Lanie’s eyes filled with tears. She shook her head but inside she already knew. “Lex, he can’t be gone…”
Lexie folded Lanie into her arms. “He told me he was leaving, for both your sakes. He said there was no future in your loving him.”
Lanie’s grief spilled unchecked. “But I do love him…”
Lexie patted her friend’s back. Over Lanie’s shoulder, Jason briefly appeared, letting Lexie know he was in the room. He looked positively grief stricken. “He knows, sweetie, he knows.”
Chapter 20
While the framework of the coach house addition was being built just outside the window, the two friends pored through photocopies of microfiche and tax records and an array of yellowed newspaper clippings tucked inside clear plastic sleeves.
Because she was feeling emotionally drained, Lanie’s thoughts periodically drifted off. When had her dreams become so real? She could barely account for loving Jason’s ghost because, for the most part, their interactions had been in her dreams. And when did being an observer to that time turn into full interaction with the people there? Last night she dreamt Jason made love to her again, made love to her with all the detail her subconscious mind could come up with despite the fact she had no personal experience.
Feeling suddenly warm, she rose and went to look out at the progress in the yard. It was breezy today. The flowers were in full bloom, and the breeze coming in through the window was redolent with roses and the scent of fresh-cut pine lumber Zack and company had just raised another wall frame. The whole addition was going up fast. She watched the men, most were bare-chested and lightly sweating. An image of Jason’s body pinning her to the wall danced before her eyes, his arms and chest covered in the same fine sheen of exertion. He was gone from here now. Did that mean her dreams would end as well?
By late afternoon Lexie and Lanie had uncovered two tax records, two census records, a social column highlighting the happy announcement of Jason’s birth, and a small array of accountings of no importance such as receipts and prescriptions of medicines either Jason or his father had written their patients.
Referencing her assistant at the Cedar Falls Historical Society, Lexie tapped the stack. “I had Jennie do some double checking for me at the HS. Do you know, excluding the tax and census records, the rest of the paperwork we’ve sorted came from Jason’s Aunt Celia? She willed her scrapbooks to the museum with the stipulation that any and all information would be available to anyone who cared to see it. I’d say the woman was obviously suspicious of her nephew’s wife. She wanted someone to discover what happened to him even if that discovery came after her own death.”
Lexie thought Jason might find that interesting, too.
Lanie found an obituary for Jackson Bowen stating the man died from a riding accident in Raleigh. As soon as she read it she recalled another aspect of last night’s dream. Together she and Jason overheard Cathy and her cousins discussing the murder of Jason’s father. But that wasn’t all. They’d planned to kill Jason, too. “Look at this.” She slid the plastic sleeve across the desk. “Wild thought here, Lex. What if they also killed Jackson?”
Behind Lanie’s back, Jason appeared and nodded. Lexie watched him dissolve into thin air. “I’ll bet they did.”
* * * *
While Lexie continued digging, Lanie had other things to take care of. She spent an hour going over the details of the atrium’s azalea beds with Ben. The azaleas shipment had come in and it was all about what colors went where now. Knowing he had an excellent eye for colors and textures in the garden, she gave him free rein to do it as he pleased.
“I figure no more than a week and a half, kiddo. We’ll soak those root balls and they’ll send out new roots fast. I’ll be using some more growth hormone too, so expect the same stink as last time but only for a day or so. We might see a few azaleas try to bloom for you this year, but if you see those, you’ll have to cut the flowers off right away. The plants need to focus their energy on roots, not on blooms. All of them should pop next year for sure.”
“That’s terrific, Ben,” she said absently.
Considering Lanie, Ben couldn’t put his finger on it, but she seemed like something heavy was on her mind. The girl was sad and trying like hell not to show it. He tried to cheer her up. “I’ve put a lot of perennials in there too to fill up the spaces until the annuals come in solid. You’ll have to replant any you’re fond of next year, but you can’t beat the fast and easy color. Did you notice the plantings on the atrium’s perimeter?
She smiled at him. “I did. What are those, foxgloves?”
“A mix. Foxgloves and snapdragons.”
“I’m familiar with those. What are those pink ones? You know, the ones with the fringe? You have them planted around the gazebo, too.”
“Dianthus barbatus.”
Lanie laughed. “While I can write Latin script that any pharmacist can understand, I’m guessing here…bearded something?”
He chuckled. “Yeah barbatus describes the fringe you mentioned. It’s like a beard. The laypeople call it sweet Richard.” He added, “Hey, I just talked with Zack at lunch. He needs you to stop over there and sign off on where your outlets should be.”
More than a little distracted by the name, Lanie nodded. “I’ll go do that now. Thanks, Ben.”
“No problem, kiddo. If you don’t see me at the end of the day, I won’t be stopping in before I go unless something big pops up. Jilli’s home from camp this week. I gotta pick her up from the train station.”
Knowing how much he and Janice missed their daughter, she smiled. “Tell her I said hi.”
“Will do.”
After discussing the shell of the new clinic’s walls with Zack and where she wanted her high and low electric outlets to be placed, she headed back to the study to talk over the morning’s findings with Lexie.
While Lanie was occupied elsewhere, Lexie talked privately with Jason.
On Jason’s end, it felt good to talk about his after-the-fact suspicions of his murder. That wasn’t something he could do with Lanie, fearful as he was that he might inadvertently influence her dreams. Despite the open dialog with Lexie, the subject of his father’s murder was still too fresh in his mind to discuss. He melted away the very moment Lanie opened the door.
The friends hadn’t gotten far into their discussion before Pete came knocking on the door with two sacks of Italian beef sandwiches and fries. It was one thing to share dreams and ghostly encounters with Lexie, Lanie always had, but no one else would understand. Of that, she was sure. They finished their meal, making small talk regarding bowling scores and the evils of pre-made margarita mix then Lanie said her good-byes. It had been an exhausting day overall.
It came to Lanie around mid-day that Lexie was right. Jason had left for both their sakes. He couldn’t share a life with her because he had no life to share, period. She knew she wouldn’t see him again here in the house but it also came to her that she had another means with which she could. In her dreams. Could she live in reality and throw herself into making her clinic a success and save her love for a dream? She might meet a flesh-and-blood man one day. She smiled. If Lexie had her way, she was bound to. The smile faded. That would leave her longing for sleep and the arms of a dream. How could that be fair to any man who might enter her life?
On some level, these dreams she’d had for nearly her whole life were very real. She’d smelled the blood and abdominal wounds and heard the keening sobs at the town square. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d tasted the food, smelled the flowers, and felt him, especially felt him. It had her thinking. Did the remotest possibility exist she was actually tapping into some quantum field of time? She’d heard stories of near death experiences from patients when she was an intern. She’d also heard of past lives and knew there were entire cultures in the world who considered the concept of multiple lives or existences a perfectly natural line of thought.
Filled with that possibility, she flew to her comp
uter and read page after page of all she could find on past lives. She also discovered something the Australian Aborigines called the Dream Time. They felt this life was the dream and what they experienced when they slept was the reality. Was it? She tried to remember all the details she’d dreamt since moving in. The dreams had changed drastically over the past few weeks, and after all these years she could finally interact with people. In fact, she’d had several small conversations with different people in her dream. A thought stopped her dead in her tracks.
Lexie had brought with her today a tarnished silver broach that had been discovered with the body in the cellar. Upon holding it, she’d thought it looked familiar, but only now did she recall where she’d seen it before. Down in the study, she found it sitting on the mantel below Jason’s portrait with his father. Lexie had cleaned it, and the inscription was now visible on the back. Lanie read, Always, A & J, a gift from Jackson to his wife, Agatha. It had belonged to Addy, Jason’s housekeeper. The kind woman had told her in her dream that the broach was a gift from Jackson Bowen because she helped take care of his precious son while he was away in the war. Lanie knew as surely as she knew her own name—Cathy and company had killed Addy, too. As certain of this as she was, she was also afraid if Jason died in her dreams, she’d never see him again awake or asleep.
Then and there, she made a decision to find Jason. She had to stop Cathy and the others from killing him. But how? There’d been other dreams in her life where she walked through the dream as herself, in knowing who she was in the waking world and in full knowledge of actually being asleep and only dreaming. But these just happened on their own, she never purposely dreamed that way. A thought came to her strong and sure—lucid dreaming.
Plagued with nightmares before living with the Berglunds, Lanie learned a trick from the child psychologist who worked in the group home. Lucid dreaming occasionally allowed her to rationalize a nightmare by being aware enough that she was dreaming and not living a frightening situation. To get there she simply needed to remind herself it was only a dream then walk through her dreamworld like she believed it. Filled with resolve, she went to find her lavender essential oil. A hot scented bath would make her sleepy.
An hour later and she was too keyed up to sleep. Seeing no other recourse, she headed to the dining room where the clinic supplies were being stored as they arrived. Moving boxes out of her way, she unlocked the safe-like dispensary and dug through the boxes of medicines. Of the four likely opiates she found, she chose the valium. She wanted to sleep soundly for as long as possible and two of these would certainly do the trick. Downing the tablets with a large glass of warm water from the tap to speed their dissolving along, Lanie took herself to bed with thoughts focused on Jason’s time.
* * * *
For Jason, it had been a heart-wrenching morning. Hearing Lanie’s declaration of love for him not only filled his heart to bursting, it also broke it into pieces. Watching her cry in Lexie’s arms, knowing he was to blame, twisted his gut. Why had he ever made himself known to her? What madness possessed him? I love her, that’s what madness. He’d been intrigued by the raven-haired beauty who’d moved into his house. He’d been fascinated by her well-ordered, intelligent mind. He’d also been selfishly intrigued by the warmth and scent of her skin and the fact he could experience both in his spectral state. But something more had occurred when he fell headlong into her dream that first time. He met her in her dreamworld and lost his heart there.
Though her dreams had taken him here and there, he found a strange sort of internal continuity. It felt like he had actually lived it with her and was remembering. It was as though he possessed the pieces that filled the gaps that allowed time to pass completely and not in fragments. He thought about her last dream and how he’d found himself standing in his surgery filling a phial for Bertha. He knew he should prepare the medicine, yet it hadn’t been a part of Lanie’s dream until that moment. Somehow his mind had completed the breakfast conversation with Cathy and her accomplices as though he had sat through the whole thing. He wondered now, had he?
He had watched Lanie reading off the lighted screen so similar to her television. Standing over her like he had, he watched her fingers fly over a typewriter of sorts. As close as he was, he could clearly read the words she created as they showed themselves on the screen. It was fascinating, like reading a book on a television. Pictures and other words she didn’t write appeared, and in reading about peoples in other lands, he discovered something referred to as the Dream Time. It had him thinking now. Was there really no difference between dreams and reality?
Wanting to know more, he waited until Lanie drew her bath then he materialized in front of the television-like gadget. After studying her actions with the machine, he was fairly certain he could get the contraption to work for him. He could move the piece with his right hand by concentrating. But all he got for his efforts was a disturbance on the screen reminiscent of the kind with which he deliberately haunted her television. Frustrated, he gave up and headed to their bedroom where he found her already abed.
Materializing on the end of the bed, he carefully lay down beside her and whispered, “Take us back, my love. Take us where I may love you a while longer.”
* * * *
Jason found himself entering the house through the kitchen. “My word, Doctor, you’ve given me a fright!” Addy had turned the corner in the dark and come upon Jason and Lanie about to enter the kitchen door.
Filled with nervous energy from the accident, and from what they had heard under the window, Lanie explained quickly, “We didn’t want to track up the floor, Addy. Once we step inside in the light, you’ll see we’re absolutely covered in grime.”
Addy clucked her tongue. “Oh, you poor dears, if not for the two of you, more would have died. Of course you’ll be wanting to clean up. I’ll draw you a bath in the upstairs bathroom, miss. Doctor wouldn’t mind using the bathroom at the top floor, would you?”
Jason put his hand on Addy’s arm and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Anything is fine, Addy. See to Lanie first if you would. I can draw my own bath.”
Addy smiled softly at him. She took both their scuffed leather bags deciding she’d boil their instruments in the morning and have Patrick put a new polish on both bags as well. “Follow me, miss. Don’t worry about your shoes. Either of you. It’s only dirt.”
Fifteen minutes later, with her arms full of clothing to be washed the following day, Addy closed the door to the bath and left Lanie in the tub. She climbed the stairs to the bathroom shared by the household help, and turned on the taps to let gravity fill the smaller tub from the tank above just as Jason entered the room with his bundle of clean clothes. She told him, “I’m sorry this won’t be a hot bath, dear. But as warm as it gets up here, it will be tepid at least.” She pointed to the large paneled screen. “Now get yourself back there and hand me those filthy clothes.”
Jason chuckled. The dear old woman used those same words when he was a boy. Doing as he was told, he handed them out to her. “Addy, have I ever told you how much I love you?”
Addy’s throat got tight. He hadn’t said those words in a while. “I love you, too, Jacy.”
“I won’t be long, no more than a few minutes. I need to speak with you. Would your room do?”
“Of course, dear. Go on now, see to your bath. I’ll check on the young miss and bring us some lemonade.”
“Thank you,” he replied. When the door closed, he settled into the tub. The water was no more uncomfortable than swimming in John Burke’s pond. Jason smiled, thinking of his friend the sheriff and recalled the newspaper clipping in which Lexie had read John’s stalwart insistence that he’d never run out on his wife. He took a deep breath and slid under the water. They had murdered his father. After what he’d read over Lanie’s shoulder in her waking world, he didn’t know what existence was real anymore. If this were his reality and the other the dream, then he’d be damned if they’d get away with another murder. A me
mory came to him, and he came back up for air. When Addy’s spirit had appeared to him in the cupola, she’d said to talk to John Singer before they killed him, too. What had you seen, Mr. Singer?
Chapter 21
“Ah good, you found the lamp.” Addy closed the door to her rooms with a gentle nudge of her hip. “The others have gone to bed. The young miss finished her bath, and I took some tea and cookies to her room. It was hard for her I think, seeing the carnage of that accident. She looks tuckered out, poor thing.”
“That was nice of you. I’m sure Lanie’s very tired.” He said the words, but he had the feeling she’d be waiting for him. They needed to discuss what they’d heard outside the window.
She sat beside Jason on the small settee and handed him a cup and saucer. “You look troubled, dear. What is it?”
Setting the cup on the small oval table in front of him, he took her hand. “I’m not at liberty to say how it is I know, but what I am about to tell you is of extreme importance.”
“You can tell me anything, Jacy, you know that.”
He smiled gently. “I know. It is my hope in the telling that it keeps you safe.”
“Safe? Whatever do you mean?”
The next thirty minutes were spent telling her what he suspected and what he knew. When she sobbed into her apron over the murder of his father, he knew he was right not trying to explain they’d already killed him. How could anyone understand or explain what was happening? He certainly couldn’t.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Johnny needs to know right way. He needs to lock them up!”
“John will put them in jail, Addy, but only when their treachery is proven. Lanie heard them, too. We have a witness. But unless we uncover more, they will be free to do as they wish.”
“What do we do?”
She was wringing her apron between her hands now, and seeing her agitation tore at his heart. Had there been any other way to keep her safe... Handing her the cup and saucer, he took his own. “We watch them every minute of the day. They’ll make a mistake. They have no knowledge we know.”
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