Leaving the people she loved without even a goodbye had been the most difficult thing she had ever done. There had been no choice. She had never been good at women’s things.
Mattie would never complain about the contributions of the men in the family. Oh nooo, their work was always more important than women’s.
Daddy had become a hero when his warnings had sent the men in her family hiding valuables before the rebel armies could confiscate whatever they needed and before the enemy had come to steal what was left. Each cousin’s plantation or farm had underground shelters and cellars to house needed goods and provide escape routes.
Mattie emptied the basket and strode across the yard toward a small garden plot. Sarita fingered the beads of her necklace. Someone had already worked the garden. Cousin Mattie grabbed a heavy basket of green beans and headed toward the house.
“Mattie,” Sarita called to Mattie’s retreating back.
Mattie stopped and turned back to Sarita. “What?”
“Thanks for helping organize my homecoming supper. I know you had a lot to do here.”
“I did it for Cousin Walter,” Mattie snapped. “He loves you.” She turned away again. “Gotta get these beans to the house. I don’t have time to flitter around visiting.” She huffed and continued toward her house.
Sarita turned from her retreating cousin and walked toward the stand of trees where she’d left Baby. Walter would be worried about her, as he was anytime she left his sight. How long before she earned his trust? How long before her cousins forgave her? She missed family closeness. She missed her cousin.
##
Sarah felt a delicate hand on her shoulder, shaking her.
“Sarah, Sarah?” Eloise was calling her name. She had no idea how long she had dozed at the window. Outside the yards were quiet and the scent of impending rain reached her.
“Sarah, what are you doin’ sleepin’ on this old bench? Where is that delicious William?”
Sarah blinked and cleared her throat. “William has to work sometime. He had meetings this afternoon.”
“I thought he was a teacher. You aren’t at school this week.“ Eloise brushed a hair from Sarah’s face. She sat in a chair someone had pulled up beside Sarah’s bench.
“He has a few patients. He’s a psychologist, you know. Uh, did Sarita ever live here?”
“Mattie’s husband built this house. He had business in town. You know he inherited lots of money from his grandparents and then his parents. He loaned money to most everybody in town,” Eloise said.
Mattie materialized behind Eloise. “Cousin Sarita never lived in this house,” she said. “that is what you were wondering, is it not?”
“Did you ever invite her here? Maybe she didn’t feel welcome,” Sarah whispered.
“Of course she was welcome. Why would you think she did not visit me here?”
Sarah shrugged and looked out the window. Should she tell Mattie she saw how she had treated Sarita? Or had she just dreamed the meeting.
“Sarah, I was hurt when my best friend left my favorite cousin and sent no word about where she was for years. It took a while before we could make peace. She even helped deliver my first baby two years after her return. We did not have this house until years later.”
Sarah swallowed the tears that clogged her throat. Would she have remembered that eventually?
“Mattie? Could I be Sarita?”
The only sound in the attic was a ticking clock. A clock? That sound had to be her imagination. A fly buzzed near a window screen. Eloise stared at her like she had grown an extra head. Mattie raised a hand to her mouth.
“I – uh, you – uh – Why do you ask such a question?”
“It’s just that I know things about Sarita, things I haven’t read in the journals. I’ve been where she’s been, feeling what she felt, you know.”
Eloise stood and paced. “You believe in reincarnation, Sarah? That’s - that’s so …” She shrugged and trailed off.
Sarah took a deep breath, then let it seep out. She turned toward Mattie. “You said I- I mean- Sarita delivered your first child? How many - ?
Mattie smiled. “Two sons, three daughters. My younger son moved up north to take over his grandparents’ business. The McKeowns welcomed him and my eldest daughter. She married a Yankee like her daddy.”
“And this house?”
“Oh, my eldest son’s daughter put this house in Eloise’s family. It wasn’t big enough or fancy enough for the other McKeown or Overby relations to want. I was stayin’ here when that big war started.”
“Mattie means World War I.”
Mattie sighed. “I never thought such a thing could happen. I saw motor cars, telephones, electricity, airplanes, and more in my lifetime.”
“Eloise, you had children?”
Eloise looked away.
“Sarah,” Mattie’s voice quavered. “Our Eloise …”
“I can tell her,” Eloise said. She seemed so far away, Sarah wondered if she remembered anyone was still in the room.
“After I got over the trick my Jackson jerk had played on me, I met a wonderful man who was really a soldier. He was beautiful.” Eloise smiled. “We fell in love like so many couples did during that scary time. He shipped out and saw combat in Germany.” Eloise turned toward Sarah. Tears ran down her cheeks. “My soldier returned and we married, but he was not the man I remembered. He was depressed, argumentative, distant, you know.” She brushed at the tears that continued to fall. “But we were so excited when I conceived. My soldier couldn’t settle in a civilian job so he re-enlisted in the Army. He had to make a living for us and being in the military meant we had medical care.
“He insisted I stay near my parents, so I wouldn’t be alone. He came to see me as often as he could and wrote nearly every day. He even made it home for my Susan’s birth. He never seemed to feel the time was right for us to join him. When our baby was a year old, her father was on his way home on leave. He said he had good news.” Eloise paused. “He never made it home.”
Mattie wrapped her arms around the woman she had tried to protect so many years ago. Eloise shuddered, then continued her tale. “Policemen found his body in a wooded area not fifty miles from here. He’d been robbed and shot. No one caught the killer.”
Mattie took over while Eloise gained her composure. “The house was filled with people during the time of the funeral. So many friends and relatives came from his hometown. I had never seen a military funeral in this town before. The man was a real hero by all accounts.”
“Oh, Eloise, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She moved to hug the ghost. She seemed so real at that moment. Sarah felt her warmth and her tears. That could not be.
“And you and Susan lived here with your family?”
“Until my parents and I took Susan on a trip to the lake. The boat capsized. They drowned. I tried to save them. Mama hit her head and daddy wouldn’t leave her. I got Susan to shore. Two other boaters tried to save my folks.” Eloise swallow was audible, her voice low. “They failed. My Susan caught a cold and we learned she had a weak heart, a defect. She didn’t survive. After all that I couldn’t go on either. I died of a broken heart. Mattie was here to help me prepare for the next world. I guess I wasn’t intended to be on this one for long.”
“That is all so sad.” Sarah felt her grief fill her and explode inside. Tears flowed. Shudders wracked her body.
“Sarah, honey,” Eloise said. “I think my time had come. I was needed to comfort my beloved and my family. Susan needed her mother for a while.
“That left the house empty. No one in the family wanted it until your father asked for it. He had no idea we were hanging around here. No one cared enough to check the attic or clean the place. Maybe everyone just felt overwhelmed by the sadness.”
Mattie began to laugh.
“What is wrong with you?” Eloise asked.
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “I don’t know what the hell can be so funny after what our Eloise has told us.”
“But when Daddy showed an interest?”
Mattie patted Sarah’s cheek. “He loved this house so I let him stay. Your dear daddy had so much capacity for love and this old place needed that.”
Eloise had stopped crying. “Yes, by that time I had settled in, and we liked him and the pretty lady he brought here before they married.”
“We felt a connection, though neither your daddy nor his new wife saw us. When you came we knew you would be our charge. The connection was so strong it hurt,” Mattie said.
“So, then I could be Sarita?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know about that.” Mattie shook her head.
“But you thought William was the man for me. Did you feel close to him, like your cousin Walter?”
Chapter Ten
Mattie’s mellow voice echoed in the silent attic. “Eloise and I spoke about that.”
Sarah looked from Mattie to Eloise to the window then back to her ghosts. Dust motes danced in the sunshine.
Mattie’s voice drew Sarah’s attention. “Maybe we just sensed William’s need. The child hung around here so much we couldn’t believe his parents allowed it.”
“Yeah,” Eloise said. “Sometimes his father would shout at him so loudly I wanted to hit the man. Poor William looked all spit and polish and neater than a boy should be. His mama stared out the windows at this house. She never came to visit. Every time your mama tried to make friends by inviting William’s mama over here, she made excuses for not coming.”
“The boy never saw us,” Mattie added. ”Something about him reminded me of cousin Walter. I think I just missed my cousin. We never connected after I passed over.”
“Did you connect with Sarita after, you know..?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe she’s haunting somewhere else. You know, watching over someone at the plantation where she and Walter lived. Maybe ..”
“Maybe,” Sarah interrupted. “she was waiting to come back to find her Walter again. Mattie, how, uh, when - did they die?”
“She died in childbirth. Sarita’s two babies died young. Maybe she wrote about them in her journals. She and Walter worshiped those boys. Each birth left her weaker.”
Mattie’s voice faded as Sarah’s thoughts drifted. She welcomed the escape back to a world that seemed as real as her own. Sarita’s world claimed her.
The fire blazing in the fireplace warmed her bedroom. Herbs scented her bath water as she soaked. Walter had not touched her intimately since her last miscarriage, five long, lonely months ago. In the ten years since she had returned from the war she and Walter had worked hard. She had lost two children to illness. Two more babies had not made their full terms. She wanted her husband and she wanted children.
Tonight she would seduce him. Sarita reached for a bathing sheet and stepped from the tub. Wrapped in the thin, worn fabric she sat before the fire. She and Walter were alone in the house. He would come up soon. He always did after dusk.
Night after night she and her love had lain side by side in their bed, touching, but not really touching. Night after endless night each had lain awake, feigning sleep. Morning after morning she had awakened in his arms, wanting what he would not let himself give.
Sarita combed her fingers through her damp hair. The door opened and Walter stood there, painted golden by the fire. His body filled the frame. With each year of laboring on their land her husband grew more muscular, his face more sculpted and dear. His presence exuded power, and she wanted him more than she had ever thought possible.
“Sarita?” his voice sent shivers up her spine. “I thought you would be in bed. I can come back, after –“
“Come in. The water is still warm, I can wash your back.”
He took one step into the room. “I bathed in the stream before supper.”
Sarita stood, holding the worn cloth around her. She felt her husband’s gaze on her. His Adam’s apple bobbed when she moved closer to him. “Come sit near the fire with me.” She let the cloth slip, exposing one breast. His audible gulp gave her the courage to bare the other one.
“Darlin’, please. You make it so hard.
She glanced at his tight breeches. “Good, my husband.”
“I can not.”
Sarita dropped the large cloth and wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt his heat through the rough work clothes. Every inch of her body ached for him. “Oh, I think you can.” She rubbed her groin against his. “I think you can.”
“No, Darlin’”
“Yes.” Unwrapping her arms from his neck she reached for his tanned hand and placed it on her pale breast, moaning at the pleasure of his touch, loving his moan when his hand closed around her sensitive flesh. She grasped his free hand and pulled him toward the palette of quilts in front of the fire.
“Oh, God, Sarita.” He groaned. She moved her hands inside his shirt, memorizing each inch, each texture. She pushed the offending fabric up, kissing his taut belly, his chest.
She knew when he gave up his resistance. He yanked the shirt over his head and tossed it. Wrapping his arms around her he lifted her from the floor and kissed her, taking her breath. Lowering her to the makeshift bed, he took her nipple in his hot mouth, laving it, suckling.
Her guttural groan shocked her.
He laughed. “That’s my wife.” With his hands and mouth he made love to her.
Her hands explored his broad shoulders. Clinging to his hair as he loved every inch of her. When his mouth worked its magic between her thighs she flew over the edge into a bottomless abyss.
“Sarah,” a voice called through the fog. The voice was not Walter’s.
“Sarah?” Mattie’s voice joined Eloise’s.
“Sarah, are you all right?” She felt gentle hands pat her damp cheeks.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You were breathing funny,” Eloise answered.
With good reason. “I was remembering - Sarita’s memories. You know, I really am Sarita, I mean I was Sarita.”
Her ghosts looked like they wanted to help her but couldn’t accept her story. Hell, she couldn’t believe it. How could ghosts not accept the possibility of reincarnation? Kinda like vampires not believing in werewolves.
“Maybe you girls lived as someone else in the past. Did you ever think about that?”
“No,” they answered in unison.
When had that story come out about the woman under hypnosis who had remembered her other lives? Bridie somebody?
Exhaustion flowed over Sarah. The bare bulbs cast eerie shadows and she wanted out of the dusty attic. She closed the windows, then left in a daze.
She’d like to get back to that daydream, or memory, or whatever it was, about Sarita’s seduction of Walter. Had they made love again? Had that time given her the baby she had died trying to birth?
Maybe the time has come to find someone who believes in the supernatural. But where? William certainly doesn’t. My journals. I need those back.
##
William returned from his appointment. What am I going to do about Sarah? What am I going to do about me?
He wanted to deny the possibility that anything supernatural was happening or could happen. He’d grown up practical. No tooth fairy had left money under his pillow. He’d heard fairytales at school and next door. He’d kept the myth of Santa Claus for Sarah’s sake and even pretended he believed. Belief in angels and ghosts was for other people. No reincarnation for him. Nope. He wasn’t a skeptic about such things. He knew they didn’t exist.
He’d read the Sarita Journals at his desk so he wouldn’t fall asleep to dream about what he read in them. He’d email his mentor in the north Georgia mountains.
His old friend would know what to make of the fantasies and why both he and Sarah were having them. There
had to be a logical reason. Walter pulled down a stack of psychology journals with articles about reincarnation and ghosts for research, leaving spaces on his neatly arranged bookshelves.
What he didn’t want to change was his new relationship with Sarah. He’d almost be willing to accept all the myths to keep what they had found. He’d give anything to have Sarah forever. He’d be careful and responsible and maybe he could keep her. For some illusive reason the idea of her becoming a mother concerned him. Or was he really concerned about having a family. What did he know about being a parent?
Instead of going next door and bumming a supper invitation he made a sandwich and ate while he read about kooks who tried to prove the existence of ghosts.
He heard the grandfather clock in his entry hall strike ten. He rubbed his tired eyes that wouldn’t focus on the page. Rotating his head relieved the stiffness in his neck. For a minute he closed his eyes to rest them.
##
When he opened them again he saw Sarita sitting in front of a fireplace. Her hair captured the flames like spun gold. Her skin glowed, warm porcelain. Every nerve in his body wanted to make love to her all night and all the next day.
His brain and heart knew he had to avoid giving her a child ever again. He’d nearly lost her with the last miscarriage. He’d buried two sons and mourned babies that hadn’t been meant to live. Losing his Sarita would kill him.
There she sat, smiling, seductive. He’d leave and wait ‘til she slept. He needed her warmth and nearness like he needed air and water. He could not look into her eyes without wanting her in a way that could hurt her.
He should leave, but he could not. Like a goddess she mesmerized him as she rose and glided toward him. Her nipples puckered beneath the bath sheet, making his sex hard. Hell, he had been a walking arousal for months and had survived. But he and Sarita were both miserable.
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