But most times, she is in the ballroom, where he conjures her parents from ash and bone. Over and over she watches them meet. Over and over she watches them crumble. Over and over he brings them back and they look at her with hands outstretched, with pleading in their eyes, as if to say, we could be real.
They are only dreams, she tells herself, every time she wakes.
And dreams can never hurt you. That’s what her mother said. Of course, she knows now it isn’t true. Dreams can make you hurt yourself, dreams can make you do so many things, if you’re not careful. She has yet to wake and find herself beyond the bed, but she keeps the soft leather cuffs tucked beneath the mattress, in case one day she needs them.
And she is not alone.
Hannah locks the doors each night.
Edgar checks the shutters.
And her mother’s ghoul sits at the foot of her bed, eyes trained on the dark.
Olivia moves through the house, thinking of the bath she plans to draw, soaking the dirt of the garden from her limbs. But first, her feet carry her as they always do.
To the music room.
Beyond the bay window, the sun continues to sink. Soon it will fall between the distant mountains and vanish behind the garden wall. But right now, there is still light.
A yellow vase sits on top of the piano, and Olivia sets the red rose there, then sinks onto the narrow bench. She eases up the lid, fingers sliding through the air above before coming to rest on the black and white keys.
The light in the room begins to thin, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees it. The ghoul is half-there, half-not, but she can fill in the missing pieces from memory. The furrowed brow, the messy curls, the eyes, once fever bright. The ghoul draws forward, lowering itself onto the bench beside her. As badly as she wants to turn and look, she doesn’t.
She keeps her gaze down and waits, and after a few moments, it bows its half-there head and brings its spectral fingers to the keys. They hover there, waiting for her to follow.
Like this, it seems to say, and she places her hands, just like he showed her, and begins, haltingly, to play.
Acknowledgments
Some stories spill out in a wave. Others come in drips. And now and then, a story sits pooled somewhere, waiting for you to find it. I had to go looking for Olivia’s tale. I had the door in the wall, that was always there, but for years, I wasn’t certain what I’d find on the other side. What I needed to find. Because of that, Gallant was not only a work of love, but patience.
In a world with deadlines and release dates and expectations, it is a luxury, to be patient. To have a publishing team that understands that need for patience and makes space for it.
My agent, Holly Root, and my editor, Martha Mihalick, made space, and I will forever be grateful for it. Just as I will be grateful to the entire team at Greenwillow Books, for their confidence and belief when the story I finally found proved strange and wild, and it was clear it wouldn’t sit easily on any one shelf, that my readers would still find it.
I am grateful to my cover designer, David Curtis, for creating the perfect door into my world, and to my illustrator, Manuel ?umberac, for creating pieces of art that have their own voice on the page.
I am grateful to Janice Dubroff for her close reading with respect to nonverbal communication, and to Kristin Dwyer, for being my constant champion, and to Patricia Riley, Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Cordova, and Sarah Maria Griffin, for reminding me again and again and again that I know how to do this.
And I am grateful to my mother and father, who were there with me, for once, in person, due to the pandemic. In a time of so many hardships, they provided strength and light, safety and shelter, and the constant reminder that no matter how far I go, how lost I feel, I will always find my way home.