Up in the bathroom she spent a few minutes washing her face. The water still ran clear and warm from the faucet. In the mirror she saw her face, and how tired she looked. The bed was waiting to be made up. Then again, the bathtub looked really inviting.
“Yeah, why not?” she asked herself. “I deserve a bath. This is going to be a long few days. I’m worth it.”
She turned the lever to the hot water. The pipes made a rattling noise at first and the water gushed out with a spurt of air before settling down into a steady stream. Good to know the pipes weren’t going to need any work. She adjusted the water temperature to just how she wanted it, and then stepped back to start taking off her clothes.
The shower curtain had been taken away some time ago but it didn’t matter to Katie. There was no one here to see her in her birthday suit. The doors were locked and she had the whole house to herself. It was when she was unhooking her bra that she remembered she had no bubble bath to use. She decided she didn’t need it. Just laying under the water for a while would be nice—
Oh, wait. There should still be...in the cabinet...yes!
Her mom had stockpiled stuff like shampoo and Lysol and other things in the bathroom supply cabinet, including extra bottles of bubble bath. There was a lilac scented kind, and moisturizing bubbles, and something called Island Escape, all of them opened and half empty. She went with lilac.
Pouring some of the purple liquid into the cap she ran it under the stream of the water. She remembered that smell. As a pre-teen girl, convinced she knew all about what it meant to be feminine, she had taken lots of bubble baths with this stuff. After all this was the same kind her mother used, and she was the prettiest woman Katie knew.
More memories. The house was full of them.
Her pants and underwear joined her other clothes on the floor. She shut off the faucet, and one foot at a time, she sank into the luxurious feeling of bubbly, warm water.
It felt so good to lie there and just soak. Katie put her feet up against the tiled wall next to the faucet and sank down lower, letting her arms float. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. So peaceful. So nice. She didn’t give herself enough time to do things like this. Life was too complicated, is what it was. If only she could go back to when she was a little girl in this house and things were simpler for her.
“You’re a big girl now. You get to do big girl things.”
Katie didn’t remember thinking that, but she was the only one here so she must have said it. “Doesn’t mean I can’t take time for myself.”
“There’s no more time.”
She shifted in the water, scooping bubbles with her hands and dropping them over the bare skin of her knees, her eyes still tightly closed. “I’ve got lots of time tonight. Lots and lots of time.”
“There is no more time,” came the answer, in a voice that Katie suddenly realized wasn’t her voice after all. “I’m all out of time.”
Her eyes popped open wide and she jolted up in the water, sloshing some of it over the side, drenching her jeans.
There was no one else in the bathroom. Only her. Self-consciously she covered her chest with her arms and sat there, wondering how she was hearing anyone but herself talking in this not-too-big, empty house.
In the bathroom mirror, a face flickered and disappeared. Katie had the impression of blue eyes staring down at her before the mirror was just a mirror again, angled to show her in the bathtub, and the bubbles sliding off her skin.
“Um. Hello?” she called out, knowing there was no reason to because there couldn’t be anyone here. She was by herself.
“Forget it, Katie. You’re just jumpy. After all those houses turned out to be haunted before, now you’re seeing ghosts where there aren’t any.”
Outside, lightning flashed, and thunder boomed, and the lights in the house flickered and went out.
“Well, that’s just great,” she muttered to herself.
Then she slid back down into the bath water. Might as well enjoy it while she could. She leaned back, resting her head against the lip of the tub again, and closed her eyes against the darkness.
A hand smoothed back the wet strands of her hair.
The water had turned cold while she slept. Her mother had always told her not to fall asleep in the bathtub because you might slip under the water and drown.
Katie had always thought that was a very silly rule, because the first time you tried to breathe in a big gulp of water your body would wake you up coughing and sputtering and then you wouldn’t drown after all. Either way, her mother frowned on sleeping in the bathtub.
“It’s all right,” her mother said gently, still stroking her hair. “You’re back with me. That’s all that matters.”
Katie opened her eyes to look up at her mother. Those pale blue eyes, the smile that had become Katie’s smile as she grew up, the curls of gray hair that framed a kind face. The lines of laughter and sadness that made deep wrinkles in a face that had once been so young. Now she was old.
No, wait. Now she was dead.
“Mom, I miss you,” Katie whispered. “I’m glad you’re here. There’s so much I want to say. So many things I have to ask.”
“I miss you too, Katherine.” Her mom had very rarely called her Katie. She had picked the name Katherine, she would say, and by God she was going to use it. “You took so long to come back. I’ve been trying to call you, but you couldn’t hear me.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand. You’re the one whose been gone, Mom. You passed away.”
Her mom stroked her hair again. “I tried to call you home. I needed you.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy.” She shivered, goosebumps rising on her skin. All the warmth had leeched out of the water. “I’m cold, Mom.”
Her mother smiled. Her eyes dimmed. In an instant her skin turned pale and translucent and she began to fade right there before Katie’s eyes.
“Mom?” Katie reached out for her. “Did you hear me? I’m cold.”
Her mother faded more and as she did, her face became thin and skeletal, like a death mask.
“So am I, Katherine. I’m cold, and I’m alone.”
Katie jerked awake from the dream, her one hand clamping onto the edge of the tub as the rest of her slipped around in the cold water. How long had she been in the tub?
Water got in her mouth and her breath came in little choking gasps as she looked all around the bathroom. At some point the power and the lights had come back on. She could see she was alone. She could see there was no one here.
“Just a dream,” she whispered to herself, hunching up with her arms around her knees. “Oh, wow. Just a dream.”
It had been so real, but there was no reason to be freaked out by it. Her mother was on her mind more than usual. That was all there was to it. Tomorrow she would go and visit her mom’s grave and that would make her feel better.
Getting out of the tub, she pushed the lever that opened the stopper for the water to drain. It gurgled on its way down. There were only hair towels in the cabinet, but she made due. They smelled that way that linens do when they’ve been packed away for a long time. She might have to run a load of laundry tomorrow to make them fresh, or go to Freddie’s or some other department store to buy new towels and such.
As she fluffed her hair reasonably dry she kept looking over at the mirror. There were no eyes looking back at her except her own. Of course there wouldn’t be, she told herself.
“Stop being paranoid, Katie,” she said out loud. “Not every house is haunted. You’re home. What could possibly go wrong?”
But then, what had the dream been trying to tell her? When her mother said she tried to call Katie back home, and Katie couldn’t hear her...what did that mean?
“Nothing. It’s just a dream.” She made herself believe those words. “It was just a dream. Now, go to sleep.”
She decided that was good advice.
Chapter 3
Waking up in her old room ag
ain was a little weird.
Doing what she did, Katie was used to waking up in strange places. Whenever she bought a new house Katie would always spend the first few days there to get a feel for the place and what repair work it needed. This was different, though. It wasn’t coming home. It was more like she was here to work. In a lot of ways this house that used to be hers felt stranger than all the other houses she had ever been in.
The dream from yesterday when she was in the tub kept coming back to her. The idea that it had been her mother calling Katie back to this house was a troubling one for her. It was a crazy thought, she knew. Just her guilt for not being here sooner, speaking through her subconscious. That’s all.
There were no ghosts in this house.
Just the same, maybe she should call on a psychic friend she had worked with a while ago, just to be sure.
“Don’t be stupid, Katie.” She laughed as she rolled out of bed, the box springs squeaking from disuse. “Aren’t you done with all that psychic cleansing and Ouija board stuff?”
The Ouija board had been a wild experience, to say the least.
When the alarm on her travel clock buzzed, she stretched across the bed to the nightstand and tapped the button to turn it off. She always brought the clock with her because when you were in a house you wanted to flip there were two things you could always count--drafty windows, and no clocks. Why did people always take the clocks with them when they moved out of a house? It was like they wanted to take all of the time they spent in the home with them, too.
The digital numbers on the clock told her it was eight-thirty. Odd that she’d woken up before the alarm. Usually she slept right through until it woke her. Well. Earlier was better. She was excited to begin working on the house.
“Who knows. I might get lucky with my new contractor.”
She stopped, one leg swung over the edge of the mattress, realizing what she had just said.
Then she laughed. That was so not the way she meant it to come out!
Anyway... Riley was supposed to be here around nine, which gave her time to get dressed and do a quick scan of the house like she’d meant to do last night before she fell asleep in the tub. She could skip taking a shower for now because--well, for the same reason. Soaking in a tub for over an hour certainly made her clean enough to do work on this old house.
She had laid out a pair of jeans and a plain, pale red t-shirt last night so she’d be ready when she got up. Still, she was only just finished getting dressed and settling her hair in place when the knock came from downstairs. Going to the window, she looked out through the faded curtains to see a pickup truck parked in the driveway, one of those pickup trucks with a rack in the bed that holds an assortment of tools standing ready for use.
The side of the truck had an oval magnetic sign on it which read Homework by Harris.
Riley was early.
“All right. Let the renovations begin!”
Taking the stairs down two at a time, Katie got to the front door, unlocking it and opening it all in the same motion. “Hi. I’m Katie.”
He smiled down at her and stuck his hand out to shake hers. He was a good half-foot taller than she was, lean and muscular under a soft looking corduroy work shirt. His face sparked a memory from high school--that sort of Ryan Gosling, handsomely wolfish look. He hadn’t changed that much either. If anything, the years between then and now had simply pushed his blonde hairline back from his temples.
Around his waist was a tan leather toolbelt, with the company logo on the front pocket. A bear, growling and clawing at the air with his front paws. The rig looked good slung low across his hips like that and Katie’s eyes couldn’t help but notice.
He smirked at her as he let her hand go. “No need for introductions. I remember you, Katie. Didn’t even have to look at my old high school yearbooks to find your picture or anything. But, I take it you didn’t remember me?”
He sounded disappointed. Katie decided a half-lie wouldn’t hurt if it saved his ego. “Of course I remember you. I was glad that I ran into Lizzy. I would have never known you were doing this kind of work otherwise.”
“Yup. For six years now. I’m starting to get a good enough reputation that I’ve got more work than I can handle. That’s why I just hired two other guys to work on my crew. Trust me. We can do anything you need.” He waited, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. After a moment he pulled another smile for her. “You, uh, want to invite me in and show me around?”
“Oh. Oh, sure.” She felt her cheeks heating up and turned away so he wouldn’t see. She hoped to God he wasn’t looking at the photos of her as a baby up on the walls. Why hadn’t she taken those down? “Right. Well. This is the living room through here. There’s a fireplace that I’ll need you to check out and certify for me but there doesn’t seem to be much else to do in there. The plumbing is working fine. I’d like the electrical to be checked out, of course, but so far that seems to be good, too.”
“Good,” he said, echoing her own words. “I saw the roof needs reshingling. You’ll want us to repaint the siding, too.”
“I was thinking of vinyl siding, actually.”
Riley scratched the back of his neck. “Well. We can do that, of course, but it might take a week to get the supplies and get the work done. Why don’t you let me look it over later and see how bad the current siding is.”
Katie liked that he wasn’t trying to take over or tell her what she should do. There had been a number of contractors who tried to tell her things had to be done their way. She knew her business, and she liked it when men respected her direction.
“Through here,” she said, leading him around to the rest of the first floor, “is the room Mom used for storage. You can see it’s a mess. We’ll need to clear all of this out but I’ll take care of most of that. There’s the stairs to the basement, too. You’ll need to check the walls and the floor for cracks or water seepage.”
“Right,” he said, nodding as he pulled out his cell phone.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Do you need to make a call?”
He shook his head as he typed something out. “I know a lot of guys write things down on paper but I’ve got an app on my phone that lets me fill in different kinds of work, then the app estimates time and cost. I’ll have an estimate for you as soon as we’re done taking our tour.”
“Wow. That’s pretty high tech.”
He shrugged. “I’m just a hometown boy trying to make good. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”
“Being a boy?” she teased, wondering why it was so easy to talk to him.
He chuckled. “No. Not that. You know what it’s like to be someone from a small town who makes good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it seems to me you left Fount Azure to start your own business, and you certainly made a go of it.”
“I make a living.”
For some reason, that made him laugh harder. “I think maybe you’re being modest. I talked to a couple of friends over in California who do my kind of work. They’ve heard of you. I think that says a lot right there.”
Katie suddenly found she didn’t know what to do with her hands. He was paying her a compliment, and she could tell he really meant it. Were her cheeks still red? If he was fishing for a way to land this job, he didn’t have to shower her with flattery. So far she’d been very impressed by him.
“I guess,” she said, “that a good reputation is everything. You’re supposed to have a really good one yourself. Come on, I’ll show you the kitchen.”
This room had always been one of Katie’s favorites in the house. It was absolutely huge for a kitchen space. Easily the same size as the living room. Around the corner past the refrigerator was a smaller dining area, with the buffet hutch and the square four-seater table. Here there was long counter space and cabinets and a double-deep sink and a dishwasher and windows that let in the full sunlight in the afternoon.
“Wow,” Riley commente
d. “This is bigger than some restaurant kitchens!”
“Yeah, I know.” Katie took her time walking around the room, listening to her footsteps echo off the hardwood floors. “For a time when I was like, seven, my Mom sold baked goods like pies and cookies and stuff. It made us some spending money and helped pay for my school supplies. She let me help her. It was kind of our thing.”
“What’s in here?” he asked.
He was standing by the metal door in the wall to the side, set in between the end of the countertop and the entryway. It had a curved locking handle and a thermostat that read the temperature inside.
“It’s a walk-in freezer,” she explained. “It was actually here in the house when Mom bought it. That’s what inspired her to do the baking thing. She was such a good baker. An amazing mother, too.”
Katie hugged her arms around herself. It was warm enough in the house. She just felt cold inside. “I wish...I wish that I’d been here when she passed away. That’s a moment in my life that I can never get back.”
His hand on her shoulder surprised her. “I know that feeling. I lost both of my parents when I was really young.”
“Both of them?” Katie was a little uncomfortable with how close he was standing, and how he was touching her. She turned to face him, taking a little step back as she did. “How did they die?”
“Car accident,” he said, his voice a little sad. “It was really unexpected. I’m surprised Lizzy didn’t tell you. The whole thing really hit her hard. What about your mom? How did she die?”
“Natural causes,” Katie told him. That was her standard answer whenever anyone asked, even though it wasn’t exactly true. The doctor’s actual determination had been “indeterminate causes” but Katie still wasn’t sure what that meant. It was just easier to tell everyone her mother died from something simple. Something like old age. “She’d been sick for a while but I thought she’d been getting better. Then one day I got the phone call that she was found in her bed, and that she’d passed on.”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 26
