The Fantasie of a Stepmother

Chapter 4

“What?”

I was about to ask what she was talking about when an overwhelming sense of déjà vu silenced me.

Wait a second. I’ve seen this situation before.

Where have I seen it? Where is this déjà vu coming from?

The old vanity was back in its place like a wailing ghost. This room felt familiar and alien at the same time. Gwen and I both looked younger than usual. Gwen’s black funeral clothes...

I gasped when I finally understood. It wasn’t just déjà vu.

This was it. I knew it. There was no way I couldn’t know. This was... just like the morning of my husband’s funeral seven years ago.

***

Marquess Johannes von Neuschwanstein was the man who brought me to the grand Neuschwanstein estate when I was just fourteen.

His funeral took place on a beautiful day. The autumn sky was bright and clear as if the heavens didn’t care what happened to humans on the earth.

I doubt another woman alive has sat through the same husband’s funeral twice.

God have mercy, what is going on here?!

“The marquess...”

“That girl is...”

“What a sin. Oh, those poor children.”

“That’s the marchioness? That child?”

“The marquess must have been delusional before his death. How could he leave such an absurd will?”

“Who knows? We mustn’t underestimate someone who tempted the marquess.”

“That’s nonsense. The marquess must have gone senile.”

“She must have bewitched him. How else could such a wench...”

The mourners gathered like a black wave. Their whisperings were terribly familiar.

The wave followed to the large chapel where the funeral was being held, and the view was the same: the crowd in mourning attire, the sorrowful sound of the bell, and most of all...

“The young boy looks so dignified. He must feel he has to be, as the eldest. How could such a young one not shed a single tear?”

My legal children.

The twins, Leon and Rachel, who were barely ten, were sniffling, honest with their emotions as always. Thirteen-year-old Elias was trying in vain to look dignified but couldn’t hold back his tears.

And fourteen-year-old Jeremy was standing by the coffin with an empty look on his face, just as I remembered.

My God, I never thought I would see their younger selves again. It was a novel feeling.

At the same time, it was driving me insane. How did I end up in such a bizarre situation? Was I dreaming?

I had finally put everything down, free to live the rest of my life quietly, but now I was in this dream. No, I wished it was a dream. If I had truly gone back in time to the past, it would indeed be a horror story!

The thought of starting from the beginning again after how I had toiled to raise the children... I couldn’t!

A sigh of deep regret spilled from my lips. It was a quiet sound I had made unconsciously, but Count Mueller—my husband’s younger brother—seemed to have heard from where he stood behind me.

“You must be bored,” he said.

I said nothing.

“Isn’t this the least you should be willing to bear?” He went on, his tone openly disparaging. “After all, you’re holding the golden goose now.”

He was testing me.

Ha ha, so this is how you want to fight?

“Is that all you have to say?” I said.

“What?”

“If that is all you have to say at your elder brother’s funeral, you may leave. I am far too busy to lend an ear to your whining.”

Count Mueller could have said, “What did you just say?” or “How rude!” but instead, he stared at me with disdain as if nothing he could say would be enough.

Erm, I suppose I’m not surprised.

The first time I sat through this funeral, I was a fearful child who didn’t know anything. My sudden change in attitude must have made me look triumphant.

I ignored the looks of reproach I received and tried to disentangle my thoughts.

If I really had returned to the past, I had a problem. I would have to redo everything I had done over the past seven years. I didn’t want to suffer thanklessly like that again!

While I was lost in thought, the ceremony came to an end. The burial service was about to begin.

I waited until the priest leading the mass finished his prayer, then walked to the platform. The gazes that followed me should have stung, but I felt numb and distant, as if I was drunk.

“Lady Neuschwanstein?”

“Excuse me, Father. If I could, I would like a moment alone with my husband before the burial. Please understand.”

The crowd began to murmur. As the mourners cleared their throats and frowned, I turned toward the children. I looked at Jeremy.

He looked dazed, but I had been by his side for nearly a decade. I knew that he was angry at me. I could see it in his dark green eyes. “Who do you think you are to make such a request?”

Ugh, what a wicked boy. Stare at me all you want, you wretch. See if I bat an eye.

***

After everyone left, as I had requested, the chapel was silent, swirling with fragrant incense. The coffin was draped with a banner with a lion biting a sword, Neuschwanstein’s crest.

I looked at it for a while, then kneeled quietly by the coffin.

“It has been a long time, Johan,” I whispered and stroked the lid of the coffin. I could feel the rough wood through my gloves. If this was a dream, it was far too vivid.

Last time, I never asked the mourners to leave us alone, nor had I sat by the deceased and talked to him. My verbal repartee with Count Mueller had never happened either.

Back then, I had been so overcome with fear and confusion that all I wanted was for the funeral to end so that I could hide from everyone.

How many tears had to be shed for that timid and naive viscount’s daughter to transform into the wicked Witch of Neuschwanstein?

Looking back now, I made so many mistakes. I was impressed that I had overcome all that I had.

But all of that...

“Would you believe me if I told you I kept our promise? Would you believe that the children you left with me grew up admirably... and heartlessly? Would you?”

The dead cannot speak. I wasn’t expecting a reply.

The statues of the Father and the Virgin Mary looked down at me from either side of the altar. They seemed to scorn me.

“Where did things go wrong?” I lamented. “I won’t resent you or blame those children after all this time. I know how meaningless it would be to say that it was all for your sake and theirs.”

My husband may have been the one to ask for the promise, but I was the one who had gone to such lengths to keep it.

I was the one who had charged forward like a tank without sparing a second to look back or around me. I was the one who allowed endless rumors to circle about me until they grew and grew into misunderstandings and conflicts that amassed into an unbreakable wall of ice.

I had no one else to blame, but...

“But I can’t do it twice. I can’t,” I told him. “I refuse to be insulted and shamed like that again. I am too tired for that.”

I never knew that it would hurt so much for your sacrifices to go unappreciated. What had I expected from the children? Thanks? Respect? Affection…?

“Do you understand? I can’t do that again. You don’t know how much I wanted to see our Jeremy get married.”

I lowered my head. My long pink hair scattered over the coffin. The tears falling down my face felt too real to be a dream.

If I really had returned to the past, perhaps God wanted me to make different choices. Nothing else could explain this bizarre situation.

I didn’t know how long I had been there. After staying in that wretched state beside the coffin for who knows how long, I stood up.

Goodbye for real, Johan. I hope that this is our last farewell.

I barely suppressed my scream as I started in shock, coming face-to-face with someone entirely unexpected while I was in the middle of a sob. If I had felt slow and numb before, my heart raced like a rabbit standing before a predator.

When did he get in here?

Jeremy stood six paces away. Not the mature twenty-one-year-old Jeremy I knew, but the boy who still straddled adolescence and adulthood.

My memories of Jeremy overlapped with the child before me. It was an odd feeling.

I quickly wiped away my tears. “Jeremy?” I asked with a dry voice. “Why are you here?”

Jeremy didn’t respond. Confusion passed through his dark green eyes as they observed my tear-streaked face.

I was dumbstruck. Why does that surprise you, you rascal? Did you expect to find me dancing on your father’s coffin?

I swallowed my bitter laughter. “I must go.”

As I started to leave, Jeremy grabbed my wrist. It shocked me as much as his entrance, and I flinched.

“Jeremy?”

A short silence followed. Jeremy scanned my face without a word.

Instead of asking him anything, I stared back and watched him.