Chapter 3

Ichabod stood by the window all night. He just stared into the darkness and tried unsuccessful not to think about Katrina. He did not want to wonder where she would go or if she was warm enough out there in the ice-cold night.

She is not freezing. She has enough money from the heritage of her father. She will find a nice hotel and stay there until she finds another man to mess with. But her voice sounded so broken when she told me she loved me. Maybe she had been honest.

"Stop that" Ichabod told himself. He took his wedding band of and threw it in the corner of his room.

He would not allow himself to think about her anymore. Ichabod decided to get dressed and to go for a walk. That would clear his head. But soon he realized that everything around him reminded him of her. When he came past a book store he could not keep himself from looking into the window and thinking about which book she might like. When he noticed a jewelry stall on the marked he wondered how she would look with a certain pair of earrings or a brooch. Whenever he saw a rider he thought about how graceful she looked on a horse. She has really messed with his my mind. I hope she said the truth when she told me it would be over within a week. And I hope I will not go crazy missing her in the meantime.

Katrina had taken the next train back to Sleepy Hollow. She did not know what to do now and she needed a familiar place to stay and clear her thoughts. So she had decided to live in the small hut in the forest where she had spent a part of her childhood. Of course she could have afforded a fancy hotel. Her father had been a rich man and as his only relative she had inherited all his money. But she did not want an anonymous room. She needed a place that reminded her of the times when her parents had both been alive. A time in which her father had not been a rich and busy man. The three of them had been poor and they did not have anything but each other. It had been the most happy and carefree time of her whole life.

Katrina had hoped to retrieve this feeling of contentedness and belonging with Ichabod. A part of her still hoped that he would come back to her. Maybe he would realize that his feelings for her were not only induced by the spell and then come back to her. But she knew the chances were not good.

I cannot seriously expect him to ever trust me again. Ichabod is a man whose trust is hard to gain and easy to loose. He probably never had anyone who deserved this gift. I intended to change that, to make him happier than he has ever been before. You really succeeded, Katrina. There is no better way to gain the trust of the love of your live than putting a spell on him. But what should I have done? I knew he would not need a long time to solve the case. And a man who is as careful as Ichabod would have never proposed to a girl he knew for only some weeks without a little help. He would not have taken the risk to share his life with a woman he barely knew. He would have thought what he felt is just a short-lived attraction. But what if it had been exactly that? Many men have told me that I am a beautiful and interesting woman. Maybe Ichabod had only been fascinated by a mysterious and lively beauty, a woman who was different from the women he knew. Would he have gotten bored with me after the initial attraction had gone? Will he still care enough about me to even ask himself these kinds of questions when the effects of my spell subside?

When it started to get dark outside Katrina curled down on the plain mattress she used as a bed, softly caressing her wedding band and wishing it were Ichabod, until she finally cried herself to sleep, not knowing that her husband was doing exactly the same thing far away from her.