echristian-epub-ee8a4ba5-94c3-4982-ae55-299db4e26c11

by Unknown

  Lully had once thought she heard someone walking around in the attic. Huddled together, they explored, flashlight in hand, eyes surely as round as saucers. It turned out to be squirrels. Lully located two traps the next morning and baited them with cheese. Within twenty-four hours the “ghosts” disappeared.

  Until about a year ago.

  Lully insisted on sending an occasional letter to Emma, though Emma had written back only once or twice. They never talked by phone, though Emma never had an unlisted phone number. She supposed something inside her knew that in case of an emergency someone in Serenity might need to reach her. Maybe.

  In her letters, Lully told about starting a business with the jewelry she designed. She’d also mentioned hearing strange sounds coming from the basement, but had passed it off by saying she guessed the dead folks were “acting up again.” The private joke always brought a smile to Emma’s face.

  Guilt and sadness welled inside her. She was going to miss those letters. Though she’d stubbornly refused to reveal to Lully anything about her new life, telling herself she’d put her past and God in a box she’d never need to open again, Emma had always known Lully was there. God she wasn’t so sure about. Now Lully was gone. And the knowledge hurt. Worse than she’d ever imagined.

  Sighing, Emma watched the sun sink lower. “Are you up there Lully? Because if you are I’m going to break your rotten neck for what you’ve done.”

  Tears pricked her eyes and she closed them. Then the sound of a car in the drive made her open them again. Someone was coming. Her mood lightened. Maybe a neighbor with that casserole?

  Someone, anyone who was compassionate enough to care …

  Getting up to stand at the edge of the porch, Emma wrapped the jacket tighter, trying to make out the visitor. Probably Merle coming to see if she needed anything. She didn’t. She’d stopped at the market on the way back to the house, accepting condolences almost absently as she’d gone up and down the aisles gathering her few purchases. She’d bought enough to last a few days, if she stayed that long.

  She studied the black-and-white car parked next to the house; the sheriff’s insignia was clear on the side. Emma frowned, trying to ignore the way her heart rushed into her throat. After all these years you’d think—

  Sam got out of the cruiser, adjusting his hat in what Emma knew was a habit, before starting toward the house. She couldn’t help but take stock of the changes in him. As a teen he’d been painfully thin with a thatch of curly hair. The unruly locks were now tamed into a fashionable cut. A sullen mouth was now firm with determination. Slim, hunched shoulders had broadened into muscled bulk, and he had stretched to an impressive six-plus feet. Maturity looked good on Sam Gold. Really good.

  Lully had once written that when Sam returned to Serenity there wasn’t a woman within fifty miles who wouldn’t surrender her MasterCard to put her brand on him. His brother, Ken, she’d written, ran a close second.

  It wasn’t hard to see why. Sam Gold was one ruggedly handsome dude. Emma would have surrendered everything at the tender age of fifteen to marry the boy who’d only had promise.

  This man was the fulfillment of that promise.

  She refused to go there. His betrayal had cut too deeply. And that was a wound that would never heal—one she fiercely protected. She realized not many years later that every man she’d ever been attracted to had been compared in some way to Sam, and she’d always found some reason to break off the relationship. She wouldn’t be hurt like that again.

  Sam’s tall frame was a silhouette against the sunset as he approached the porch. He stopped at the bottom step. “Emma.”

  “Sam.”

  Her chin lifted a notch. Battle stance, she realized. The last time they’d spoken in private had been in the hallway in high school when he’d told her in no uncertain terms to get lost. Well, not in so many words, but the meaning had been clear. “Forget about me, Emma. Our families are going to fight this ‘till the day we die.”

  It had taken her two years to save up enough money to do just that. She’d gotten lost and put Sam and Serenity behind her. But here he stood, looking up at her.

  So cotton-picking handsome she wanted to spit.

  The intensity in his gaze unnerved her. Sympathetic, but unwavering, unyielding.

  “Sorry about Lully.”

  Emma swallowed against the thickening in her throat. “You didn’t really know her.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  A thousand thoughts raced through her mind. Swallowing back tears, she focused on the sunset. “What happened to her?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Was her sister’s death the result of foul play? The idea was ludicrous, yet hadn’t her relationship with Lully been strained? Was it possible that someone had carried a prank too far? The townspeople held little tolerance for Lully’s eccentricities. Instead of offering help, they’d judged her. Emma couldn’t understand the degree of Lully’s isolation. But that someone in Serenity would purposely do something to harm Lully—that was beyond imagination.

  Sam broke the silence, his gaze moving over the old house.

  “We’re working on it. The autopsy results will be ready in a few days.”

  “Do you suspect foul play?”

  There was no evidence that Emma heard of. Lully had been sitting in the swing as if she’d gone to sleep. Nothing seemed amiss. The paperboy, delivering his early route, found her.

  While Lully had lived a reclusive lifestyle, she was a woman of routine. From Lully’s letters, Emma knew that her sister rose early in the morning to work in her flower garden with Gismo, her little dog, beside her. The dog itself caused some speculation. Gismo was not a pretty dog. His one crossed eye and fur that went every which way gave him a face only a mother, or Lully, could love. Gismo would trot out among the headstones in the cemetery, pausing occasionally to “do business.” Lully said some folks didn’t care much for the idea of Uncle Henry or Grandma Nelson getting a good watering every now and again by the golden-eyed sprinkler, but no one did much other than complain loudly enough for Lully to hear from the porch or her garden. Sam’s voice broke her thoughts.

  “I don’t think the coroner will find anything.”

  Emma returned to the swing. “She was thirty-five. No one dies of natural causes at thirty-five.”

  People die at thirty-five in a car accident or plane crash. Not sitting in a porch swing. Lully wasn’t the sort to indulge in drugs or hard liquor. Or was she? Emma realized she didn’t know. She didn’t know her sister, not really, not anymore.

  “I can’t imagine … Lully has always been there. She raised me when the family fell apart.”

  “I know.”

  Lully had been her mainstay after their father left. Three years later, Emma and bad boy Sam Gold had run off to get married and been stopped. And now, it seemed, they were drawn together by the same woman who helped tear them apart.

  “I know this is difficult for you, Emma. As soon as the reports come back we’ll know more. Meanwhile,” Sam looked away, “you’ll need to identify the body.” His gaze softened when he looked back. “It’s a formality. I know the will’s been read, but …”

  She stood, brushing lint from the front of her skirt. She would not let the sound of his voice affect her. He could still be the most handsome man she’d ever known, he could still make her heart beat faster by looking at her, but things were different now. Truly different. “Now?”

  “If you feel up to it.”

  Did anyone ever feel up to identifying a deceased family member? “Okay.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I want to get it over with.” She glanced at his cruiser. “Shall I follow you?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  “I have a car.”

  He took a deep breath. “I wrote you, Emma.”

  “I never got it, Sam.”

  His gaze locked with hers. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t write it.”

  Well, fine. H
e wrote a letter. Where was it? In the same place his loyalty was fifteen years ago?

  As she brushed past him, a faint hint of aftershave and Irish Spring soap reached her. Masculine. So Sam-like. She shoved the barriers firmly in place and locked them. With fifteen years of practice it should have been easy, but it wasn’t.

  At least it wasn’t tonight.

  Chapter Three

  Darkness had settled over the mountains when Emma emerged from the morgue, her knees still shaky. The facility was small—one room in the courthouse basement. When the stainless-steel drawer opened, Emma glanced briefly at Lully’s strangely peaceful face and then looked away.

  “Are you all right?” Sam steadied her elbow.

  “She looks older.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  He matched strides with her, his long legs outdistancing her more often than not. She didn’t want him touching her yet felt powerless to ask him to stop. As they strode toward their parked vehicles she was acutely aware of the man she’d fallen in love with so long ago. The words she’d defiantly erased from her mind rushed back in such clarity:

  I, Emma, take thee, Sam to love, honor, and cherish ’til death do us part.

  I, Sam, take thee, Emma … .

  They’d practiced their vows while they’d driven toward Santa Fe, so certain they would be married before sunrise …

  Sam glanced at her sideways. “If I know you, you haven’t eaten all day.”

  You don’t know me! Emma wanted to shout. He didn’t know her at all. If he had, he’d know that she wanted this to be over, wanted to be on her way back to Seattle. To sanity. To a life she’d made on her own, a good life, a satisfying life.

  “No—I’m good.”

  She rummaged in her purse for car keys. Where were they? Why was it keys always fell to the bottom of the purse? Checkbook, credit cards, empty gum wrappers. Those she could find. But keys? She dug deeper.

  Sam plucked the bag out of her hands and extracted the keys, the ring balanced on the tip of his finger. “Brisco’s still makes the best hamburger in town.”

  The lump in her throat grew until she thought she would choke. I will not cry. I will not cry. “No thanks.” She took the keys and turned toward her rental car.

  “Emma.”

  The softness of his voice compelled her to turn. He was leaning against the cruiser, arms crossed, a patient look on his face. Had he married? Were there a wife and child—children, nearly grown children—waiting for him at home? It could have been Emma waiting. It would have been her if Lully and Mrs. Gold hadn’t—

  “You’re underage, Emma. This is ridiculous. No justice of the peace would believe a doctored birth certificate,” Lully had said.

  Emma had tried to pull out of her sister’s grasp. “No! Sam and I love each other.”

  Lully’s mouth firmed and she yanked Emma out of the tiny motel room Sam had rented, shoving past Emma’s soon-to-be husband and his glowering mother.

  “You can’t do this!” Sam shouted. “I can take care of her—”

  He had tried to block their way, but between Lully’s determination and Mrs. Gold’s angry insistence that he leave that moment, his attempt failed.

  Lully had paused on the sidewalk, scorn marking her face as her gaze swept Sam’s lanky frame, his youthful chin with a razor nick. Her red hair stood nearly on end, dark eyes burning with anger, darting from Emma to Sam. At that moment she looked every bit the unearthly soul some said she was. “You’re seventeen years old, Sam Gold,” she’d hissed. “You barely know how to wipe your nose, let alone Emma’s. I’ll see you dead before I let you near my sister—”

  Sam’s chin had firmed and he held tight to Emma’s hand. “How old are you, Lully?”

  Wrestling Emma away from his grasp, Lully refused to confirm what they all were thinking. Only a year separated Sam and Lully.

  “Sam!” Emma screamed as Lully dragged her toward the beat-up pickup they’d used since Ralph had disappeared. Lully roughly thrust Emma inside and slammed the door. Turning again, she’d pointed an accusing finger at Sam. “You stay away from her! You hear? Stay away!”

  Biting her upper lip, Emma paused with her key still in her hand and looked up at Sam. He had stayed away. In fact, he’d hardly looked at her that following Monday and carefully avoided her from then on. She’d cried, she’d prayed, and then she’d realized she’d been every kind of fool. Sam’s “love” no longer existed and because he felt like she was dying he was content with the outcome. “What?” Emma queried.

  “I wanted to call you myself, but I thought the news should come from someone else.”

  Nodding, she took a deep breath. “I’m tired, Sam. I’m going … home.”

  “You’re going to stay out there? At the house?”

  She turned finally. “Where else would I stay?”

  “There’s a vacant room at the bed-and-breakfast in town. I could call Lois Jackson and—”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Right. You’d die before you’d let me help you.”

  “You’re right. I would.”

  Emma couldn’t bear talking to one more person today. Besides, the old house was hers. Partly. The stories about ghosts and goblins haunting the halls didn’t bother her, nor did the cemetery. None of the tales were true. It was simply an old house—an old house in need of repair. A house she now co-owned with Sam Gold. She closed her eyes, sucking in breath.

  “Do you mind if I stay at the house?” Emma’s tone held a hint more animosity than question.

  “Stay wherever you like.” He straightened, adjusting the brim of his hat so it hid his eyes. “There is one thing, though.”

  “Sam, I’m tired. It’s been a long day, and tomorrow I have to make arrangements for … for Lully …”

  Sam opened the back door of the cruiser and took out a carrier. He set the transporter on the hood of her car.

  “What’s that?”

  A snuffling and soft woof came from inside. She peered in through the holes of the cage to see a pair of strange-colored gold eyes, one crossed, staring back at her.

  “Gismo,” Sam announced.

  Touching one finger to the brim of his hat in polite salute, he strode around the cruiser and got in, leaving Emma staring at the cage with Lully’s cherished pet barking to be released from his prison.

  “Gismo,” Emma breathed. What else could go wrong today?

  Sam headed for Brisco’s for a hamburger, if for no other reason than because he didn’t want to go home to the small house he owned at the edge of Serenity or to the sheriff’s office.

  He didn’t want to answer any questions that Ken might have, because he didn’t want to think about why Emma’s coming back to Serenity bothered him. What was the old saying? There’s no fool like an old fool?

  His hamburger tasted like sawdust, and he finally gave up and left half of it on the plate. He went home and, not for the first time, wondered what it would have been like to have married Emma, to be coming home to her vibrancy and warmth instead of to a cold empty house. To be met by a couple of kids with Emma’s eyes.

  “Get over it,” he muttered, stripping off his uniform. “Past history now and there’s no way she’s going to revive it.”

  And neither was he. Let sleeping dogs lie, he thought, and realized the corny clichés sounded just like his mother.

  Emma wandered through the old house, touching familiar objects. The house was drafty and a chilly, musty smell penetrated her nostrils. Memories are a strange phenomenon, she mused. Often the sweetest ones could instigate raw ones; painful ones could be the most gratifying. A chipped goldfish bowl won one warm July evening when the fair was in town. A fading picture, with a corner missing, of two young girls grinning into the camera, arms wrapped around each other’s waists, wind-tossed hair held back with matching barrettes.

  Lully almost never grinned, but that day, in the picture taken near Mommy’s rose garden, she’d smiled. A rare thing caught forever
in sepia tone. Maybe it had been Daddy saying, “Grin, Puddin’ Stick.” That’s what he called Lully. Puddin’ Stick. Or sometimes, Popsicle Stick. Emma was Tootsie Pop. Mommy had been Angel Eyes before everything had changed.

  Emma stood at Lully’s dresser, the chaos around her, the mingled aromas of candles and incense surrounding her with reminiscences. Funny, Emma thought, staring at the picture, her thumb rubbing away the dust on Lully’s face. She hadn’t thought of those pet names in years. She’d put them with all the other memories in a tightly sealed box and pushed it into a dark corner of her mind. They weren’t important. She’d spent seventeen years in this house and fifteen on her own. In two years the balance would be even: half her life as a “crazy Mansi girl” and half as Emma Mansi.

  Did shadows of abandonment follow from childhood to adult-hood? Psychologists indicated a link, but Emma had worked hard to break it, to put the past behind her. She rarely thought of cold Colorado nights, of the chaotic home life after her mother died, and then of the quiet desperate years when it was just her and Lully.

  Mom’s dying, Dad’s leaving. Sam’s betrayal. Unfounded gossip and name-calling. She shook her head. No wonder she was a basket case.

  A psychologist friend had explained that a chaotic childhood didn’t necessarily mean “hectic” or “frenzied.” It could simply mean “unstructured,” which certainly described Emma’s and Lully’s lives. And feelings of abandonment were natural, considering Emma’s past. But she’d thought she’d dealt with that, put it all behind her, until the phone call. Until those few words, “Your sister’s dead” forged a link back to Serenity and what the town represented.

  Emma picked up the small gold compact nestled among strings of beads on the dresser and examined the gift she’d sent Lully one Christmas when she felt guilty about not staying in touch. What had she been thinking? The gift wasn’t Lully at all. What did one sister get another sister when they shared nothing in common? When all connection between them was severed? Were they family? Did birth certificates indicating they’d both been born to the same mother and father define a family? They should. Something should. Legal documents should have the power to make their holders loving, caring, compassionate, committed members of the same family. But it wasn’t so.