I lifted the water glass I'd placed near my chair, feeling the audience with me even as I sipped.

"My Dear Charlotte Bronte," I said. "Passions unknown to moi?" I placed my hand near my heart, confidence surging, the audience eating from my hand. Maybe I could take this show on the road. "Have you seen Colin Firth in the wet-shirt version of Pride and Prejudice?" Pause. "I didn't think so. Pity." I wished Willis were here to witness this. But I could not think about Willis while on stage. Whenever the deacon peeked around the corner of my subconscious, I tended to leave my body and climb stairs to the third floor where I entertained him with witty observations, causing Willis to be immediately overcome, etc. When I detected Willis creeping into my head I had to look the other way and focus on something scary like my half sister. "My Dear Kingsley Amis," I continued. "Sorry to miss dinner at your house but I have to wash my hair that night."

While addressing My Dear Andrew Davies, demanding information leading to the apprehension of the party or parties authorizing the Harlequinization of my novels, I felt My Jane Austen more intensely than ever. I corresponded briefly with My Dear Lionel Trilling to recommend counseling with an emphasis on sensitivity training. Taking big curves now, audience laughter cushioned the turns. As I roasted My Dear Seth Grahame-Smith, warning him not to travel alone in dark alleys, or for that matter, anyplace it might eventually get dark, like his personal bedroom, I felt as if I had become Jane Austen. She hovered so close to me, and I so close to her, that a sideways glance would not scare her away. I experienced such fusion with My Jane Austen, sensing the words she scribbled on her ivories as if she wrote in my mind. If I let go, her words would come out of my mouth. "My Dear To Whom It May Concern," I said. "Regarding the issue of failing to include slavery and war in my novels, what part of writing about the doings of a few country families do you not understand?" And then it happened; her words came from my mouth. I felt slightly buzzed, as if a dentist's anesthesia had numbed body and soul for my own protection since the words felt different, sharper.

"You are very kind to offer advice as to the sort of composition which I might have undertaken," I said. "I am fully sensible that a historic account of the Napoleonic Wars or Evils of Slavery might have been much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could not sit down to write a serious history under any motive other than to save my life. And if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself and other people, I am sure I should be hung before finishing the first chapter." The audience sensed the change in the language, condescending. I wished to go back to my own script but I couldn't get there, speeding too fast to change direction without crashing, and I sensed more dangerous terrain ahead.

"My Dear Faculty of Literature Live," she spoke through me. The audience stopped breathing and raised their collective eyebrows. Some looked over at Nigel. "I must thank you dear teachers, for the very high praise you bestow on my novels. I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. While I am too vain to wish to convince you that you have praised my novels beyond their merit, I must warn that your intellectual endeavors on my behalf have been extolled so highly that future generations shall have the pleasure of being disappointed." Some audience members laughed but they weren't laughing with me anymore; we were out of sync. I'd been abducted, forced to perform. My Jane Austen was showing her true self. Prickly, she suffered no fools and wasn't cutting us any slack now. Her words felt mean, born in pain and subtly intended to inflict the same. I once imagined feeling the sharp end of her pen; now I felt it.

"My Dear Janeites," I said, knowing this was going to be bad, unable to stop because Jane Austen was driving, recklessly. "Why do you insist on another stupid party?" Several people gasped and I sensed a low rumble, unrest in the audience. Would someone please call the police and have me arrested? "Can you conceive that it may be possible to do without dancing entirely? Instances have been known of women passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind. But when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more. Obsession working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief."

No one laughed. I kept my mouth shut to make sure no further damage occurred. I conveyed harsh thoughts to My Jane Austen: How could you use me like this? We were best friends but you've gone too far. Return to my rear periphery and either stay there or go away. If you can't respect boundaries, you need to get help. Nigel's face bore frail amazement. Vera looked stricken. Omar's fist supported his nose, obscuring his expression. Just as I thought things couldn't get much worse, the muffled electronic wail of a cell phone interrupted the horror, the sound originating from the tiny fringed bag on my wrist. The unmistakable ringtone played the first line of Tommy's new song, "I'll Find You," as a rush of panic crashed against my chest. I answered the phone, why not? Perhaps Lionel Trilling was calling to get the last word. "Hullo?" I said. The audience waited, stifling black laughter as I listened to the halting voice.

"Oh, Lord Weston," I said, "I'm so sorry."

The audience hushed, watching intently.

"She's here with me, actually," I said, looking up at Vera. I listened. "Yes, I'll let her know." I nodded and closed my eyes. "I'm so sorry." I powered off the phone and looked at Vera. She sat stiff, prepared for the worst as I spoke the last line of my last one-woman show. "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news," I said. "Lady Weston died early this morning."

Twenty-Four

The memorial service looked more like Masterpiece Theatre than a funeral. Mrs. Russell and the entire corps of volunteers filled our church with their Regency best, thankfully distracted from the insults of my one-woman show. Volunteers who had served tea, sold tickets, and passed out programs over the years, now gathered to celebrate Lady Weston's life. Even the sun presented a robust rendition of its English version—nothing you could fry an egg on—but the cobalt and emerald in the church windows sparkled like tumblers inside a kaleidoscope.

Surrounded by a multitude of glorious hats, I would see nothing unless I stood on the pew. I would miss the first glimpse of Willis when the clergy processed down the aisle. The organ thundered a prelude and my heart beat faster at the immediate prospect of existing in the same room with him. Only here, at the memorial service for a dead woman, would the world come alive for me. Breathing deeply to calm myself, holding his jacket to return to him, I failed to suppress the dangerous hope that he was sorting Philippa out of his life. My anticipation grew and I desperately needed a sign from him to sustain me.

The woman next to me fanned herself with the bulletin as the small assortment of gray-haired Weston relatives filed into reserved seats in the front. The actual funeral had been held elsewhere, making family attendance here optional. Philippa wore black except for the gold purse chain slung over her shoulder; her dark glasses, worn inside the church, compelled her to lean on her brother to avoid running into things. Randolph, in a somber suit, looked like the polished bankers or lawyers that rode the elevators to the upper floors in my old office building.

With a great rustling of fabric, the congregation stood for the opening hymn. I leaned forward for a view of the verger leading the procession, followed by an earnest young acolyte hefting an ornate brass cross, flanked by two torch bearers. Behind them, the small choir followed, and finally the clergy. A star zapped me when Willis entered, the center of the lovely universe; the only one who mattered. I saw the world through him, saw myself through him, and knew I wanted to get in there with him forever.

Music stopped and the priest said, "I am the resurrection and the life." The mighty words resonated. I heard them for the first time. Fear took note and fled the premises, snagging my personal tangle of dread and beating a hasty departure. Once freed, my spirit surged and I met myself in clarity, suddenly unafraid of being alone. I wiped tear-filled eyes with my bare hands until the woman next to me offered a tissue. I turned the pages of the prayer book feeling new and strong. What was so hard about this and why was I only now feeling this lightness? Fresh confidence sustained me all the way through the Great Thanksgiving.

When the time came, I approached the rail for communion, eyes downcast and hands folded, passing the family, including Philippa, without looking at them. Aware that Willis could see me, I knelt at the rail, head bent. If my mother's spirit were here, as Willis had assured me it was, there must be so many others, a great swirling mass of ethereal beings hovering above us like spirits in an Italian Renaissance painting. In their parallel plane of existence, they welcomed the new arrival—Lady Weston—and supported me as I knelt. Outwardly, I projected calm, but beneath my composed exterior I harbored the entire heavenly company, their voices joining with angels and archangels in a chorus of eternal forgiveness. I could be free.