by Brenda Novak
The memories of that warm, summer night often lingered on the fringes of her mind. They were partly what drew her out here.
“But after a couple of hours,” she went on, “I felt this strange sort of peace, as if she was with me and didn’t want me to be frightened. I even started talking to her.” Uncomfortable admitting this, since she’d never told Eve before, she laughed to make herself sound a little less crazy. “I know it was all my imagination, but I’ve never been frightened of her since.”
“You don’t feel like you’re betraying a friend by using her death or her ghost or whatever in our marketing ideas?”
Cheyenne shook her head. “We could never squelch the rumors, anyway. A good ghost story gets handed down generation after generation.”
“But we’ll be playing into it,” Eve argued. “And do you really think we have to go so far as to change the name?”
Cheyenne studied the Victorian-style building just beyond the black-iron filigree fence that surrounded the cemetery. All the Christmas garland and lights made the inn look magical, but underneath the decorations it needed caulking and paint and some dry-rot repair. New plumbing, too. “Saving the inn will require a total makeover, Eve. The place should get a new name to go with it. That feels like a clean start. And I like calling it Little Mary’s. Adding ‘Gold Country’s Only Haunted Bed-and-Breakfast,’ softens the darkness of it.”
“My parents don’t agree.” Eve kicked at the snow.
“Things are different than when they were in charge.”
“You mean the Russos hadn’t opened A Room with a View,” she grumbled. “Still…” She sighed. “I can’t help feeling bad about using what happened to Mary to book rooms.”
“We’re trying to save her home.” An idea occurred to Chey that brought her to her feet. “Hey, maybe we can save the inn and do her a favor at the same time.”
Eve’s eyebrows slid up. “What are you talking about?”
“What if we get Unsolved Mysteries or one of those shows to come out here and do a segment on Mary’s murder, see if they can convince forensic profilers and detectives to take a look at the scene and try to solve the case?”
Eve blew on her hands, then rubbed them together. “How would we even reach the right people?”
“Are you kidding? One of our best friends owns a PR company. If Gail can’t get in touch with the producer, I bet her movie-star husband has contacts who could. Simon might even be willing to do a guest spot on the show, to mention that this inn is in his wife’s hometown. We’d be a shoe-in if Simon’s name was attached.”
“I don’t want to impose on him, Chey. He already sent us those movie props for our new haunted house theme—not that we’ll be able to use them now that we’re going with a restoration.”
“He won’t mind,” she said. “It wouldn’t take more than an hour of his time. Just a quick cameo appearance. Come on. Getting the B and B on a show like that would be great PR for our grand reopening. We’d blow the competition away. It might also bring Mary some peace.” She bent closer to Eve. “Think about it. What if we finally solve the mystery?”
Grooves of concern appeared in Eve’s normally smooth forehead. “That would be great, but does it mean we hold off on the renovations until these forensic people have a look?” Now that her parents had retired and left her in charge, her first consideration was, and had to be, how to cover the mortgage payments, especially now that her parents had done all they could to help financially. “Because I can’t really do that,” she added. “Riley’s about the only one, besides you, who isn’t going on the cruise on Sunday and part of the reason he’s staying is to start the improvements so we can reopen in January.”
Eve and five other friends were taking a ten-day Caribbean cruise for the holidays. They were leaving this weekend and wouldn’t get back until the day after Christmas.
“We won’t have to change the schedule,” Cheyenne said. “We’re not renovating the basement.” No one had ever changed anything down there, which gave her hope that, one way or another, the mystery could be solved.
The darkening sky threatened another storm. Eve stood as she glanced up. “It’s a long shot that they’d be able to tell anything after a century and a half.”
“A long shot is better than no shot at all. Even if they don’t end up solving the crime, we’d get the PR. It’s a national show. You can’t buy publicity like that.”
Linking her arm through Chey’s, Eve pulled her toward the shelter of the inn. “Okay, fine. We’ll see what we can do to get their interest, but not until after I’m back and the holidays are over.”
“That should work,” Cheyenne said as they walked. “But why aren’t you more excited? It’s exactly what we need to get the word out.”
“You’re right. I’m just…stressed. It’s a great idea. Gail’s going to be mad she didn’t come up with it first.” Eve gave her a conspirator’s smile, but it disappeared almost immediately. “How’s your mother doing?”
Cheyenne didn’t want to dwell on the cantankerous woman who awaited her at the end of each day. She had only a couple of hours until she was off work, hours that would pass far too soon. Then Presley would head over to the casino and she’d be in for another endless night with Anita. “She’s hanging in there.”
“How much longer do you think she’ll last?”
“Who knows? The doctor says it could be a few days or a few weeks.”
Eve stopped, jerking Cheyenne to a stop with her. “Maybe I should cancel my trip. I’ve been thinking of doing that, anyway.”
“No.” Cheyenne wasn’t willing to let Eve miss the cruise she’d scrimped and saved for, the vacation she’d talked about for twenty-four months.
“But what if your mother dies while we’re gone? You’d have to deal with that all by yourself.” She lowered her voice even though there wasn’t anyone around to overhear. “Lord knows Presley’s not much support.”
“Presley does what she can. And your folks are here. I’m sure they’d offer me whatever I need.” The cold was beginning to seep into Cheyenne’s bones. Suddenly anxious to get inside, she tugged Eve to get her moving again. “Anyway, I don’t think any of our friends particularly want to go to Anita’s funeral.”
“We’re all too angry at her to like her very much,” she admitted. “But we want to be there for you.”
“You are. Always.”
“I can’t believe the cancer came back, and that she went downhill so fast.”
“It’s bad timing, what with Christmas and all. But you can’t miss the cruise. There’s no canceling at this late date. You wouldn’t be able to get a refund.”
Eve made a sound of impatience. “I had no business spending that money in the first place. If I’d had any idea we wouldn’t recover after A Room with a View opened…”
Chey held the gate as they passed through. “I know. But look at it this way. The money’s spent. We have a plan for rescuing the inn. And Anita will probably survive until the new year. She may have her faults, but she’s tough. No one could argue with that.”
Once they reached the welcome mat, Eve stomped the dampness from her boots. “I wish you were going with us.”
So did Cheyenne. But she hadn’t even made an effort. She’d known from the onset, when the idea had first been proposed during one of their Friday morning get-togethers at the coffee shop, that she’d never be able to afford the trip. The Harmons paid her what they could, but she didn’t make a lot. And either her mother or her sister always needed financial help. “I don’t have a birth certificate, remember? I can’t get a passport without one.”
“We could’ve gotten a copy of your birth certificate somehow.”
“Not if my mother can’t remember where I was born!”
A roll of the eyes told Chey what Eve thought of that. What mother didn’t have this information? “There has to be another way to find it. We just need to do the research.”
Cheyenne knew it would be a lot harder t
o come up with than Eve imagined. There weren’t even many pictures of her and Presley as children. For several years they’d lived out of a car, which made it impossible to collect much memorabilia. Even Presley’s birth certificate had fallen by the wayside when, shortly after Anita was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, they’d come back to the motel where they’d been staying to find the manager had thrown all their stuff away because Anita hadn’t been able to come up with the payment.
Cheyenne had shared that incident with Eve and the others. But she hadn’t told them about the blonde woman in her dreams, how any type of snowfall made her feel bereft, or the suspicions that went along with her earliest memories. Intimating that her mother might’ve kidnapped her would be a very serious accusation. And she wasn’t sure she could trust that the images in her mind were accurate. She needed some sort of proof before she went that far.
“I’ll be fine here,” she said. “I’m overseeing the renovations for you.”
“My folks could’ve done that. They’re not leaving to visit my aunt until February.”
Cheyenne slipped into the warmth of the inn and was immediately enveloped by the scent of the expensive pine-and-mulberry potpourri they purchased to impress their guests. “This way they won’t have to,” she said, but she knew it wasn’t going to be easy to face Christmas with all her friends gone, her mother dying and the inn closed for remodeling.
3
Presley sat next to her mother’s bed, chain-smoking while watching her sleep. Part of her felt guilty about spewing carcinogens into the air Anita was breathing. She knew Chey would have sent her to the porch if she were home. But it was cold outside, and Presley didn’t see how a little secondhand smoke could make any difference now.
The small TV on the dresser droned on in the background. They were supposed to be watching The Bold and the Beautiful. It was their favorite soap; they’d followed it for years. But her mother was so drugged she could hardly keep her eyes open. She drifted in and out of consciousness, scarcely aware that Presley was in the room.
Once again, the morphine on the nightstand drew Presley’s attention. She’d already taken a swallow of it, but she was tempted to drink more—or head over to the blue shack down the hill where she could buy crystal meth. She had to be careful not to take too much of her mother’s supply. The state would provide only a limited amount. The hospice nurse, who came in every Monday, kept a close eye on it, and so did Cheyenne.
Anita moaned, shifting as if she couldn’t get comfortable, and opened her eyes. Then she saw Presley and made an attempt to rally. “What’s happening…on our show?”
She recognized the voices of the actors, knew what she was supposed to be doing even though she’d been asleep for twenty minutes or more.
“Nothing new,” Presley replied to cover for the fact that she hadn’t really been watching, either.
“Have they shown Thomas?”
He was Anita’s favorite. She’d loved that bit about the ecstasy-induced weekend with Brooke and whether or not he’d slept with his stepmother. “Not today.” That she’d noticed, anyway.
“What’s happening with Ridge?”
“He was kissing his ex-wife before the last commercial.” Presley had seen that much, but even if she hadn’t, Ridge cheating with his ex was a safe bet. The writers had kept that love triangle going for several seasons.
“If he doesn’t choose between Brooke and Taylor soon, I’ll miss it.” Her eyes drifted shut. Presley assumed she’d fallen back asleep, but she spoke a few seconds later. “You’d better quit smoking, or you’ll wind up like me.”
Presley wanted to quit. She remembered how yellow her mother’s teeth had been before she lost them to poor hygiene. But now was not the time to fight that battle. She needed all the help she could get just to survive each day. “I will. Later.”
“Right.” Her mother coughed as she tried to laugh.
“Mom?”
Anita took a deep breath. It was getting harder and harder for her to speak. Sometimes she didn’t have the energy for it at all. “What?”
Presley used the remote to turn down the television. “Chey’s not home.”
“I didn’t ask if she was.”
“I wanted you to know she wasn’t.”
Her mother’s eyes showed a heightened alertness. She’d noticed the change in Presley’s tone. Sometimes they told each other more than they ever admitted to Chey. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to ask you again about Eugene Crouch.”
“Don’t.” Her mother smoothed her thin gray hair. “It’s better if you…leave that alone.”
“Why? He had a picture.”
A grimace added more wrinkles to Anita’s heavily lined face. “So?”
“So?” Presley repeated. “Aren’t you curious where he got it? Who was in it?”
She coughed again. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to…hear anything about it.”
“Because you already know.”
With a grimace, Anita motioned to the TV. “Turn that back up.”
Presley didn’t comply. She bent over Anita to convince her that she wanted the truth. “What happened, Mom? Who was the blonde woman in the picture? Is she the one Chey keeps asking about?”
Her mother waved her off. “Stop. Just trust me.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
Her face flushed with the first color Presley had seen in several days. Maybe she realized she hadn’t earned much trust, even from the daughter who loved her. “I’m trying to…do you a favor,” she said, finally meeting Presley’s gaze. “Don’t ruin it. It’s…the last gift I have to give you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does! Why make you…carry the secret after I’m gone? It will…only tear you up inside.” She lowered her voice. “Or cost you…the one person you’ve always been able to count on.”
The sickening feeling that’d crept over Presley when she’d seen that photo of Cheyenne as a little girl, all dolled up, returned. “She doesn’t really belong to us, does she,” she said, clutching her hands in the bedding.
Anita’s breath rattled as she dragged it in and out of her lungs. “You knew that. You might…deny it, but in your heart…you knew all along.”
“No.” Presley shook her head. “We don’t look alike because we come from different fathers. That’s what you said!”
“That’s what you wanted to believe!”
She was right. As much as Presley would rather have denied it, she’d had her doubts. She’d just been unwilling to face them. She’d heard Cheyenne ask about the blonde woman, had listened to her sister describe with longing the many toys she’d once had, the pretty clothes and the full belly, and she’d purposely pretended she remembered no time when they weren’t a family. She’d even told Chey, on a number of occasions, that those images had to be from a dream.
“Oh, God,” she muttered, and sank down into her chair.
It required considerable effort, but Anita managed to sit up on her own. “Presley, you wanted a sister so bad. I couldn’t have another child, but you needed someone, someone besides me. I couldn’t be there all the time. I had to make sure we had food to eat and somewhere to sleep. I— It was just the two of us, and every day you begged me for a playmate.”
Anita’s actions hadn’t been entirely altruistic. She’d used her children as much as anything else. But Presley didn’t make an issue of it. She was too preoccupied, too frightened by what she was learning. Covering her mouth, she spoke through her fingers. “So what did you do?”
“I got what you needed, that’s what.”
The drugs Presley had taken made her feel as if her mother’s voice was growing loud and then dim. Was this really happening?
Yes. She was pretty sure it was. She’d suspected for a long time. But now that she was confronted with the reality, she didn’t know how to react. Was she supposed to be grateful to her mothe
r?
She would’ve been miserable growing up alone. Cheyenne had provided the companionship that’d made life bearable. Together they’d weathered so much, stood against the world, especially when Anita took up with a man and her daughters became less important to her. Or when Anita went on a drunken binge. Cheyenne had been there to provide love and comfort.
“But…what about her?” Presley wasn’t sure how she managed to speak. It felt as if someone had put a clamp on her tongue.
“What about her?” Anita’s eyes snapped with the instant anger that was so typical of her. “She’s fine. I took care of her just like I took care of you, didn’t I? Why does she deserve party dresses and birthday presents? Why does she deserve to have life any better than you or me?”
Because Anita had stolen her from the family she would’ve had, and who could say what they would’ve been able to give her. Didn’t she see the injustice in that? “You told her you have no idea who the blonde woman is or why she keeps remembering all those things,” she whispered. “She’s asked at least a hundred times.”
“Well, now that you know, we’ll see if you tell her anything different,” she responded, and with a bitter laugh that said she didn’t think Presley would, she fell back on the pillows.
* * *
Presley was gone when Cheyenne returned home from work, which surprised her. With Anita in such bad shape, Presley usually waited for Chey to arrive so that someone would be with Anita at all times.
Cheyenne would’ve asked her mother why her sister had left early, but Anita seemed to be in a drugged stupor. As Chey stood at her bedroom door, looking in, she realized that what she’d told Eve wasn’t true. No way could Anita make it until after the cruise. The cancer had progressed too far. She’d already been reduced to a bag of bones beneath waxy skin. She’d grown so small and feeble compared to the woman Cheyenne used to fear, it was a wonder she was still breathing.
Maybe that was why Presley had gone. Watching Anita die a little more each day wasn’t easy.
