Her eyes opened and glowed green-gold in the lamplight. “Do you want to hear it or not? Because if not, I would be more than happy to toss myself into your arms to pass the time.”
His lips twitched. That rated as the most interesting threat he had ever received. “Sorry. Go on.”
She closed her eyes again. “ ‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat…’ ”
He slid the book from her lap and located the story, reading along with her. She didn’t miss a word—or rather, when she did, she quickly corrected her fumble. Nearing the end of the page, he prepared to flip it…and frowned. The pages were still folded together from the press, uncut, making the inner pages inaccessible. He fished out his penknife.
Marietta stumbled over her words, came to a halt, and opened her eyes. A frown marred her brow. “Let me see that.” Without waiting for his reply, she took the book back and sighed when she noted the same thing he had.
He leaned over and slid the blade along the crease, separating the pages and revealing the words.
She glanced at one page, the other, and then handed the book back and closed her eyes again. “ ‘We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of catacombs.’ ”
“Yetta.” He didn’t know whether to stare at the book or her. Obviously, she had never read these pages before.
“ ‘I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.’ ”
“Yetta.” He seized her by the elbow, though hesitatingly. But she opened her eyes, glanced once out the window at the still-raging storm, and then turned her gaze to him, somber. He rested his arm on the back of the couch, his fingers resting against her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
Her smile, for a reason he couldn’t discern, looked self-deprecating. “Reading.”
“No, you’re…what? Reciting?”
“No.” Her gaze fell to her hands, which were twisting and untwisting a portion of her skirt. “Recitation, as I understand it, is when you purposefully commit something to memory and then deliver it through practice. I am reading. From the pages in my memory.”
“Reading from…” He blinked, but that did nothing to help. He moistened his lips, but with the same lack of result. “You mean, you have only to glance at a thing once, and you can recall the entire page perfectly?”
So all those times he had seen her sitting in seeming idleness, with her eyes closed just like this…
“Mm-hmm.”
“The files from the desk.” That was how she had copied them so exactly after she had given him her key. And what was it she had said when he asked her whether she had looked at them? That she had taken a glance—and that a glance was all it took. “The way you flipped through the book in the cellar. Yetta, that’s—”
“Interesting, odd, and hard to believe.”
He reached for her hands and stilled them. “I was going to say miraculous. But how—so you remember everything you set your eyes to, or do you have to make a point of it?”
“Everything.” The way she said it…her tone heavy, her shoulders slumped. “Everything. Always. Not that the images are always there, but they can reemerge without warning. And they can evade me when I am too tired or in distress. Sometimes they flip so quickly before my mind’s eye that I can scarcely lay hold of any one memory.”
A miracle and a burden both, then. He couldn’t imagine. Sure, it would be convenient not to forget the important things. But everything? “Just visual memories, then. Things you read or see or…”
“No.” She said it on a half laugh, but this time she looked at him. Exhaustion filled her eyes. “Every word spoken, every event on every day.”
Which would mean every harsh word. Every scream, every tear, every fear. “How do you not go mad?”
Again she laughed, more fully this time, with a hint of relief. Her fingers hooked around his. “For years I decided the only way to handle it was to live solely in the moment.”
“There’s a certain kind of logic to that.”
“A foolish kind, but yes.” Her breath quavered as she pulled it in, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with the newest roar of thunder that shook the house. “My family…they always thought it so amazing. A miracle, as you said. A gift from God. And it is, but they never understood why I sometimes hated it. Why I never wanted anyone to know. It is one thing to amuse a party with a parlor game, but they always thought it some trick.”
His hand on her shoulder traced the contour and trailed up her graceful neck. “Easier that way. If they realized, then they would never say an honest word in your company.”