In the Blink of an Eye (27 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Seeing him, realizing what he's going through, hearing his pain—that really shook me up, Julia. It's hell to live like that . . . immersed in pain and loss every second of the day. Rupert has a chance to do some of his grieving and to accept reality before his wife dies. I didn't get that chance. Instead, I've spent the past three years trying to accept the shock of what's happened. It's time for me to stop being haunted by Kristin's death and figure out how to live again. For Dulcie's sake.”

“I understand what you're saying,” Julia said quietly, staring out the rain-spattered window into black nothingness.

She also understands that her reasons for wanting Paine and Dulcie to stay are purely selfish. These past few days with Dulcie have given her a taste of what it would be like if she ever has a child of her own. Her whole life, she has instinctively been a nurturer. Having somebody who needs her—somebody who so desperately needs to be cared for—has awakened a fierce longing in Julia.

She wants a child of her own. A family, a husband of her own.

Her mental image of Paine is replaced with one of Andy. Before they parted last night, she happened to mention needing to find somebody with a boat to take her out on the lake to scatter Iris's ashes on Thursday. Andy immediately offered to do it. Until that moment she forgot that Andy, an avid fisherman, rented a small motorboat to use while he's here this summer. It was sweet of him to offer to help her with such a somber task.

Julia turns off the kitchen light and walks into the living room, pressing the wall switch that plunges the living room into darkness again. As she does, a flashing red light catches her eye.

The answering machine.

She's tempted to leave the messages until morning.

But sheer force of habit makes her cross the room in the dark and press the button.

The tape rewinds. Julia wonders if it was Andy who called.

If it was, I might as well call him back tonight, she thinks wearily. I'll just get it over with, and I'll tell him I'm tired and can't talk.

The tape stops whirring.

Myra Nixon's recorded voice fills the room.

“Hello, Julia, this is Myra. It's almost ten on Tuesday evening. If you haven't heard about Lorraine, please call me when you get in, no matter what time it is.”

Lorraine?

Has something happened to Lorraine?

Her hand trembling, Julia dials Myra's number.

H
EARING THE PHONE
ring, Rupert rises from the chair at Nan's bedside.

She's sleeping again, peacefully, for a change. No calling for Katherine. No digging.

He hurries into the kitchen to answer it, glancing at the clock as he picks up the receiver. It's nearly eleven o'clock. Who could be calling at this hour?

“Rupert? It's Pilar. I hope I didn't wake you . . .”

“No. No, I was up.”

“I thought so. I just spoke to Myra Nixon and she happened to mention that your lights were still on. Is everything all right?”

Myra Nixon. Leave it to that busybody to see to it that everyone in Lily Dale knows his business. Being out of her sight range is another plus to the move back to Ten Summer Street, he thinks grimly.

“Everything is fine. I was just about to go to bed,” Rupert tells Pilar brusquely, not in the mood for chatter.

“I just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving tomorrow morning. For my cruise.”

“Yes. Yes, that's right Well, have a good time, Pilar.”

“I will. But Rupert please know that you and Nan are in my prayers.”

“Thank you.”

There's a pause. Then Pilar says, in a rush, “Please ask for help, Rupert, if you need it. There are so many people around who would be happy to help you. Nan is such a wonderful person, everybody around here is just aching to do something for her, or for you.”

Tears sting Rupert's eyes and he reaches for a paper napkin from the holder on the counter, wiping them away before they can fall.

“I'll be gone a week, and then I'll be over to visit,” Pilar promises. “Please tell Nan I'll read to her when I come.”

He clears his throat. “I'll tell her.”

“Oh, and, Rupert, did you hear about Lorraine?”

“Yes. I heard earlier, when I went out for milk.”

“It's tragic, isn't it?”

Yes, he murmurs, it certainly is tragic.

A lot of things are tragic, Rupert thinks as he hangs up, alone in the silent kitchen as thunder rumbles in the distance.

A
N ENORMOUS TREE
has fallen across Route 60 just south of Sinclairville, blocking the road leading to Jamestown. The vast mountain of leafy branches is surrounded by police cars with flashing red lights. Officers in reflective orange uniforms stand in the roadway, directing cars to take turns creeping around it as the rain continues to fall.

It isn't coming down as heavily now as it was earlier. The thunder has long since faded into the distance, the deluge giving way to a steady drizzle.

Waiting for the cops to wave him around the downed tree, Edward finds it hard to be annoyed by the delay.

Usually brimming with impatience, especially when it comes to driving, tonight Edward is feeling almost serene.

He can sit here all night, for all he cares. He's in no hurry to get back home to Jamestown. He's content just to sit here, alone in the dark, savoring the moment—and digesting the little added surprise he stumbled across.

But nobody will ever have to know about that part. He'll see to that.

At last things are about to fall into place for him.

At last he has what he needs to make it happen.

He lips curve into a faint smile as he pats the envelope safely tucked into his T-shirt pocket.

L
YING IN BED,
her hand resting reassuringly on
Where the Wild Things Are
under her pillow, Dulcie stiffens at the sound of soft footsteps in the hall outside her room.

Is it Daddy?

No.

No, she's almost positive it's not.

She's been lying here, wide awake, since well before he climbed the stairs and went to bed a long time ago. She heard him close his door at the far end of the hall, and she hasn't heard him open it since.

For some reason, Dulcie can't sleep tonight Yes, she slept in the car on the way home from the restaurant so soundly that she didn't even get to say good-bye to Julia. And she slept right through Daddy carrying her up to bed, which is the only way she could have gotten here. He even remembered to change her into the new pink flowered pajamas she and Julia picked out in T.J. Maxx, and to take the ponytail scrunchy out of her hair, and to put her book under her pillow. Somehow, Dulcie slept through all of that.

But she didn't stay asleep. She doesn't know what woke her up earlier, or what kept her awake despite her exhaustion. She only knows that she's been lying here for a long time, almost as if she's been waiting for something.

Almost as if she's been expecting something, and now, at last here it is:

Footsteps.

Somebody creeping through the old house in the dead of night.

Is it her again?

The lady who Julia says might be my mommy?

Her heart pounding, Dulcie considers the possibility.

There are two things wrong with it.

The first is that she doesn't feel the now-familiar presence of the ghost lady who has visited before.

The second is that whenever the lady came, Dulcie never heard her approach. It was more as though she came and went in a rush, appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Not like this, creeping in one sneaky step at a time.

Outside Dulcie's window, the overflowing gutter drips rhythmically, sending one droplet after another to plunk onto the driveway below.

Inside the house, in the hallway outside Dulcie's room, a floorboard creaks.

The little girl holds her breath.

The footsteps have stopped.

Somebody is lurking there, just outside her door. She can feel it.

Is it Daddy?

Is it the ghost lady?

Is it Mommy?

Dulcie lies very still, her eyes open to nothing but the usual blackness, her whole body tense as she listens. She tries to tell herself not to be afraid, that it might really be her mommy's spirit, as Julia said. And she shouldn't be afraid of her mommy . . . should she?

There is a slight rustling outside her door, followed by a faint, telltale
click.

Dulcie recognizes the sound.

It means somebody is turning the knob.

Then, all at once, the face appears in front of Dulcie—the face she saw before. The face of the beautiful golden-haired lady. Her blue eyes are wide, as if she's afraid. She's waving her hands frantically at Dulcie and her mouth is open wide, lips moving.

With the vision comes a rush of sound in Dulcie's ears, drowning out anything else. It's a frantic jumble of words, screeched in a phantom voice that Dulcie can hardly understand.

But one word is clear.

Danger.

In the instant before the spirit's energy dissolves, Dulcie gets a closer look at her. That's when she sees it—the grotesque crack in her skull, above her right ear. The blood that covers one side of her head, matting her hair, smearing her cheek red.

Then she's gone, leaving Dulcie in the dark once again.

But not alone, and not in silence.

She can hear the door softly opening, inch by inch.

Danger.

The beautiful woman isn't outside Dulcie's room, trying to get in.

She was right here, inside already, trying to warn Dulcie about whoever is on the other side of the door.

Danger.

Dulcie opens her mouth.

Her voice seems to catch in her throat as she hears a quiet footstep crossing the threshold.

Then she finds her voice and lets loose with a bloodcurdling scream.

“Daddy!”

She hears immediate commotion. Running footsteps in the doorway, in the hall, on the stairs before the front door closes with a distant click.

Then Daddy is rushing into the room. “What is it? Dulcie? What's wrong?”

He's too late.

Too late to catch the intruder.

But just in time to save me,
Dulcie thinks, trying to catch her breath.

“Somebody was here, Daddy,” she says, tears spilling down her cheeks as Daddy puts his arms around her and holds her close. “I'm scared. Somebody was in my room.”

“It was just a bad dream, Dulc—”

“No! No, it wasn't, Daddy. Didn't you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“Footsteps. Whoever was here—they ran out of my room and down the stairs.”

Daddy doesn't say anything for a long time.

When he does speak, he doesn't say what Dulcie wants to hear. Actually, she doesn't know what she wants to hear, but she knows what she doesn't.

“Dulcie, don't worry. Whatever you think you heard . . . it wasn't anything that can hurt you. Nothing is ever going to hurt you again, because I'm here, and I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to take you home.”

“Home?” she echoes, bewildered. “You mean, to California?”

“Yes. We only have to stay here another day, maybe two, while I wrap things up. Then we'll get out of here, and we'll never come back.”

“But . . . what about Julia?”

Again, Daddy says nothing for a long time. Then he says, “Maybe Julia can visit.”

He says it in that way adults have of telling kids something just to keep them quiet. To keep them from asking too many questions.

Dulcie leans her head against her daddy's chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“Don't leave me in here alone, Daddy,” she says, wiping at her eyes, realizing she's crying.

“I won't, sweetheart Come on.” He stands and scoops her into his arms, carrying her down the hall. “You can come sleep in my room. I promise there are no ghosts in there and nightmares aren't allowed.”

Ghosts.

Nightmares.

He thinks it was all in her head.

He doesn't believe that somebody was here, in the house, in Dulcie's room.

And she has no way of proving it to him.

Whoever it was has fled into the night.

But what did they want?

And what if they come back?

And how did the lady get covered in blood?

Chapter Eleven

J
ULIA HURRIES DOWN
the corridor, a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She didn't take the time to cut them from her garden before leaving home first thing this morning—they're from the Garden Gate florist shop a few blocks away from Brooks Memorial Hospital in Dunkirk.

She's left her sunglasses on to hide her eyes, red and bloodshot from a sleepless night and teary morning.

Suddenly, a nurse in pink scrubs materializes in her path. “Excuse me, can I help you?”

“Yes, I'm here to see Lorraine Kingsley. She's a patient here.”

“I'm sorry, she isn't able to have visitors yet,” the nurse says, wearing a sympathetic expression. “She's in intensive care.”

Julia swallows over a lump in her throat. “How is she?”

“It's been touch and go all night, and she's still critical, but her condition seems to be stabilizing. Her mother is flying in later this morning and the surgeon will consult with her then. Are you a friend of hers?”

Julia nods, unable to speak.

“Would you like to leave the flowers for her? I can put them by her bed so that she'll see them when she wakes up.”

Encouraged by the fact that the nurse said
when
and not
if,
Julia manages a smile and hands over the bouquet.

“Do you know if . . . are her daughters here?” Julia asks.

“They were here earlier, with their aunt.”

That would be Lorraine's older sister Laura, who lives in Buffalo.

“This is such a shock,” Julia murmurs, wondering how the girls are coping. Their mom is all they have. She
has
to recover. Feeling tears spring to her eyes again, Julia reaches into her pocket for a tissue. She finds only a handful of soggy ones she used up during the ride over.

The kind nurse reaches for a box of tissues on a nearby counter and offers it to Julia, asking, “Have you heard anything about the police investigation? They told us it was a hit and run down in Lily Dale during that awful storm last night.”

“That's all I know,” Julia tells her, dabbing at her damp, sore eyes.

She has been picturing what happened ever since Myra Nixon described the accident last night on the phone. She told Julia that Lorraine was struck as she was walking along the road on her way back from a healing temple service. The car mowed her down and kept going.

I can't believe the driver didn't see her, Myra said. Somebody mentioned she was wearing that bright orange raincoat you must have loaned her. Everybody in town is always saying you can see that coat of yours from a mile away—no offense, Julia.

Julia looks at the nurse. “When you see Lorraine's sister again, would you please tell her Julia was here, and that I'd be happy to help if she or the girls need anything? They're teenagers, but I know they must be devastated by this. They're very close to their mom.”

And so am I,
Julia thinks as she walks slowly back down the corridor toward the elevator bank. She still can't quite believe what's happened to Lorraine. She didn't sleep most of the night, drifting off only when the first light of dawn slipped through a crack in the blinds. The alarm went off half an hour after that. She set it early so that she could be at the hospital first thing.

Elevator doors slide open the moment Julia presses the down button. She finds herself face-to-face with Lorraine's sister, Laura.

After a tearful hug, Julia asks, “Where are the girls?”

“I brought them over to one of their friend's houses to rest for a while. They've both been up all night.”

“Is there anything I can do, Laura? Do you want me to get anything from Lorraine's house to bring here? I have the keys.”

“Not yet. I don't know what she'll need when she comes out of this . . .” Laura rakes a distracted hand through her dyed red hair. “I can't believe this is happening, Julia. Just when things were finally falling into place for her, and she'd finally unloaded that bastard Bruce.”

“I know. This feels like a nightmare. What a horrible accident.”

“If it was an accident,” Laura says darkly.

“What do you mean?” Julia asks, startled.

“The police said she was wearing a neon orange coat with the hood up, and she was right under a streetlight when she was hit, well off the side of the road. The car swerved into her. There were tire marks on the grass, Julia. It was almost as if somebody was out to get her.”

“But . . . who would do something like that?”

“I can only think of one person. Bruce.”

Julia considers that. After an abusive marriage and bitter divorce, Lorraine's ex has been evading court-ordered alimony and child-support payments. Lorraine threatened him more than once with legal action for the money he owes. He's a loser, yes. But would he go this far to get her off his back?

“I have to get back in there,” Laura says, glancing at her watch. “I've been gone more than an hour. I want to be there when the doctor comes in.”

“Will you keep me posted, Laura? Call me later and let me know how she is.”

Lorraine's sister promises to do so, then hurries off toward the intensive care unit.

Julia presses the down button again.

As she stands waiting for the elevator, she thinks about what Laura said. Was somebody really dying to hit Lorraine?

And if it wasn't Bruce . . . then who?

Lorraine doesn't have another enemy in the world.

Maybe it really was an accident, Julia thinks as the elevator arrives. Thank God she's alive. It could have been worse. You never know. Maybe it would have been worse, if Lorraine hadn't been wearing my orange coat . . .

B
RIGHT MORNING SUNLIGHT
filters across the attic floor, illuminating a thick layer of dust and a smattering of bat droppings. Standing at the top of the steep flight of stairs, Paine surveys the stacks of cardboard boxes, the rickety-looking nursery furniture, the trunks he's already checked and found filled with cast-off clothing dating back a good forty years.

What am I going to do with all of this crap? What are the chances Dulcie will ever want any of it?

He sighs. With any luck, she'll stay asleep downstairs for another hour, giving him time to look through the cardboard boxes for any belongings of Iris's or Kristin's that might have sentimental value. Everything else, he'll leave for Rupert to sort through.

Paine makes his way over to the first cluster of cartons and lifts the interfolded flaps of the nearest one. The box is filled with old newspapers and magazines. The musty smell of yellowing paper wafts up. Rifling through them, glancing at the datelines, Paine sees that they were collected throughout the seventies. None of them seem to have any particular historical relevance. God only knows why Iris saved them. She was one hell of a pack rat.

Paine wonders whether Iris and Anson were as mismatched as he senses they were. He knows little about their relationship, aside from what Kristin told him. They met during what she described as her father's “midlife crisis,” after he dumped his alcoholic spendthrift of a first wife and got back into the singles scene. Pretty, free-spirited Iris, who dabbled in pottery—and pot—and ran a health-food store in Fredonia, caught his eye. There were undoubtedly others, but to know Iris was to love her. Her marriage to Anson lasted nearly two decades, until the day he collapsed and died of a heart attack in her arms.

Paine shoves the first box aside and reaches for the next. This one is filled with baby clothes. Pastel little-girl dresses, ruffled bonnets, rumpled satin hair ribbons, lace-trimmed once-white anklets mellowed to ivory. Paine smiles, recognizing a little blue sailor dress with a red tie as having belonged to Kristin; she's wearing it in one of the baby photos on the mantel downstairs.

Dulcie might want to keep these things,
he thinks, carefully tucking the flaps in again and carrying the box over to place it at the top of the stairs. If Dulcie ever has a daughter, she might want her to wear Kristin's baby clothes.

Dulcie as a mother . . . now there's an amazing image. With it comes the usual pang of regret as Paine realizes that Kristin will never see their daughter all grown up . . .

Or will she?

Right before Dulcie drifted off to sleep last night in his arms, she murmured something about having been visited again by the pretty lady—and that the lady's visited Julia, too, when Julia was here. Dulcie said Julia thinks the lady might be her mommy.

“I don't think she's here to hurt me, Daddy,” Dulcie said sleepily. “I think she's here to watch over me. But, Daddy . . . I think somebody hurt her. When she was alive. I think she wants to tell me about that.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because she keeps coming back. And she has blood on her face. She keeps trying to tell me something. But I can't hear her.”

“Then how do you know she's trying to talk to you?”

“I
sort of
hear her. It's like when we're in the car, Daddy, and you press that seek button on the radio and it skips over the stations that aren't coming in so well. That's what it sounds like when she talks to me. The words are never clear.”

Paine lay awake long after Dulcie's breathing became steady and her little body settled into slumber at last. He kept thinking about what she said, about the lady.

Blood on her face?

Kristin wouldn't have blood on her face. She drowned. And anyway . . .

He doesn't believe in ghosts. He never has, damn it. But . . .

Can Kristin's spirit possibly be in this house?

“Why can't
I
feel you if you're here?” he whispers aloud now, standing still in the deserted attic. “Why won't you let me see you? Just one more time. If it's possible, babe, please. If you're here, let me see you . . .”

He waits, listening, watching . . .

Hoping.

“All I want is to see you again, babe,” he says softly, wiping tears from his eyes with the hem of his T-shirt “I never got to say good-bye. All I want is to say good-bye. . . .”

There is nothing.

Nobody here.

Just Paine, alone, heartbroken, same as always. He stares into space, remembering Kristin, absently watching a tiny, floating speck of dust as it glints in the sunlight before finally drifting to the floor.

C
LAD IN A
hard hat, orange work vest over a T-shirt, jeans, and steel-toed boots, Edward lifts his mirrored sunglasses to wipe a trickle of sweat from his brow.
Damn the sun,
he thinks, and is struck by the irony. Just yesterday, he was damning the rain.

Well, this work sucks in any kind of weather.

Good thing Edward won't be doing it much longer.

“Hey, Shuttleworth,” his supervisor calls. “Get to it!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, hoisting his square-point shovel again. They're following the truck that is grading the thick new layer of stones, preparing the roadbed for paving.

After a few more minutes, Edward glances around to see if anybody is watching him. The others are concentrating on the job at hand, eager to complete this grueling part of the job and break for lunch.

Turning his back to the rest of the crew, Edward slips something out of his pocket and quickly drops it onto the roadbed in front of him. Moments later, he's shoveled a pile of gravel over it.

There. It won't be long before the spot will be sealed with layers of oily tar and asphalt.

Then there will be no chance of anybody stumbling across the letter, as Edward did. Lucky thing he happened to find it. If it fell into the wrong hands after all these years, it could ruin everything.

At first, it surprised him that Anson would save something like this. Now he's grown certain that his father wasn't the one who saved the letter. It had to have been Iris. The freaking pack rat saved everything: every art project Kristin ever made, every button that ever fell off a shirt, even old twist ties. It's no wonder that she regained possession of perhaps the most significant letter she ever wrote to her husband, and decided to save it just in case . . .

Well, who knows why she did it?

The important thing is that Edward found it with several other papers—most of them important family documents such as Kristin's birth certificate and the tide to the VW, sealed in a large manila envelope in a locked drawer of the desk in the upstairs study. It was surprisingly easy for Edward to pick the lock.

Now nobody else will ever read Iris's heartfelt plea to her new husband, forgiving Anson's brief indiscretion and telling him that he was welcome to come back home again after all—that she and their infant daughter needed him. Iris also pointed out that they could put the affair behind them for good; that although Lily Dale might be the smallest of small towns, only three people in it knew Anson's deep, dark secret: Iris, Anson himself, and the woman with whom he'd had a one-night stand.

Even Edward, as much as he has always resented Iris, grudgingly respects his stepmother's ability to forgive the old dog.

Not many wives would take their husband back after something like that. His temperamental, insecure mother certainly wouldn't have.

Not many wives would urge their husband to pay the requested hush money to ensure that the other woman would never reveal to another living soul that he fathered her newborn child.

And not many wives would later allow their husband's illegitimate daughter to befriend their own little girl a few years later.

In his youth, Edward spent enough time with his father's new family to know that Iris apparently got over any lingering resentment.

After all, he remembers noticing that Kristin's friend Julia Garrity was more at home in the Shuttleworth household than he ever felt. Now he alone is left to appreciate the irony that it was the presumably unwitting Julia who looked out for Iris until her dying day.