Ghost Moon

by Karen Robards

  ‘‘Yes, that was Sara,’’ Olivia confirmed with a smile.

  ‘‘We’re glad to have you both in church this morning,’’ Father Randolph said. Then he turned to Seth, and the men shook hands. ‘‘I stopped by to see your grandfather at the hospital yesterday. We’re all praying for him.’’

  ‘‘I appreciate it, and he would, too, if he knew.’’

  Father Randolph’s voice lowered. ‘‘Your mother is handling the chemotherapy okay?’’

  ‘‘As well as can be expected.’’

  ‘‘We’re praying for her as well. You all know you can call me at any time if you need anything. In any case, I expect I’ll see you at the hospital next week.’’

  ‘‘I’ll be there. Take care, Father.’’

  ‘‘You too, Seth.’’

  Another woman came up to the priest, and Olivia started to move on. Seth followed her, only to pause as the woman called after him.

  ‘‘Seth! Where’s Mallory?’’

  Olivia instinctively turned to look as Seth stopped. The woman appeared to be about forty, with short, feathery blond hair, crow’s-feet around blue eyes, and a comfortably plump figure in a navy summer suit. Although her hand was still being shaken by Father Randolph, her gaze was moving with open curiosity over Olivia.

  ‘‘She’s showing houses in Baton Rouge today,’’ Seth replied courteously.

  ‘‘That real estate business of hers certainly keeps her busy!’’ The woman withdrew her hand from Father Randolph’s with a distracted smile for the priest and another pointed look at Olivia. At that juncture, Father Randolph’s attention was claimed by another new arrival, a man in a navy business suit.

  ‘‘Yes, it does,’’ Seth agreed. Glancing around, his caught Olivia’s gaze and he smiled. For a moment something almost wicked danced in his eyes, and Olivia thought for the second time, Why, he’s handsome. Then he reached out a hand to catch hers and draw her forward. ‘‘Olivia, this is Sharon Bishop. She’s the new principal of the high school. She and her husband— that’s her husband, Tom, talking to Father Randolph— bought Jett Paley’s old house. Sharon, this is Olivia Morrison.’’

  The women exchanged polite greetings, and then Seth excused himself and Olivia, and followed Olivia on into the church. With her hand once more free, Olivia could concentrate on something besides her sudden, stunningly unexpected response to Seth, and she became aware of the other woman’s covert looks following them. She knew what Sharon Bishop was thinking. To tell the truth, it was not too far from what was in her own mind at the moment—but in fact it was totally untrue. She and Seth—there was nothing to it at all. There never had been.

  ‘‘You should have told her I was your cousin,’’ she whispered scoldingly over her shoulder at him.

  ‘‘She’ll figure it out,’’ he said in her ear, and then it was time to take their places for the service.

  St. Luke’s was a beautiful church, designed to hold no more than a hundred, with high ceilings supported by dark carved beams, walls of rough white plaster, and rows of gleaming mahogany pews divided by a center aisle. The choir loft was to the left of the pulpit. Only three women and one man in maroon and gold robes were seated there today. To the right of the pulpit, in pride of place, was an intricate church organ, donated by Big John years before. Of the twenty or so worshipers in the chapel, Olivia estimated that she knew at least fourteen. That was how little things had changed in LaAngelle, even after nine years.

  The church service included a special prayer for Big John and another for Callie. Except for that, it was the traditional Episcopal service, and Olivia found it comforting. Although she had grown up reciting the prayers of her mother’s Catholic faith in times of need, and indeed had been baptized as a Catholic at birth, she had been raised Episcopalian. The Archers had seen to that.

  Olivia sat between Sara and Seth. On Seth’s other side was Chloe, and next to Chloe was Callie. Ira sat beside Callie, and the two shared a hymnal. Although Sara and Chloe had originally been sitting together, Seth had shifted his daughter to his other side after the two girls succumbed to a muffled fit of giggles over a dropped hymnal. Olivia silently agreed with him that, for decorum’s sake, it might be wiser to separate the children. But sitting so close to Seth did nothing for her peace of mind. With six of them in one pew, it was a bit crowded, and her arm brushed Seth’s sleeve whenever she moved. Although she shared a hymnal with Sara, while he shared with Chloe, she was conscious of his height when they stood up to sing, and of the pleasingly deep timber of his voice. When he turned sideways to deposit Chloe in her new seat, she found herself admiring the breadth of his shoulders, and the strength that allowed him to pick up his daughter as though she weighed nothing at all. Seated beside him, she became more aware with every breath she drew of the warm male scent of him, with its overnotes of shaving cream and soap. A glance down acquainted her with the long muscles of his thighs, and the flatness of his abdomen beneath his tailored slacks. As the service wore on she grew so aware of him that it was embarrassing. I’m getting turned on by Seth, she thought. The realization disturbed her so much that she slid infinitesimally closer to Sara, and forced herself to think about something else.

  Sara. She would think about Sara. To her mingled surprise and relief, she had returned from the hospital the day before to find Sara and Chloe playing Beanie Babies on the upstairs gallery. Bonded by a common interest, the girls had apparently made friends. Her offer to take both girls exploring had been rejected, and they had played together with relative amity for the rest of the day. Still, Sara was wary of Chloe’s temper, and, Olivia thought, perhaps a little too eager to please her new friend.

  Seth knelt, along with everyone else in the church. Realizing that she had completely lost track of the service, Olivia followed suit, sliding to her knees on the padded prayer bench and piously closing her eyes. As she murmured the words to the prayer that she knew by heart, Seth was close beside her, his body brushing hers every time one of them moved. After a few moments, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on church and faith and prayer, Seth and Seth alone filled her mind.

  Maybe being back in LaAngelle was awakening the old Olivia, she thought. Maybe that was why she was suddenly so attracted to Seth. As a teenager, she had liked men, liked their attention, liked their bodies. She had enjoyed sex, which was really why she had imagined herself to be so in love with Newall: They’d been great together in bed. At first. But then she’d gotten pregnant and Sara had been born and sex had become the last thing on her mind. After Newall had left her, her mind had been occupied with feeding and clothing and caring for her child, and her body had been routinely exhausted.

  It shocked Olivia to realize that she hadn’t had sex in six years.

  No wonder Seth suddenly looked good to her, Olivia thought with relief. Back in the familiar environs of LaAngelle, she was simply reverting to her old self. And the Olivia that she had once been would have died at the idea that she might go six years without sleeping with a man.

  Sara had taken over her existence, and for those six years taking care of her daughter had been paramount. But her life in Houston, while not affluent, was at least stable now. Sara was growing up, and she was still young, Olivia reminded herself. When she got back to Houston, there was no reason why she couldn’t start a relationship with someone if she chose. She’d gone out with several of Dr. Green’s dentist colleagues over the years, and with the brother of a patient and her upstairs neighbor. She’d been asked out by and had turned down a lot more, including her divorce lawyer. The point was, if and when she decided she wanted a man in her life again there would be plenty of men to choose from. There was nothing wrong with her renewed interest in sex, she told herself. She just needed to redirect her lust to a more suitable candidate.

  Anyone but Seth.

  CHAPTER 19

  ON SUNDAY NIGHT, WHEN THE GRAY JAGUAR pulled into the parking area behind the house, its lights cutting bright swathes through the darkness
, Olivia and the two girls were out in the yard. It was about ten o’clock, not long after nightfall, which, given the heat of a LaAngelle summer, meant that it was the best time of day to be outdoors. Overhead, a pale three-quarter moon just skimmed the treetops. Although it was as dark as the inside of a cave under the trees and along the hedge, translucent moonlight bathed the rest of the yard. The marble angel in the center of the perennial garden looked almost alive in the unearthly light. The scent of honeysuckle lay heavy in the humid air. Insects and amphibians joined together in their usual nightly chorus. Occasionally one of the peacocks perched in the trees near the lake would scream, making Olivia jump. It always took her a second or two to remember that birds made that nerve-shattering sound.

  Slathered with bug repellent and armed with mason jars, Sara and Chloe were darting about chasing lightning bugs, which they dropped into the jars to make one-night-only ‘‘lanterns’’ for their bedrooms. Olivia had loved catching lightning bugs as a child on this same lawn. The limitations of their Houston apartment meant that Sara had never had the opportunity to flit about outside at night in pursuit of the glowing insects. To Olivia’s surprise, upon proposing this activity she discovered that Chloe had never chased and caught lightning bugs, either.

  Fifteen minutes into their game, Chloe and Sara were running and giggling and in general having a wonderful time, their darting progress marked by the blinking illumination of the ‘‘lanterns’’ they carried about with them. Taking care to keep within their general vicinity as they swooped about, Olivia laughingly served as referee, cheerleader, and bug spotter. Callie and Martha sat in rocking chairs on the rear veranda, watching the action as they talked.

  The arrival of the Jaguar coincided with an unearthly shriek from Chloe. Stopped in her tracks by the sheer, paralyzing intensity of that scream, Olivia ran to the child’s rescue as soon as she recovered the use of her limbs. Her progress marked by her bobbing lantern, Sara flew toward Chloe from another part of the yard. After playing together all afternoon yesterday and today, the two girls were now friends.

  ‘‘Chloe! What on earth . . .?’’ Olivia gasped out as mother and daughter converged on the still-screaming girl.

  ‘‘It’s on my arm! It’s on my arm!’’ Clearly panic-stricken, Chloe hopped about, her bare right arm extended out from her body with as much stiff horror as if a snake were coiled around her wrist.

  ‘‘What is?’’ Olivia’s mystified glance at Chloe’s arm found nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘‘A bug! Get it off me! Get it o f me!’’ Chloe was on the verge of hysteria.

  ‘‘It’s okay. Hold still, now, and let me see.’’

  Placing a hand on her shoulder to hold the dancing child still, Olivia grasped Chloe’s extended wrist and took a second, more thorough look at her arm. She then perceived that the shrieks had been precipitated by the escape of one of Chloe’s bugs from her jar, which she still clutched tightly in her hand. Instead of flying off to safety like a sensible bug, it had chosen to go crawling up her arm, where it now fanned its wings in the vicinity of her elbow.

  A relieved smile curved Olivia’s lips. She resolved the crisis by the simple expedient of recapturing the bug with a gentle swipe of her hand. She then let go of Chloe’s wrist. Chloe let out a shuddering sigh, and her arm dropped to her side.

  ‘‘My God, what is it?’’ Seth came pounding to the rescue just a few seconds too late.

  ‘‘It was on me!’’ Chloe’s voice quivered piteously— but she hung on to her jar, leaving Olivia to surmise that the trauma hadn’t been all that severe. Instead of flinging herself on her parent, as Sara would have done in like circumstances, Chloe only looked at Seth with huge eyes and a trembling lower lip. He didn’t make any move to hug or physically comfort his child, Olivia noticed. It flitted through her mind that Chloe might have caused such a commotion just to get her newly arrived father’s attention.

  ‘‘What was on you?’’ Seth’s gaze darted from his daughter to Olivia and back. Unable to verify her suspicion, Olivia pushed it to the back of her mind to contemplate later.

  ‘‘A lightning bug,’’ Olivia said, the merest hint of dryness in her voice as she opened her palm for just a second so that he could see the evidence in her hand. The bug spread its wings and flashed its light, but before it could escape she closed her fist around it again. ‘‘Chloe, if you’ll give me your jar, I’ll put this one in for you.’’

  ‘‘That scared me to death,’’ Chloe said with conviction, eagerly handing over the jar.

  ‘‘Me too,’’ Sara said, as Olivia unscrewed the lid and carefully scraped the bug off her palm so that it could join its fellows in the jar. ‘‘I thought something had you. A monster or something.’’

  ‘‘In our yard?’’ Chloe’s voice was scornful. Recovering with amazing quickness from her fright, she gave Sara a disdainful look. ‘‘What kind of monster could there be in our yard?’’

  ‘‘A yard monster?’’ Sara suggested.

  ‘‘You mean like a giant frog?’’ Chloe asked, intrigued by the idea but still scornful.

  ‘‘More like a giant lightning bug,’’ Sara said. ‘‘Maybe the king of all lightning bugs, who’s come down from the sky on this beautiful night to rescue the lightning bugs we’ve caught and wreak dreadful vengeance on us for catching them.’’

  ‘‘Do lightning bugs even have kings?’’ Chloe asked doubtfully.

  Sara nodded. ‘‘Sure they do, just like bees have queens. And this particular lightning bug king probably has fangs,’’ Sara added with a delicious shudder, getting into the spirit of the story. ‘‘We’ve enraged the vampire lightning bug king, and he’s come down to drink our blood,’’ she finished dramatically, and giggled. ‘‘That’s what I thought had you.’’

  ‘‘You’re making that up!’’ Chloe stared wide-eyed at Sara, who giggled. Suddenly Chloe giggled, too, and then both girls were laughing and scrunching up their shoulders and looking around with pleasurable fear for the imaginary creature.

  ‘‘Here.’’ Having screwed the lid back on, Olivia passed the jar back to Chloe. Chloe’s quick passage from terrified victim to giggling coconspirator strengthened her suspicion that some of her terror, at least, had been put on for her father’s benefit. ‘‘Next time a lightning bug lands on you, remember it won’t hurt you and just brush it off. You scared me to death, screaming like that.’’

  ‘‘I guess that makes it unanimous, then,’’ Seth said under his breath, as the girls scampered off to resume their game with this new variation. ‘‘From the amount of noise she was making, I thought she was being murdered at the very least.’’

  ‘‘Yes, well, your daughter obviously likes lightning bugs better in a jar than on her arm.’’ Olivia glanced up at him. He was wearing khakis and a dark-colored polo shirt that contrasted nicely with his moon-silvered hair, and his eyes gleamed faintly as he watched the girls play. The attraction she had felt for him earlier had not faded, Olivia discovered, as she caught herself measuring her height against his—at six feet two, he was exactly a foot taller than she was—and admiring the breadth of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips.

  Dismayed, she switched her gaze to the girls, and switched her focus to them as well. They had played Beanie Babies for a while that afternoon, and then Olivia helped them build a fort on the upstairs gallery, where they held a tea party. After supper, they had watched a tape of Beauty and the Beast on the television in the den. Chloe had really been very good all day, and Olivia was beginning to feel almost fond of the child.

  ‘‘Your daughter obviously has quite an imagination.’’ From his tone, Olivia wasn’t sure that it was exactly a compliment.

  Olivia made a face at him. ‘‘Yes, she does, thank you very much. And we just finished reading Bunnicula, which accounts for the vampire lightning bug king, I think.’’

  ‘‘Bunnicula?’’ He obviously had no idea what she was talking about. Olivia wasn’t surprised. She had already figur
ed out that he actually knew very little about his daughter.

  ‘‘It’s a children’s book about a vampire bunny. I bet Chloe would love it, if she hasn’t already read it.’’

  He shook his head. ‘‘I have no idea. You’ll have to ask her. Or check with Mother. She buys Chloe’s books.’’

  Olivia said nothing, although telling him that he should know more about his daughter than anyone else hovered on the tip of her tongue.

  ‘‘Any problems this afternoon?’’ Seth asked after a moment, glancing down at her, the question carefully casual. It was obvious that he was referring to problems with Chloe’s behavior, and Olivia found herself wondering again about the state of their relationship. Clearly he loved Chloe. She just as clearly loved him. But something was obviously not right between them.

  ‘‘Chloe’s been wonderful all day,’’ Olivia replied, not pretending to misunderstand. Seth smiled wryly.

  ‘‘I’m glad to hear it’’ was all he said.

  ‘‘How’s Big John?’’ Olivia changed the subject. Seth had been gone since just after church, and she assumed he’d been at the hospital for at least part of that time.

  Seth was once again watching the girls, a slight frown on his face. He slapped absently at his bare forearm— Olivia suspected a mosquito—then glanced at her again. ‘‘No change to speak of. He’s still unconscious, still on a respirator. Charlie says every day he hangs on his chances improve, though.’’ His gaze slid the length of her body, which was clad in cutoffs, a red tank top, and her Keds, and lingered for a moment before returning to her face. ‘‘You’re going to get eaten alive out here, dressed like that.’’

  Olivia shook her head, smiling a little. ‘‘Sara and Chloe and I are wearing so much insect repellent that we’re slimy with it. Don’t forget that I know what these mosquitoes are like: I lived here as a little girl.’’