There is nothing easy about this. Nothing. Ava has been gone for so long that he can hardly believe she will return to him. By now, Crockett has lived in her absence for just as long as she was at his side, and although he preserves her room just as he does Harper’s, he knows that she is like his daughter in that she will never be coming back. No amount of being lonely, nor looking through the national news for strange and vicious animal attacks, will bring her home. He rereads her latest letter again.
Dearest Crockett,
I hope this letter finds you well. By the hours we shared, I know you as well as myself, and feel confident in my assumption that you have remained in your home even now. I send this to you from Chicago, just as I did my last letter- I believe that here, I have found someone worthy of staying near for as long as she will have me. I do believe this to be something you understand. Her name is Sarah, and she has beautiful hair, curly and dark that seems made for my fingers. I have found, recently, that she is not as the rest of the population stands, nor is she one of us, although I intend to change that soon. She knows what we are.
Perhaps I will be able to bring her home soon. I think you would like her. She looks very much like photos I have seen cherished on your walls. Besides that, she is kind. I have watched her care for others deeply, especially as a modern doctor. Medicine has advanced incredibly, you must know. Sarah tells me there is research on our affliction and intent to find a cure. While I have no interest in such a thing, I think it something you may find comfort to know. Or, perhaps, you have decided that your life is worth keeping in my absence; I should hope so, but I know you better than that.
All my love,
- Bekker
He places it in a little hand-carved box on his desk, alongside her other letters from the past fifty years. The paper changes often. Her most recent letter, the first in three years, is on thin, stark white paper that feels more like plastic than real parchment. It is short, as is custom with her. Each letter is shorter than the last. Her first few had been pages and pages long, filled with descriptions of the world she has met, blustering with her excitement to show him what she’s learned upon her return. It feels offensive that she even keeps up the pretense that she intends to come back to New Orleans.
Still, as in the aftermath of each renewed thought of sharing his home once more, the letter has him cleaning the place up. He dusts knick knacks and washes wine glasses, tossing the ones that are irreparably stained by blood, even taking the time to clean the floors with a strong smelling chemical designed to do right by the old wood. He built this home so long ago, and maintains them with the diligence he has as a new father, mopping up the muddy footprints after Harper’s play in the garden. If he unfocuses his eyes, he can even imagine their appearance.
He washes the house because he feels he must. Someone has to tend to the upkeep to make it fit for company. Crockett even goes to the trouble of taking some of his nicer clothes to the washtub out back to clean. Ava had asked him to get a machine for it sometime around 1950, and had she stayed, he may have agreed. In a year or two, he would have said yes- he is not very good at saying no to people he cares for, something that shows in the still so toy-filled room down the hall from his own, and although he is stubborn, he would have done it once she turned those puppy dog eyes on him. But she left, citing her desperate need to see how the world has grown, and will continue to do so, and he lives with the same relics that greeted him at birth.
The sun beats down on his bare back, but he does not much mind it; the sun does not burn him the way folklore seems determined to argue. No, it is the same warmth that kissed his cheeks as a child, and dared to give him tiny freckles his mother would kiss when she tucked him into bed. He’s struck with a sharp grief for her as he beats his favorite coat against the washboard. She passed away shortly after Harper, and although he attended the funeral, he knew that she would have asked after his daughter, had she seen him stand on his own like that.
Once everything has been cleaned, even the sheets, he carefully clips them up on the drying lines and leaves them to become soft in the afternoon light. His favorite coat will take until evening, possibly overnight, to fully dry. Until then, he simply goes without.
When night begins to fall on his yard, he returns his cloak to his body- warm and safe- to busy himself with making things he knows Ava loved. Funny enough, there is an exact conversion of blood to eggs for baking out there on the modern internet. He isn’t great at using it yet, but he is decent enough to search it up and keep it written on a paper in his kitchen. He makes beignets and chocolate chip cookies, their dough a ruddy shade of brown, and sets them out on the counter. He knows Ava will more than likely not come home, but he is still a good host. And at night, once the lights are off, he wraps the treats up and lays on the couch. Maybe, just maybe, this time she will come home, before the flies make use of the food.
Somehow, he falls asleep there.
The light through the curtains is what seems to wake him, but he quickly realizes that the true culprit is the slap of something against his heavy door. Before answering it, he picks up the poker beside the fireplace, heavy at his side when he approaches, half expecting it to be a mob or those who ruined his life 200 years ago. Either way, he will survive it.
He opens the door with caution, and finds no threat. It’s her. The second he sees her face, Crockett pulls her into his arms and clings to her, almost afraid she imagined her visage on her front porch. She uses a different perfume, sharper and more woodsy, and her hair is short around her angled face. But it is still her. He holds Ava for as long as she lets him before stepping back, allowing him to see her company.
The woman reminds him very much of Lizzie. She has tan skin, smooth, with curly ringlets of dark hair and a straight nose that ends in a point. She holds herself differently, though, and there are little things that remind him who he is looking at. Ava’s companion has narrower eyes, and slimmer fingers that look made for the delicate weaving of lace. Perhaps he will teach her, should they stay.
“Sarah Reese,” she says, extending a hand.
He shakes it. “Crockett Marcel. You must be Ava’s friend.” He opens the door wider to let them in, uncovering the treats on the counter. There’s a beignet in each of Ava’s hands in a split second, happy with the dusting of sugar and looking just as bright-spirited as she did when he met her in the twenties. Sarah hangs back with an apprehension that suggests she knows the ingredients. “She turn you, Sarah?”
“On our wedding night,” Ava answers for her.
Neither of them are wearing a ring, but perhaps that isn’t a thing in modern society. Crockett wouldn’t know. His own band is on his finger when he doesn’t have gentlemen callers, including now, as he twists it idly. Ava houses three beignets in the time it takes for Sarah to nibble on the edge of a cookie, and he wonders how it happened- was Sarah drained of her blood, and cradled in Ava’s arms, fed with tender hands to allow her to survive, or did Ava slice her wrist open and hold it to her soft lips until Sarah was so full of this life between them that her teeth became sharp. He does not ask such a personal question, especially just now meeting Sarah, and seeing Ava for the first time in forever.
Instead, he asks what she likes to eat, and sets about the kitchen to prepare it for her. In her early years, Ava had been insatiable with bloodlust, and inelegant in her technique- he has buried the shreds of her impulsivity in the backyard, just as much as he has taught her to be neat and shown her the beauty of what can be cooked. In particular, she was becoming partial to pastries before she left.
“You should see the world.” She smiles when Crockett glances back at her, as if the suggestion is more than just an idle thought. “It’s bigger now. There are buildings that reach the sky, and so many people it feels like an ocean. And the stores, Kett, you wouldn’t believe it. I saw one in San Francisco with three stories, just full of pornography. Stuff that I would have never even thought of!”
Sarah rolls her eyes. “A hundred years old, and it never occurred to you that you could-”
“Shhh, he knows all about that,” Ava interrupts. “Believe me. He knows.”
“And you didn’t. I married an old lady.”
“An old lady who whisked you away from that rat in your hospital.”
“Oh, but as I recall, you wanted to do something rather antiquated with Joey.”
Then Ava waves a hand dismissively, and they share a private laugh that speaks to a quickly, yet thoroughly developed intimacy between the two of them. Crockett is nearly jealous, even once he finishes Sarah’s gentle request of pancakes. They’re irony, as most things must now be, but she seems happy with them and the thick syrup he offers for her to pour over top. He’s rather pleased with himself that he has kept his kitchen stocked on the off chance that Ava returned, because it gives him this gift.
All in all, it seems to be a pleasant day, and a quiet night. He can hear them laugh and chat through the night down the hall, his home feeling full for the first time in a while. It’s good. He feels happy when the next day comes, right up until he sees the carnage made of the first floor of his home.