Katie stopped, her thoughts interrupted as a soccer ball bounced out onto the sidewalk in front of her, spinning to a stop at her feet.
The black and white pads on the ball were scuffed from use. Katie could tell that this was someone’s favorite toy. Odd, she thought. It wasn’t every day that a soccer ball came bouncing out of nowhere to interrupt your day.
Only...yeah. This all seemed very familiar, somehow. Like it had happened before. She looked around, tracing the line the ball had just travelled back up to the house she was standing in front of. Then she remembered.
The day she had first arrived here in town, this same thing had happened. She’d walked down this very street, in front of this very house, and this same soccer ball had come bouncing out in front of her.
Someone’s favorite toy.
Weird.
She picked the ball up, and turned it around in her hands, and sure enough there was the faded name printed across the pads, just like she remembered. She couldn’t read it this time any more than she’d been able to the first time this had happened to her, but it was definitely the same name. Which meant the house this ball belonged to was that one, right there.
It was a single story home with a sloping green roof. It looked a little newer than the other homes on the block, and a lot less expensive. Cheaply built, was what she was getting at. She could just toss the ball on the yard and keep walking. It was probably the smart thing to do. Katie heaved a sigh and reminded herself that she was part of a community now. This wasn’t the city, where you could just ignore people. Everyone saw what you did here. There was probably a dozen people watching her now already, just waiting to see what she did, and God help her if she just tossed the ball and kept going. What would the rumor mill make of that?
So, spinning the ball in her hands again, she put on a smile and brought it up to the front door of the house. At the little front porch she knocked, and waited.
When the door opened, the woman Katie remembered as the house’s owner was standing there. She was an older woman, with gray in her once bright red hair and fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Her simple blue dress was not flattering, cinched at a thin waist, with a tall collared neck. She was the very image of someone’s mother.
“Yes, who is it? Oh,” she said, “hello Katie. Can I do something for you?”
“Um, I found your ball. On the street.” She looked harder at the woman. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”
“You mean, because I called you Katie? Don’t be so surprised. Everyone in town knows about the new owner of our Inn. We don’t get a lot of people moving into Twilight Ridge. Most people move away as soon as they can.”
Katie knew that was true. Everywhere she went in Twilight Ridge, people recognized her. Even if she didn’t know them or their names or anything about them, everyone in this town seemed to know everything about her and Riley both.
Well, not everything. She’d managed to keep the whole thing about seeing ghosts to herself. At least for now.
“I brought your ball back,” Katie told her, suddenly realizing she was just standing there. “I remember it was important to you.”
The woman took it from her with an embarrassed look on her face. “Oh my. Not again? This is becoming a habit with us.” She laughed gently, and Katie laughed with her. “Well. Please, won’t you come inside? I’ll make us some tea.”
“Oh, I’d like that, but you don’t have to.”
“I insist. It’s the least I can do for someone who keeps finding my son’s lost soccer ball. I’m Vera, by the way. Vera Keats.”
Katie had some time before she had to be anywhere. It certainly couldn’t hurt to be friendly with everyone she met. Not that she planned on staying in Twilight Ridge for very much longer. The Inn was doing well, and once she had someone trained to take over for her then she would be leaving. Probably.
But in the meantime, it would be nice to have friends.
The inside of the house was neat and orderly, with items on shelves in their proper places and nothing anywhere that didn’t belong. The long hallway just inside the front door had a few pictures on the wall, and a few pieces of furniture. It looked almost empty, even so.
It was the home of someone who lived by themselves, Katie thought. She’d seen it before. Not a lot of belongings, and what she was here was packed tightly away so that it took up as little space as possible.
When they were halfway down the hallway, Vera stopped and placed the soccer ball on top of a sideboard. It had a little circular stand set up there to keep it in place. Not that it was doing what it was supposed to be, Katie thought to herself.
To either side of the ball there were framed photographs of a young boy in a blue uniform, shorts and a t-shirt, with a black number eight on it. On his freckled face was a big smile, and the red hair made it almost a certainty that this was Vera’s little boy. The one who used to play with this soccer ball.
Vera’s hand lingered on one of the photos. “This was my Martin. Such a good boy. He loved to play outdoors. Practically begged us to put him on the soccer team. How could we refuse him something that made him so happy?”
Katie let her talk. This was obviously a story that she had told any number of times before. It was also a story that she needed to tell again.
“I’m sorry,” Vera said. “There I go again. I always seem to drift into the past. It’s been fifteen years since we lost Martin, and I still can’t walk past this display without touching his picture. I suppose that’s silly, right?”
“No,” Katie said to her. “It’s fine. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. I’m sure your husband feels the same way.”
Vera’s face soured. “I don’t have a husband.”
“Oh. Um, I’m sorry. It’s just that earlier you mentioned a ‘we’ and I thought you meant you and your husband.”
“I did, yes, but my husband isn’t here. He disappeared just two weeks after my Martin did.”
Katie wasn’t sure she understood. “Your son is missing?”
Vera nodded. “He’s dead. It’s been all these years, I would have heard something from him by now. He tried to run away several times but he always came back when he was ready. No, my Martin is dead. I’m sure of it.”
“I see...and your husband?”
Now Vera shrugged. “Mark? Oh, he up and left me. He could be dead too, for all I know, but it’s no great loss either way.” She put her hand up to her mouth, realizing what she just said. “I’m sorry, that was rather cold wasn’t it? Please don’t get me wrong. My husband was a good father. He was a good husband. I miss him, and I miss my son, but in different ways. It was me who stayed to carry on after our son died. The sad thing...the very hard thing, was that we never found Martin’s body.”
“Then how do you know?” Katie asked, unable to help herself. “How do you know he’s, um, gone for good?”
Vera smiled sadly. “I know. A mother just knows these things.” Then she took a deep breath, like she was coming up from under water. “Well. That’s enough of the past for right now. Let’s have that cup of tea and find something happier to talk about, shall we?”
Katie followed her to the back of the house, where the kitchen was. It was a cramped space, and even more so with everything that was here. There was a small oval table to one side, a refrigerator and stove on the other.
On every counter, on the refrigerator, and stacked on the floor, were boxes and boxes of bottled water.
Vera took two bottles out of an open box on the counter next to the sink, and opened them one at a time, then poured them into the tea kettle on the stove. She put the empty bottles into an overflowing bag next to the sink, already full of others.
“Wow,” Katie said. “You like bottled water this much?”
Vera looked embarrassed. “I don’t have a choice. The water’s been contaminated here for years. I should move, I know, I just...can’t bear the thought of moving. I think that’s why my husband Mark left me, actually. He n
eeded to get away from here and I needed to stay.”
Katie didn’t know what to say to that. People broke up all the time, for the stupidest of reasons, and maybe that was the reason her husband Mark had gone away. She couldn’t help but wonder if there were other reasons, however.
“So anyway,” Vera continued. “I cook with bottled water, and I drink bottled water, and I do my dishes in bottled water. It’s kind of a hassle but I have the water from my well tested every two months and believe me, it’s not something we want to drink. Not the way it is.”
The kettle whistled, and Vera poured out two cups for them, with a tea bag in each. Katie took hers and added a lump of sugar from a bowl on the table. “Is the town’s water supply bad?” she asked, realizing the implications there. “I’ve been using the water at the Inn, and so have Riley and our guests...”
Vera shook her head. “No, no. It’s nothing like that. This isn’t the city where everyone’s on the same water supply. Here we use well water. Don’t you know where the Inn’s water comes from?”
Katie furrowed her brow over the question. “I guess I didn’t think about it. The pipes go into the wall, water comes out. Everything was working so I just assumed...huh.”
She realized that she’d goofed. Usually, whenever she purchased a property to flip it, and sell it again, she was only worried about the bones of the structure, so to speak. Was the foundation solid, was there wood rot or mold issues, was the roof sound. That sort of thing. Of course she had someone come in to do a general inspection of the septic and water systems before the sale. That was required by law.
But in this case, she had purchased the Inn for herself. She knew the septic tank was out back, somewhere, and that it was twice the size that a building like hers needed, but if she ever needed to have it emptied then she was going to have to have a bunch of exploratory holes dug to find it.
As far as the water system went, she had only concerned herself with having it come out of the pipes. Well. Maybe there was more to this owning your own business thing than she realized. Everything was working...except for the sink in room four, where it was always getting clogged. The rest of it never crossed her mind.
It was crossing her mind now.
“So,” she said, “you have well water?”
Vera grimaced. “I have a dug well out back that goes down one hundred feet. It was never a problem until a few years ago. There was a funny taste one day and so I bought a filter, but it just got worse and worse. Had it tested and they said it was toxic to drink. At first I could still use it to wash dishes and clothes and such, but it’s just gotten worse and worse. Now it’s so contaminated that it’s starting to kill the grass in the back yard. I need to find someone who can fix it but I just never seem to find the time and it’s not like there’s anyone around here who can do that sort of thing.”
Well, Katie thought to herself, that might not be entirely true. “Hmm. I might know just the man who can help.”
Vera looked surprised. “Just like that?”
“Sure. After all, it’s not what you know, it’s who. Now that we know each other I want to help. Or I guess I should say, I want to let my boyfriend help.”
“Ooh.” Vera’s eyes shone with interest. “Now that’s a happier subject, for sure. Ah, young love. It does my heart good to see someone so happy after everything that happened in this house...er, well. Enough of that. Tell me about this boyfriend.”
Katie smiled at the ‘young love’ part of that comment. She felt young when she was with Riley. “Well, he’s a great guy. We met out West, and he followed me here. We work together, you see. He’s a general contractor. He can fix up anything that’s wrong with a house. Fixing a dug well might not be his specialty, but I’m sure he can help.”
“Well. Then Katie Pearson, I’m very glad you stopped by today.”
They both lifted their cups of tea, and clinked them together in a toast to new friendships.
Chapter 3
“I know you think I’m a miracle worker,” Riley said to her, “but I’m really just an ordinary guy who happens to be in love with the most amazing woman in the world.”
“Ooh,” Katie cooed, curling her legs around his. “Amazing? Is that what you called me?”
“Yup,” he smiled as he reached past her to turn off the light. “Amazing, and pretty, and the best thing that ever happened to me.”
They were lying in bed at the end of the day, both of them half naked, and both of them too keyed up to sleep. It was like that for Katie sometimes when she was around Riley. All she could think about was him, and what she wanted to do to him when they were alone, in the dark. Like now.
His compliments were going straight to her head, too.
“Go on,” she told him. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me, mister.”
“Oh yeah? Will it get me out of trying to fix a contaminated well?”
“No, it will not.” Her hand slipped up his bare torso, settling on his shoulder. “It will get you something else, though.”
“Really?” he murmured, with his lips right up to her ear. It tickled. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re going to give me in exchange for sending me down a deep, dark, wet hole?”
She giggled at the obvious innuendo in that. A little thrill hummed through her body, from the nape of her neck all the way down to her toes. They were alone in the Inn tonight, no guests due in until tomorrow, and she could be just as wild and naughty as she wanted. Just the two of them. Just his body, and her body, alone in this big bed.
He was a tall and muscular man. Years of working with his hands had honed his physique to calendar pin-up status, and the feel of his skin under her fingers was driving her wild.
It was going to be a good night for both of them, and now she whispered every single one of her desires to him, feeling his body react to each suggestion, each fantasy, every husky breath.
“Well,” he purred. “That will definitely buy a few hours of my time to fix the neighbor’s water system. Maybe it’s just a raccoon stuck down there, or something.”
“Ew. Don’t talk about dead things when I’m touching you...here.”
He grunted, and shifted his hips, giving her more room to play. Men had such interesting parts. Women were all sleek curves. Men were...
Interesting.
“You know,” he said, his voice tight, “I’ll do just about anything when you do that to me.”
“Then let me do it some more.” She curled her fingers, and let him feel that for a long moment while she trailed kisses along his collar bone, circling down lower, and closer to the little nub of his nipple.
He always went crazy when she kissed him there.
He took hold of her, wrapping his arms around her and rolling her under him. She gasped and felt a tremor flow through her. Yes. Oh, hell yes.
“You’ll do it?” she asked him.
His legs moved against hers. “I’m trying to do it right now.”
She laughed at him, and kissed his chest some more as he held himself over her. “The well, big boy. You’ll fix the well?”
He told her yes so many times that she lost count.
When Katie finally looked at the clock, she couldn’t believe how late it was. Her body fell into an exhausted sleep, with a wonderful sense of love radiating all through her body.
Next to her, Riley was already snoring.
It was in the short hours just before the dawn when Katie woke up. It was something she could feel, even before she looked at the fuzzy numbers on the bedside clock. There was a certain feel to this time of day. It was mysterious. A little dangerous, maybe.
Katie loved it.
She enjoyed getting up before the dawn, before Riley woke up, and sneaking out to do her own thing for an hour, maybe two. She should be dead exhausted but instead she felt invigorated. Full of energy. Alive.
Since they’d settled down here in New Hampshire she’d taken up jogging again, and after carefully slipping away from Riley’
s side and out from under the covers, she got dressed in her sweats and sports bra and zip-up hoodie. It was chilly this morning, but by the time she’d gotten a mile into her run she knew she’d be perspiring.
The Inn was quiet around her. She would have to be back here and showered by midmorning, when the guests were scheduled to arrive, but there was plenty of time. Maybe even time to enjoy an omelet down at the Good Eats Diner. Their name was a bit of a misnomer since most of their food was only just so-so, and not exactly ‘good’ per se, but the chef certainly knew how to do an egg white omelet with diced veggies.
After stretching out on the front steps, and with the sunrise just a bare red line above the trees on the horizon, Katie set off down the quiet streets of Twilight Ridge.
She didn’t like to jog to music. She liked listening to the world waking up around her. She liked to think about things like how she could improve the menu for the Inn and save some money on their grocery bill. She liked to let her mind drift, like it was doing right now, going back to the way Riley had used his hands on her last night. That bruise would probably go away in a day or two. Probably.
She didn’t mind.
The grist mill was running, the creak of the water wheel drifting over the town. Usually that sound was covered up by the sounds of traffic and dogs and the usual life of Twilight Ridge. She wondered how early people started working there. She might want to find out sometime, in case a tourist ever asked.
That brought a little smile to her lips. She wasn’t a tourist anymore. Did that make her a local? Or was she still ‘from away?’
Somewhere between those thoughts she realized the street ahead of her was too bright. Artificially bright. She could see her shadow stretching out long and straight in front of her.
Looking over her shoulder she found herself staring into the headlights of an approaching car. It was getting very, very close. She stepped over further over onto the right shoulder, never breaking her stride.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 61
