Drifting closer, I inspected the image. In browns and sienna, the fuzzy photograph depicted a man in a fur coat with a pipe furling with smoke. Snow banks hid parts of Hawksridge, making it seem like some fantastical castle.
There’s something about him.
I peered harder at the man’s face and froze.
Oh, my God.
Jethro?
It couldn’t be. The picture was ancient. There was no way it could be him.
Bonnie sidled up beside me, dabbing her nose with a handkerchief. “Notice the resemblance?”
I hated that she’d intrigued me when I wanted nothing more than to act uninterested and aloof. My lips pinched together, refusing to ask what she was obviously dying to say.
“That’s Jethro’s great, great grandfather. They look similar. Don’t you think?”
Similar?
They looked like the same person.
Thick tinsel hair swept back off sculptured cheekbones and highbrows. Lips sensual but masculine, body regal and powerful, even the man’s hands looked like Jethro’s, wrapped around his pipe tenderly as if it were a woman’s breast.
My breast.
My cheeks warmed, thinking what good hands Jethro had. What a good lover he was. How cruel he could be but so utterly tender, too.
My heart raced, falling in love all over again as memories bombarded me.
Jethro, I miss you.
Having a likeness of him only made our separation that much more painful. My fingertips itched to trace the photograph, wanting to transmit a hug to him—let him know I hadn’t forgotten him. That I was fighting for him, fighting for a future together.
Bonnie coughed wetly. “Answer me, child.”
“Yes, they look similar. Eerily so.” My eyes trailed to the following photographs, hidden between cross-stitches. One picture had the entire household staff standing in ranking order on the front steps of Hawksridge. Butlers and housekeepers, maids and footmen. All sombre and fierce, staring into the camera.
“These are the few remaining images after an unfortunate fire a few decades ago.” Bonnie inched with me as I moved from picture to picture. I didn’t know why I cared. This wasn’t my heritage. But something told me I was about to learn something invaluable.
I was right.
Two more photographs before I discovered what Bonnie alluded to.
My eyes fell on a woman surrounded by dark fabric as if she swam in an ocean of it. Her tied-up hair cascaded from the top of her head thanks to a piece of white ribbon, and her eyes were alight with her craft. Her hands held a needle and thread, lace scattered like snow around her.
It was like staring into a mirror.
No…
My heart bucked, rejecting the image, unable to make sense of how it was possible. Unable to stop myself, one hand went to the photo, tracing the brow and lips of the mystery woman, while my other sketched my own forehead and mouth.
I was the perfect replica of this stranger. A mirror image.
She’s me…I’m her…it doesn’t make any sense.
“Know who that is?” Bonnie asked smugly.
I shook my head. There was no date or name. Only a woman caught in her element, sewing peacefully.
“That was your great, great grandmother, Elisa.” Bonnie stroked the photo with swollen fingers. I wanted to snatch her hand away. She was my family, not hers.
Don’t touch her.
Why didn’t our family albums contain images of Elisa? Why had we kept no records or comprehensive history of what happened to our ancestors? Were we so weak a lineage that we preferred to bury our heads in the sand rather than learn from past mistakes and fight?
Who are we?
Dropping my hands, I breathed deeply. “What is her image doing on your wall?”
“To remind me that history isn’t in the past.”
I turned to face her. “What do you mean?”
Bonnie’s hazel gaze was sharp and cruel. “I mean history repeats itself. You only have to look through generations of photographs to see the same person over and over again. It skips a few bloodlines; cheekbones are different, eye colours change, bodies evolve. But then along comes an offspring who defies logic. Neither looking like their current parents, or taking on the traits of evolution. Oh, no. Out pops an exact imposter of someone who lived over a century ago.”
She looked me up and down, her nose wrinkling. “I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I do believe in anomalies, and you, my child are the exact image of Elisa, and I fear the exact temperament, too.”
A chill darted down my spine. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.” My eyes returned to the image. She looked fierce but content—resigned but strong.
She chuckled. “It is if you know the history.”
Wrapping her seized fingers around my elbow, she pushed me onward, following a timeline of photos of Elisa and Jethro’s great, great grandfather.
Seeing Jethro’s doppelganger in images side by side with Elisa sent goosebumps scattering over my skin. “What was his name?”
“Owen.” She paused by a particular one of Elisa and Owen staring sternly into the camera, spring buds on rose bushes and apple blossoms in the orchard behind them. They both looked distraught, trapped, afraid. “Owen ‘Harrier’ Hawk.”
Did you have the same condition Jethro has, Owen? Were you the first to hate your family? Why didn’t you do anything to change your future?
Bonnie let me go. “I could rattle off tales and incidents of what befell those two, but I’ll let the images speak for themselves. After all, what is the common phrase? A picture tells a thousand words?” She laughed softly as I repelled away from her, drinking in image after image.
The copper and coffee tones led me from one end of the room to the other, following a wretched timeline of truth.
Bonnie was right. A picture did say a thousand words, and seeing it captured forever, imprisoned and immortalized, sank my heart further into despair.
Elisa slowly changed in each one.
I gasped as I stumbled onto the First Debt. An ochre image where blood wasn’t red but burnt bronze, trickling from lash marks on Elisa’s creamy back.
It was as if time played a horrible joke, slapping me with the knowledge that my life was on repeat—my very existence following in the footsteps of another, no matter how unique I felt.
Just like when Jethro came to collect me.
That night in Milan when I’d found out my life was never mine. That Jethro was just as indebted as me. That we were both prisoners of a tangled predetermined fate.
My limbs quaked as I moved to the next.
The tarnished image showed Owen, standing with the First Debt whip in his hand, a tortured expression on his face. He was more than just Jethro's ancestor—he could’ve been his identical twin. Seeing another man look so conflicted brought tears to my eyes. He tried to hide it, but regret and connection blazed through the grainy picture.
We weren’t the only ones to fall in love.
Owen and Elisa had defied the Weaver-Hawk boundary and fallen hard.
Photo after photo.
Trial after trial.
Their love deepened and blossomed, only to be slowly hacked away as time went on.
The Second Debt and the ducking stool. Elisa dangled on the same chair I’d been strapped to, the black lake glittering below her.
The Third Debt in the gaming den. Owen fisted crumpled playing cards, his mouth tight and unyielding, eyes begging for a reprieve.
Amongst the extracted debts were personal images. Photos of Elisa sewing, sitting in the gardens, trailing her fingers in the fountain, looking up at the cloud congested sky as if she could fly away. There were also secret images taken of Owen watching her, his fists in his pockets, his face transmitting apology, sorrow, anguish.
We’re living their history.
An exact replica of two people’s lifetimes that’d taken place decades ago.
Yet another example that I was no different from my ancestors. That I had no hope of changing my fate.
I jumped as Bonnie brushed aside my hair, her swollen knuckles hot against my throat. “See, child. You think you’re different. You think you’d won by claiming the heart of my grandson, but I had forewarning.” She waved at the timeline boldly placed on her walls like jewels. “I saw what happened with my ancestors before you even arrived. The day I saw the resemblance between Jethro and Owen, I studied the records. I armed myself years before you came to us. I knew you wouldn’t behave. I knew this generation wouldn’t be straightforward and I planned accordingly.” Her smile was priggish. “There is no winning, Nila. Both of our families are cursed to bear such a trial, and only the worthy are permitted to inherit.”
I couldn’t reply.
Taking my wrist, she guided me toward the last seven images all framed in one intricate gilded frame. “Study this well, child. This is what happened to Elisa once Owen was dealt with for his infractions. And this is what will happen to you.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth.
Owen was dealt with? He was killed, too?
My eyes burned as the sepia photos engraved themselves on my brain.
Torture after torture.
Misery after misery.
Methods I never knew existed.
Barbarous items I couldn’t even name.
Elisa faded in each image from a fierce, heartbroken woman into a ghost already departing the world.
She suffered horrendously, subjected to methods of persecution no one could endure for long.