebs and years' worth of accumulated dust. The air was stale and stagnant, and my nose was assailed by the scent of old wood and rotten fabric. I walked forward, straining my eyes in the gathering darkness. The sun was setting, after all, and it would be night soon. Without any light, there was no way I was going to be able to find my way back out without hurting myself.
I wandered through the house, gingerly walking on floorboards that creaked dangerously under my weight and softly calling out for Giselle. I truly had no idea where she'd gone, but I thought to go to the second floor just in case, following an instinctive pull that I felt when I stood at the foot of the stairs.
So I ascended and walked into the first bedroom I found. It was empty. Moldy and dust-caked furniture littered the area, the ceiling nothing more than a thick canopy of cobwebs that hung low. The waning light filtered through the filthy windows and lent me some means of illumination.
"Giselle?" I called out, my voice sounding oddly muffled.
Almost as though in answer, I felt a quiet shuffling behind me--the sound of light footsteps tentatively walking in, hesitant and almost frightened.
I froze where I stood, noting with some surprise and a growing sense of unease the sudden drop in temperature in the room. It was a draft--a very slight one but yet one that was palpable enough to feel through the thin cotton of my sweater.
Instinct told me to turn around slowly, and I did. The cold felt stronger coming from the direction of the door. And I almost cried out my shock when I discovered its source.
Someone was in the room with me--a boy. Tiny, pale, abnormally thin and clad in dirty, ragged clothes. He stood before me--just a couple of feet away--staring up at me with the saddest, most terrified look on his face. I could see that he'd been crying a lot. His skin was white--bloodless. His eyes were large and sunken, the shadows around them giving them a hollow, haunted look, and his eyes--pale and lifeless--were red from tears. He was holding a tattered old doll against himself, and I saw his hands--tiny and almost skeletal--looking filthy, with his little knuckles reddened as though from knocking against something incessantly.
The cold came from him, and with it the smell of the earth--freshly dug or tilled or turned.
"Oh, my God," I managed to gasp as the boy continued to regard me mournfully before he opened his mouth and let out a small, distant sound.
"Papa?" he asked, and it was then when I felt my skin crawl.
"What's your name?" I stammered after several ineffectual attempts at forcing the words past my throat.
"Papa?"
I shook my head. I couldn't even move from where I stood. "No, I'm not your papa," I said, my voice falling to a whisper.
The boy--the apparition--turned around and walked out, calling "Papa?" yet again, his voice thin and pathetic and heartbreaking. He turned right once he reached the hallway and was promptly swallowed up by the shadows.
I don't know how long I stood there, staring at the empty doorway, feeling the temperature rise once again to its former level. I didn't hear myself breathe and realized that I'd fully stopped. Silence fell on me from all around, and I was once again alone. It took some doing for my body to get itself to move once more. I was soon staggering out of the room to peer into the gathering darkness beyond and seeing nothing there. No sign of the boy, no sign of Giselle.
"Giselle?" I called out, this time raising my voice. There was a comfort to hearing myself, and I was soon filling the stagnant, musty air with insistent calls for my sister-in-law.
"Giselle? Giselle! Where are you?"
I hurried downstairs, ignoring the rest of the second floor, where I believed the boy was likely lurking. God knows I did not need another shock, and I was certain that if the child were to materialize before me one more time, I'd have gotten sick on the spot.
"Giselle! Giselle!"
The sound of hurried footsteps from the rear of the abandoned cottage alerted me, but I couldn't move from where I stood, which was by one of the windows facing west next to the front door, from where the fading light came. I didn't have a light on hand, and the darkness in the bowels of the cottage was much too heavy for me to proceed safely.
"I'm over here!" I called out, raising my voice even more. "Giselle, I'm by the front door!"
"Trowa?" came that familiar voice, muffled by the distance and the ancient walls that separated us.
"Over here!"
Her footsteps grew more and more distinct, and I sighed my relief. I turned to glance over my shoulder in hopes of catching one more glimpse of the dying sun outside, when my eyes fell on the shrunken figure of the small boy standing outside the window, looking in. Still clinging to his ruined doll, the child gazed at me from without, sad and pitiful, one hand raised and lightly knocking on the window.
"Papa?" came the faint, spectral voice, and I watched tears fall.
I stepped away warily, my eyes still fixed on him, and he turned and crept away, weeping.
"Did you see him?" came a voice behind me, and I let loose a loud cry of surprise, causing Giselle to squawk in response, and for two seconds, we filled the air of the abandoned cottage with our cries.
"Goddamnit, don't ever sneak up on me like that!" I hissed, more mortified than angry.
Giselle merely blinked. "You were calling me, though," she replied, brushing off my consternation easily. "But--did you see him?" she prodded, her voice falling.
"I did. Who is he?"
"He's a ghost."
"I know that," I replied a bit testily. My nerves were completely frayed at that point, and my patience had all but worn itself out. "What's this all about? Why's he here?"
"I don't know. I didn't even know that this house was here till about three months ago."
"Let's get the hell out of here," I urged, moving toward the front door and pulling my sister-in-law with me. "Quatre's worried sick, I'm sure."
We both stepped out and scanned the vicinity for signs of the specter, but we saw nothing and walked away. Giselle apprised me of her recent adventures with the child's ghost as we made our way back home.
"I was walking down this road three months ago," she said. "I was looking for new places to check out and all that, and I've never really gone this way before. So I went off and passed by the cottage and ignored it when I saw that no one lived there. But it was when I was on my way back when I realized that it wasn't empty."
I glanced at her and noted some agitation in her manner. She'd taken hold of her jacket hem and had begun to tug and twist it almost unconsciously as she spoke.
"I heard someone crying," she continued, her voice low and almost uncertain. "I looked up and saw a little boy standing outside the cottage and knocking on one of the windows. I thought he got locked out, so I went to him to see if I could help."
Here she suddenly burst into tears, and I had to stop to help her.
"He's so lost, Trowa," she sobbed, knuckling tears from her eyes and refusing a hug from me. "He's looking for his father, and he's lost. I've gone back several times to the cottage to help him..."
"You can't connect with ghosts, Giselle," I interrupted, feeling odd saying this. She shook her head, still crying.
"No, you can. If you do it long enough, you'll be able to reach out and touch him somehow, and that's what I've been doing these past three months. You've seen him, haven't you? Didn't you notice how undernourished he is? He's been neglected and abandoned by everyone--even in death, he can't find someone who can make him feel loved."
I didn't know what to say. What could I tell her? It wasn't everyday that something of this nature would come up in normal conversation. But I felt something in me stir, and I finally walked up to her and enclosed her in my arms, soothing her with words that I knew were weak and ineffectual.
"I don't even know his story," she continued to sob into my sweater. "I want to help him, but I don't even know his story."
"I think--I think we can pretty much guess from what we've seen of him," I replied quietly as I watched the night enclose us. "He might've died from starvation--his family must've been dirt poor. He might've died from neglect--or abuse. Though I didn't see any bruises or marks on him. I understand that ghosts tend to appear in the same state in which they died--but I might be wrong." I broke off to laugh awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Giselle, but I'm the wrong person to talk to about ghosts. I'm just--I really don't know what to say. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I know. You're smart, Trowa. Smart people don't really go for supernatural things like this." She pulled away, wiping her eyes with her shirt. "You're lucky. You don't have to come up with all sorts of strange ideas when something like this happens to you. I can only think about taking care of him and comforting him and finding out why he's so sad and sickly-looking."
"Being smart isn't a virtue in this case, judging from what you've just said," I replied as we moved along. "Empathy..."
And here I stopped. My vocabulary seemed to have stripped itself dry, and I was at a complete loss now. Whatever words floated in my mind at that moment seemed inappropriate--inconsequential. I'd reverted to Trowa-the-virtual-deaf-mute just when reaching out mattered the most, no matter how unusual the circumstances. It was all I could do to wrap an arm around her shoulders and walk her back in companionable silence.
Quatre couldn't find it in himself to believe either of us. But he did accept what we'd told him, most likely out of frustration as well as confusion. He scolded his sister severely for jeopardizing her health and worrying herself sick over a dead child. He scolded me severely for jeopardizing my safety by walking up to the second floor of an old house, where I could've easily met a serious accident.
And after chastising us, Quatre sent us both to bed and went about cleaning up, fuming as he did.
Nothing more was said about the ghost, but I watched Giselle closely and found her lost in her own thoughts, staring out the window a lot more than usual and looking more and more miserable with each passing day. Quatre had called a doctor in to examine her, and he'd prescribed rest and plenty of food for the patient, who largely ignored him.
Quatre suspected that his sister was planning to sneak out when we had our guards down. His fears weren't unfounded, of course. Being a Winner, Giselle had inherited their father's single-minded determination that had always set him at odds with his own family.
And sure enough, we caught her trying to run off at least twice and had to drag her back, protesting and begging and crying. It frightened me, really. I never knew how sincerely she believed in her chances of reaching out to touch that dead child. And I was damned glad that her family wasn't anywhere near. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it was they would've done to her had they found out.
A feeling nagged at me all this time as I watched her butt heads with her brother almost everyday. It was a feeling that I was more than happy to ignore had I been given the chance to do so, but as it was, it wouldn't leave me alone, and I had to give voice to it, no matter what Quatre would say. So I pulled him aside.
"I think we should let her go," I said quietly, and Quatre stared at me incredulously.
"What?"
"You heard me. I don't think this is right. We're not helping her."
"Oh, and how are we supposed to help my sister, Trowa?" Quatre demanded, exasperation evident with every word that he spoke. "Let her run off to some godforsaken shack to find a ghost to take care of? Have you any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"
"I know how ridiculous that sounds. And I know how worried you are about your sister, but something tells me that we're hurting her right now."
Quatre simply buried his face in his hands and sighed heavily, shaking his head. "I can't listen to this, Trowa. I can't. I'm tired. I want to help Giselle--God knows how much I want to do just that. But all this talk of dead children and haunted houses and so on--I can't deal with them, you know? This isn't what I want for either you or my sister. I want her to be happy for once, and I just can't do anything for her. I don't know why--I don't understand why I feel so helpless with her, but I do, and I hate it. It's like I'm watching her from behind a window--I can reach out, but I can only touch glass, and I can see her trying to talk to me. She's like..."
He fumbled for words and fell into an agitated silence.
"A ghost," I managed to say after a moment, and Quatre looked up at me, pale and tired and defeated--a great deal worse than the way he looked when we first arrived, with him half-dead from being so overworked.
"A ghost," he echoed in a whisper.
Giselle continued to remain bedridden for the next few days, and Quatre and I kept constant vigil over her, even fighting with her on occasion, particularly when she made a move to jump out of bed and run out.
We only had about four days left, when Quatre decided to drive back to the nearest town for supplies and left me in charge of Giselle, who was fast asleep in her room.
I went about cleaning up and tidying the place. It was just before noon, I remember. After cleaning I stepped out to sit on the porch step to enjoy the bright, warm day with a novel. I'd just realized that I hadn't yet read to my sister-in-law since we arrived when a slight movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I looked up to catch Giselle slinking away, cautiously walking toward the open lawn, glancing around, before sprinting off and disappearing in the direction of the old gravel road that would take her back to the abandoned cottage.
I was too stunned at the woman's audacity that I simply sat there, dumbfounded, for a few seconds before I managed to do something about it. Once my mind had caught up with the situation, I leapt up to my feet and ran off after her, cursing under my breath.
The cottage wasn't difficult to find. I simply followed the road and made a sharp right at the first side path that came within view, and I was once again staring at the dilapidated building. I saw Giselle run off toward the back and disappear around a corner, and I hesitated.
I'd argued with Quatre about allowing her to have her way, after all. I'd always thought that letting her see her "child" at least one more time would perhaps make her understand, finally, the futility of her efforts. After all, she'd said so herself that she couldn't bridge the world of the living and the dead. Both she and the boy knew each other's existence, apparently, but neither could break that barrier--that glass window--that kept them from touching each other.
So I listened to the voice that nagged me, and I held myself back and stood in the shadow of some trees while keeping my eyes on the cottage as I waited. When no one appeared, I walked up to the house...
...then paused in my tracks.
The child had appeared before one of the windows, and he was once again peering in, knocking almost desperately against the filthy glass. At the same time, Giselle showed up, walking up to him from around the corner. She stopped, said something, then fell on her knees, her arms stretched out in eager welcome. The child, in the meantime, turned to look at her, and to my amazement, he slowly, shyly moved forward and was gently taken hold and pulled close into a tight embrace.
My jaw dropped at the sight. I watched the boy wrap his arms around Giselle's neck as she stood up, lifting him up and cradling him against herself, her mouth moving as she comforted him with words I couldn't hear. The child clung to her. There was relief and joy in that hold, and I thought I saw that tiny, emaciated body shiver its happiness. My eyes fell on Giselle, and I saw her smile in her turn--a wide, beautiful, beatific smile that I'd never seen on her before--one that brightened an otherwise thin, tired face with a light that seemed to come from nowhere. But it was the same kind of smile I'd seen on Quatre during those moments of connection between us--when what we were sharing was much more than something emotional--when I'd first asked him out, when I'd first kissed him, when I'd proposed. It was a smile that I'd always read to be one that was defined by something that transcended simple physical and emotional connection between two people. It was spiritual. That would be the only way for me to describe it.
I watched my sister-in-law comfort the child for a few seconds before the truth of what I was seeing finally hit me.
"My God," I breathed. "She's dead."
That was two years ago. Up to now, neither Quatre nor I discovered the story behind that poor boy's haunting. And neither of us had told anyone else the truth about Giselle, particularly that which involved her discovery of a connection that she'd never enjoyed alive. Shunned or ignored for being born plain and slow, she tried her best to feel loved inasmuch the same way as the lonely, terrified boy who tried to find the family who'd likely abandoned him to his death.
Quatre and I still harbor regrets and some guilt over Giselle's lonely existence even though we both knew that the fault didn't lie entirely on our shoulders. But isn't that the way it always is for those left behind? Regrets over what we could've or should've done while the person was still with us?
I visit Giselle every month. I bring a towel with me, which I lay down on the grass by her grave, and there I sit myself and spend the next several minutes reading a new chapter from whatever book I choose to share with her. Is this atonement for the past? Perhaps. Whatever the reason, I feel compelled to carry on with this, no matter what the weather.
She listens. Of that I know. I can feel her watching me with that broad, bewildered grin, her head cocked, her hands clasped on her lap. I can feel my eyelashes catch the sun and blanket my eyes with soft shadows. I can hear my patchwork accent give form to the words fixed on the pages before me. And I know that she's tickled by all this.
When I'm done, I drive back home and back into my husband's arms, feeling both saddened and grateful.