Spirits of Spring (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 4)

by Joy Elbel

  “But a few weeks before my due date, Brad begged me to forgive him and said that he was ready to be a husband and father. I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t seem right to go back on my promise to Mark and Megan and the thought of taking care of two babies was overwhelming. Brad’s job at the factory was barely going to keep three of us afloat, let alone four. After much heartbreaking discussion, we decided that separating the boys was the best decision for everyone involved. When they were born, we gave them matching names—Lucas Seeley and Lee’s full name was Seeley Lucas. Before she left the hospital with Lee, Megan gave me a lecture about responsibility and about how she wasn’t always going to clean up my messes for me. I had no intention of messing up again so I listened halfheartedly. Things were okay at first but the already strained relationship with my sister grew even more tenuous a year later.”

  Stacy rose out of her chair and pulled the blanket tightly to her. “I just can’t seem to stay warm. Would you like to have another cup of tea with me?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled absentmindedly as I tried to wrap my brain around everything she had just told me. Lucas was never even adopted! He’d been living with his birth parents all along. That trip to Pittsburgh was even more of a farce than I suspected it was. Even if Ruby still wanted to be with Lucas, she had to know what a damned liar he was. He used that whole story to garner her sympathy. I glanced at the clock and realized that my dad would probably be at the accident site soon but I couldn’t leave before I heard the rest of her story. It was one more thing my dad would be mad about but he was simply going to have to wait for me.

  “What happened a year later?” I asked as I joined her in the kitchen. “I got pregnant again—accidentally, of course,” she said as she poured the tea into my waiting cup. “When she found out about it, my sister stopped talking to me. I tried contacting her multiple times to arrange a meeting because Lee and Lucas hadn’t seen each other since the day they were born but she ignored my calls. Letters came back to me unopened. I had a miscarriage when I was six months pregnant but even that couldn’t melt her icy heart. Mark sent us photos of Lee for a while but eventually those stopped coming, too. Mark died in Afghanistan but we didn’t hear about it until a few years later. I had no contact with my sister until the day Lee died. Even then, she delivered the news with barely any emotion. I don’t think she ever let go of the bitterness she felt toward me for giving Mark the one thing she couldn’t.”

  “Lucas took it hard. He grew up knowing that he had a twin brother and I always hoped that Megan would look past her feelings for me for their sakes but she didn’t. A week after Lee died, I found out that I had cancer. Round after round of chemo and radiation were unsuccessful. We spent every penny we had on random treatments until we were left with nothing. The last few years have been very rough for Lucas—my illness, losing his brother, our terrible financial situation. We lost our house and practically everything else but I wouldn’t let him give up that car he loves so much. Every boy should have the car he loves. We moved to Charlotte’s Grove so that I could have a peaceful place to die but I’m afraid things have only gotten worse since we moved here. Leaving his girlfriend behind was hard for him but he wanted to do what was right for me. Oh God, how was I to know that she would follow him here and end up getting murdered?”

  Stacy began to sob while I stood there even more dumbfounded than before. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I know I’m probably boring you to death here but I’m too sick to ever leave the house. I’m always alone—Brad works long hours at Wolfe Industries and Lucas spends so much time working, too. They both seem to think that money is the answer but it isn’t. I’m not going to get better but they don’t want to believe that. I’m done with the treatments, I’m done fighting this. All I want to do is enjoy what time I have left with them.”

  Again, information overload. Lucas had a girlfriend? And she was murdered? She had to be talking about Portia, Jonas’s last victim. And where was Lucas working? The story was even more twisted than I could have imagined. Lucas was more twisted than I ever possibly could have imagined. I was just about to apologize for upsetting her and leave to go meet my dad when she dropped the biggest bombshell of them all.

  “I’m just glad that Lucas found some measure of happiness here. I’ve never seen him as happy as he is when he’s been with Misty. She gave him a job and helped him get his mind off of all the terrible things that have happened. I swear that girl is an angel.”

  I didn’t need to hear another word—I knew exactly what job Misty gave Lucas. She was paying him to drive a wedge between me and Ruby. I dropped my manners and my teacup at the same time and flew out the door without so much as a goodbye.

  5. Weeding Out the Truth

  Just as I started to cry and accept the fact that I couldn’t stop the horrible things that were about to happen to me, the sound of hurried footsteps came floating in from the hallway. I managed to shout out one word before Lucas clamped his hand over my mouth.

  “ZACH!” The odds that he was even looking for me were slim to none but he was the one person I wanted to find me. Technically, it didn’t matter who was here to help me but on some level, it did. He was the one person in the world that made me feel completely safe, the one person I didn’t mind seeing me at my worst. Zach was the one person I swore I couldn’t live without.

  The footsteps increased in sound and speed after I called his name. I didn’t have to see his face—I knew in my heart that it was Zach. All of the fears that something bad had happened to him faded away in an instant. It wasn’t too late for us. He cared enough to come looking for me and Fate was allowing him to find me just in time. I was right from the very start—Zach and I were made for each other. We had a connection that no one else could compare to, one that no one else could ever understand. My heart would never be led astray again.

  In a flash, Zach ripped Lucas away from me and threw him across the room. The dressing table shattered under his weight and smashed to the floor beneath him. Zach’s eyes were full of rage—triple the amount I saw on the day he beat up Ryan. Lucas, dazed and trying to shake off the hit, struggled to get back onto his feet. I wanted to see him pay for what he tried to do to me but not at Zach’s expense. Desperately, I reached out for Zach’s arm and begged him to behave.

  “Zach, he’s not worth it! You saved me and that’s all you needed to do! Please don’t let your anger control you again! I love you and only you! I don’t want to see you get into any more trouble because of me!”

  I could see the internal struggle he was facing reflecting in his expression. He wanted nothing more than to beat Lucas until he was unconscious—that much was obvious. But unlike that day in the hallway, he was weighing the options before acting. He was listening to my pleas. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on tight. If he could resist the urge to go after Lucas, I would know once and for all that his anger was firmly in check.

  The closer I clung to him, the more I could feel his muscles unwind. Full body tautness slowly gave way to relaxation until all that remained of his anger was a slight tremble. He put his arms around me and I collapsed against him. All he said to me was, “Let me take you home, Ruby.”

  I nodded my head, grabbed my stuff, and let him lead me out of the room. I took one look at Lucas and wanted to throw up. How could I have been so stupid? He was nothing like his brother. As we were about to walk through the doorway, he called out to me.

  “I’m sorry, Ru, but I needed the money.” Money? He did all of this for money? I couldn’t even face him and there wasn’t a single thing in this world that I wanted to say to him. Instead, I did something I rarely ever did. I took my hand off of Zach just long enough to flip Lucas off as I walked away. Like. A. Boss. It felt like one of those scenes in a movie where the hero strides off into the sunset while multiple things explode behind him. Yeah, that’s exactly how it felt.

  Neither one of us spoke a word to each other as we left the theater. I had so many questions for Zach
. How did he know that I needed help? Where did he go after he left the theater? Why was his dad waiting for him in the parking lot looking incredibly pissed off? But the biggest question that had been on my mind no longer needed an answer—he still loved me. Even though we hadn’t had time to talk yet, I knew that everything was going to be okay between us. He would give me a chance to explain and to make things up to him. He didn’t have to tell me he still loved me. It was something I felt inside—I couldn’t explain it but I knew. It was a feeling I never wanted to have to live without. Ever.

  I handed Zach the keys to my car and he opened the door for me to get in. He asked me to wait there for him while he talked to his dad for a minute. After a brief, initially heated but eventually civil, conversation with his father, Zach joined me in the car and we drove away. There were so many things we needed to talk about but there was one odd thing at the forefront of my mind. My feelings for Zach hadn’t changed at all. In fact, he somehow managed to do the impossible tonight—he made me love him even more. But after everything that happened with Lucas, my feelings about one thing changed significantly.

  “I don’t want to have sex with you, Zach!” I blurted out like a total moron.

  “O-kay,” he replied hesitantly. I was hoping for a different reaction to my badly timed outburst but instead the car filled up with awkward silence. Would my mouth ever learn to wait for my brain to fully form a sentence before it tried to fill in the blanks? What I said came out so wrong, so dreadfully wrong.

  “What I mean is, after tonight and what Lucas intended to do to me, I don’t even want to think about that kind of stuff for a while anyway. I know that it would be completely different with you but it’s just not something I want to do any time soon. Are you okay with that?”

  Zach took one hand off the steering wheel and wrapped it around both of mine. “Ruby, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say that. I’m more than okay with it. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I know that everything will change after we do. I kind of like who we are now and I want to enjoy it while it lasts because once it’s gone, we’ll never get it back.”

  That—that right there—was why I loved him. He thought about a lot of things that most people didn’t think about. He looked at our relationship differently—he looked at it with his heart. His depth of understanding of the true beauty of what we had overwhelmed me. We always ended up in the same place eventually—just sometimes we took different paths to get there. What I found with Zach was irreplaceable. He was irreplaceable. I couldn’t control my emotions and I started to cry.

  “Aw, Ruby, don’t cry, sweetie! It’s okay, you’re okay now. You know I’ll always be there for you. I wish I could have gotten there sooner but I’ll never let Lucas hurt you again—I promise.”

  “I’m not crying because of what happened tonight. I’m crying because I love you and I almost messed that up because I couldn’t get over my past. But all of that is over now—that’s my promise to you.”

  Zach didn’t say a word. He simply gave my hands a light squeeze and I hung my head and cried even harder. He understood me in a way that no one else ever had and no one else ever possibly could. My prayers were answered—I got the second chance with him that I wanted so desperately. I would never let anything come between us again.

  As we pulled up to the mansion, I remembered that Dad still wasn’t so keen on the idea of me and Zach dating. In fact, he had definitely forbidden it that night he caught us in bed together. Even once he realized that Zach wasn’t the one who sent me the lingerie, he still seemed firmly set against us ever being together again. I wasn’t in the mood for drama so I asked Zach if he would mind just dropping me off and then calling me once he got home.

  “You do realize that I’m driving your car, right Ruby?” Zach asked. “Honestly, I totally wasn’t paying attention. Our cars are so much alike that when I’m not driving, I automatically assume that we’re in your Neon. Where is your car, by the way? I didn’t see it when we left the Bantam—not that I was paying much attention back there, though.”

  “Well,” Zach said sadly, “our cars used to be so much alike. If you could see my car the way it looks now, you wouldn’t have any problem telling them apart.”

  “You wrecked it tonight, didn’t you? Right around 8:47, right?” Zach gave me a look of pure shock. “How did you know? I mean, I suppose you could have guessed that I wrecked it based on what I just said to you but there’s no way that you could possibly know the exact time that it happened!”

  “It was really weird. I had Lucas drive me to the cast party at the country club because I thought you might be there with Rachel. For some reason, I took note of the time as we pulled in. As I got out of the car, this freak wind blew past me and chilled me down to my very core. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong and Rachel felt it, too. To be perfectly honest with you, I thought you were dead.” Cue the tears. This was one night I would rather forget.

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t think your ability to see ghosts is the only special talent you have—I swear you’re a little bit psychic, too. I happened to look at the clock in the car just before I wrecked. 8:47 exactly. You are one mysterious woman, Ruby.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I’m not psychic. I just think that you and I have some strange connection that defies explanation.” “I agree and even if there was an explanation, I wouldn’t want to hear it. We’re a mystery that’s better left unsolved. Are you ready to go inside now?”

  Inside. Not really. I wasn’t looking forward to Dad’s reaction when he saw me with Zach. Things happened tonight that I didn’t really want to talk to him or Shelly about. All I wanted was to find some sort of little cocoon that Zach and I could curl up in together and never face the world again. He was the only one that I would ever discuss the details of tonight with. But that cocoon didn't exist and I would need to face my parents and the rest of the world sooner or later. With a heavy sigh, I nodded my head and dried my eyes as best as I could.

  As soon as we set foot into the foyer, Dad was on Zach like a zombie at a Mensa convention. While his face began to turn an odd shade of red, I tried to prepare a rebuttal for his as yet still unspoken accusations. Shockingly, Zach was the first one to speak.

  “Dr. Matthews, may I speak to you in private for a minute please. I want to talk to you about my relationship with your daughter.”

  Whoa. I certainly didn’t see that one coming and by the look of surprise on his face, neither did my dad. I had no idea what Zach was planning to say to him but he already had the upper hand. There wasn’t even a trace of fear on his face and his leg was firmly planted on the floor without any nervous fidgeting in sight. Whatever it was, he knew exactly what he wanted to say.

  Shelly popped out of the dining room doorway just in time to see Zach and Dad disappear down the hallway and into the Man Cave. “Wait a second—was that Zach? I should go check to make sure your dad isn’t breaking the Hippocratic Oath in there,” she said as she marched across the foyer.

  “No—don’t. I don’t know why Zach wanted to talk to Dad but it must be important. I think it’s something he feels he needs to do. We should leave them alone,” I said in protest. I thought about it carefully for a second and then added, “Unless somebody starts screaming, of course.” Screaming would be bad, very, very bad.

  Nervous about what was potentially unfolding in the next room, I plopped down on the bottom step of the grand staircase so that I was close enough to hear the first hint of a scream from the Man Cave. The grandfather clock gave a perfectly timed “BONG” as my butt hit the step. Ten o’clock. Based on how much had occurred since the last time I looked at the time in Lucas’s car, I was surprised at how little time had actually passed. Time was a funny thing. We measured it in seconds, minutes, and hours because it was the only real way to keep track of it but the true passage of time was in moments. Good ones, bad ones—they had a way of distorting your pe
rception of reality. Like right now, as I sat there waiting for Zach to emerge—hopefully in one piece—from his conversation with my dad.

  Shelly sat down beside me and gave me a hug. “You were wonderful on stage tonight! I have to admit I was a little scared for you at first because I know how introverted you are. But let me tell you, after those first few lines you were nothing short of perfect! You’ve grown up so much since we moved here. You’ll be heading off to college soon and we’ll barely ever get to see you. I’m so happy for you yet so sad for me!”

  I could see the tears forming in her eyes and I couldn’t take it. Tonight was emotional enough as it was for me—I couldn’t handle any more sadness. “Please, Shelly. I can’t talk about this tonight. Let’s talk about something good. How’s the bed and breakfast coming along? Did you get all of your business licenses and stuff approved yet?”

  “No, Jason and I decided to put all of that on hold for a few months. We decided not to open until the fall. That way, we can spend more time with you before you head off to college.” Despite my efforts to steer clear of any more emotional distress, Shelly burst into tears and so did I. We were a picture perfect tissue commercial just waiting to be filmed. While I have to admit that the thought of leaving home did make me sad, that wasn’t the primary reason for my tears. I still felt terrible inside for how I must have made Zach feel when he knew that I couldn’t decide between him and Lucas. I needed to find a way to reassure him that nothing like that would ever happen again.