Parting the Veil

by Paulette Kennedy

A life written by her own hand was worth a thousand cold summer days. “Allons-y,

Lydia was four years younger—twenty-one to Eliza’s twenty-five—but no one would know it from the way she acted. She was ever taking charge.

She’d be a millionaire by American standards. If she married. And to think two days ago England had represented freedom! Her daydreams of living out her days as a moneyed spinster were dissolving as fast as spun sugar on her tongue.

“It seems falling into widowhood is the only way a woman is guaranteed her full rights.”

“I think I’d rather have a dog than a husband. Their hearts are much more steadfast.”

Eyes of amber and of green, a courageous heart and a noble mien. Eliza thought of the silly childhood love spell she had cast to the wind so many years ago—in the days when she still believed in magic, true love, and the fantastical.

One truly begins living once they no longer hold the opinions of others in high regard.”

Three in the morning. The witching hour, Lydia always called it. The time when the veil between worlds was thinnest.

“When something traumatic happens, it leaves a mark. That energy—that blackness and anger—remains in a place the same way a bruise lingers long after an injury. Whatever happened in that house, the evil created by it may still be there, Liza.”

“The two of you have a right to be happy, you know. We do no service to our dead when we linger too long in our misery.”