‘‘I don’t forget, believe me,’’ Seth said, his gaze running over her body once more. Olivia was suddenly conscious that the raggedy fringe of her cutoffs ended at midthigh, and her tank top, besides being skimpy, clung. For a second she thought that Seth was looking at her breasts, and her breathing suspended. Then, before she could be sure, he turned abruptly away, heading toward the parking area. ‘‘I’ve brought David home with me. And Keith. They flew into Baton Rouge this morning and took a taxi to the hospital. They’ll be spending the night here. Come and say hello.’’
He spoke over his shoulder.
‘‘I’m glad David came.’’ Keeping one eye on the girls, Olivia trailed him to the parking area, where the single yellowish bug light on the far side of the garage revealed Callie just stepping back from an embrace with a tall, well-built man in a pale sport coat and dark slacks. Immediately Callie turned to another man, shorter, stockier, but dressed similarly to and standing beside the first, and hugged him.
‘‘Big John’s his father,’’ Seth said with a shrug that implied no matter what, then advanced on the group. ‘‘I told you Olivia was home.’’ Seth spoke to the newcomers as he and Olivia reached them.
The taller of the two men turned to Olivia, smiling. In height and build he resembled Seth, but his face was square rather than angular and his blunter features reminded Olivia of Big John. He was about sixty years old, and had the wrinkles and incipient jowls to prove it. His hair was still dark and thick—Olivia wondered if it was dyed—and he sported a neatly trimmed black mustache. This was Seth’s uncle David, whom she had met perhaps half a dozen times in her life.
Olivia returned his smile.
‘‘Well, hello, Olivia!’’ David greeted her jovially. ‘‘The last time I saw you, you were—what? Twelve years old? At Mother’s funeral, I believe it was.’’
Murmuring assent, Olivia submitted to a quick embrace, and they exchanged air kisses in the general vicinity of each other’s cheeks. Then David gestured at his companion. ‘‘You remember Keith Sayres, of course?’’
Certainly Olivia remembered Keith Sayres, although she had met him only twice before. The last time had been when David brought his live-in companion to his mother’s funeral. The resulting explosion had been unforgettable. Big John had nearly gone off into an apoplexy at the idea that his gay son would so publicly flaunt his homosexuality, and Belinda, taking her father’s part, had ranted on and on for days about how reprehensible it was of David to bring his ‘‘friend’’ to such a solemn family occasion. ‘‘For he only did it to get back at Daddy, you know,’’ Olivia had overheard her tell Callie at the time. ‘‘He hates Daddy, just like Daddy hates him.’’
Oh, yes, Olivia remembered Keith Sayres.
‘‘How are you?’’ she said cordially to Keith, and they did the hug and air kiss thing.
‘‘Worried about David because of his dad, but otherwise fine,’’ Keith replied, stepping back from the embrace and smiling down at her. ‘‘It’s a shame that it takes things like this to get families together, isn’t it?’’
‘‘It certainly is,’’ Callie answered, and then at Callie’s urging they all went inside. Left to gather up the children, Olivia finally managed to get them inside. Everyone was sitting around the kitchen table when the three of them entered, Sara and Chloe with well-filled lightning bug lanterns in hand. Declining offers of coffee and cake or a sandwich, Olivia turned Chloe and her precious lantern over to Martha, and took Sara upstairs for bath and bed. Sara’s lids were drooping and she was yawning by the time she was in bed, but she still begged for a bedtime story. Olivia settled down on the bed beside her, listened to her prayers, and then told her about a fairy house of mud and rocks she had once made in the front yard. Later that night, she had risen from her bed, looked out her bedroom window, seen lightning bugs disappearing inside the house she had made, and decided they were fairies. She had crept from her room and . . .
Sara was asleep.
Smiling, Olivia got up, tucked the covers more closely around Sara’s shoulders, and, instead of joining the others downstairs, headed for the bathroom for her own bath. The bathroom overlooked the back of the house, and while she was in the tub she thought she heard one or more cars pull up. Finishing her bath, she brushed her teeth, smoothed moisturizing lotion onto her face, and freed her hair from the high ponytail she had worn in the tub. Running a brush through the tangled strands, she peeped out the window and saw that, actually, three cars were parked in the parking area. One was Mallory’s Miata, and she thought the white Lincoln must belong to Ira Hayes, but she wasn’t sure about the ownership of the other. The mystery was solved as she headed back toward her bedroom and encountered Carl walking toward her from the direction of the stairs.
‘‘What are you doing here?’’ she asked, surprised. She was wearing her own robe, a knee-length zip-front of floral cotton, over a sleeveless pink nylon nightgown, but with Carl looking at her like he was she suddenly felt less than adequately dressed. She had not expected to encounter anyone, much less Carl, in the hallway that led to her bedroom. With Big John in the hospital, she and Sara were the only ones sleeping in this wing of the house.
‘‘I came up to see if I could talk you into coming down again,’’ Carl said easily. ‘‘Everybody’s here, and we’re havin’ a big ole family party downstairs. When Seth said you’d gone to bed, I just thought I’d come along and fetch you back down.’’
He grinned engagingly. Six feet tall, stocky but not fat, with dark brown hair, his father’s hazel eyes, and a warm personality, Carl was an attractive man. As that thought occurred to her, Olivia’s eyes brightened, and she looked him over almost hopefully. But attractive man or not, her mind refused to see him as anything other than her occasional childhood playmate and ultimate pesky cousin. It was probably just as well, she thought resignedly. Getting excited about Carl posed just about the same problems as did getting excited about Seth, with the addition of Carl’s witch of a mother’s reaction thrown in. Just imagining how Belinda would be likely to respond to any hanky-panky between Carl and herself made Olivia smile. It would almost be worth it.
Carl’s face lit up at her smile. Seeing that, Olivia shook her head at him.
‘‘I’m not dressed, and I’m tired. I think I’ll go on to bed. But thanks for thinking of me, though.’’
‘‘You sure?’’ Carl sounded disappointed.
Olivia nodded. After a couple more attempts to persuade her, Carl gave up and headed back toward the stairs. Olivia checked on Sara, then went to bed.
As she drifted off to sleep in the room next to Sara’s, a memory of the way Seth had looked at her in the backyard tonight swam through Olivia’s head. Just remembering the way his eyes had run over her body made her breathing quicken. If he were to touch her . . . She shivered at the thought. That woke her up, and, awake, she was horrified at the direction her subconscious had taken. She absolutely, positively refused to have sexual fantasies about Seth.
In the end, unable to fall back asleep without uncomfortable images of Seth filling her mind, Olivia resorted as she sometimes did to counting her blessings: God thank you for Sara; God thank you for my health; God thank you for the roof over my head and the food in my stomach and my warm bed; God thank you for Sara. . . .
With a small smile curling her lips, she finally drifted off to sleep, only to be awakened what could have been anything from minutes to hours later by a piercing scream.
CHAPTER 20
SARA! OLIVIA CAME AWAKE INSTANTLY, KNOWING without knowing how she knew it that the scream had come from her daughter. Throwing the covers aside, leaping from her bed, she ran for Sara’s room, thankful that she knew the way so well that she could get there blindfolded, because their section of the house was now so dark that it was like being blindfolded as her bare feet stumbled over the transitions between the resilient wool surfaces of the Oriental carpets in her room, the hall, and Sara’s room, and the buffer zone of the slickly smooth h
ardwood floor in between.
‘‘Sara! Sara!’’ Flinging open the door to her daughter’s chamber, Olivia saw in a glance that the bedside light she had left on was out. She saw, too, that the curtains over one window were slightly parted, allowing a shaft of moonlight into the room. By its light she could see Sara sitting bolt upright in bed, the bedclothes puddled around her waist.
As was her habit, she had checked the window locks before leaving Sara to sleep. Had she not pulled the curtains completely closed again, allowing that shaft of moonlight to enter? She didn’t remember seeing moonlight when she’d taken a last look back at Sara after turning off the light—but maybe the moon just hadn’t risen sufficiently then.
‘‘Sara!’’ Olivia flipped on the light switch by the door. The room was flooded with warm yellow light from the fixture overhead. A quick, comprehensive glance saw no sign of injury to Sara. Olivia was relieved, so relieved, to discover her daughter apparently unharmed that for an instant she sagged against the doorjamb. Her heart was pounding wildly, her breathing came in sharp gasps, and her big toe ached where she had stubbed it on something. None of it mattered: Sara was safe. Although what she imagined could have possibly happened to Sara in this secure environment, she couldn’t have said.
‘‘Mommy!’’ Voice shaking, Sara stretched out her arms toward her as if she were a very little girl again. As Olivia hurried to her daughter’s side she saw that Sara’s face was as white as the sheet upon which she sat, and her dark eyes were huge with shock. ‘‘Oh, Mommy!’’
Sara scrambled for the side of the bed even as Olivia reached the edge. They wrapped their arms about each other, and Olivia sat down on the mattress. The clock on the nightstand read 4:28 A.M. Sara’s pink Barbie nightgown was damp with sweat.
‘‘There was something—it was standing at the foot of my bed!’’ Sara was nearly incoherent as she pressed her face into the curve between Olivia’s neck and shoulder. Olivia tightened her hold as an unexpected chill raced down her spine. Something—at the foot of Sara’s bed— at the foot of her old bed, in her old room . . .?
‘‘Something was standing at the foot of your bed?’’ Olivia tried hard to ignore the disorienting sense of having played out this scene before. But she couldn’t resist glancing at the rocker in the corner, the rocker where memory had resurrected her mother, and where, she realized with some deep instinct that was surer even than conscious memory, her mother used to sit while she slept. Why had her mother sat with her as she slept? Hazy memories teased the outer reaches of Olivia’s mind, but she could not quite seem to access them. They were there and yet . . .
‘‘It was big—it had this big, bald head—it was looking at me. . . .’’
‘‘What was, baby?’’ Olivia let go of her own thoughts to concentrate on comforting her daughter.
‘‘The thing at the foot of the bed. It—it was wearing something dark, like a cloak, or—or something, and when it saw me looking at it—it—it smiled—and—and it had fangs!’’ Sara shuddered at the memory.
‘‘Fangs?’’ Olivia questioned, holding Sara close. Strangely enough, the mention of fangs was reassuring. Whatever fuzzy remnants of her own childhood terrors might be lurking at the edges of her consciousness, she was almost certain they did not include fangs.
‘‘I think it was the vampire lightning bug king!’’ Sara disclosed with a sob, and shuddered in her mother’s arms.
Olivia took a deep breath. Her own sense of horror was fading. The vampire lightning bug king? It rang no bells with her psyche. Suddenly she remembered. ‘‘From your game?’’
Sara nodded, her face hidden, her arms tight around Olivia’s neck.
‘‘Sara.’’ Olivia kissed Sara’s averted cheek. ‘‘Baby, I think you just had a bad dream.’’
Sara shook her head. ‘‘It was real. I woke up and it was standing there. The room was dark—you promised you’d leave a night-light on, Mom!—but it was standing in the light from the window. I could see it! I could see it looking at me, and I could see its fangs when it smiled, and then when I screamed it turned and went toward the window and—and disappeared!’’
‘‘It was a nightmare, baby.’’ The relief she felt as her certainty grew that her child’s scream had been due to a nightmare and nothing more was palpable. Olivia squeezed Sara tightly and smoothed her hair back from her face. When Sara looked up at her Olivia gave her a reassuring smile.
‘‘Let me check the light,’’ Olivia said, easing Sara’s arms from around her neck. ‘‘I did leave it on. Something must have happened.’’
The small bedside lamp was of white china with an inexpensive white pleated shade. Leaning sideways, Olivia reached under the shade for the switch and pressed it. Nothing happened. Disentangling herself from Sara, she stood up and looked behind the night table at the cord. The lamp was plugged in. Finally she grasped the bulb, checked to see that it was tight in its socket, then unplugged the cord and unscrewed the bulb, all under Sara’s unblinking gaze.
Finally she raised the bulb to her ear and shook it. The ensuing rattle confirmed what she had suspected.
‘‘The bulb’s burned out.’’ Olivia was cheerfully matter-of-fact by this time. The sick dread that had threatened to overtake her when she’d considered the possibility that something—someone—actually had been in her daughter’s room had faded. She put the bulb down and moved toward the parted curtains. ‘‘Let me check the window.’’
Pulling the curtains farther apart, she visually checked the latch. It was an old-fashioned brass hook-and-eye latch, and it was firmly locked, just as it had been earlier when she had checked it. Olivia touched it to make sure. It felt secure, and she didn’t see how anyone could have gone out the window and then locked it from the gallery. If anyone had gone out the door when Sara had screamed, Olivia might not have seen them because of the darkness of the hall. But she would have heard them, felt them, known they were there. It had taken her only seconds to reach her own bedroom door. There had been no time for an intruder to get away.
‘‘The window’s locked,’’ she said. To make doubly certain, she checked the latch on the other window again, too. It, too, was locked.
‘‘It was just a bad dream?’’ Sara quavered uncertainly. Some of the color had returned to her cheeks but she was still a far cry from her normal buoyant self.
‘‘That’s what it was.’’ Olivia nodded as she twitched the curtains back into place. She moved over to the white-painted chest between the windows and extracted one of Sara’s nightgowns from a drawer. ‘‘Here, baby, change your nightgown. Yours is damp.’’
‘‘I sweated.’’ Sara caught the nightgown Olivia tossed to her, pulled the one she was wearing over her head, and donned the fresh one. It, too, was a pink Barbie nightie—Olivia had gotten a half dozen on sale for $3.99 each at Kmart—identical to the one it replaced. Sara threw the damp nightgown to her mother, who placed it in the mesh bag she kept for dirty clothes.
‘‘Mommy—can I sleep with you for the rest of the night? I’m still scared.’’
Since reaching the advanced age of eight in April, Sara only ever called her Mommy when she was in trouble of one sort or another. Mom was the cool, preferred term.
‘‘Sure thing, pumpkin.’’ Olivia would have suggested it if Sara had not. As a single parent, she worked hard at not being overprotective, or overpossessive, and not babying Sara too much. Consequently, her child had had her own room and her own bed from infancy, and even when Sara was at the stage when she persisted in getting out of her bed and climbing in with her mother every night, Olivia had patiently, night after night, waited until the child had fallen asleep beside her, and then gotten up to carry her back to her own bed. Not because she didn’t want Sara with her—she did— but because she felt it was better for Sara. But on special occasions, such as when Sara was sick or upset or they just needed each other more than usual, she let Sara sleep with her. Those were the nights when Olivia slept best of all, because she knew
then, with absolute certainty, that Sara was safe.
It had never before occurred to her to wonder why she didn’t entirely feel that Sara was safe when she was in her own bed.
There was something about a child’s being alone in bed. . . .
‘‘Mom?’’
Olivia realized that she had been standing beside the bed staring blankly into space for several seconds. Her daughter was looking at her with the beginnings of concern.
Olivia blinked. ‘‘I was just wondering whether we ought to sleep in your bed, or mine.’’
‘‘Yours,’’ Sara said positively, and Olivia didn’t disagree. She nodded and held out a hand to Sara, who scooted off the bed. They exited the room together, leaving the door open and the light on behind them. Certain as she was that there was nothing to be afraid of, Olivia still didn’t want to turn out the only source of illumination in the whole pitch-black upstairs.
‘‘Bathroom?’’ she asked, looking down at her daughter.
Sara nodded. They headed to the bathroom, then to Olivia’s room. For no reason except that she just felt she wanted to, Olivia turned the lock on her bedroom door once they were inside, without letting Sara see. They got into bed, cuddling together in the middle of the mattress with the bedside lamp burning brightly, while Olivia told a very funny (and mostly invented) recollection from her childhood. Sara giggled herself breathless before finally falling asleep.
Then Olivia switched off the lamp, wrapped an arm around Sara, and tried to get back to sleep herself. But the niggling thought remained:
Had something—or someone—been in Sara’s room?
Like the vampire lightning bug king? On that absurd note, Olivia dismissed the suspicion as ridiculous. Sara had had a bad dream. Nothing more.
God thank you for Sara. . . .
Just before she dozed off Olivia thought she heard a floorboard creak in the hall. Her eyes popped open, and she was instantly alert. But strain though she might, she heard nothing more. Old houses always had creaks . . . didn’t they?
Ghost Moon Page 14
