My first instinct was to confront Micah Durant and demand to know why he had followed me to the cemetery, but suddenly I was seized by the strangest sensation. It was as if I had the power to peer past his angelic facade all the way down into his soul, and the blackness of his essence shocked me.
He turned then, a half smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he started toward me. Neither of us spoke even when he drew even with me on the path. I opened my mouth, to say what I wasn’t quite certain, but he put a finger to his lips to silence me as his other hand moved to the side of my neck.
A scream rose to my throat. I thought surely he meant to assault me, but when he drew his hand away, I saw that a honeybee clung to one of his knuckles. Bringing the insect to eye level, he examined it closely as he rotated his hand. Incredibly, the bee shifted so that man and insect remained face-to-face. They stayed that way for the longest time before the honeybee finally flew away.
And then Micah Durant turned without having uttered a word and strode down the walkway toward the King Street gate.
Twenty-One
“They say everyone has a double,” Devlin said a little while later as he peered through the viewer.
I’d arrived home to find him once again waiting on my front steps. He was a welcome sight after that odd encounter at the churchyard. And as always, he smelled divine. I resisted the urge to press my nose to his neck while he studied the stereogram.
After a few moments of scrutiny, he glanced up. “Is she a relative?”
“I don’t know. She’s almost certainly the woman named Rose that Nelda Toombs mentioned yesterday at Oak Grove. Nelda said we bore an uncanny resemblance and she seemed convinced that Rose and I were somehow connected. But what I’d really like to know is how that card ended up in my cellar.”
From past experiences, I knew that searching for a practical answer in my impractical world was often a futile endeavor. Better just to accept that some things could never be explained. But that didn’t stop me from longing for a rational explanation of recent events. If anyone could uncover the logic in any situation it was Devlin. His disdain for the supernatural wouldn’t allow him to consider the alternative. So I let him unwittingly play the role of devil’s advocate, hoping that he could open my mind to other less disturbing possibilities.
“Are you certain it couldn’t have fallen out of a box of your belongings?” he asked. “Maybe the card got mixed in with some of your things when you moved out of your parents’ house.”
“That was years ago and I’ve moved around quite a bit since then. I think I would have found the card before now. Besides, I don’t ever recall seeing any stereograms or viewers in the house, let alone any images of a look-alike. When I was little I used to spend hours and hours poring through family photograph albums. If I’d seen that picture or that woman, I’m certain I would have remembered.”
“Not necessarily. The resemblance wouldn’t have been so noticeable when you were a child.”
I let myself cling to his reasoning for a moment. “I guess that’s possible. Anything’s possible.” As I knew only too well.
“Have you shown the card to anyone in your family?”
“Not yet, but I’m driving over to Trinity to talk to Papa tomorrow. If I’m related to this woman—Rose—he’d be the one to know.”
“That sounds like a reasonable plan,” Devlin said. “Are you still worried that the stereoscope is somehow connected to the break-in?”
“I can’t imagine why Owen Dowling or anyone else would go to so much trouble for an old viewer. But I also don’t see how the timing can be coincidental. My house was broken into only a matter of hours after I took the stereoscope into his shop. And then the very next day, Louvenia Durant and her sister showed up at Oak Grove Cemetery. The whole situation is extremely unnerving, especially seeing my face in an image that must have been taken decades before I was born.” Almost as unsettling as seeing my face on a ghost.
Devlin considered the card for a moment longer before turning his attention back to me. “The resemblance really is uncanny. I can understand why you’d find it spooky. Do you know what happened to her?”
“To Rose? Only that she was the last person to be buried in Kroll Cemetery and her grave is isolated from the others.”
“She didn’t die with the colonists?”
“I don’t think so. Nelda never mentioned how she passed. If Papa can’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll start digging through the county records.”
“You’re really getting caught up in all this, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.” I shrugged and tried to play down my growing obsession. “There’s nothing like a good mystery to get the blood flowing. Searching through archives is one of the most gratifying aspects of my job. Tracking down that one piece of the puzzle that makes everything fall into place.”