Souls Lost (Appalachian Souls Book 1)

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  Given the blackness overhead, leaving the interior of the house too dark without the lights on, Zoe worried about him driving home and getting caught in a downpour. He was only a few blocks away, but when the clouds finally opened up, the storm could be climatic.

  The doorbell sounded far away, though in fact it was less than twenty feet from where she sat. The sound had to travel through the house and out to the backyard, all the windows and doors closed.

  Zoe stood, taking her coffee, wondering who would come calling so early in the morning. Everyone knew they’d find her father at the grocery store or chatting with his buddies at the coffee shop. It didn’t immediately occur to her that someone would want to talk with her. Donna would have called first or texted.

  The door swung open easily, the wood feeling lighter in Zoe’s hand than she remembered from her childhood. Because of that, she’d opened it with far more force than she needed.

  Taran Rees stood there in his uniform, an ugly gray color that bordered on brown, black tool belt at his waist carrying all the paraphernalia that police officers had to carry and which could, in theory, keep them safe. Zoe wondered how long it took them to learn to find everything quickly and easily. She’d be in the middle of a crisis looking for the one item she needed, feeling her belt here and there, knowing what she wanted but unable to find it.

  “Zoe?” Taran said. His voice was lower than she’d remembered and held hardly any trace of an Appalachian drawl. If Zoe had had one, it was gone after years on the west coast. She didn’t hear her own voice, and people never commented on where she might be from when she was in Portland.

  “Taran. What brings you here?” Zoe asked. She didn’t open the screen door. She just stood waiting, looking at him with interest. She was probably not being a very good hostess. Her mom would have been embarrassed by her, but Jodie was long past embarrassment now.

  “I have some questions I’d like to ask you. Can I come in?” Taran was already reaching for the screen door.

  His interest intrigued and annoyed her. Zoe got a feeling, not like the bad one from yesterday, but a different one, one that suggested things were going to change and she had no idea if the change was a good thing.

  “What kinds of questions?” Zoe asked. She didn’t move. She didn’t reach to stop him from opening the door, but she placed herself so that he couldn’t easily walk in.

  “I’d like to go over what you remember about your mother’s…” Taran trailed off searching for the least offensive word, but clearly one wasn’t coming to him as his mouth gaped open and closed several times like a dying fish.

  “Why?” Zoe refused to make it easy on him. She didn’t want to go over her momma’s death. She didn’t want to relive that time frame. She’d been there, in Corbin Meadow, laughing with her momma that summer, enjoying the time away from the Portland rain. Her momma had talked about the planning they were doing on the council and making a name for the town. The deal with the tech firm was just the beginning. She’d gotten the zoning on the condos through which would allow more housing at affordable prices for newcomers to the area.

  There had been real barbeque, not the sort you got on the west coast which could be anything thrown on a grill with a bit of sauce, but a real southern style barbeque where everyone had a favorite sauce and a secret recipe, corn on the cob, wine, and Zoe’s favorite—hush puppies. The day after, she and her momma had gone to the Outer Banks for a girls’ weekend and gotten sun and talked about life and whether or not Zoe really wanted to have a baby or if she and Tyler should wait.

  Zoe had still been riding high on her visit, all smiles as she sat in her cramped airline seat on her way to O’Hare for the last leg of her flight into Portland. She’d checked her phone when she got the gate, seeing an urgent message from her dad. The crashing sense of doom came rushing back, forcing her to acknowledge the tears that had started to burn behind her eyes as she remembered hearing her dad so choked up that he could hardly speak when she’d finally called back. Once again, Zoe heard the confusion in his voice, and knowing that her mom being “gone” was so much worse than those words could ever convey.

  And Taran wanted her to live through that again.

  “It could be important,” Taran said. “For Elaine.”

  Zoe looked at him, her eyes still feeling watery, realizing that he did want to help and knowing that sometimes helping meant hurting. The set of his shoulders, the faint trace scent of sweat, and the worried look in his eyes told her he wasn’t any more comfortable with the conversation than she was.

  Chapter 9

  Taran didn’t think he’d ever get through the door. Zoe’s family home was one of the larger ones on the west side of town, those homes that had been built mostly in the seventies when the locals had had plenty of children and those children weren’t running away as far and as fast as they could to places they’d heard about but never seen. As such, it had a large oak front door carved by hand by a local craftsman and sold cheaply to the builder. The varnish was peeling but the color remained, darker than ever, giving it an aristocratic feel. The storm door with the screen in the top half looked practically new, the white paint perfect around all edges.

  Zoe, too, looked good, standing behind the screen which Taran held onto, his hand beginning to sweat as he wondered if she’d ever move back to let him in. Her hair was long and brown and fell haphazardly around her face in a look that commercial models worked hours for. Her skin was paler than he was used to, but she lived in a place that rained more days than not, or so he’d been told. Her jeans were worn, white threads covering her knees indicative of a hole starting to wear. She had on bright red socks which matched the plain red T-shirt she wore.

  Her deep brown eyes had met his, already slightly moist just with his asking to talk to her, but her foot moved back an inch and then her body turned slightly as if letting him go by. He still had to brush too close to her passing through the doorway, feeling the feather light touch of her arm or perhaps her breast, a thrill running through his body that he didn’t care to look too closely at. She smelled of pine and ocean and something exotic as if she’d traveled not across the country but across the world.

  The living room wasn’t large by modern standards but was decent sized for the era, the long narrow room that held a real fireplace, a modern gas inset having been added more recently as the family had become tired of buying firewood, lighting fires, and then cleaning up the ashes after a cozy evening.

  Zoe gestured to the room beyond the door. The furniture there was more worn, the brown sofa looked as if it would be at home in his own second hand house with cushions that didn’t look very soft but looked lived in and loved. Loved was something Taran couldn’t say for his own furniture. He walked in and waited for Zoe to claim a seat, which she did on the end of the sofa.

  In front of him was a sliding glass door, the curtains open to the rain outside. Taran absently brushed his shirt, feeling for stray drops that dotted the fabric that hadn’t yet absorbed them. There was a brown tweed recliner on the other side of the door across from the sofa. He chose that, sitting on the front edge so he didn’t slide back and look as if he’d come in for a nap.

  When they were both settled and Taran had taken out his notebook, placing it awkwardly on his knee, which forced him to lean over as if he were a third-grade girl protecting her secret coloring book. He stretched his back and looked at Zoe who was watching, not saying anything, her eyes giving nothing away.

  “What brought you home the last time you saw your mom?” Taran asked.

  Zoe drew in a breath like a shield against the pain Taran was certain he was causing her. She sipped from her glass, which was a tall, thin, clear plastic thing that held some sort of milky brown drink with ice. He shuddered at the thought of iced coffee. Coffee was made to be hot in his world, no matter what people might do outside of Corbin Meadow.

  “My mom had asked me to come visit. She said we hadn’t had any girls’ time since I’d gotten marri
ed about five years before. Tyler couldn’t get off work.” Zoe paused as if she wanted to add something.

  Taran waited, wondering what the pause was about.

  “So I came. I used up a week of my own vacation which meant Tyler would probably go off somewhere without me.” Again that pause, that slight frown, irritation almost from the lines on her face, like she didn’t want to know what Tyler might have been up to.

  “Mom and I had some time here and over on the Outer Banks. We stayed in Kill Devil Hills, if you need that. It was a place we’d been to before. Mostly we talked about girl stuff, caught up. Mom was thrilled with the fact that she’d gotten the zoning approved for the condos, and when we were here she was pointing out all the new buildings that were going in on the edge of town,” Zoe finished.

  Taran remembered. There had been a frenzy of building when the tech company, Jack Lyle, came in. It was headquartered in Iowa or someplace distant and not very interesting, the kind of place that surprised him a high tech company would evolve in, computer guys liking the easy living and liberal morals of the West Coast. The company had rebuilt one of the furniture warehouses for their business, but there had been a need for more housing and a new development had gone in on the south edge of town. It had included the condos as well as some homes.

  Another gas station had been started and there was the plan for a small commercial center with another coffee shop, a fancier one than down on the Saunders’ place, but that was still waiting. Without Jodie Mason-Hyer to spearhead the zoning and to put pressure on the mayor and the rest of the council everything seemed to have stalled, as if she’d done the building by sheer force of will. Taran hoped the empty spaces would fill eventually even though she was gone.

  “Did your mom seem worried about anything?” Taran asked.

  “She’d been upset about Beth, I mean really upset. I think that’s what had started her wanting me to come visit. Amanda had just died by the time I got out here, and whatever healing my mom had done over Beth was just crushed by what happened to Amanda. Mom wasn’t close to her like she was with Beth. I mean Amanda wasn’t much older than I was, but the fact that Amanda was close to my age set Mom off. I think that’s why she was so eager to take me out of town to do something,” Zoe said.

  Again that hesitation. Taran thought there were things she wasn’t saying, guilt she held close, but not the guilt of someone who had killed people. Zoe hadn’t been there when Beth and Amanda were murdered. He could verify that but was pretty certain that she was telling the truth. Her trip to see her momma had been a short one.

  “But your Mom came up with the idea for a visit after Beth was killed?” Taran clarified, wanting to be sure he was on track, that someone couldn’t have been watching and waiting for Zoe and had gotten to town first.

  Zoe closed her eyes, thinking. “I’m pretty sure. I mean she was always asking me to come visit, but I’m pretty sure that what made me decide to come was that she said something about not waiting too long to get together. Like Beth’s death had reminded her that things happen and we needed to see each other.”

  Taran nodded and made a note.

  Zoe was staring past him, lost in thought. “Almost like she knew.” The whisper lingered in the air between them.

  Chapter 10: Before

  Dixie normally loved it when it snowed but not that time. The wind outside was whipping the trees into a frenzy worthy of small children around a Christmas tree or dogs around a new bone, and the temperature was low enough that when said wind found the tiny cracks around the seals of the windows, it was cold even inside. The fire in the wood stove was crackling loudly. Lunch had been only sandwiches because the power was down on their road.

  Helen probably still had power, Dixie thought from her place on the corner of the sofa closest to the wood stove. Her mother was knitting something, working by feel rather than by sight. Her father had the kerosene lantern next to him as he tried to read the paper. Dixie used the light from that to pretend to read.

  The way the white stuff was coming down it seemed as if the house should have been plenty bright, but the clouds were thicker and darker than Dixie had ever seen them. This was not the kind of snow they usually had even in the mountains. It was likely going to be one of those storms everyone talked about for years and years.

  What she really wanted to do was go talk to Emrys. She didn’t want to miss school the next day, hadn’t really wanted to miss school that day either, but the radio, powered by large D-cell batteries, now turned off to be sure they lasted, had said there would be no school in Corbin Meadow.

  Dixie needed to talk to Emrys, to wish that if Lorne Pugh did ask her the winter formal that her momma would let her go and not insist upon getting her a dress from the resale shop in town because if she did, everyone was going to recognize it from when someone else had worn it. Dixie was far too aware that while she was sort of cute, she was not beautiful and she did not wear clothing as well as other women might wear it. Both of these things meant she needed a dress that was new.

  It could be that Lorne wouldn’t ask her at all. They’d not seen too much of each other in school because he was a year ahead. It could be that he wasn’t looking for her and she should just plan on spending that evening at home with her parents as she’d done the year before when no one had taken her to the Formal. Helen hadn’t gone either, and they’d spent nearly an hour on the phone discussing the issue.

  This year, Dixie didn’t plan on discussing things, although Helen would want to if someone didn’t ask her to the formal dance. She had another wish for Emrys then. That if she did get to get to the formal, she wanted Helen to also go. Maybe they could even double date. It would the perfect thing to do with her friend.

  Looking out the window, Dixie watched as the snow slowed. “Do you suppose it’s stopping, finally?” she asked.

  Her father humphed and looked over his shoulder. He shrugged.

  Dixie’s momma looked up and out. “Maybe slowing up finally, which is a good thing. But I doubt we’ll be out of the house for a few days. I’m glad I got milk.”

  Her momma had put the milk out in the back stoop when the power had gone out. It was colder out there than it was in the kitchen and she had no doubt it would keep longer out there than inside. Her father said something about ice milk rather than something to drink, and her momma had swatted him.

  “It’ll keep.”

  Dixie wondered what Emrys did on cold days. Did he have a warm place to say? Or was he stuck battling the others that Dixie had to make sure didn’t intrude onto his space here in Corbin Meadow? Maybe they liked cold. Maybe they were the reason for the cold.

  Except Dixie didn’t think so. The cold was just the cold, and Emrys and the others that he didn’t like, that he perhaps feared, were just as at the mercy of the weather as she was. Unless she made a wish. Then maybe Emrys could change things. She was going to have to think up some different wishes. How far did his power extend? How far did that mean her power extended?

  Dixie felt a small smile creeping onto her face as she considered the implications of that.

  Chapter 11

  It wasn’t long after Taran left that the clouds that had been threatening opened up and dropped waves of water on the town. Zoe hoped her father had the sense to stay in the coffee shop where it was warm and dry, and where he could discuss the weather with his friends. For her part, she’d finished her iced coffee and was sitting in the front room watching the rain pour out on the street, which now looked like a shallow river.

  Even the wind had picked up, whistling ghostly tunes under the eaves of the house, something that had once scared Zoe but now made her feel at home because no other house had exactly the same tune. She was comfortably warm but the bad weather made her consider making another cup of coffee, this one hot, and enjoying it inside, pretending that it wasn’t nearly eighty degrees outside.

  Zoe stood up, walking into the kitchen. The chair where Taran had sat still had the faintest inde
ntation of his butt, which, Zoe had to admit, was very fine. She wasn’t going to say that out loud, certainly not to anyone in Corbin Meadow, although if she caught up with her friend LeAnne, who lived in Portland, she might make a comment. Both women worked in the hospital lab reading blood work, working with the blood bank, hiding away from the world while they did their magic to help doctors pinpoint the reasons their patients weren’t doing well.

  Zoe picked up her phone, taking it over to her favorite spot in the small family room area, just an alcove, really, off the kitchen, something built long before people wanted such spaces to be huge so they could call them great rooms. It might not be fashionable but this was home. This was comfortable. It wasn’t a good time to call LeAnne, who would certainly be at work, but there were other people who could answer the questions Taran’s visit had gotten Zoe noodling over.

  “Hey, Stacy,” Zoe said when the phone was answered. It had taken her but a moment to find the number using the computer search on her phone. Zoe was far too good at using the internet to find what she wanted, particularly when she was on a mission. LeAnne often said that Zoe was like the computer nerds on the crime drama shows who could find anything by typing in a bunch of garbage on their keyboards. Instantly they’d find the answer for the detective, leading them to solve the case within the hour. It was a ridiculous claim, but Zoe appreciated it all the same. She didn’t know how to program or hack, but she did understand the upper level workings of social media and search engines.