The Past is Prologue: Chapter Seven - Isobel Flemming-Saltzman, Part 1
“I guess things never turn out exactly the way you planned. I know they didn't with me...I remember how it was, growing up. Among people and places I loved. Most of all, I remember how it was... to leave.”
Once upon a time, Isobel Flemming had thought she would go be a teacher. Her mother - her real mother - had taught literature at Grove Hill Senior High; she had been voted “Teacher of the Year” three times during her tenure there. Isobel inherited all of the first-editions of classics which her mother had loved so desperately; when she was younger, Isobel would trace her mother's handwriting on the inside cover, over the same six words written into every book: This book belongs to Elena Aleksandrova.
Isobel did not remember her mother. She had been two when a semi-truck crossed the center line and hit her mother head-on, killing her instantly. Most of what she knew about Elena Flemming she had learned from her Aunt Veronika; her father never spoke of his first wife, especially after he married Natalie and had two sons with her. It was why she always wanted to go to Mystic Falls to be with Veronika, to hear about the woman Isobel was desperate to know.
When she had first learned she was pregnant, before she had told her father or Natalie, Isobel would lie on her back, one hand resting on her still flat stomach, and she'd spend hours reading her mother's books, painstakingly copying down the fading annotations, struggling to translate them with the English-Bulgarian dictionary she stole from a bookstore in Richmond, trying to divine some sort of maternal advice.
She found it in a battered copy of War and Peace written in the original Russian. The passage was underlined in blue pen, but it was the word written next to it which caught her attention. There, in her mother's perfect scrawl, was Isobel. It had taken her a week to find the same passage in an English edition, but once she read the words, they were permanently engraved on Isobel's soul:
”"The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness..."
That was the day she decided to keep her baby, and that was the day the entire course of her life changed.
There was no doubt in Isobel's mind that she loved John Gilbert more than she had ever loved anyone; no matter how often her father declared she had no idea what love was, Isobel believed what she shared with John was love, that their baby was conceived in love. And when she made the decision to run away, to stay with her mother's cousins in North Carolina, Isobel did it because she thought John didn't love her in the same way, had only seen her as “willing,” her father's favorite accusation to throw at her as her stomach grew.
She hadn't expected him to hold her hand as she gave birth to Elena. She hadn't expected his family to embrace her so whole-heartedly, to offer her the chance to stay with them and raise her baby. She hadn't expected John to give her his ring, to find him looking at Elena like she was a miracle, to have him pull her into his arms, tangling their limbs on his brother's couch as their daughter slept upon his chest.
And then Isobel woke up to the sound of the front door opening, and there was Miranda, her arms burdened down with bags and bags baby items.
She genuinely liked Miranda. There was something comforting about her presence, about the way she smiled and brushed Isobel's hair away from her eyes. She had a sister Isobel's age; Miranda had mentioned her when Isobel asked why she was being so nice. Isobel had always wished she had a sister, had someone to watch out for her. Her half-brothers were just kids, and she suspected they didn't really like her much.
Isobel stood there in the Gilbert dining room, watching as Miranda pulled out adorable outfit after adorable outfit, cooing over how cute Elena would look in an embroidered sleep sack, when Isobel blurted out, “Why don't you and Grayson have kids?”
Miranda froze, a pained expression crossing her face, before she murmured, hands carefully refolding the clothing, “I have a condition which...The chances of me ever getting pregnant are very low and it's...We just can't.”
Isobel felt a stab of self-consciousness and shame, her eyes flicking towards the perfect newborn she had not even wanted to conceive. “I'm sorry.”
She shook her head, waving a hand away as if it would wash away any unpleasantness. “We're on a waiting list to adopt. If it's meant to be, it'll be.” Reaching across the table, Miranda laid a hand atop Isobel's. “So did you and John decide on a name?”
“Elena.”
“Elena,” Miranda echoed. “That's beautiful.”
As Miranda began to wash the bottles she had just purchased, Isobel asked, “Do you think it's selfish to keep her?”
With a sigh, Miranda turned off the water, clearly considering her words carefully. And then she said words Isobel would never forget, words she knew were designed to put her at ease, words which made her heart break and her stomach churn.
“If you were being selfish, Isobel, you wouldn't have even asked me the question.”
Isobel had no knowledge to bestow upon her child; she had no money, no education, no comprehension on how to care for an infant, let alone raise a child. If she stayed in Mystic Falls, raised Elena in Miranda's spare bedroom, she would forever paint Elena with the label of “John Gilbert's bastard,” the baby which derailed the successful life he was supposed to have.
As John woke up, entering the kitchen with a fussy Elena, she watched as Miranda mixed up a bottle of formula, saw the ease with which John's sister-in-law tended to her niece, and Isobel felt tears, hot and sharp, rise in her throat. Her father was right; she wasn't ready for this, couldn't give Elena what she deserved.
But Miranda and Grayson could.
She waited until John went home for the night, until the couple were asleep. As she wrote John's letter, Miranda's letter, Isobel struggled to keep from sobbing aloud, tears clouding her vision so badly at times she had to stop. She kept staring at Elena, at the tiny creature who had twisted and turned beneath her skin for nine months, whose heart had sung beneath her own, and she felt a love so all-encompassing it made her physically ache. This would be the hardest decision she'd ever make, and she wished with everything inside of her that Elena would never know the sort of loneliness or pain Isobel had felt her entire life.
It was why she added the last paragraphs to Miranda's letter, the one which she kept out of John's.
Please, Miranda, never let Elena know she is not your daughter. Do not tell her that John is her father, that I am her mother. I know what it is like to spend your entire life feeling as if something is missing, like the woman who left you behind is the woman who would be able to understand you. No matter how well my stepmother loved me, I always felt as if it was less than what my mother would have, and I do not want Elena to ever think you do not love her with everything you are.
I won't come back for her. I swear to you on everything in this world and the next that Elena will always be your daughter, that I will never be anything to her.
You and Grayson deserve a baby, and Elena deserves real parents, which John and I can never be, not now, maybe not ever.
When she got to North Carolina, she told her cousins that the baby had died, stillborn; they took her to church and prayed for its soul, and, while prayed her daughter had found peace, Isobel prayed for her own salvation, so torn up with the decision she had made, she could barely breathe.
What kind of woman gives away her child?, the leaves seemed to ask every time the wind blew.
What sort of mother doesn't know what her daughter looks like?, the birds seemed to accuse every time they sung.
Your mother must be rolling over in her grave, every sunny day seemed to taunt.
She was losing her mind, barely keeping it together, by the time she got to Duke. As she sat in her first education class, Isobel barely heard a word the professor was saying; every time she thought of teaching now, she thought of her mother, of Miranda, and Isobel knew before she even had the syllabus in her hands, she was going to drop this class, change her major.
And then Alaric Saltzman sat down beside her and changed everything.
He was so normal.
Ric was the youngest of four children, the only son; his parents lived in Boston where his father was an attorney and his mother, a grant writer for a hospital. He had gone to private school, graduating as salutatorian, and had rowed crew all four years of high school. When he told his parents he wanted to be a teacher, he had what was, in his estimation, the first fight he had ever had with them, and they had only agreed to finance his college education if he swore he would get his doctorate so he could become a professor.
Isobel thought of her own parents back in Grove Hill whom she hadn't spoken to in almost three years, who had barely spoken to her for the last nine months she had been in their custody, and realized she was going to need to amend her life history if she ever wanted any kind of relationship with Ric Saltzman.
The new Isobel Flemming was an orphan, both parents having perished in a car accident. Her Aunt Veronika raised her. She dropped out of high school to help pay the bills, earning her GED at sixteen, taking classes at community college while waiting tables at night. There had never been any serious boyfriends, had never been any boyfriends at all, and there were certainly no babies with big, brown eyes.
They weren't lies exactly; they were just bits of “what might have been,” tied together by a desire to be someone she could look in the mirror every day.
John was the only boyfriend Isobel had ever had, the only boy she had ever kissed, certainly the only boy she had ever slept with; everything Isobel knew about boys came in the form of Johnathan Gilbert IV. There had been a time when she had honestly believed the only boy she'd ever have to know was John. Before coming to Duke, she would lie on the cot in the laundry room - the only bedroom she had in her cousins' house - and imagine what life would be like if and when she and John reunited.
Ric was nothing like John.
At first, they danced around each other. Isobel was nervous, unsure of how to even talk to someone her age after two years in near-exile, and Alaric was still technically with his girlfriend from high school who was a freshman at Smith. They would study together, have meals together, and once, when the campus was half underwater from a passing hurricane, Isobel slept in his bed while Ric slept on the floor. Alaric had become her best friend, and, even though she could feel a crush blooming in her chest, Isobel knew if nothing ever came of it, she was still grateful for his presence in her life.
And then Ric came back from fall break without a girlfriend.
She had barely finished processing what he had just told her when Ric gently cupped her face, his mouth brushing against hers whisper soft, asking but not demanding, sampling but not taking.
“I'm sorry,” he breathed against her face, his hands still holding her cheeks, his eyes remaining closed. “I just had to do it once. I had to - “
She was not so polite as she swallowed his words.
Ric thought she was a virgin.
It wasn't as if Isobel didn't know where the assumption came from; while they spent an exorbitant amount of time making out, crammed into their tiny single beds while their roommates were out, kissing until their mouths were swollen and sore, until their lips were numb and tongues tasted of the other, it rarely ventured further than that. When Ric would slide his hands beneath her shirt or beneath the band of her panties, Isobel could feel the desire coiling tight within her core, begging to be let out, demanding satisfaction. And, as she'd pump his length, making him moan and twist in her grip, Isobel would decide she was ready only to change her mind the second her back touched the mattress.
“It's okay if you're scared,” Ric assured her one rainy afternoon as they laid on their sides facing each other in his single bed, both of them naked and beneath his covers. Isobel was still trembling in his arms, feeling the aftershocks of panic at the temporary pressure of his cock against her wetness; she felt horribly embarrassed by her reaction, by the unused condom unfurled in his trash can, unneeded and wasted.
“I'm not - “
“It's okay,” he cut in, stroking her hair away from her face, his expression almost unbearably kind. “We don't have to do this right now, Iz. When you're ready, we'll try again. I'd be happy just holding your hand.”
“But you want this,” she whispered, touching his face softly with her fingertips, afraid he'd dissipate like smoke right out of her grasp.
Ric smiled, a chuckle slipping past his lips. “Well, yeah. I'm a nineteen-year-old guy and you're beautiful. But, Iz...I don't want this until you want this. I never want to make you do something you don't want to do. That's not...That's not what I want for us.”
She hated it, how much she wanted to be with him and how terrified it made her. It made her feel broken, like a shell of the girl who had kissed John first, who had taken him up to her room and inside of her body without a single thought beyond, I love you, I want you, I need you to be a part of me. Every time she had slept with John, twisting her hips to find his rhythm, she had never considered the consequences, never considered anything.
It killed her, how all she could now think when Ric touched her was This was how you lost Elena.
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't be sorry.” He kissed her forehead, her temple. “We have all the time in the world.”
It was her inability to sleep with Ric which compelled her to send John the birthday card.
She had been sitting in her dorm, filling in assignment due dates in her planner, when she noticed the date. It had been three years since she had spoken to him, since she had consciously allowed him to come to her mind, but Isobel still found herself in the school store, buying some generic card and scribbling down her number.
She didn't know if she wanted him to call, but she also didn't know if she was ready to have him not want to call.
But when his voice filtered over the telephone line, it still stole her breath the same as it ever had, a sucker punch to the open wound in her heart.
At first their conversation was utterly benign, strangely formal for two people who were anything but; he kept asking her questions about where she had been, what she had done, where she was now. She described North Carolina and rambled about the weather, described the classes she was taking and her interest in the anthropology program. It was the conversation of strangers, and Isobel began to hate the sound of her own voice, so she asked, “How's Georgetown?”
“I transferred after my freshman year to Richmond.”
“What?” It was a body blow, one which lit the fuse of her anger. “Why would you do that?!”
“Why do you care?” he countered spitefully.
“That was your dream! You were supposed to go and stay there and be - “
“It's not so easy for some of us to walk away!”
His words sucked the air from her lungs, making her wither. Isobel felt the tears start to inch their way forward, the screams rising in her throat.
Softer, more pained, John pushed, “Aren't you even going to ask about her? Don't you want to know?”
All she ever wanted was to know, but Isobel could not put that desire into words and risk upending everything.
“She's beautiful,” John continued without her consent, and Isobel heard the tremor in his voice, the suppression of his own pain. “She's so beautiful, sometimes all I do is look at her. She has these big, dark eyes and her hair...curls everywhere. And her laugh...God, Iz, her laugh...It's, like, the greatest sound on earth, especially when you know you're the one who caused it.”
“Stop,” she whispered, drowning in her tears.
He wouldn't. He couldn't. She knew this was her punishment, knew she maybe even deserved it, but she certainly didn't want it.
“They have a little boy now named Jeremy, and she dotes on him; Grayson calls her 'the little mother.' And she loves everything. There's nothing sad or angry or bratty in her body. She's absolutely fucking perfect, Isobel, and you just walked away from her like she wasn't.”
She hung up, gasping for oxygen, sobbing so hard she couldn't catch her breath.
It was the meanest thing anyone had ever said to her.
But Isobel knew, if anyone had earned the right to say something so hateful, it was John.
He called her back a week later, his voice full of regret, an apology on his lips. She wanted to hang up, to curse him, to banish him from the open sore on her heart, but she didn't because it was John, and no one knew her the way John knew her, could ever know her the way John did.
“I don't ever get to talk about her,” John confessed, voice trembling. “I have her picture in my wallet and in every frame in my apartment, but I don't ever...She doesn't ever get to be mine. There's a part of me that fucking hates you for that.”
“You didn't have to do what I asked,” Isobel sniffled in a whisper, keeping her voice low so as not to wake up her roommate. “You could have kept her.”
“No, I...I know it was better this way, I do. I just...She calls me Uncle John, Iz; she crawls into my lap and kisses my cheek and calls me her uncle.”
“At least she calls you something,” Isobel retorted without thinking, her secret desires slipping free of the locked box she kept them in. “She knows you, she loves you. You're someone to her, John.”
“Am I still someone to you?”
Isobel was quiet, caught painfully off-guard. And then she said what was perhaps the most truthful statement she had offered anyone since leaving Virginia three years earlier.
“You're the other half of me, John.”
She couldn't tell him they were two sides of the same ruined coin.
She found out about parapsychology completely by accident. As she waited to speak with her new adviser, Isobel sifted through a handful of brochures when she came across an announcement for an upcoming speaker in the department. Her eyes quickly flicked across the words, about the research the speaker did in parapsychology, specifically in the study of paranormal phenomenon.
She asked her adviser about it, what it meant; he explained how Duke had partnered with a center which conducted paranormal research for years, people who investigated near-death experiences, telekinesis, telepathy, almost any kind of psychological phenomena which was unexplainable.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but they actually do some interesting research. Most people think it's hunting for Bigfoot and vampires, but it is a legitimate science. If you're interested, I could connect you to someone who does research at the center. Several of our students interested in folklore have partnered with professors at the center.“
“I'd like that, thank you.”
As Isobel accepted the slip of paper with the professor's contact information, she couldn't stop thinking about the vampire stories John had told her, the tales handed down through the men of Mystic Falls.
Isobel didn't know if she believed in the supernatural wholly, but she certainly liked the idea of ghosts, of the people who had been lost watching over their loved ones, keeping them safe.
She needed to believe her mother was still with her in some capacity.
“Come home with me for Easter.”
Isobel looked up from her statistics homework, genuinely stunned. “What?”
Ric grinned as he repeated, “Come home with me for Easter.” When she said nothing, he rushed on, “You said you were just going to stay in the dorms, and I hate the idea of you spending the holiday alone. I already talked to my parents, and they can't wait to meet you.”
“You told your parents about me?”
His brow crumpled in confusion, a quizzical smile playing at his lips. “Of course I told my parents about you; you're my girlfriend. You told your aunt about me, right?”
She thought of the last letter she sent Veronika, of her repeated affirmations that she was fine, that she was doing well at school, to please not tell her father where she was. Veronika had all but plead with her to spend the upcoming summer in Mystic Falls, but Isobel couldn't fathom returning there, to seeing John's house across the street and knowing Elena was so close.
She had not told Veronika about Ric; she was afraid of what her aunt would think.
“I just didn't know we were...I mean, that's kind of serious, isn't it, bringing me home to meet your family?”
He laughed, light and free. “Yeah, but we're serious.” Reading the expression on her face, his laughter tapered off. “Do you not want to be serious?”
“No, of course I...” Shifting so she was sitting up, Isobel murmured, “I just don't feel ready for that step yet.”
The irritation which filled his face was so unfamiliar, it took Isobel a moment to recognize it. And then he snapped, “Is there anything you are ready for?”
Isobel flinched, tears starting to well in her eyes, and she knew acutely this was how her relationship with Ric was going to end.
“Ric, please understand - “
“Understand what, Iz? You won't hang out with my friends, you dodged my calls when my sister wanted to take us to dinner, you introduce me as your friend, and now you won't come home with me? If you don't want to be with me, Isobel, just tell me because I deserve better than this.”
He said “better than this”; Isobel heard “better than you.”
“If that's how you feel,” she managed to get out, “then maybe we should just end things now.”
Ric recoiled in surprise before nodding shortly, getting to his feet. “If that's what you want...”
It wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't what she wanted at all.
But, in Isobel's experience, nothing good ever came from wanting.
Isobel was asleep when someone began to knock on her door. Given that campus had pretty much cleared out the day prior, she was expecting a maintenance man on the other side or maybe one of the international students who also stuck around over the holiday. She was certainly not expecting John Gilbert.
He looked older now, which, she realized, was the result of being older. In the past three years, he had lost the last of his baby fat, his features sharper, more angular; his hair had darkened some, no longer the bright blond Isobel remembered, but his eyes...God, his eyes hadn't changed at all, still staring at her with that heartbreaking mixture of affection and awe.
There were ten thousand questions in her brain, all fighting for top billing, but Isobel couldn't seem to make her voice work, couldn't seem to connect the screaming in her brain with the silence in her throat.
But her body didn't need her brain, her hands grasping the front of John's shirt, pulling him powerfully against her, her mouth mauling his.
John dropped his bag, barely managing to close the door with his foot as he lifted her off of her feet, stumbling towards her bed. Isobel tugged his shirt out of his pants, pushing it impatiently over his head, and John moaned as she drug her nails down the front of his chest, leaving faint pink lines in their wake.
“God, I missed you,” John groaned against her throat, stripping off her sleep shorts in one smooth motion.
Isobel didn't say it back because it wasn't true; she didn't miss John. Most days she wished she had never met John, had never fallen in love with him or been so careless as to get pregnant to him. But John was also the only person she felt remotely comfortable with, the only person on earth who knew her, and she missed being known.
The sight of the condom being pulled from his wallet started a roll of nausea in Isobel's stomach, but she didn't make a movement to stop him, to stop this. She needed this, needed to feel John against her, inside of her, needed to be reminded of who she used to be and who she could never be again.
As John entered her, Isobel closed her eyes, breathing in sharply through her clenched teeth, hoping John would take her reaction as a sign of pleasure, a signal of her desire for him and what their bodies were capable of when working together.
John rested his forehead against her shoulder, his hips pumping in a quick, steady rhythm, and Isobel realized she felt nothing at all: no pleasure, no discomfort, just a strange nothingness which permeated every inch of her. Even as she felt the telltale signs of an orgasm building, Isobel could not manage anything more than a cursory moan, so different from the first time John had made her come, his mouth between her splayed thighs, his mother in the other room.
As John cried out his pleasure, Isobel wondered when sex had become so sad.
“I brought you some things,” John said later as they gorged themselves on the pizza he had ordered. John sat at the foot of her bed, unashamedly nude, while Isobel had wrapped herself in her flat sheet, peeling slices of pepperoni off of her pizza.
“What kind of things?”
“Elena things.”
Isobel froze, her heart threatening to stop. Unbidden, her eyes fell on the bag John had dropped earlier in the day, and she was simultaneously desperate to know and terrified to glimpse what exactly was inside.
“I don't...I don't know...”
John covered her hand with his own. “You don't have to see them if you don't want to.”
Isobel nodded quickly, grateful.
John was fast asleep beside her, the moonlight trickling in through the shade, when Isobel stole across the floor, unzipping John's bag and digging amongst the clothing. She found the photo album at the bottom, the pictures chronologically depicting her daughter's life thus far. Isobel started to cry as she witnessed Elena's growth from the pink-skinned, sleepy eyed baby she remembered to a grinning toddler with a tumble of curls. In almost every photo, her little girl was smiling, her entire face alight with happiness, and it made Isobel's heart warm to know Elena was the well-adjusted child Isobel had wanted her to be; the last clutch of photos depicted Elena's third birthday, a princess-themed affair complete with a child's size Belle costume.
“It's her favorite movie,” John said, startling Isobel. She looked up to see John propped up on his elbow, an inscrutable expression on his handsome face. “She begged Miranda for weeks for a Belle dress. Grayson rented a Beast costume to surprise her with; it scared the shit out of most of the kids, but not Elena; she ran right into his arms and demanded he dance with her.” Meeting her gaze unwaveringly, he stated, “She's fearless, our girl.”
There was respect in John's voice as he said it, an admiration Isobel didn't want to examine too closely; if there was any trait Isobel didn't want her daughter to have, it was fearlessness.
You couldn't protect yourself fully if you weren't smart enough to recognize when the wolf was at the gate.
Isobel was waiting when Ric got back from Boston.
Ric paused at the sight of her, his duffel over his shoulder, before stating, “It's been a really long day, Iz, so - “
“My parents aren't dead,” she blurted out, uncaring of the others in the hallway, uncaring of anything other than getting out what she needed to get out. “I mean, my real mom is, but my dad, my stepmom, my brothers, they live in Grove Hill, Virginia. I ran away when I was sixteen, and I didn't look back. My aunt, the one I told you about, I used to spend the summers with her, but she didn't raise me. I've lived with my mom's cousins the last couple of years, and I didn't tell you this because I didn't want you to think less of me.” Taking a deep breath, Isobel concluded, “I just needed you to know that.”
As she turned to leave, Ric caught her wrist, a kind expression on his face. “Wait.”
She couldn't tell him the whole truth, couldn't tell him about John and Elena and fleeing Virginia in the middle of the night like a criminal. If he ever knew those things, Isobel was certain he would never cup her face gently in his palms, would never kiss her softly or cuddle with her or whisper how beautiful she was ever again; if Alaric Saltzman knew everything about Isobel Flemming, he would never be able to get over it.
But a little truth parceled out here and there, Isobel could live with that.
Ric proposed to her the night before they graduated. His parents had taken the two of them and Veronika to dinner, toasting their accomplishments with champagne, and Isobel felt it, a sense of peace settling over her body. She was happy, due to start grad school in the fall with Ric, and they had just signed a lease on a townhouse near campus. Life was finally good, and Isobel couldn't remember the last time she had been so happy.
After dropping off Veronika at her hotel, they went back to campus, to Ric's nearly empty dorm room, stripped of everything but the sheets on his bed and his outfit for graduation. Isobel reached for the buttons of his shirt, her mouth gently exploring the underside of his jaw, when he pulled back, his hands tucked deeply into his pockets.
“What - “
Her words stuck in her throat as Ric removed a velvet box from his pocket, opening it to reveal an emerald cut diamond on a silver band, sparkling brightly in the muted light.
“I had a speech planned, and I was going to do something big, but then I realized that just isn't us, you know?” Ric babbled, nervousness causing his words to slur together. “What we have, not everyone gets that, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You're the one, Isobel, and I want - “
“Yes,” she interrupted, wiping hurriedly at her face before pulling the ring from the box, sliding it down her finger. “God, yes.”
They got married six months later, a tiny winter ceremony in Boston that only a handful of friends, Ric's immediate family, and her aunt Veronika attended. She selected the prettiest of their pictures and sent it to her father, tucking it into an envelope with a letter outlining all she had done in the past six years. She didn't write about the baby or include her address; there were questions they would ask Isobel did not want to answer, did not want Ric to know needed to be answered, and it was easier this way.
John had not spoken to her since she told him of her engagement. Isobel knew it shouldn't bother her, but it did. She had grown used to their weekly phone calls, to talking about anything and everything, and Isobel knew it was selfish, needing John's companionship while she built a life with Alaric.
Isobel had never pretended that she wasn't selfish.
She got the call from Mystic Falls General as she was headed out the door. Isobel was considering letting the machine pick it up, but something made her grab the receiver even as she worried she was going to be late for class.
“Is this Isobel Saltzman?” the voice on the other end asked.
“Yes, who is this?”
“Are you the niece of Veronika Lange?”
Isobel felt her heart drop. “Yes.”
It was a stroke, quick and painless. She had been in the middle of her shift, grabbing a cup of coffee between deliveries, when she had suddenly dropped. Isobel was the only family she had left, listed as her next-of-kin and executor of her estate. The idea of returning to Mystic Falls made Isobel's skin crawl, but the idea of not saying goodbye to Veronika was even worse.
Ric began to insist on coming with her, but Isobel was adamant she wanted to go alone. He looked as if he wanted to fight her on it, but he didn't; she loved him even more for that.
“I'll call you every night I'm there,” she promised after he put her suitcase in the trunk. “I just need to do this by myself.”
“I just want to be there for you, Iz.”
“This is the best way you could be here for me,” she insisted, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
It was teasing, a throwaway line, but it cut Isobel to the quick because she highly suspected it was true.
Veronika's house hadn't changed much since Isobel's last summer there. As she unlocked the door, Isobel caught the scent of the vanilla air fresheners Veronika had loved so much, and it brought tears to her eyes. Isobel gasped aloud as she pushed open the door to the room which had once been hers to see Veronika had left it as it had been six years, complete with the pile of worn paperbacks by the bedside and the photo booth strip capturing she and John as two teenagers deeply in love.
It was like finding the fossilized remains of the girl she had been, preserved and intact with no sign anything had ever changed.
She had just returned from the funeral home, more than a little disgusted at the monetizing of grief, when she heard a woman's voice call, “Excuse me? Excuse me?”
Isobel turned, her chest clenching painfully at the sight of John's mother at the end of her driveway. Her blonde hair was cut short now, one of those trendy cuts so popular amongst women of a certain age, and her face was beginning to show the deepening lines of age. But Mary Gilbert was still pretty, still the woman Isobel remembered gazing down on her with such disapproval.
“Yes?”
“You're Veronika's niece Isobel, aren't you? You used to date John?”
Isobel nodded tentatively, crossing the street so she would not have to raise her voice. Just stepping onto the curb in front of the Gilbert house made her blood pressure rise, but Isobel felt its pull, like a siren song.
“I'm so sorry for your loss, dear,” she offered, surprising Isobel by wrapping her up into an embrace. “Veronika was such a wonderful woman.”
“Thank you.”
“Why don't you come inside, dear? I'm making dinner, and there's more than enough for you.”
“I don't want to impose - “
“Nonsense,” Mary cut in, taking her hand. “Besides, it will give us a chance to catch up. It's been such a long time since you've been around.”
Isobel had spent the past five years studying anthropology; she understood human behavior. And she understood Mary Gilbert was trying to be kind by providing her some sense of comfort in the wake of her aunt's death, even if they had never had an actual conversation prior to this. Isobel understood it and usually it would have angered her, the false politeness, the obvious fakery.
But when she had been with John, all she had ever wanted was Mary Gilbert's approval, so Isobel followed her inside.
There were different pictures on the mantle now; the Gilbert family portrait was still there alongside Grayson's wedding picture, but they were now flanked by John in his graduation robes, a professional shot of a little boy Isobel suspected was Jeremy, and Elena's first-grade school picture, the same one Isobel had hidden in one of her mother's books. There was a toy box in the living room, overflowing with a variety of playthings for boys and girls, and the cool, antiseptic feel the house once held was gone now.
It took Isobel a second too long to understand the implications of the elaborately set dining room table; by the time she saw Mary carrying another place setting to the table, Isobel heard the front door open, and she suddenly wished she had never come back to Mystic Falls.
Isobel saw the blood drain from Miranda's face as she turned around, saw the way Grayson froze stock-still. Their little boy was clutching Miranda's hand, rubbing sleepily at his dark eyes, but Elena was wide awake, smiling brightly as she chattered about someone named Caroline. Mary came from the kitchen, smiling charmingly as she accepted a hug from Elena, and said, “You remember Isobel, don't you? She was Veronika's niece.”
There was a heavy beat before Grayson replied, “Of course. We were sorry to hear about her death. She was such a nice woman.”
“Thank you,” Isobel managed, trying to look anywhere but at Elena, so close she could reach out and touch her. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Gilbert, I shouldn't - “
“Nonsense, dear, you should have a home-cooked meal. Have a seat. There's plenty of food, and John will be here soon. I'm sure he'd like to see you.”
Isobel dutifully sank into one of the chairs, trying desperately not to start crying as Elena took the seat across from her. She couldn't help but study her now; her eyes were dark, not like hers or John's, but the long, curly hair Isobel recognized from photos of her own mother. Her skin was olive colored, so different from Isobel's own pale flesh, and it occurred to Isobel how much Elena looked like Miranda.
None of them spoke as Mary laid out the dishes of food, chattering about the goings-on in Mystic Falls; Isobel could feel Miranda's mounting anxiety, Grayson's careful observation of the situation. When the door opened again, Isobel flinched, a movement echoed by Miranda as John came into view. He paused momentarily at the sight of her before grinning widely as Elena leapt to her feet shouting, “Uncle John!”
John hugged Elena tightly, picking her up and shaking her playfully as Elena giggled; his eyes were focused on Isobel, and she simultaneously hated him and envied the vigor with which Elena greeted him.
Isobel tried to focus on dinner, answering the questions Mary asked, trying to smile believably as John glowered at her from across the table. She was trying to figure out when it would be acceptable to leave when Elena announced, “Your ring is really pretty.”
She looked down at her hand, at the set of rings she was still not used to having on her hand. “Thank you.”
“Do you have a husband?”
Isobel didn't know why she suddenly felt so guilty, why she felt the need to apologize. Swallowing it back, she nodded briefly.
“What's his name?”
“Ric,” John answered crisply, grabbing another roll for Jeremy. “Right, Izzy?”
She had always despised being called Izzy; he knew this.
“Oh, I didn't know you two stayed in touch,” Mary chirped.
“We're great friends,” John snapped, the edge to his voice just sharp enough to raise Isobel's hackles.
Mary, oblivious to the tension, asked, “What does your husband do?”
“He's getting his masters in education.”
“How noble,” John drawled.
Offended, she could not help but retort, “Well, we can't all save the world by selling insurance, now can we, John?”
“Did you wear a big dress?” Elena spoke up, helping to dissipate the mounting anger, diverting the attention of her grandmother away from the terse exchange.
Isobel couldn't help but chuckle. “No, I wore a simple dress. But I had a really long veil.”
“I'm going to have a gigantic dress and it's going to have a million sparkles on it.”
“Elena just went to her first wedding,” Grayson volunteered with a smile. “She was a big fan.”
“Do you and your husband have a little girl I can play with?”
The pain blindsided her so rapidly, Isobel had no chance to prepare for it. Her thought processes stopped, her voice died; the tears filled her eyes so quickly, she didn't have time to hide it, to put up the brave face she had perfected over the past six years. She looked down, trying to form a sentence, trying to remember a single word.
“Isobel doesn't have any children,” John volunteered, his voice far gentler than it had been moments earlier.
And then her daughter nodded before telling a story about a kitten.
John showed up on her aunt's doorstep two hours after Isobel excused herself from the world's most tortuous dinner.
“I don't want to talk.”
He nodded. “Good.”
It was like falling back in time, having sex with John Gilbert on her former bed, but it quieted the screaming in her head for a little while.
“How do you handle seeing her all the time?” she asked as the sweat dried on their skin.
“I don't,” was all John offered, idly toying with the silver bands on her left hand. “Does he know about her?”
They have never talked about Ric before; it was the only topic off-limits. “No.”
“Are you going to have children with him?” John asked in a soft voice thick with vulnerability. It was the way he had sounded years earlier, back before everything had gone to hell.
Isobel understood the idea of having a family with Ric was a far greater betrayal to John than simply marrying him. But it was not the reason she answered, “No.”
Any child she had now would be tainted by the emptiness inside of her, the sadness she just couldn't shake. Isobel knew unequivocally that Elena would be the only child she would ever bear.
She may have promised to love Alaric Saltzman until the day she died, but John Gilbert was the man who truly had her until death.
CONTINUE READING CHAPTER SEVEN: ISOBEL FLEMMING-SALTZMAN