It Lingers, Still [Barbara Jagger/Alice Wake]
A particular portrait stops Alice in her tracks through the filled halls. There, a woman hides beneath a dark veil, standing in an isle surrounded by tall and violent waves; she has a hole in her chest, and in her palms are the beating heart carried as an offering. Nobody seems to have minded this frame. Not a single visiting eye tried to find the woman’s own in the middle of a chaotic, though beautifully static, standing place.
Alice stares at it for longer than many, and forgets the woman standing beside.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She tells Alice. The photographer regards her with a smile.
“Yes,” she agrees. “But… haunting, too.”
“There is something unique to admire in the darkness,” the woman comments. “My husband used to tell me that.”
Alice feels the bitter remembrance in herself and ignores it for the sake of her new companion. She doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t need to…
“And he is right,” Alice says instead, paying attention to the details of the woman’s stance: the pose of her arms, the black hair, the beauty and the youth, all an imitation of the portrait—or the other way around. The sight pins her into a state of inertia. “I’m sorry, but do we know each other?”
She gives a little laugh. “Don’t worry, and no—we don’t.” A hand is outstretched. “Barbara.”
“Alice.” They shake hands, but Barbara has a tight hold on Alice’s palm. Everything feels gentle about her. “Is your husband here tonight?”
“Ah,” she shakes her head negatively. “He’s gone. It's been over thirty years since the incident.”
Alice’s stomach twists by a bit, swirling down a question she wanted to make firstly. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to say sorry twice.” Barbara smiles at her—it is an assuring sight. “I always come back to look at this portrait. It reminds me of Tom.”
By now, Alice looks down to the ring on her finger and itches to disclose her entire loneliness since Bright Falls, offering her own wounded heart: telling how she knows the feeling and how it has stained on her entire soul, one half of it tarnished and another missing, left on the Lake to never be found again.
However, as she glances up, Barbara seems to understand every single word Alice has preferred to not speak through her expressions, and Alice offers instead: “I know how it is.”
They part from the hold. Alice gazes back to the portrait and believes herself capable of drawing the shape of the veiled lady’s eyes.