Unfinished (Historical Fiction) - By Harper Alibeck Page 0,2

the life before. A mother who dies in childbirth might come back to meet her child. Or lovers who were unable to experience true bliss might reconnect in future centuries.”

“I am no mother,” Lilith exclaimed.

“You have the motherly instincts of a brick,” her mother muttered. Lilith stifled a laugh. The entire production had turned into a séance circus.

“Then contemplate this,” the medium urged. “What is holding you back in your life now?”

My father, she thought, but did not say. Even Lilith knew when to stand on the safe side of the line.

One other obstacle, though, stood in her way. That, too, she dared not mention in polite company.

“And if I am a conduit for a lost love,” she humored the room, “would finding a way to my soul's match in this world be the answer to this problem?”

The medium shook her head sadly. “Nothing will fix this problem for you in your current life, Miss. You are what you are. All you can hope to do is to help your soul to progress so that, in the next century, in the next body, she can find peace.” Her face resumed shape and tone, the muscles returning to their place deep in her jaw, color flushing her cheeks. Lilith could feel relief flooding the Beacon Hill Biddies behind her.

“Why would my soul need this centuries-old ritual?”

Weighing her words, the medium stood, faltered on unsure legs, then walked to a small door, opening it and nearly crossing through without answering. She paused, turned back, and said, “Because your entire life has been a lie. The lie needs to be undone. No soul can rest until it has experienced absolute truth.”

A loud thump interrupted them. Margaret lay prostrate on the floor, legs akimbo, neck twisted at an odd angle against the cheap, bright carpet.

“Mother!” Lilith cried, leaning down and elevating Margaret's head. “Michael!” she screamed, calling for their coachman. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs as Lilith lowered her ear to Margaret's mouth. Relief flooded her at the feel of hot breath against her earlobe, her hand checking for a heartbeat and finding it steady. The man thumped up the stairs, reeking of tobacco and flush-faced with surprise.

“Mrs. Stone? What happened?” Michael asked, leaning down and delicately sliding his arms under her legs and waist. Lifting Margaret seemed to rouse her enough to murmur something like “You can't know.” Lilith swallowed hard, the pebble of truth reappearing. Her mother's secret was her own, a different sort of obstacle that, thus far, had traveled through two generations. Not quite timeless, yet persistent nonetheless.

Removing her coat and draping Margaret with it, she shooed Michael toward the door, a man of barely twenty carrying Margaret's tiny, elegant frame, careful to catch each step without stumbling. As Cornelia and Marjorie flitted about their biddie friend, the medium slipped from the room, glancing back nervously at Lilith as if being a conduit were a contagious disease.

No more séances. Whatever lies stood in Lilith's way, none were worth her mother's health.

Or Evangeline Wolf's dead eyes.

Chapter Two

LILITH NEVER EXPECTED TO BE STARING into her father's eyes when she lost her virginity.

The early autumn evening was the perfect setting for John Alastair Stone's annual Beacon Hill event, the party that would fuel the society pages of newspapers within one hundred miles for weeks to come. Though Stone had spent the last few years in Toronto with his wife and daughters, he'd been born, raised, and machine-honed by the Mayflower pedrigreed family that had lived on Beacon Hill for generations. Now he'd come back to roost.

The Harvard-Boston Aero Meet was the topic of choice, as most of the party's guests had attended the airplane show. President Taft had been in town, and John Stone had met with him, a fact he worked into every handshake, each conversation, and any offhand comment he could. Former Mayor Fitzgerald monopolized as much of Stone's attention as possible, discussing a business venture with the billionaire, and Lilith gratefully took the opportunity, out from under her father's surveillance, to achieve her goal.

That night, Lilith positioned herself with Jack Reed, her father's new lawyer, and flirted until he knew exactly how to get her. And then she let herself be caught. The gardens were lush with ripe, turned Japanese maples and oak trees pregnant and laboring to drop their gold, pumpkin and adobe leaves on the New Hampshire granite stone floor. A bundle of mature hostas under a small maple tree provided ample ground cover and shade for