by Donna Alward
The alcohol-fueled fuzziness in her brain was long gone. She couldn’t blame this on the wine or anything else. What she could do, though, was try to salvage a little of her pride.
“I shouldn’t have, either,” she murmured, straightening her blouse and trying desperately to school her features. She’d never had much of a poker face. “I guess the pinot was better than I thought.”
“You’re a really attractive woman, Abby, but starting anything would be a mistake. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
That was almost as good of a line as It’s not you, it’s me. For some reason it made her angry. Maybe because the dismissal came so easily to his lips. “Why? Because you’re on the rebound?” She asked the question before she could help herself.
The change in his face was so instant that it made her step backward. Surprise, pain, anger. “Who told you that?” he asked sharply, his black eyes glinting at her in the bright light of the hall.
She hadn’t realized one simple question could cause such an instant reaction. “Jess might have said something…”
“Jess should mind her own business,” he growled, running a hand through his hair.
If she’d had any doubts about Jess’s claim that he was suffering a broken heart, his reaction erased them completely. Whoever had hurt him had done a good job. “I think we’ve established that,” she said quietly.
Despite the kiss and the fact that he’d started it, it was abundantly clear that he wasn’t really interested in her. She certainly didn’t want to be some charity case at a family function, a pity-the-new-girl sort of hanger-on. “Listen, about Saturday…” She swallowed past the lump of awkwardness in her throat. “You can just drop me off here after we finish with the samples.”
The fire in his eyes mellowed and he blew out a breath. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly. You’re not interested in this—whatever this is—and Jess is interfering, though why, I have no idea. Rather than be uncomfortable … I don’t want to be a pity date or make things more uncomfortable between us than they already are.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.” His dark eyes burned into hers. “I said it wasn’t wise.”
She didn’t know what to do with that. On one hand it made the butterflies in her stomach start winging around again. On another she’d agreed it was a mistake. She began to chew on her lip again and consciously made herself stop. The truth was, even if she were interested in Tom Arseneault, he was still hung up on someone else. That would only be asking for trouble.
“You’re right. It’s not the smart thing.”
“Now that we’ve established that, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come. It doesn’t have to be a date.”
“I’m not sure Jess got that memo.”
“I’ll make sure she understands. I’ll remind her that she’s the one who invited you.” His agitation mellowed as he looked down at her. “If you’d go as my friend, that’d be great. I hate walking into these things alone. Really, Abby, it’s me, not you.”
She raised an eyebrow. There it was. Double whammy of letdowns tonight, then.
“I know, I know.” He had the grace to look sheepish. “Worst cliché in history but it’s true. Just because Jess doesn’t know how to mind her own business, doesn’t mean she wasn’t right. I’m not—”
“Interested,” Abby finished for him, her voice flat.
He shifted his feet. “Well, clearly I am on some level. I did kiss you.”
“Why did you?” She tilted her head and watched his face. He had such an interesting face, a little dark and mysterious but with a glint of good humor and the strong set of stubbornness. How could she not be drawn to him?
The question seemed to send the tension humming between them again. And it wasn’t relieved by his answer.
“I don’t know. I just looked at you and … and I wanted to.”
This time she did bite her lip. He’d wanted to kiss her, but was incapable of anything deeper. That spelled trouble in her books. She had to start looking at him as her contractor and not like …
Her mouth watered. Not like dessert.
“Come on, Abby, it’s a long weekend. It’s not right that you end up sitting here by yourself while there’s a perfectly good party happening. Don’t let Jess’s interfering drive you away.”
It wouldn’t be Jess driving her away. And the truth was that while kissing Tom had been a brilliant experiment on her part, she knew it was nothing more. It wasn’t just Tom carrying around a cart of baggage. She was a long way from trusting anyone. From opening up and letting anyone see the real Abby Foster. One kiss wasn’t a cure-all.
But if she backed out now, how would it look? It would look like tonight’s kiss mattered more to her than to him. She would look like a big ol’ chicken.
“Make sure she knows,” Abby said. “No matchmaking.” She leveled him with a look. “And I’m staying away from the wine.”
He chuckled a little. “Fair enough.”
“And what I said earlier, about my great-grandmother … just forget it, okay? It’s a combination of an overactive imagination and too many novels.”
“Consider it forgotten.”
“Okay. I’ll still go on Saturday. Besides, no one but the two of us knows what just happened. We’ll tell Jess that you dropped me off and went home. End of story.”
“That what happened?” He grinned, and the atmosphere around them eased again.
“Exactly.” She smiled back. Dammit, it was bad enough that Tom looked good enough to eat. It wasn’t fair that she was starting to like him, too. It had been easier to dismiss him when he was boorish and aggravating.
“I should probably get going, then.”
“Probably.”
She walked him to the door, keeping her hand on the knob as he stopped on the veranda. “Thanks for bringing me home.”
“Anytime. If you need anything…”
It felt like a polite, empty offer. The kiss still hung between them. No matter what they’d both said, how they’d backed off, the kiss couldn’t be taken back.
He disappeared into the dark and moments later his truck started and the headlights came on.
Then he was gone. And when Abby turned around, she caught her breath and pressed her hand to her pounding heart.
It was her. Edith Foster.
Same gray-blue dress, same long hair that touched her shoulders. Same sad, pleading look in her eyes. She was here. Real but not real. Like Abby was seeing her through some sort of filter even though every detail was clear.
Her heart thudded in her throat as she asked clearly, “Edith? What do you want, Edith?”
There was no answer, but Edith turned and walked toward the stairs.
Abby’s heart pounded so loudly she could hear it in her ears. When Edith paused at the bottom of the steps and looked back, Abby knew that she expected her to follow. And while Abby was completely freaked out at the fact that she was taking instructions from a ghost, oddly enough she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t feel threatened in any way. And so, with the fleeting thought that she must be losing her mind, Abby put one foot in front of the other and followed her great-grandmother up the stairs.
On the second floor, Edith paused and looked out the back window toward the outbuilding that had once been the carriage house and, later, a garage. Edith only paused a moment, her fingers against the glass before she turned back to Abby, her face profoundly sad. She then led the way into the bedroom with the smaller room linked to it. Abby was sure now that this room had been for babies. For Marian and Iris. Had the bigger room been Edith’s? A nurse’s?
Edith paused near one corner of the room and stared at her feet. Then she looked up, directly into Abby’s eyes.
And then, just when Abby had been about to repeat her question, the figure melted away.
The room turned cold. Abby’s heartbeat was still accelerated and she stared for several seconds at the spot where Edith had been. There was no do
ubt in her mind now that she was sharing the house with the ghost of her great-grandmother. And she was equally certain that there was something Edith wanted her to do. She wouldn’t have led her up here otherwise. But what?
Abby went to the window in the larger bedroom, the one that overlooked the backyard, but with the lights on she could only see her own reflection in the glass. She wasn’t calm enough to cut the lights and look into the darkness; considering the strange twist in the evening, who knew what she’d see if she looked out? Shivering, she retraced her steps back to the nursery, taking slow steps until she was in the corner where Edith had stood. Why had she stopped here, in this precise spot? What was she trying to say?
The floor creaked beneath her foot, audible in the complete silence, and Abby looked down at her toes.
Edith had looked down, too.
Abby’s pulse started hammering again as she knelt on the floor, feeling along the wide planking. The piece of flooring was shorter here, maybe only three feet long. There was give along its length; it bowed slightly when Abby pressed her hands upon it and she considered trying to take the board up herself.
Tom would kill her, wouldn’t he? She couldn’t start ripping at original flooring. If she wrecked it, it could never be replaced. And yet there had to be a reason why Edith had stood just here, in this very spot.
She got up from her knees and sighed. This was insane. Besides, it was eleven o’clock at night. Whatever Edith wanted her to find would have to wait. She shook her head and went back down the hall to her room, put on her nightgown and brushed her teeth. No more odd sounds, no more Edith. It was like nothing had ever happened as she crawled beneath the covers.
But she left the downstairs lights on. Just in case. And lay awake for a long time while her imagination ran wild.
* * *
Abby woke up with sweat beaded on her brow. The sun was already up, streaming through the window, and she checked her watch—seven-thirty.
Her dream was already slipping away to the fringes of her mind and her brain scrambled to gather the pieces and keep them whole. It felt important somehow. Edith had been there, and a tall, blond man who had made her laugh. But then Edith had been crying and there’d been another man, a darker man, holding a baby in his arms. Edith was screaming and the man had held the baby out from his body, as if he couldn’t stand to hold it closer.
That was when Abby woke up, her limbs stiff with fear. Exasperated, she tried to reach into her mind for more detail. What had happened next? What had she missed? What did it all mean?
The slamming of a truck door jolted her out of remembering. Tom was here already. The dark, oppressive feeling of the dream mingled with the shocking memory of him kissing her last night. She sat up in the bed, the sheets pooling around her hips. Heard him turn the key she’d given him in the lock. Heard the front door shut behind him.
Abby sank back into the pillows, torn between jumping out of bed and still trying desperately to hang on to the tattered bits of the dream. There was something important she needed to remember. She wanted to cling to those last few moments, the last dregs of memory before getting up and facing the day.
Before coming face-to-face with him. Her dream finally evaporated from her mind, pushed away by the memory of last night. It was bound to be awkward between them. She could still feel Tom’s body against hers, the way he kissed her like she was water and he was a man dying of thirst. It wasn’t a big leap to fantasize about what might have come next. The big surprise was knowing she probably wouldn’t have stopped him. All she’d been able to think about was getting closer to the hard, hot length of his body.
His boots echoed in the downstairs hall and she was thrown out of that delicious bit of fantasy as his footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Up the stairs! And she was in her a nightgown!
“Abby?” he called. “You okay?”
Dammit. She was always up before he arrived. Always, ever since the first time he’d seen her sweaty and gross after her run. She made sure she was dressed and had her hair tidied and her teeth brushed. Now her hair was a tangled mess and she had morning breath and …
She opened her mouth to call out that she’d be right down, but before she could get out the first word, he appeared in her doorway.
“Um … hi.” She pulled the sheet up to her chest.
“Hi.”
The man wore work boots constantly. Abby realized she was getting quite attached to them. He hadn’t shaved this morning and dark stubble shadowed his jaw, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow. It would be much easier to not think about him if he’d stop looking so damned appealing.
“You feeling okay? You’re always up before I get here. I was worried when you didn’t answer.”
Curse him for actually looking concerned. “I’m not hungover, if that’s what you’re asking.” She cringed as she heard her sharpish tone. It was the interrupted dream putting her on edge, not a headache or any such symptom.
He grinned, lighting up the room. “You didn’t have that much to drink. You were practically sober when I left last night.”
Yes, she had been. Which meant that neither could place the blame of what had happened between them on the alcohol.
“I had trouble falling asleep last night, that’s all.” She’d lain beneath the blankets for a long time, thinking about the floorboard. And the more she thought about it the more she was sure there was something hidden beneath it. Why else would Edith have led her there if there wasn’t something important to find?
The awkwardness multiplied in the room and she realized he’d quite understandably misinterpreted what she said. Naturally he’d think it was their kiss that had kept her up. She wondered if she would ever stop sounding like a complete idiot when he was around.
“I’m sorry.” He backed out of the doorway and without thinking she leaped from the bed.
“No, it’s not what you think.” She felt her cheeks heat and pushed on, trying to explain. “It wasn’t you, Tom. I mean … it doesn’t need to be awkward between us, okay?”
And yet here she stood in a cotton nightie that ended several inches above her knees. Awkward was an understatement. She hurried to elaborate. “I found something last night after you left.” Ignoring the fact that she was barely half-dressed, she brushed by him. “Come here, and tell me what you think.”
She led him into the empty bedroom and went straight to the floorboard. “This is loose, here.”
He knelt and felt around the board. “I can tack it back into place. Nothing to lose sleep over.” He sounded genuinely puzzled.
“I don’t want you to tack it into place. I want you to rip it up.”
He stood and gaped at her. “What? Are you crazy?”
“I think there’s something underneath it.”
“Hopefully not rotted joists,” he grumbled.
“I was going to try to do it last night, but I knew that if I wrecked the board it would be wrecking the whole floor.”
“You’re damned right it would.” He frowned. “What makes you think that there’s something underneath there?”
She already felt ridiculous for mentioning the whole “house is haunted” thing. If she told him about last night he’d think she was completely out to lunch. She shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
“You’re willing to chance wrecking this flooring on a hunch? I could never replace it, Abby. Not and have it match. You do understand that, right? If I wreck this one board, it means replacing the whole floor.”
She looked up at him and nodded. “Which is why I didn’t go looking for a pry bar last night. Will you do it? It won’t get ruined if you do it.”
He shook his head. “You are the strangest woman I’ve ever met.”
“I know.” It wasn’t the first time she’d been called odd. She’d spent a good part of her childhood with her head in a book or in the clouds. Oddball came with the territory.
“If I say no, you’re going to do it when I’m not here,
aren’t you?”
She smiled. “Probably. And then you’ll be sorry.”
He sighed heavily. “All right then. Let me get some things. Why don’t you…” His gaze ran down the loose material of her nightshirt, which she suddenly realized was quite thin. “Get dressed.”
He disappeared out the door and down the stairs. Hurriedly she dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and pull a hair band into her hair. By the time he came back up, she was coming out of the bedroom looking perfectly tidy. The way she should have looked when he’d first arrived.
She waited while Tom used a small pry bar and claw hammer to lift the board, working it a bit at a time to keep from cracking the old wood. Impatient, Abby shifted her weight from side to side, trying to peer into the gap. Finally Tom lifted the other end and the nails let go with a squeak. “All in one piece,” he said, relief in his voice. “And you were right.” He looked up, amazement marking his features. “There’s something in there.”
It was too crazy. Abby knelt beside Tom and watched as he set the plank to one side. A small box was nestled in the gap. Carefully Abby reached in and removed it, kneeling on the bare floor, ignoring how hard the wood felt on her kneecaps.
She lifted the lid on the box.
“Oh, Tom.” The first item was a smaller version of the picture that was downstairs on the mantel. Edith and a baby. She turned it over and could still make out the slightly smudged ink on the back. “Edith and Iris. Tom, it’s my grandmother.” She touched the picture reverently. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? And look at all that blond hair.”
Tom knelt beside her. “What else is in there?”
Abby reached in and took out a lock of fine, pale hair, tied with a thread at each end. “Do you suppose it’s Iris’s?”
“It could be.” He lifted a watch out of the box. “This is very nice.”
“It’s a man’s watch. Elijah’s, do you think?” Tom turned it over but there were no markings on it.
He shrugged. “It must be. But why would this stuff all be under the floor?”
