We hold within us – each of us – an ever-regenerating capacity for awe at darkness, and it is never too late for the specters of our past to rise up before us, like vampires in the night, and seek once more to suck from us what happiness we have managed to find in their absence. No amount of time can ease the shock of their reappearance in our lives, nor lessen the pain they bring us. This I know to be true.

"Adam! Leave poor old Pilot be, and come here. I've something for you."
"What is it?"

"Such skepticism! Come and see. Look, my boy, this is very special."

"A flower?"

"And not just any flower. Do you know, if a fairy happened upon this, she could turn it to a sovereign? Yes, it's true! Here, you may take it, but I want you to handle it very carefully, you understand? Yes, that's it. Now go on and take it over to Mamma."
"Why?"

"Because that is the proper etiquette for a gentleman to follow when he presents himself to a fairy. If you have no gift for her, she will be cross."
"Mamma is a fairy?"
"Why of course!"

It was the height of summer, but a stormy, capricious one, with apparently little liking for sunshine. Today, however, the morning downpour had broken off by noon, and the rain-weary Rochester's were at last at liberty to go out of doors. Droplets of water still shimmered on leaves and glinted on the blades of grass in the lawn behind Ferndean, but the sun had come out and shone warmly down on them, as if anxious to atone for its long absence. A quarter past three in the afternoon. The remnants of a fine tea lay abandoned on a lawn table, beside which sat Jane with her drawing materials, her sketchbook open before her on an easel. For some time Edward and Adam had busied themselves looking for rare plant and insect specimens, the child's keen and careful eyes more than making up for the dimness of his father's own vision. Pilot had ambled along after them at first before returning to the center of lawn – the driest, warmest patch, apparently – to curl up and doze in the rare sunlight. Adam, who never liked to be apart from the old dog if he could help it, had returned as well to pester him awake when his father had summoned him.

The flower was a rare specimen indeed – silvery-white, with pointed petals like the arms of a star – and Edward had rejoiced inwardly at finding it. Before Adam's birth, in the days when he had been without his sight, he remembered Jane coming upon the blooms on their walks. She had gathered them with cries of delight (always she was drawn to the small, the pale, the delicate, the overlooked), had described to him their simple beauty, had taken his index finger to trace the flower's star-like shape. He had known what it looked like without ever having seen it. Yet finding it now, on his own, filled him with a boyish sense of excitement. He would have Adam take it to Jane. It would be a special surprise for her and might, he hoped, chase away whatever spirit had come to trouble her.

For the past fortnight there had been something unusually reserved in Jane's manner. She had not been taciturn, nor even particularly despondent, but she'd been slower to smile, still more reticent to laugh, and there had been moments when he'd come upon her – doing some ordinary task like sewing or reading – and found a strange depth in her eyes, a peculiar expression of longing, something akin to the innate desperation of a long-abandoned child who knows only what it is to be lost. He did not want to press her for explanations, and he guessed that her wistfulness might well have its foundation in the Northern journey they'd taken, but he felt it deeply when she was not herself. As he waited for his son to come to him, Edward carefully fingered the precious cluster of flowers, determined to pick out the single finest, most delicate bloom.

You are not lost, not alone, my darling; I have found you. Every night in dreams I find you. Every blessed morning I awake at your side, I find you. Every time I look at our child, I find you.

Adam's sudden presence beside him broke his reverie. He revealed to the boy his discovery, answering the childish questions with the good-humored, bantering manner he'd adopted with his son. He had resolved, three years ago when the boy was born, that he would be a different sort of father to Adam than his own had been to him. Unlike his father, whose family had been but a means to an end – securing the enduring legacy of Thornfield Hall – Edward's family was the long-awaited end to the labyrinthine path of his youth. His wife and son were his entire world.

All the while, Jane watched them in mute fondness, but, as he'd suspected she might, directly after his confirmation of her otherworldly nature, she voiced an interjection. She was not his impish mind-reader for nothing.

"Edward, what are you telling him?" Jane called, one eyebrow raised reprovingly. Her husband's answering smile was innocence itself, but a warm flush of relief at this return of her old humor spread through him he leaned to whisper conspiratorially in his son's ear.

"Go on, lad!"

The boy skipped over to Jane with the flower held up proudly in front of him, mouth curved in a grin to match his father's. When he reached her chair he dropped it obligingly into her lap, then turned back to glance at Edward for approval. Edward winked his good eye, and Adam, who knew now that he had fulfilled his errand properly, chortled in success and watched his mother's reaction. She took the flower from her lap – recognizing the love token for what it was – and inhaled its fragrance.

"Thank you, my love!" She bent to kiss Adam on top of his dark curls and obligingly tucked the flower into one of her winding braids.

"Does that look well, do you think?" Adam nodded solemnly.

"Fairy money."

"Really?" She smiled. "And whatever should I need fairy money for?"

"You are a fairy, Mamma!" Jane laughed at this and began tickling Adam under his chin.

"And you are a very silly boy." He squirmed and squealed, delighted with the fond slight to his judgment. Then she drew him into her arms and set him on her knee.

"Your father put you up to it, I'll be bound," she said, looking up and catching Edward's eye. "He's bad enough to spout such nonsense himself without teaching it to you as well."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Edward declared, starting toward them. "Eh, Adam?"

Yes, the sunshine had returned to her face. She lifted her shining eyes to him as he came and stood beside her, ruffling Adam's hair and bending to place a soft kiss on Jane's lips.

"How are you, Janet?" He asked softly.

"Well, thank you Darling." She shifted Adam on her knee. "A bit warm, perhaps – do you not feel warm?"

"Are you sure you feel well?" Suddenly he was concerned. She did look rather more rosy than her pale complexion usually allowed. "You must not allow yourself to become feverish in this heat. Perhaps we ought to go in."

"Don't worry!" she assured him, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "If need be I will move into the shade, but truly, I'm well at the moment."

Edward was unconvinced.

"I'll fetch you bonnet, shall I? And dampen a handkerchief for you."

"Really, Edward, that is quite unnecessary."

"It's no trouble," he insisted. He would not allow Jane to fall ill if there was something he could do to prevent it. "I will only be a moment." Before she could voice any more objections he made for the house. Jane shook her head at him, but she smiled to herself as she did it. No other woman in the world could boast such an attentive husband, she was sure. She had only to speak a word and he would brave hell and high water to carry out her request.

As she waited for her husband to return, Jane played "ride a cock horse" with Adam, bouncing him on her knee, then set him down and attempted to return to her painting. The peculiar weather that summer had not allowed her to paint much out of doors, and she knew she ought to be relishing the opportunity to do so now, but her thoughts - in particular, one image that flashed constantly before her – were too much distraction. A low, windblown tree; bleached white stones; a figure in black. And then she, turning away in horror, clutching Edward's arm like a lifeline, looking and looking at his face and wishing fervently it was all she would ever see.

The minutes passed, and when she came to herself again she realized that dark clouds had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and the air had turned humid and seemed to ripple with intensity. Another storm was coming. Jane glanced at the watch hanging around her neck. The afternoon was getting on, and Edward had not returned from the house. She ran the back of her hand along her brow, which had begun to sweat in the heat.

"Your father certainly has been a long time, hasn't he?" Jane murmured, more to herself than to Adam, who knelt on the grass happily beating her paintbrushes together by their handles, as if they were drumsticks.

"Gently, my love!" she reprimanded, but Adam was too engaged to heed. "Here, give them to Mother. There's a boy." She gathered her materials together, then looked from her easel, where her work was still drying, to her son. She decided to ask Mary to help her bring everything in after she'd taken Adam inside.

"Come, let's go and see what mischief Papa has got himself into."

One of the most liberating things of being mistress of a household was that she could enter and leave any way she chose, without being thought a sneak or provoking servants' gossip. Mary and John were quite used to her presence in the kitchen and thought nothing of her using that door as easily as the one at the front of the house. Through this portal, then, she and Adam entered quite freely, and, finding the room empty, they paused for a moment as Jane crouched to examine the grass stains on the knees of the boy's breeches.

"Look at that, you careless fellow!" she teased. "That's what comes of crawling after Pilot. And Mary just washed these yesterday." She shook her head in mock hopelessness and tut-tutted, drawing a sheepish grin from Adam. But his amusement sank to an expression of disturbance as the sound of voices – raised, angry voices – reached them from the foyer. Jane turned and listened carefully. She was quickly able to make out Edward's tones, but the others – also a man's – were too low to be recognizable, and it was impossible to distinguish what was passing between them. Though she knew nothing of their conversation, Jane felt her blood run cold. She had detected something cold and hostile, something alien in her husband's voice. She shivered, and her mind traveled back again to the previous fortnight, to the black figure she'd glimpsed among the grave stones. When she spoke her own voice was low and coldly determined.

"Adam, hold tight to me."

Leaden with dread, she left the kitchen with her son in her arms and headed for the foyer. In the hall she stopped, her steps halted by the now clearly audible tones of the other man. She felt frozen. Shock reverberated though her body, an awful thrill dancing along every nerve. She knew that voice. It had been years, but she would have known his voice anywhere. Had she not heard it, again and again, pronouncing its terrible words, in the darkest of her dreams?

She is living at Thornfield Hall… I am her brother.

Clutching her son close to her, she closed her eyes and summoned all her strength.

Mason, around the corner in the foyer, seemed to have lost his. Silence held the room in thrall for several agonizing moments, until he at last managed,

"My God, Rochester!" There was both fear and revulsion in his faint exclamation. Jane could only guess that he was looking upon his former brother-in-law in full for the first time. Edward laughed – a bitter, mirthless sound that she'd hoped never to hear again. When he spoke his voice was like ice.

"Why have you come? Was it to catch a glimpse of me?" The laugh again.

Jane winced, and felt tears rush to her eyes. Adam was trembling against her, his head on her shoulder.

"Was it to see this?" Edward was demanding. "Or this?" The hall was dark, but in the foyer a lamp had been lit, and Jane noticed now that she could see the men's shadows on the wall behind her, like figures in a magic lantern show. Her husband's form was distorted and monstrous, Mason's smaller and sharper, but no less ghastly. As Edward spoke, it seemed to cower before him. Jane held her breath as the shadow hand of her husband gestured to his left eye, as the handless left arm was held out to his visitor.

"No, no, please-" Mason began hoarsely, but whether his feeble protest was directed at Rochester's display of his disfigurements or at his equally formidable anger, Jane could not tell. Edward quickly cut him off.

"You see now how things are with me. Are you satisfied?"

"Rochester-"

"Was one time not enough? Tell me, was it not enough that you killed my chance of happiness once?"

"Please, understand-" Mason was pleading now, but Edward's temper had reached fever pitch and would not be held off.

"You had your victory, Mason! You took everything I had left. What more do you want of me?"

Suddenly Jane did not know whose desperation was greater, whose fear more consuming. She watched her husband's shadow, dreading what she might see it do yet unable to look away. It has found us, she thought, rocking Adam who had begun weeping silently, terrified at his father's rage. Last fortnight was but a warning for this. It has found us now.

The silence was palpable. Then, in tones fortified by renewed confidence, Mason said with as much dignity as he could muster,

"I want to see my sister, Edward."