Chapter 6

Davina closed her journal. She’d read through the night as the pages slowly unfolded the events of the year.  Very little happened from January to April, other than the continued sightings of the couple on the edge of the forest.  She wrote that she was convinced that the couple was the spirits of her parents.  She’d never seen a spirit before and had pictured them to be less opaque than the couple she kept seeing. Even so, they had too close a resemblance to her mother and father to be anything but their spirits returned to her.  There was also the matter of them disappearing whenever she tried to get close to them.  She read the paragraph again.

Although I’m convinced that the couple I keep seeing is my parents, I’m a bit frightened by it. I’ve never seen a ghost before and I don’t know as I care to. They were killed in a car crash, but at least they aren’t appearing to me all bashed up like the ghosts in the movie ‘The Sixth Sense’ did to that kid.  I don’t think I could handle that.  In fact, I know I couldn’t.

I want to talk to someone about it, but after Louella carried on about my being mentally unstable to that doctor in January after I mentioned it to her, I don’t dare let anyone know that I’m still seeing them.  Why am I seeing them?  Is there a message for me? Are they back to haunt me?  I don’t understand, and I won’t understand until I’m able to get close enough to communicate with them.  Funny, as hard as I try to reach them before they disappear, I’m relieved when they do, and I don’t have to face them.  I find it all too unsettling.

I think Aunt Tillie and Aunt Maria see spirits.  I wonder if they’d believe me if I told them that mom and dad are teasing me like they are, or, would they join forces with Louella to lock me up?   I might take a chance and tell one of them. Maybe, Aunt Maria.  If I ask her not to tell Louella, I don’t think she would. She’s more aware of how Louella is with me than Aunt Tillie is.   Poor Tillie is so naïve, she can’t see past Louella’s artificial smile.

She closed the journal and sighed.  That’s

exactly what happened. She’d foolishly believed that Maria would say nothing confided in her about it.  Her aunt shared this during the recent family meeting that Louella called to state her case for having her committed. Within a week, she found herself confined to the room she now considered a prison cell and Aunt Maria had taken off to tour Tuscany.  It was a trip she claimed she’d arranged a while ago.  Davina found that convenient.

The journal shed some light on who this mystery lover was. She’d met him during the summer months.  He was her boyfriend right up until the journal ended. There was no mention of where he went or why. She closed her eyes and tried to remember their time together, but it was vague at best.  Maybe if she could remember him and contact him, he’d be able to help her.  She opened the journal to a page that spoke of him and read again in hopes it would jog her memory.

The most extraordinary thing happened to me yesterday. I met the most handsome man while walking near the forest’s edge.  I was trying to find my parent’s ghosts, so you can imagine my surprise when I came upon a real live human crouched over as he sat on a fallen log.    He’d been camping on the state land that borders our property and got lost while hiking a trail he found.  It was something my father warned me about constantly and was one of the reasons why I didn’t leave the vineyard and enter the woods on my walks. 

When I found him, he was weak from dehydration and lack of sleep. The poor man had been wandering for some time. He was so disoriented that it took me some time to get him to speak to me and tell me who he was.

I wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but I was so taken by him that I could have stayed where we were forever and not spoken. Just to be near him was such an experience. I can’t even describe the warm, fuzzy, I’m where I should be feeling that I got when I knelt next to him and looked into large brown eyes that were like pools of melted chocolate.  My lips grew dry and needy as my eyes followed his perfectly shaped nose down to his slender, kissable lips. They literally pulsed with want.

When I helped him stand, he was weak on his legs and had to lean on me for a while. That must have been a comical sight, since I don’t even reach five–feet-four-inches and weigh one-hundred-eight pounds while he stands an easy six-feet-two-inches and I’m guessing weighs about two-hundred pounds.  Somehow, I managed to assist him until his legs held him on their own.

I thought about bringing him back to the house, but then I remembered Louella.  I knew what she’d do when she saw such a handsome man with me and I wasn’t willing to stand back and watch her work her slutty ways on him.  Not him.  I’d never battled my sister for a man before, but I was willing to for him.  The problem was that I hadn’t a clue how to do it on her terms.  I suddenly regretted my vow to remain a virgin.  If Louella caught sight of him and started working her wiles, I didn’t stand a chance.

Although I wasn’t terribly familiar with the forest, I knew enough about it that when I asked him to describe where he’d been camping, I had a good enough idea of the location that I was able to lead him back to it.  In fact, it was so easy to reach from the vineyard that I was surprised he hadn’t found it.  Then, who knew where he’d wandered in from.  With no trails and landmarks to aid in finding your way, the forest can be like a maze.

He was so grateful for the help back to his campsite that he invited me to stay and eat with him. I hesitated only briefly because I knew that it was going to be difficult for me to leave him when the time came.  As far as I was concerned, I could stay in his camp forever. Just him and me.  What a wonderful thought.

There was a clean spring nearby that he’d been getting his water from, so I filled a few bottles while he gathered firewood and started a campfire. The food he prepared was dehydrated.  I hedged at the thought of eating it as I watched him drop it into a pan of water, but I said nothing. The last thing I wanted to do was to insult this gorgeous guy.  I could suffer through what looked to be a meal of surplus army rations if it meant spending more time with him.

When I asked if he’d been in the army and he questioned what gave me that idea, we both had a good laugh when I pointed to the dehydrated food.   I wasn’t laughing by the time we ate, though.  The food was amazing.  I would have guessed that it came from the best five-star restaurant instead of a packet of cellophane and a pan of water over a campfire.  I was shocked.

We enjoyed each other’s company so much that we got lost in conversation.  Before I knew it, the sun had gone down to the point that it was too dark to try to find my way back to the vineyard.  He graciously offered a spare sleeping bag to me. Funny.  Looking back, I wasn’t the least bit afraid to spend the night with him.  I was just grateful that he happened to have a spare bag with him; although it never dawned on me to ask why he’d brought it along.   The fact that he could have been some escaped convict or lunatic murderer never crossed my mind. What did cross my mind was what it would be like to share his sleeping bag instead of having one to myself, but I kept that thought quiet.

Camping out has never been my thing, but I hunkered down into that sleeping bag inside his little tent while he slept near the fire. I jumped at nearly every sound I heard coming from the creatures of the night until he finally took pity on me and offered to have me sleep near him for comfort.  I hadn’t planned it, but I was sure happy it turned out that way.  Morning came all too soon as I bathed in his yumminess while sleeping only feet away from him.  If I could have kicked that sun, I would have.  Anyway… he fed me coffee and bread he’d toasted over the fire to the point of being burnt with some peanut butter slathered on it, thanked me again for my help, and walked with me a few yards as if escorting me from his camp. My mind scrambled for an excuse to stay, but I could think of none.  So, I shook his hand, thanked him for his hospitality, and left.

I swear that my hand is still tingling from his touch!

When I got home, Louella was just getting her slutty ass out of bed. She never even noticed that I was gone all night.  Why would she?  The house is so big, and our rooms so separated that if we aren’t in the kitchen together, we could go days without seeing each other. When we do occasionally meet up in the kitchen, she’s usually either talking on the phone with her head bent against her shoulder while she fixes something to eat or is so preoccupied in thought that she doesn’t even notice I’m around.  I like it that way, so I’m not complaining. The less she notices me, the less I have to endure her evilness being sent in my direction.

I don’t know when or if I’ll see T.J. again. (I don’t dare write his real name, so from now on I’ll refer to him as T.J.) I hope I do. He’s not only handsome, but he’s funny and kind.  If I don’t, I know he’ll be imbued in my mind forever.  That could be tortuous because I think I fell in love with him last night.

She hugged the journal to her chest.  She wrote that he’d be imbued in her mind forever.  Never had she met someone who had that type of an effect on her. It didn’t make sense that she’d lose all memory of him.  To lose memory at all was very strange, but to lose the memory of someone who affected her in such a way?  She just couldn’t understand it.

The arrival of an attendant notifying her that she was expected to attend a group therapy meeting in ten minutes forced her to put her journal down.  Even though she doubted anyone would bother with it, she pulled her bed from the wall so that she could tuck it behind the headboard and then shoved the bed back in place again.  Although she’d thought the geometric blocked, solid wood headboard to be a garish monstrosity when she first arrived, she was now glad for the tiny ledges to rest the ledger on that strips of wood forming the large square partitions created.