Old Ghosts
LONDON, OCTOBER 31, 1902

It is late and the pavement is dark despite the streetlamps dotting the line of grey stone buildings. Isobel stands near the shadowed stairs of the one she called home for almost a year, what now seems like a lifetime ago. She waits outside for Marco to return, a pale blue shawl pulled around her shoulders like a patch of day-bright sky in the night.

Hours pass before Marco appears at the corner. His grip on his briefcase tightens when he sees her.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “You’re supposed to be in the States.”

“I left the circus,” Isobel said. “I walked away. Celia said I could.”

She takes a faded scrap of paper from her pocket, bearing her name, her real name that he coaxed from her years ago and asked her to write in one of his notebooks.

“Of course she did,” Marco says.

“May I come upstairs?” she asks, fidgeting with the edge of her shawl.

“No,” Marco says, glancing up at the windows. A dim, flickering light illuminates the glass. “Please, just say whatever it is you’re here to say.”

Isobel frowns. She looks around the street but it is dark and empty, only a crisp breeze blowing through, rustling the leaves in the gutter.

“I wanted to say that I was sorry,” she says quietly. “For not telling you that I was tempering. I know what happened last year was partly my fault.”

“You should apologize to Celia, not to me.”

“I already have,” Isobel says. “I knew she was in love with someone, but I thought it was Herr Thiessen. I didn’t realize until that night that it was you. But she loved him as well, and she lost him and I was the cause.”

“It was not your fault,” Marco says. “There were a great many factors involved.”

“There have always been a great many factors involved,” Isobel says. “I didn’t mean to get so tangled up in this. I only wanted to be helpful. I wanted to get through  …  this and go back to the way things were, before.”

“We cannot go backward,” Marco says. “A great deal is not how it used to be.”

“I know,” Isobel says. “I cannot hate her. I have tried. I cannot even dislike her. She let me carry on for years, clearly suspicious of her, but she was always kind to me. And I loved the circus. I felt like I finally had a home, a place I could belong. After a while I didn’t feel like I needed to protect you from her, I felt I should protect everyone else from both of you, and both of you from each other. I started after you came to see me in Paris, when you were so upset about the Wishing Tree, but I knew I had to continue after I read Celia’s cards.”

“When was this?” Marco asks.

“That night in Prague when you were supposed to meet me,” Isobel says. “You never let me read for you, not even a single card before last year. I had not realized that before. I wonder if I would have let this go on so long if I’d had the opportunity. It took ages for me to truly understand what her cards were saying. I could not see what was right in front of me. I wasted so much time. This was always about the two of you, even before you met. I was only a diversion.”

“You were not a diversion,” Marco says.

“Did you ever love me?” Isobel asks.

“No,” Marco admits. “I thought perhaps I could, but  … ”

Isobel nods.

“I thought you did,” she says. “I was so certain that you did, even though you never said it. I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real. I thought this was going to be temporary, even when it kept dragging on and on. But it’s not. It never was. I was the one who was temporary. I used to think that if she were gone, you would come back to me.”

“If she were gone, I would be nothing,” Marco says. “You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.”

They stand in silence on the empty street, the chill of the night air falling between them.

“Good night, Miss Martin,” Marco says, starting up the stairs.

“The most difficult thing to read is time,” Isobel says, and Marco stops, turning back to her. “Maybe because it changes so many things. I have read for countless people on innumerable subjects and the most difficult thing to understand within the cards is always the timing. I knew that, and still it surprised me. How long I was willing to wait for something that was only a possibility. I always thought it was just a matter of time, but I was wrong.”

“I did not expect this to go on as long as—” Marco begins, but Isobel interrupts him.

“It was all a matter of timing,” she says. “My train was late that day. The day I saw you drop your notebook. Had it been on schedule we never would have met. Maybe we were never meant to. It was a possibility, one of thousands, and not inevitable, the way some things are.”

“Isobel, I am sorry,” Marco says. “I am sorry that I involved you in all of this. I am sorry that I did not tell you sooner how I feel for Celia. I do not know what else you want from me that I can give you.”

Isobel nods, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

“I read for someone a week ago,” she says. “He was young, younger than I was when I met you. Tall in the way of someone who is not yet used to being tall. He was genuine and sweet. He even asked me my name. And everything was in his cards. Everything. It was like reading for the circus, and that has only happened to me once before, when I read for Celia.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Marco asks.

“Because I thought he could have saved you. I didn’t know how to feel about that; I still don’t. It was there in his cards along with everything else, as plain as anything I have ever seen. I thought then that this was going to end differently. I was wrong. I seem to be wrong quite frequently. Perhaps it is time for me to find a new occupation.”

Marco stops, his face going pale in the lamplight.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“I am saying that you had a chance,” Isobel says. “A chance to be with her. A chance for everything to resolve itself in a favorable manner. I almost wanted that for you, truly, in spite of everything. I still want you to be happy. And the possibility was there.” She gives him a small, sad smile as she slides her hand into her pocket. “But the timing isn’t right.”

She removes her hand from her pocket and uncurls her fingers. In her palm sits a pile of sparkling black crystals, silt as fine as ash.

“What is that?” Marco asks as she lifts her palm to her lips.

In response, Isobel blows softly, and the ash flies at Marco in a stinging black cloud.

When the dust clears, Marco’s briefcase sits abandoned on the pavement by her feet. Isobel takes it with her as she leaves.