Love Me to Death

by Maggie Shayne

He was a gorgeous young man. His hair was unruly, curling and light brown, blond bits here and there that probably got blonder in the summer and browner in the winter. Eyes all streaked with brown and green. When he smiled, there were dimples in his cheeks. Deep ones that were going to be there forever.

  The image blurred and wavered before her eyes, and then as she blinked it clear again, she realized that the photo was in black and white. Not color. And yet, she’d been seeing it in color. Furthermore, he wasn’t smiling in the photo. Only in her mind. At her. With some deep sort of emotion in his eyes. She’d been seeing him as if he were real—not a photograph. Something else. Something that felt an awful lot like…like a memory.

  “David,” she whispered, trying the name out on her lips, wondering if it would elicit anything more.

  But there was something more. A very real resemblance between the boy in the photo and the man in her dream.

  David Nichols wasn’t in town anymore. According to Nikki, he’d moved away long ago. And besides, he was twenty-two years older now. Still, she couldn’t quite explain the odd yearning in the pit of her stomach, the feeling that she had to meet him, to see him, to talk to him.

  Maybe the one who was still in town could give her some answers. Maybe Mark Potter would even know where David Nichols was, how to reach him. Maybe. She would talk to Mr. Potter first thing in the morning, at his grocery store in town.

  But in the meantime, she had to see that house—the old Muller place.

  Giving up on sleep well past midnight, she decided there was no time like the present. She got out of bed, dressed warmly, donned her parka and walked into town. She didn’t want to drive; it was too clear and crisp a night, and besides, she’d been driving all afternoon.

  The village of Port Lucinda was less than a mile ahead, and as she moved through the silent, darkened streets, over well-maintained sidewalks, past shops that looked as if they were preserved from the previous century, she felt waves of déjà vu so many times that she stopped counting them. They came with every steamy puff of air she breathed.

  Potter’s Grocery was dark. Empty. She saw from the sign that they opened early, though, and she imagined Mark Potter would be there even earlier. So she would try to catch him on the way back.

  But for now, her goal lay beyond the town of Port Lucinda. All the way on the other side, in fact. She walked on, leaving the village and its shops behind and following the winding road northward another half mile until, at last, she saw it.

  The house rose up before her, the starry blackness of night its backdrop. There was no moon, and despite the stars, she thought it seemed the blackest night she had ever seen, anywhere. And there was that house, that very same house she had painted over and over again, standing in the midst of it.

  There was no question it was the same building. Oh, it had been repainted, and it had been restored—but it was the same. Those round balconies, the turret, the scalloped siding that made the turret sort of birthday-cakelike. That had been clinging in bits and patches in her paintings of the place. The maple tree was the same—only it was bigger. Older than she’d depicted it.

  The only difference she could see was the sign on the front lawn. Sierra House—Teen Crisis Center. The white wood sign hung from a post, suspended by iron S hooks that creaked as the wind blew.

  She dragged her gaze away from the sign, and found it riveted to a window on the second floor—and for the barest instant, she could have sworn she saw her own face staring back down at her from that window.

  “So you’ve come back.”

  She gasped and turned to see an old woman, brown-skinned and mature, though beautiful. Her silver-streaked raven hair was wound into a tight bun and pinned to the back of her head, and she wore an ordinary sundress with a heavy peacoat over it, but she seemed as if she would be more at home in a brightly colored sari.

  “Do you know me?” Sara asked.

  “I know who you were. Perhaps not who you are. But you look the same.”

  “As…who?”

  The older woman smiled. “Her,” she said, and she pointed toward the exact window at which Sara had just been staring. “It happens that way sometimes. When there are things unsettled. But now you’ve come back. You’ll work it all out.”

  Sara frowned even harder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing’s unsettled.”

  “Something is, or you wouldn’t be here. I never did feel the entire story was known. Oh, Sierra, you’ll work it out. You will.”

  “My name is Sara.”

  “It’s all the same.”

  Sara was still shaking her head. “Who are you?”

  The woman smiled mysteriously. “I’m an aunt. I saved my money. Came here to take care of you. But I was too late. You were already dead.”

  The woman’s voice was warm, her face sincere, but Sara thought she was probably a little bit demented.

  “Look, you might have been an aunt to Sierra, but I’m not her.”

  “You are,” she said. “And you will be, until it’s all worked out. You can’t move on until it’s settled. But you have to come to that in your own time.” She patted Sara’s shoulder and then stretched her arm, pointing a crooked finger up the road. “I live that way, near the trailer park where you grew up. Your father’s still there, you know.”

  “No. No, I don’t have a father. I was raised in foster care.”

  She smiled. “My house is yellow. It’s the only yellow one on the block. When you are ready to know who you are, Sierra, you come to me. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “My name is Pakita.” Again the hand patted her shoulder. And then the woman turned and walked away, up the sidewalk, toward that yellow house that must not be too far.

  So Sierra—the dead girl who looked like her, and who seemed to be haunting her dreams—still had family here. This slightly loopy aunt, and a father. Two things Sara had never had.

  Shaking her head, she decided she’d had enough of this place—she didn’t like it. She didn’t know why anyone would. Turning, she headed back toward town, and when she made it there by five a.m., she figured Mr. Potter would show up to open his store in an hour, maybe an hour and a half. So she found a comfortable place to sit at the end of the alley between Potter’s Grocery and the drugstore-slash-soda shoppe, where she was more or less out of sight. An upturned plastic milk crate made a great seat, and she took it, and she waited.

  Mark Potter arrived about an hour later. He pulled his Cadillac into a spot along the roadside, and, taking his keys from a pocket, walked to the door to unlock it. Delivery trucks had begun rumbling over Main Street, their noise signaling a firm end to the quiet of a Port Lucinda night.

  She studied the man as he bent to the lock. He had changed quite a bit. He was bigger, of course, but he still had the same dark hair and striking, wide jawline that he’d had in the high school photo.

  She said softly, “Excuse me. Are you Mark Potter?”

  And the man turned his head slowly, a big smile on his face until his gaze fell on her. Frowning, he reached inside the now open shop door, and flipped a switch. The store’s lights came on, and because she stood now right in front of the big window, they spilled on her. She shielded her eyes and backed up into the shadows again.

  But he’d had a good look at her, and now his eyes widened.

  “Are you?” she asked. “I think you are, but you’re older now.”

  “I…I…” He held up a hand.

  “I know, it’s probably a shock to see me. I know I look like—wait!”

  He didn’t wait. Before she finished the sentence, he’d turned, his face having gone white, and just ran, just lunged really, headlong across the sidewalk and right into the road, even as yet another delivery truck rumbled by. It hit him instantly. He ran so directly into its path that given another microsecond, he would have hit it.

  But it hit him instead. The impact was brutal, and she covered her mouth and averted her face, but her eyes coul
dn’t turn away. She saw the man airborne, then crashing down onto the pavement. People came running, the truck driver, other shop owners, a jogger just passing by. They gathered around him, blocking her out, calling for help.

  Sara thought she was going to vomit. She backed even farther into the alley, emerging into the wide paved areas behind the buildings, and walked toward the southern end of town, and Nikki’s childhood home.

  As she walked, she dialed the cellphone. And when Cami answered, her voice sleepy, she said, “I’m pretty sure I just killed a man.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT,” Nikki said. “You’ve had a day to recover while I found out what was what, and now you’re showered, you’re sitting, and you have some of that chamomile tea Mom keeps in the teddy bear cannister?”

  “I’m clean, I’m sitting, I’m sipping. What have you found out, Nikki? Is that poor man dead?”

  “I’ve talked to Mom, who phoned the town gossip, Nellie Camaroon, who is also the organist at the Methodist church.”

  “You didn’t tell her why you wanted to know, did you?”

  “And what would I have told her, Sara? That there’s a ghost haunting my friend? Or possessing her, or…whatever the hell this is?”

  “Past life.”

  “Huh?” Nikki asked, then she said, “Cami, come here. I’m putting her on speaker. Okay, Sara, say again?”

  “Look, when I was out there—out at Sierra House—”

  “When were you there?”

  “About four in the morning yesterday, before I went to see Mark Potter and got him killed.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Thank God.”

  “He’s not far from it, though.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “Get back on topic, Sara. You went to Sierra House in the dead of night. And what happened?”

  Sara took a breath and sighed. “Most notably, an old Indian woman approached me. She called me Sierra, claimed to be my Aunt Pakita and said I had come back to work things out.”

  She heard Cami’s swift intake of breath, and Nikki whispering the word, “Reincarnation?”

  “I think that’s what she was getting at. Turns out Sierra’s father still lives here.”

  “You have to see him!” Cami shouted.

  “Uh, don’t think so. Look what happened to the last guy!”

  “Maybe you could wear a disguise. Or even talk to him by phone.”

  “Maybe. But back to the subject, okay? What did you find out about Mark Potter, and the others?”

  “Mark’s injuries are pretty serious. Word is that he’s been asking for the other guys—the other four guys. I know one of the nurses at Port Lucinda General, and she says they’re all arriving this morning.”

  “They’re coming here?” Sara swallowed hard. “All of them?” And in her mind’s eye, she was seeing David Nichols. Those intense eyes, that warm smile. And her stomach was tying itself up in knots. She was feeling his powerful arms closing around her, and tasting his desperate kisses the way she’d been doing in dreams, night after night, since before she knew his name.

  “Yeah. Randy Madison’s family own a place out at The Heights. I can give you directions up there.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, you’re there to find out what this is about. If you don’t talk to them, don’t talk to Sierra’s father, don’t even want to talk to this old woman who apparently wants to help, then what’s the point? You might as well come home right now.”

  She drew a breath, sighed. “I know you’re right.”

  But Cami jumped in. “No, she’s not. Don’t do one thing if you’re scared. We’ll be with you on Wednesday and we can be the ones to talk to all these people for you. Okay?”

  “If I haven’t managed it by then, sure,” Sara said. “I’m gonna take a nap, I’ve been up all night for several nights in a row now. Maybe I’ll know what to do when I wake up again.”

  “Keep us posted, hon,” Nikki said.

  “I will.”

  * * *

  SARA TOOK THE NAP. And then she returned to Sierra House, by car this time, intending to look for the old woman, maybe talk to her, perhaps even get a phone number for Sierra’s father. But the old woman wasn’t at home, the trailer was in a park full of them and she didn’t know which one to approach, and she found herself walking back up the road and staring at Sierra House again.

  Until he came. His Jeep pulled to a stop alongside the road, and she knew him the minute she saw him. David Nichols. Older than the boy in the yearbook. Exactly like the man in her dreams. He sat there, staring at the house for a long moment, and she stood there, staring at him, with something happening inside of her that she had never felt before. God, she was so confused, so overwhelmed. She didn’t even believe in reincarnation.

  “He was your soul mate, Sierra.”

  She turned, expecting to see the old woman—but there was utterly no one there. And it shook her. The one thing she hadn’t considered during all of this was that she might be losing her mind.

  Now, though, hearing voices, seeing faces in windows when no one was there—now she had to consider it.

  She dashed up the sidewalk to where she’d left her car, got in and drove as fast as she could back to the house, and then she shut herself inside, and paced, and wept, and racked her brain to think of an explanation. Any explanation. At length, she phoned Nikki, and without preamble said, “Phone your mom, right now. Ask her the name of the person who lives in the yellow house on Maple Street, a block up from Sierra House, near the trailer park.”

  “You don’t sound right. Are you okay, Sara?”

  “I’ll tell you when you call me back with the answer. Please hurry.”

  “Okay. Sit tight. I should be able to reach her cell. I’ll call you right back, either way.”

  Sara hung up the phone, and paced, and waited, and wondered if she needed to get herself into a hospital, or something. Her heart was racing. Her head was…it was just a mess. Jumbled, mixed-up notions and ideas. And an endless and ever-growing ache in her heart—a longing, yearning ache for a man she’d never even met.

  The phone rang. Three minutes had passed, according to Sara’s watch, but it felt more like thirty. She answered immediately. “Well?”

  “Sammy and Lois Sheppard live there with their three dogs. No one else. He’s a road crew guy for the county, and she works at the post office.”

  “You’re sure it’s the right house?” she asked.

  “It’s the only yellow house on Maple,” Nikki said.

  “And there are no elderly relatives living with them?”

  “No. And if there were, they wouldn’t be Indian women, Sara. That is why you’re asking, isn’t it? This woman you saw, this Pakita, she’s messing with you for some reason.”

  Sara shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think—I think she’s not even real.”

  There was a long, long silence. Then, her voice taking on a new kind of tone, the kind she probably used for the most agitated patients in the E.R., Nikki said, “You know what? You shouldn’t be out there alone. I really think maybe you need to just rest now, Sara. Just rest. I’m gonna come out there, okay?”

  Sara wiped tears from her eyes, and shook her head as if Nikki could see her. “God, don’t be so dramatic. I don’t mean I think I’m imagining her,” she lied. “I mean, I think she’s not really some aunt of Sierra’s. She’s not really who she says she is, and she doesn’t live where she says she lives. That’s all. Not that she…you know, doesn’t exist.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t sure if Nikki was buying into her fabrication. But she wasn’t ready to have her roommate cart her off to a mental ward for evaluation. She wished she’d never blurted her suspicion in the first place. But damn, she’d been stunned. Pakita was a figment of her imagination.

  Or was she?

  “I’m going to go out to Randy Madison’s parents’ house,” she said. “I think my best bet is to talk
to Dav—to talk to the four other men.”

  “Okay,” Nikki said. “But just…be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah. I will, I promise.”

  * * *

  SARA DROVE OUT PAST TOWN, toward the ocean, angling her Bug up the hilly, narrow, snake track of a road that led into The Heights—the cliffs high above the Atlantic, where the wealthiest Port Lucindites lived.

  The cottage where the men were staying was just as Nikki had described. Far more modern than Sierra House, and yet clearly mature, and solid. She didn’t turn in to the driveway. She was afraid—so afraid. What would they say to her? Did they blame her for their friend’s horrible accident? Would they think she was insane? Was she?

  She pulled the car over along the side of the road, needing to work up her courage before she could face them—face him. David.

  God, her heart beat faster at the thought of seeing him. Her blood heated and her skin warmed.

  Getting out of the car, she followed a footpath that wound up a hill, through quiet pines part of the way and then covering a more barren, rocky terrain right up to the edge of the cliffs.

  She stood there for a moment, staring out over the ocean. The wind blew inward, whipping her hair around her head. The air tasted like the sea. Below, the waves exploded in bursts of white foam as they crashed against the rocky shore. It was good here, she decided. Right here, right now, this was good. She would be okay if she could just spend a few more moments here, with the sea wind in her face.

  Eventually, though, she felt eyes on her, and turned her head to the left. It startled her how close the winding path had taken her to the cottage occupied by David and the others. Far too close. She hadn’t realized.

  And, oh, God, there was someone looking right out the window at her, right now! Not David. One of the others, one who’d changed so much she couldn’t tell which one he might be. He was pale, balding and overweight. And then he was staggering backward with his mouth gaping.

  Sara frowned, straining her eyes, moving her body left and right to try to see what had happened to him. And moments later, she saw David’s face in the window, staring out at her. And she saw raw anger in his eyes.