“And you did—or you didn’t?” he asked. So much for pleasantry. Those eyes of his were on her again, deep blue touched by frost, and his tone had changed.
“I really don’t know what you want me to say. For about two weeks before her death, she seemed to be afraid all the time. I had dragged a cot into her room, to be with her at night. Sometimes she woke up screaming about the lights. I was always still half asleep, so I honestly don’t know if I saw the lights or not. We’re not talking huge, the-aliens-are-landing lights, just pinpricks of lights out back and from the area of the cemetery. Or sometimes she would hear things, and again, I’d be half asleep. Did I hear anything out of the ordinary? I’m not certain.”
“What did you hear?”
“Wind, sometimes. It can sound like a cry when it moves through the old oak trees. Rustling sounds—again, possibly the wind, or maybe squirrels. Everything can be explained, I’m certain. Except, then, at the end…”
“At the end…what?”
He was a good interrogator, she thought. His voice had softened in a gentle and encouraging way.
She took another sip of her drink. “I was only afraid at the end, I guess.” She hesitated for a long moment. “You can make fun of me, if you like. But most of the time…I felt completely safe at the plantation. As if it were…protected by the past, by a benign spirit or something. Maybe it’s just the beauty of the area, I don’t know. But at the end, Amelia did unnerve me a few times. I mean, at night, it really feels like the plantation is in the middle of nowhere. And despite the feeling of being safe in the house, I kind of grew uneasy about there being something…evil, I guess, going on around it, but if I kept quiet and stayed in bed, I’d be safe. Maybe I did hear things, maybe I didn’t, but I did sleep with a baseball bat at my side.”
“You needed a gun.”
“That would be just great. I don’t know how to shoot. I’d have blown a hole in myself or Amelia.”
He smiled at that. “You should learn how to shoot—especially if you plan on spending any more time at derelict plantations in the middle of nowhere. You know, there’s a lot worse out there than ghosts. Real live monsters.”
“Well, I don’t plan on sleeping in the wilderness anymore, so I guess I’m okay without being a sharpshooter,” she said.
“Go on. Tell me more about the end.”
Inadvertently, Kendall shivered. She hated herself for it, knowing he was watching her every move. “Nothing happened at the end. She just started talking to people I didn’t see.”
“Saying what?”
“Different things at different times.”
“Go on.”
“It sounded as if she was teaching a history class. She talked about Reconstruction—after the Civil War—and World War I, World War II, Martin Luther King…all kinds of things. She talked about being proud of the old house. She seemed happy. She seemed to be talking to…”
“Ghosts?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But she was on a lot of morphine.”
“Of course…. I wasn’t alone with her at the end, you know. She didn’t want to die in a hospital. She’d been born in that house, and she wanted to die there. But I’m not a nurse, so I hired an RN to stay with Amelia when it was clear she was getting near the end. Still…”
“What?”
“She had been unconscious, in a coma, when she suddenly opened her eyes and sat up. She looked right at me and said goodbye, and that she loved me. Then she reached out, as if she were taking someone’s hand—you’ll never convince me she didn’t see something, someone—and she said, ‘It’s time. I’m ready now.’ And then she died.”
“Morphine,” he said softly. He actually said it as if he were trying to reassure her.
She looked directly back at him. “Sure.”
And then she suddenly felt uncomfortable. He was standing some distance from her, and he wasn’t threatening in any way. In fact, he was being extremely decent, almost kind. Humoring her? Maybe not. He seemed sincere, and when he smiled, or even when he just looked thoughtful, he was astonishingly appealing. It might have been his self-confidence, the fact that he didn’t just pretend not to care what others thought; he really didn’t give a damn. His height and the breadth of his shoulders made him naturally imposing, and the hardness of his features somehow made the sculpted strength of them more intriguing. There was a leashed energy about him that seemed to emit a heat, even a sexual charisma.
She wondered once again what had happened to his wife.
But she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask him.
She told herself that her sudden unease was ridiculous. Just because he was an unattached man and she was an unattached woman, that didn’t mean they were about to jump one another. Oh, God. What a bizarre thought to have pop into her head. She had disliked him the moment she met him, and she still didn’t like him. It was just that she’d stopped believing his horns and tail popped out when he was alone.
And she was aware that as a man…