Imaginary Lover

by Sandra Chastain

  “No, he isn’t an artist, he’s a doctor. Hattie talked Nick into accompanying our art teacher to the Children’s Center at the hospital. He usually helps her load and unload the van and wanders around the activities room while she teaches. I’ve never heard of his using his medical skill before.”

  There was a silence. David was frowning and lifting his eyebrows to his unseen caller.

  “I assure you, he is a licensed medical doctor, and if he thinks the child has a problem, I’d take him seriously.”

  A few more words and the conversation broke off. David sat for a moment, his mind on his conversation, before he remembered Dusty’s presence. “Sorry, part of the job is putting out brush fires when they spring up. What can I do for you this morning?”

  “I stopped to see if you’d recommend a bank. I have a check I’d like to deposit.”

  “Sure, one block over. Trust Company. Just ask for Joe Turner. He’ll fix you up.”

  She thanked him, started to leave, then turned back. “Nick is with an art teacher?”

  “Yes. We send an art teacher to the local grammar schools that don’t have one. Two mornings a week our teacher goes to the children’s hospital. When she’s teaching the sick children, Nick goes along and drives our van. He’s been a big help to Thelma.”

  “But there was a problem?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but I don’t know yet. I’m sure it’s nothing. By the way, we were very impressed with your performance last night. Have you decided on an ending yet?”

  “No, but I’m working on it.”

  The phone rang again, and David turned back to it as Dusty left the building and began to walk along the sidewalk. Main Street was a picture postcard scene of quaint little shops, merchants sweeping the sidewalks, and motorists vying for one of the few parking spaces along the street. As she paused to look for the bank, she noticed a blue van embossed with brightly painted flowers.

  A van being driven by Nick. He didn’t see her. Which was just as well. It was at that moment that she knew beyond a doubt. The man in her dream the night before was no apparition. What happened might have been a dream within a dream.

  She was the woman.

  And the man who’d loved her was Nick Elliott.

  The bank manager opened Dusty’s account and issued her temporary checks. She didn’t have enough money for a car. But she could buy a bicycle with a big enough basket to carry her groceries home. The hardware store owner attached double baskets to the rear of her machine and supplied her with a security lock.

  At the grocery store she purchased three bags of food. Two went into the baskets, and one was tied around the handlebars. By the time she rode back into the yard, she felt as if she were back in charge of her life.

  Nick didn’t appear until late afternoon, sticking his head in the door and sniffing appreciatively. “I don’t know what you’re cooking, but if it tastes as good as it smells, I might have to marry you.”

  “It’s good. I just tasted it.”

  He walked through the house and picked up the spoon. “May I?”

  “You may. Then you have to call somebody named Bill. He says that the procedure has been approved, and you’re going to help. I’m glad.”

  Nick swallowed the marinara sauce and put the spoon back on the counter. “He’s wrong. I’m not going to help. I can’t.”

  “Well, maybe I misunderstood, but I was sure that’s what he said.”

  “No, you didn’t misunderstand,” Nick said, and turned to leave.

  Dusty didn’t like the sudden stiffness of his stance, nor the pallor that turned his face to chalk. Something was wrong. She searched her mind for a way to find out. “Nick, I saw you today, driving a blue van.”

  He paused. “Yes.”

  “David said you go with the art teacher. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It’s nothing. I only drive the van on the mornings when she visits the hospital. Some of the children are pretty sick. I can be of more help to the teacher in that kind of situation.”

  Even when he didn’t have the confidence to treat them, Nick was drawn to children. Just as she had been when she’d tried to help the police officers’ widows and their children.

  “Did something happen today, something different?”

  He turned and gave her a quick hard look. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I was in David’s office when he got a call from someone, something about you examining a student.”

  “Damn! I knew that was mistake. But I couldn’t let it go.”

  Dusty cut the temperature down to simmer and walked over to Nick. “Come along, Doctor, and tell me what happened.”

  He allowed her to lead him to the sofa, where he sat down and leaned back, closing those dark eyes and letting out an oath. “I should never have examined the boy. What if I’m wrong?”

  “Wrong about what, Merlin? What’s wrong with the kid?”

  “Somebody has been using him as a punching bag. He was being very brave, trying to hide his bruises. It might not be obvious to others, but I knew.”

  “Of course you did, Nick.”

  “How can I be sure?”

  “Any doctor would recognize those kinds of wounds. I’d recognize them. I sure saw enough.”

  “Dusty, I don’t know whether it was the doctor in me who knew or just the human being.”

  She wanted to put her arms around him and comfort him, say that everything would be all right. But he wouldn’t welcome that. She didn’t even know how to let him know that she shared his uncertainty.

  Finally she lifted his hand to her face and nestled her cheek in his palm. “I’m sorry, Nick. I wish I knew what to do to help.”

  His eyes flicked open and he looked at her with hunger. Not sexual this time, but the hunger of one person for another, of loneliness seeking a common bond to lighten the weight of the pain.

  “You already have, Desirée. You’re so much like Hattie. She wouldn’t leave anything alone either. I’ll bet you were a good cop.”

  “I was the best.”

  “And you should be again. Isn’t there some way you can clear your name?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. There’s a man on the force who never believed that I was taking a bribe, but he couldn’t prove it. He wanted me to stay, but I couldn’t see any future in that.”

  “I remember,” he said, “the tide coming in, surging around your ankles. When Hattie told you to come home.”

  She looked surprised. “I’d forgotten I told you that.”

  “It seems I’m not the only one who talks too much. What is there about us that makes us bare our souls to each other?”

  She lowered his hand and laid it across her knees. “I don’t know. I’ve never been one to talk about myself much. Nobody else ever seemed to care.”

  “I do. Tell me about the bribe.”

  And she told him, about learning that contributions to the charity were being skimmed off the top so that what was turned over to the Finance Allocations Committee was only a fraction of the money collected for widows and children.

  “What did you do?”

  “That’s where I made my first mistake. I went to the director of the charity. Silly me, I thought it was some kind of mistake.”

  “And it wasn’t?”

  “No. Before I could get a handle on who the bad guys were, they were charging me with theft.”

  His fingertips were drawing little circles on her knee. “The last time I was in court, you were innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Oh, it didn’t take long to find that. There was a large deposit made to my bank account. Then a second one. A new car was delivered to my house, supposedly paid for in cash. And the director of the fund testified that I’d been the only one with access to the money.”

  “Were you?”

  “Of course not. I never even saw the money. Only the envelopes from the contributors with the amounts noted on the outside. I entered them and kept the records.”


  “And the amount on the envelope wasn’t the amount on the checks.”

  “No. There were two separate bank accounts. The real one, which I was responsible for administering, and the phony one where the real checks were deposited.”

  By the time she finished her revelation, their fingers were entwined and Nick’s eyes were filled with compassion and understanding.

  “You believe me?”

  “Of course. Why would you lie about that? You’ve already served the time. Now you have to go back and find the real bad guys.”

  Dusty stood up abruptly. “No way am I ever going to set foot in the state of Florida again. I’ve put all that behind me, and that’s where it’s going to stay!”

  “That’s what I said too. And then I saw an X ray and a little boy who’d been abused. We can’t turn our backs, Dusty. Life keeps catching us in a scissors hold and forcing us to face up.”

  “I’m going to stir the sauce,” she said, backing out of the room. “We have to eat if we’re going to practice.”

  “Good idea, Desirée. Have you figured out the ending?”

  “No, but after another night of dreams like I had last night, my ghost story may be X-rated.”

  He sat up. “Dreams? If your dreams were anything like mine, I imagine we could increase the take from the tour by half again.”

  She stopped in the doorway and looked back at him, her eyes wide with shock. “You dreamed too? About what?”

  “It started with the widow in your story, and a hip bath. I don’t think I’d better tell you where it ended.”

  Dusty gasped.

  “I think I already know.”

  EIGHT

  Rehearsal that night drew a bigger audience as the other storytellers who hadn’t heard Dusty finished their tales and joined Betty and David as they walked the tour.

  This time Dusty didn’t have to ask. Nick, once again, found his spot in the corner. She could see him, but the tour couldn’t. As she had the first two times, she closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind, beginning to speak only when she felt the presence of the woman whose tale she was telling. Dusty began haltingly, then as the words came to her, she spoke more confidently.

  “My name is Danielle. I live here, at Blessing House, the house my husband built for us before the war. My husband, Clay, was so proud when he rode away to fight for our way of life. But now he’s missing. ‘Wait for me,’ he said.”

  Dusty turned toward her audience as if she were letting them in on the secret.

  “They tell me he’s dead, but I won’t believe that. No, he would never leave me. I feel him here, in my heart.” Dusty tilted her head. “But wait. He will be here. Listen. There, do you hear them? Hoofbeats? I hear them every night, but Clay never comes. Clay? Clay?”

  Tonight Dusty’s words were different. But the pain and the anguish were the same. She raised her eyes to the window, then dropped her head as before, tears rolling unbidden down her cheeks.

  There was a sound, a movement from the crowd that distracted her for a moment, then, as if arranged, she moved her gaze back to Nick and felt the story take life again.

  “Where are you, Clay? I can’t see you. Speak to me. Tell me what to do.”

  As Dusty beseeched Nick with her eyes, she felt a veil of shadows fall between them. He was there, yet he wasn’t. And the room fell away. She tilted her head, as though she were still listening. Another room began to take shape and form.

  “Clay, are you here? Have you returned at last?”

  In her mind the walls turned to windows. On one side there was a bed with a red satin spread. The smell of honeysuckle seemed caught in the air currents swirling about the room. The sound of drums, of cannon fire, or shots faded away, and then, turning to the door, she saw him standing there, her beloved.

  As he reached out for her the grief-stricken woman took a step toward him, felt her arms pass straight through the vision of the soldier she’d waited for so long, and collapsed in a swoon.

  There was a woman’s cry, then silence.

  “Dusty! Dusty! Are you all right?”

  She seemed to float somewhere between consciousness and a dreamlike state that wrapped her in contentment. She didn’t want to wake.

  “Turn on some lights, Betty. Stand back so I can examine her!”

  Dusty stirred. It was Merlin, no—Nick. He was taking her pulse, lifting her eyelids so that the sudden light blinded her. Then he gave her a sharp slap on the cheek.

  The lingering veil of the past vanished and Dusty came fully awake. “Hell’s bells, Merlin. If that’s the kind of medicine you practiced, I’m not surprised you don’t have any patients.” She came to her feet, eyes snapping, rubbing her face. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Why’d you scare the life out of me?” Nick’s voice was angry as he tried to conceal the dreadful fear that had swept over him when she fell. He rose slowly as he studied her. “Is this your idea of an ending to the story?”

  The low murmur of conversation around them reminded Dusty of where she was, and she turned to face the shock on both Betty’s and David’s faces.

  “Yes!” Dusty answered with more authority than she felt. “What do you think?” she asked, doing some fast fabricating. “Will that scare the spooks?”

  Betty gave David a confused look and took a step toward Dusty. “You mean this was all part of your story?”

  “Sure. At least it was an idea I was trying out.”

  “I think,” David said slowly, “that it might be a little too scary. Remember we have a lot of kids in the audience.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll work on it a bit more,” she said, and took a couple of unsteady steps. She came to a stop and looked back at Nick, who stepped up and took her arm.

  “Let’s get that costume back,” he said, “before you do something to it. Then if you want to practice the story more, we’ll do it at home.”

  With gratitude in her eyes, she allowed him to walk her to the costume room, where she quickly changed into her regular clothes. Then she headed for the car with Nick beside her.

  Once inside, Nick started the engine and drove away from the park. Except this time he took a different drive and ended up at the edge of the lake. He stopped the car.

  “Now, let’s talk. What was that all about?”

  “Sweet Jesus, I don’t know,” she said. “I just started telling the story and it was as if somebody else took over.”

  He thought about that for a minute. “Hattie?”

  “Nope, this wasn’t Hattie.”

  “Then who?”

  She considered her answer carefully. She’d been called dishonest, overbearing, even a smart aleck, but she’d never been called crazy. “If I had to guess,” she finally answered, “I’d say it was the woman in the story.”

  Nick took her hand, positioning his fingers on her pulse again. “Normal now. But back there it was very erratic. I don’t like this, Dusty. When all this ghost business started, it was merely in fun. But you’re being affected by it.”

  “I’m not the one seeing Sigmund Freud.”

  “No, you are having erotic dreams about ghosts.”

  That stopped her. She didn’t know how to answer him, how to argue. He’d had the same dream, or something similar. Otherwise how would he have known about it? She glanced out of the car window. There was a full moon, reflecting itself in the water. It looked as if it were riding gently across the surface like a great mound of cream-colored butter set on its side. She noticed something else.

  “What’s that, Merlin, out there in the water?”

  “That’s the carillon. It plays music every morning, at noon, and at six in the evening.”

  The graceful stone building caught the light and sparkled like amber.

  He went on. “There was some talk about removing it.”

  “By whom, the Jolly Green Giant? That thing looks pretty well settled in.”

  “State officials wanted to have part of the Summer Olympics out here, som
e boating event, but the carillon was in the way. In order to stage the event, they would have had to relocate the bell tower.”

  “But they aren’t?”

  “No, the committee moved the boating event.”

  “I’m glad,” Dusty said. “I like things to be able to stay put once they’ve found their place in life.”

  “That would be nice,” he said, deciding that she wasn’t talking about structures at all. “But sometimes fate intervenes and forces us down another road.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Like you and your accident.”

  “And you and your little tour of the Florida state prison system.”

  Nick got out of the car and held out his hand, inviting Dusty to slide across the seat and join him. “I’m beginning to think that the important thing may be that we don’t forget the road, in case we want to go home again.”

  Dusty felt her pulse rate increase the second she placed her hand in his, and followed him to a spot at the edge of the water. She wasn’t sure whether he was talking about his accident, or finding his way back somewhere he wanted to be.

  “Why don’t you go home, Nick? You said you had a house. Do you still own it?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “If you didn’t want to keep the connection to your former life, why didn’t you sell it?”

  He sat down on a bench beneath a large oak tree and pulled her down beside him. “I’m not quite sure. I never liked the house. I bought it because it was near one of my partners and my wife liked it. But I stayed at the hospital so many nights that my little room there seemed more like home.”

  “Tell me about your wife, Nick. What was she like?”

  He sat for a long time, his thumb drawing little circles in her palm, as if he were constructing some kind of road map.

  “She was nice. She loved me. She helped me become whatever the hell I was.”

  “Nice?”

  “Yes. Lois was a nurse when I met her. She was a little older than me.”