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My Name Is Might-Have-Been
By Kay Kelly
Rating: K+ | Status:
Completed | Genre: Drama | Series: None
Summary: Original Series alternate universe. A familiar character
ponders the strange twists and turns of her life...and an even stranger
legend in the making.
Barnabas died last night. Died in my arms. And
after forty years of happy marriage, he died with her name on his
lips.
The grandchildren were so distressed, so concerned for me. I'm still not
sure I've convinced them that it's all right. I understood when I
married him that she had been the great love of his life.
And were it not for her, the family I love as my own would not exist...
Looking back after all these years, I can scarcely believe the things I
did in my early attempts to win him. Fresh from the witch-world of
Martinique and my mother's tutelage, I was a child playing with the
dangerous toy of sorcery. Choking Barnabas, almost fatally, in a fit of
pique; kindling passion between Josette and Jeremiah. I shudder at the
memory...and at the thought of how close I came to attempting something
even more perilous. Where, I wonder, might that have led?
I knew the brothers were quarreling that night--Jeremiah bent on leaving
Collinwood and the temptation of Josette, Joshua equally determined to
stop him. And I knew Jeremiah would not be dissuaded. I had conceived
the mad idea of making Joshua disappear--actually transforming him into
a cat! Causing a family crisis that would make it impossible for
Jeremiah to tear himself away.
But I hesitated. I had seen spells of this sort cast in Martinique...but
were my powers equal to the task? Even if they were, did I dare...?
I held back. One minute, two...
And Jeremiah began to scream.
I froze, paralyzed. I had done nothing, nothing!
Running footsteps echoed through the halls. Babbling voices... My ally,
Ben Stokes, broke away and darted out of my room. I stumbled to the door
and closed it, then swept my witchcraft paraphernalia into a drawer.
Groped for a chair and sank into it, trembling from head to toe.
I was still sitting there--how long afterward, I have no idea--when Ben
returned. "Angelique? Mr. Joshua's dead. A heart attack.
Sudden-like, whilst he was arguin' with Mr. Jeremiah."
He waited for a reply, received none, started to turn away.
Then he looked back at me and said kindly, "You had nothin' to do
with it."
I remember saying in a very small voice, "Thank you, Ben."
Of course I did blame myself. I had never meant to cause permanent harm
to anyone...and I had caused this, however indirectly. But at least I
had learned my lesson. I let my spells lapse. Never practiced witchcraft
again.
Jeremiah also blamed himself. Devastated, he sought to ease his guilt by
carrying out Joshua's final wish: within a week he proposed marriage to
Millicent.
Millicent was elated; but news of the betrothal horrified Naomi and
Barnabas. They knew that if Jeremiah rushed into a loveless marriage to
an unstable woman, he would never find happiness. Nor, in truth, would
she.
Barnabas and Josette had already postponed their wedding because of
Joshua's death. Now Naomi asked them to delay it a full six months, so
she could exert pressure on Jeremiah to observe the same "mourning
period" before marrying Millicent. They graciously agreed. Andre
DuPres returned to Martinique, while Josette stayed on, with her aunt
Natalie as chaperone.
As the months passed, and Barnabas spent more and more time with the
guests from Martinique...something happened that I could never, in my
wildest imaginings, have anticipated. He realized, on his own, that
Josette was not the woman for him! He never put the problem into words,
then or later--to me or, I suspect, to anyone. He was too much the
gentleman. But I think he came to see--as I always had--that for all her
sweetness, Josette was bland and shallow. His life with her would have
been relentlessly predictable, devoid of challenge. In a word, dull.
He might even then have gone through with the marriage...if he had not,
unexpectedly, found his true love before his very eyes.
Natalie.
Natalie. At the time, that was harder for me to accept than it was even
for Josette. Natalie, a woman old enough to be my mother? But I
came gradually to understand. Natalie was fifty, several years older
than Barnabas, but much nearer his age than Josette or I. He fell in
love with her keen wit, her maturity, experience, worldliness...and yes,
her beauty. As they drew closer, Natalie seemed to blossom.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah came to his senses and realized his union with
Millicent would be a disaster. He broke their engagement as gently as
possible.
And Millicent leapt to her death from Widow's Hill!
Poor, luckless Jeremiah. In misery again, tortured by guilt.
But...he was going through this just as Josette was becoming aware
Barnabas had cooled toward her. They drifted together, found, to their
surprise, that there really was a mutual attraction...
And at the end of that six-month "mourning period," two
couples wed in a double ceremony. Barnabas and Natalie, Jeremiah and
Josette.
Of all the family, only Joshua had truly wanted that grandiose new
mansion. It was agreed Jeremiah and Josette would live there with
Millicent's brother Daniel, for whom Jeremiah felt responsible. Everyone
else remained in the original family home. And I stayed on as well, as
Natalie's maid.
To everyone's surprise--except her own--Natalie soon became pregnant.
Her blissful life with Barnabas grew even richer, their love deeper.
Yet I knew he was desperately frightened at the thought of her giving
birth at fifty-one. Everyone was frightened, save Natalie herself. From
the beginning, she had been serenely determined to bear this child--a
healthy boy, as she was sure it would be, another Barnabas.
To her, nothing else mattered.
But I...for Barnabas's sake, I knelt in my room night after night and
tried, for the first time in my life, to pray to the Christian God. That
He would spare mother and child.
Perhaps I was the only one who prayed. God can be excused for ignoring
me.
The infant lived and thrived. But Natalie was laid to rest on the
anniversary of her wedding. And Barnabas was distraught...inconsolable.
Many years later, he confessed that only his sense of responsibility to
his son had kept him from taking his own life during those first hellish
months.
Time heals, or at least makes grief easier to bear. I stayed on, of
course, to care for the baby. And seven years later, Barnabas asked me
to be his wife. He did love me, if not with the blazing passion of his
love for Natalie.
Or mine for him...
Naomi lived to see Sarah happily wed to Daniel--a cousin, but a very
distant one. By the time the matriarch died, Collins business interests
in England had expanded sufficiently to require closer attention. So
Barnabas moved our family here, and Collinwood now seems almost as
remote a memory as Martinique.
Jeremiah and Josette had a happy marriage, but bad luck continued to dog
him. Twenty years ago, quite by accident, he shot himself fatally while
cleaning his gun. Josette died soon afterward--her death hastened, I
think, by loneliness.
Strange...in all my years of trying, I never became pregnant. Josette
conceived five times by Jeremiah, but was never able to carry to term.
So of the three women who loved Barnabas, the least likely
possibility--the middle-aged Natalie--was undoubtedly the only one who
could have given him a child! For that child, and his children, I thank
Natalie every day of my life.
I suppose Sarah will be leaving now, going home to Daniel. I'm grateful
she came to be here during her brother's final illness. But she brought
the oddest tales, of distorted versions of the family history
circulating in Collinsport...
The simple facts are that Josette was betrothed to Barnabas, but wed
Jeremiah instead. Years later, Jeremiah accidentally killed himself
while cleaning his gun.
Long before that, Barnabas had moved to England for business reasons.
And still earlier, Millicent had plunged to her death from Widow's Hill.
Somehow, that has been twisted into a legend that Barnabas and Jeremiah
fought a duel over Josette! Jeremiah was killed, and the family gave out
a false story of his having died of an accidentally self-inflicted
gunshot wound. Barnabas left for England under a cloud--or in other
versions, died of the plague(!) or by sorcery, his move to England
another lie. And Josette committed suicide on Widow's Hill.
Incredible...
(The End)
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