Page 48 of The Ghost of Ellwood

My beautiful Harvey who used to say I was his one and only. Our dreams of living happily ever after would never come true. We weren’t meant to be happy.

Iwasn’t meant to be happy.

Now I’m drinking away my sorrow from the bottle of scotch I took from Father’s collection. Lillian is Harvey’s wife. Of course they would partake in sex, but did he have to enjoy it so much?

I loathe him!

Did he kiss her the way he used to kiss me? Did he nuzzle her neck like he once did to mine?

We leave for war in a few weeks, and I’m looking forward to it just so I can get away from here. Harvey will be with me, but I don’t want him anywhere near me. I swear to God I will punch him the next time I see him.

He betrayed me. Deeply.

Father just returned home. I hear him bitching up at me from downstairs. I detest his voice almost as much as I detest the images of Harvey’s betrayal now seared in my mind.

This is the last page in this dreadful journal. Fitting, I suppose.

There’s nothing more to say.

Slowly, I closed the journal. Theo had been drinking and upset when his father returned home. Had he said something in his grief that had triggered George? My suspicion of George Blackwell murdering his son was looking more and more accurate.

“You must think me a horrible person.”

“No. I understand your anger.”

“I didn’t stay angry at Harvey for long,” Theo said, placing his hands behind his back. “Right after I finished writing, I stormed out of the house to go talk to him again. Father screamed at me to come back, and I told him to bugger off. When I arrived at Harvey’s house, I banged on the front door, screaming at him. When Harvey answered wearing nothing but trousers that weren’t even fastened properly, I…well, I sort of punched him.”

My eyes widened.

“I was intoxicated.” He smiled sheepishly. “Before I swung at him a second time, he caught my arm and shoved me against the outside wall. ‘I saw you fuck her,’ I said before spitting at him. He squeezed my jaw between his fingers and glared at me, saying, ‘She’s my wife! I can fuck her if I want!’ But his eyes watered. ‘And god, I wish she was you.’ Harvey kissed me then. I kissed him back, whimpering against his mouth. There were no close neighbors, but his wife was home. And she saw him kiss me.”

“What did she do?”

“She came outside and shoved him, calling him a sodomite. It was a chaotic affair. She hit me too, and I let her. But Harvey grabbed her and told her to stop.” Theo puffed out a breath. “I’ve never heard a woman say such vulgarities before. I had to remind myself it wasn’t her fault, that she maybe even loved him too.”

“Did she leave after that?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Once she stopped shouting at us, she started crying. She said she could sense Harvey wasn’t really withherwhen they had sex because he kept his eyes closed, but she thought he was picturing another woman. Not a man. She laughed then, saying she was almost relieved. Both Harvey and I were shocked.”

“What happened next?”

“You’ll think a liar of me, but as odd as it might sound, the three of us sat down in their kitchen and talked it out.”

“Wait,” I said, my head spinning. “What? The woman sees her husband kiss another dude and then sits down to talk about it?”

Theo shrugged. “That was Lillian for you. Her exact words before we went inside were, ‘Get your arses in the house before I throw you both down the porch steps.’”

Even though sadness clawed at my chest, I chuckled.

“We explained everything to her, how we were in love since we were sixteen and how Harvey felt forced to marry her. It was an arranged marriage, you see, between her father and Harvey’s. They were business partners. Lillian listened, and though she was still upset, she said she’d keep our secret.”

It was a lot to process.

“So she agreed to let you two…what, sleep together behind her back?”

“I feel that she pitied us,” he said. “She made us promise to be discreet in our endeavors, for she knew Harvey loved me and always would. Her only condition was that Harvey provide her with children. That’s what she truly wanted after all. She even said, ‘If you have to think of him to do it, so be it, but I want children, Edward Harvey Jones.’ Odd, perhaps, but it was the arrangement, and we all accepted it.”

“Why didn’t she just divorce him?”