Linda Lael Miller Bundle (17 page)

The door of her bedroom was literally clattering in its frame, the knob twisting wildly, and Trista’s brown eyes went wide. She was too scared to scream and too curious to run away, so she just stood there, staring.

The doorknob ceased its frantic gyrations, and the woman spoke again, “Please. Who’s there?”

“Trista,” the child said softly. She found the courage to touch the knob, to twist her wrist. Soon, she was peering around the edge.

There was nothing at all to see, except for her bed, her dollhouse, the doorway that led to her own private staircase leading into the kitchen and the big, wooden wardrobe that held her clothes.

At once disappointed and relieved, the eight-year-old closed the door again and trooped staunchly back downstairs to the piano.

She sighed as she settled down at the keyboard again. If she mentioned what she’d heard and seen to Papa, would he believe her? The answer was definitely no, since he was a man of science. He would set her down in his study and say, “Now, Trista, we’ve discussed this before. I know you’d like to convince yourself that your mother could come back to us, but there are no such things as ghosts. I don’t want to hear any more of this foolishness from you. Is that clear?”

She began to play again, dutifully. Forlornly.

A few minutes later, Trista glanced at the clock on the parlor mantel. Still half an hour left to practice, then she could go outside and play with Vera. She’d tell her best friend there was a ghost in her house, she supposed, but only after making her swear to keep quiet about it.

On the other hand, maybe it would be better if she didn’t say anything at all to anybody. Even Vera would think Trista was hearing things just because she wanted her mama to come back.

“Twinkle, twinkle,” she muttered, as her fingers moved awkwardly over the keys.

“My, yes,” Roberta Buzbee went on, dusting nonexistent crumbs from the bosom of her colorful jersey print dress. “Mama was just a little girl when this house burned.”

“She was nine,” Miss Cecily put in solemnly. She shuddered. “It was a dreadful blaze. The doctor and his poor daughter perished in it, you know. And, of course, that part of the house was never rebuilt.”

Elisabeth swallowed painfully, thinking of the perfectly ordinary music she’d heard—and the voice. “So there was a child,” she mused.

“Certainly,” Roberta volunteered. “Her name was Trista Anne Fortner, and she was Mama’s very best friend. They were close in age, you know, Mama being a few months older.” She paused to make a tsk-tsk sound. “It was positively tragic—Dr. Fortner expired trying to save his little girl. It was said the companion set the fire—she was tried for murder and hanged, wasn’t she, Sister?”

Cecily nodded solemnly.

A chill moved through Elisabeth, despite the sunny warmth of that April afternoon, and she took a steadying sip from her coffee cup.
Get a grip, Elisabeth,
she thought, giving herself an inward shake.
Whatever you heard, it wasn’t a dead child singing and playing the piano. Aunt Verity’s stories about this house were exactly that—stories.

“You look pale, my dear,” Cecily piped up.

The last thing Elisabeth needed was another person to worry about her. Her friends in Seattle were doing enough of that. “I’ll be teaching at the Pine River school this fall,” she announced, mainly to change the subject.

“Roberta taught at the old Cold Creek schoolhouse,” Cecily said proudly, pleased to find some common ground, “and I was the librarian in town. That was before we went traveling, of course.”

Before Elisabeth could make a response, someone slammed a pair of fists down hard on the keys of a piano.

This time, there was no possibility that the sound was imaginary. It reverberated through the house, and both the Buzbee sisters flinched.

Very slowly, Elisabeth set her coffee cup on the counter. “Excuse me,” she said when she was able to break the spell. The spinet in the parlor was still draped, and there was no sign of anyone.

“It’s the ghost,” said Cecily, who had followed Elisabeth from the kitchen, along with her sister. “After all this time, she’s still here. Well, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Elisabeth thought again of the stories Aunt Verity had told her and Rue, beside the fire on rainy nights. They’d been strange tales of appearances and disappearances and odd sounds, and Rue and Elisabeth had never passed them on because they were afraid their various parents would refuse to let them go on spending their summers with Verity. The thought of staying in their boarding schools year round had been unbearable.

“Ghost?” Elisabeth croaked.

Cecily was nodding. “Trista has never rested properly, poor child. And they say the doctor looks for her still. Folks have seen his buggy along the road, too.”

Elisabeth suppressed a shudder.

“Sister,” Roberta interceded somewhat sharply. “You’re upsetting Elisabeth.”

“I’m fine,” Elisabeth lied. “Just fine.”

“Maybe we’d better be going,” said Cecily, patting Elisabeth’s arm. “And don’t worry about poor little Trista. She’s quite harmless, you know.”

The moment the two women were gone, Elisabeth hurried to the old-fashioned black telephone on the entryway table and dialed Rue’s number in Chicago.

An answering machine picked up on the third ring. “Hi, there, whoever you are,” Rue’s voice said energetically. “I’m away on a special project, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone this time. If you’re planning to rob my condo, please be sure to take the couch. If not, leave your name and number and I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can. Ciao, and don’t forget to wait for the beep.”

Elisabeth’s throat was tight; even though she’d known Rue was probably away, she’d hoped, by some miraculous accident, to catch her cousin between assignments. “Hi, Rue,” she said. “It’s Beth. I’ve moved into the house and—well—I’d just like to talk, that’s all. Could you call as soon as you get in?” Elisabeth recited the number and hung up.

She pushed up the sleeves of her shirt and started for the kitchen. Earlier, she’d seen cleaning supplies in the broom closet, and heaven knew, the place needed some attention.

Jonathan Fortner rubbed the aching muscles at his nape with one hand as he walked wearily through the darkness toward the lighted house. His medical bag seemed heavier than usual as he mounted the back steps and opened the door.

The spacious kitchen was empty, though a lantern glowed in the center of the red-and-white-checked tablecloth.

Jonathan set his bag on a shelf beside the door, hung up his hat, shrugged out of his suitcoat and loosened his string tie. Sheer loneliness ached in his middle as he crossed the room to the stove with its highly polished chrome.

His dinner was congealing in the warming oven, as usual. Jonathan unfastened his cuff links, dropped them into the pocket of his trousers and rolled up his sleeves. Then, taking a kettle from the stove, he poured hot water into a basin, added two dippers of cold from the bucket beside the sink and began scrubbing his hands with strong yellow soap.

“Papa?”

He turned with a weary smile to see Trista standing at the bottom of the rear stairway, wearing her nightgown. “Hello, Punkin,” he said. A frown furrowed his brow. “Ellen’s here, isn’t she? You haven’t been home alone all this time?”

Trista resembled him instead of Barbara, with her dark hair and gray eyes, and it was a mercy not to be reminded of his wife every time he looked at his daughter.

“Ellen had to go home after supper,” Trista said, drawing back a chair and joining Jonathan at the table as he sat down to eat. “Her brother Billy came to get her. Said the cows got out.”

Jonathan’s jawline tightened momentarily. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told that girl…”

Trista laughed and reached out to cover his hand with her own. “I’m big enough to be alone for a few hours, Papa,” she said.

Jonathan dragged his fork through the lumpy mashed potatoes on his plate and sighed. “You’re eight years old,” he reminded her.

“Maggie Simpkins is eight, too, and she cooks for her father and all her brothers.”

“And she’s more like an old woman than a child,” Jonathan said quietly. It seemed he saw elderly children every day, though God knew things were better here in Pine River than in the cities. “You just leave the housekeeping to Ellen and concentrate on being a little girl. You’ll be a woman soon enough.”

Trista looked pointedly at the scorched, shriveled food on her father’s plate. “If you want to go on eating that awful stuff, it’s your choice.” She sighed, set her elbows on the table’s edge and cupped her chin in her palms. “Maybe you should get married again, Papa.”

Jonathan gave up on his dinner and pushed the plate away. Just the suggestion filled him with loneliness—and fear. “And maybe you should get back to bed,” he said brusquely, avoiding Trista’s eyes while he took his watch from his vest pocket and frowned at the time. “It’s late.”

His daughter sighed again, collected his plate and scraped the contents into the scrap pan for the neighbor’s pigs. “Is it because you still love Mama that you don’t want to get another wife?” Trista inquired.

Jonathan went to the stove for a mug of Ellen’s coffee, which had all the pungency of paint solvent. There were a lot of things he hadn’t told Trista about her mother, and one of them was that there had never really been any love between the two of them. Another was that Barbara hadn’t died in a distant accident, she’d deliberately abandoned her husband and child. Jonathan had gone quietly to Olympia and petitioned the state legislature for a divorce. “Wives aren’t like wheelbarrows and soap flakes, Trista,” he said hoarsely. “You can’t just go to the mercantile and buy one.”

“There are plenty of ladies in Pine River who are sweet on you,” Trista insisted. Maybe she was only eight, but at times she had the forceful nature of a dowager duchess. “Miss Jinnie Potts, for one.”

Jonathan turned to face his daughter, his cup halfway to his lips, his gaze stern. “To bed, Trista,” he said firmly.

She scampered across the kitchen in a flurry of dark hair and flannel and threw her arms around his middle. “Good night, Papa,” she said, squeezing him, totally disarming him in that way that no other female could. “I love you.”

He bent to kiss the top of her head. “I love you, too,” he said, his voice gruff.

Trista gave him one last hug, then turned and hurried up the stairs. Without her, the kitchen was cold and empty again.

Jonathan poured his coffee into the iron sink and reached out to turn down the wick on the kerosene lantern standing in the center of the table. Instantly, the kitchen was black with gloom, but Jonathan’s steps didn’t falter as he crossed the room and started up the stairs.

He’d been finding his way in the dark for a long time.

A
pple-blossom petals blew against the dark sky like snow as Elisabeth pulled into her driveway early that evening, after making a brief trip to Pine River. Her khaki skirt clung to her legs as she hurried to carry in four paper bags full of groceries.

She had just completed the second trip when a crash of thunder shook the windows in their sturdy sills and lightning lit the kitchen.

Methodically, Elisabeth put her food away in the cupboards and the refrigerator, trying to ignore the sounds of the storm. Although she wasn’t exactly afraid of noisy weather, it always left her feeling unnerved.

She had just put a portion of the Buzbee sisters’ casserole in the oven and was preparing to make a green salad when the telephone rang. “Hello,” she said, balancing the receiver between her ear and shoulder so that she could go on with her work.

“Hello, darling,” her father said in his deep and always slightly distracted voice. “How’s my baby?”

Elisabeth smiled and scooped chopped tomatoes into the salad bowl. “I’m fine, Daddy. Where are you?”

He chuckled ruefully. “You know what they say—if it’s Wednesday, this must be Cleveland. I’m on another business trip.”

That was certainly nothing new. Marcus Claridge had been on the road ever since he had started his consulting business when Elisabeth was little. “How are Traci and the baby?” she asked. Just eighteen months before Marcus had married a woman three years younger than Elisabeth, and the couple had an infant son.

“They’re terrific,” Marcus answered awkwardly, then cleared his throat. “Listen, I know you’re having a rough time right now, sweetheart, and Traci and I were thinking that…well…maybe you’d like to come to Lake Tahoe and spend the summer with us. I don’t like to think of you burrowed down in that spooky old house….”

Elisabeth laughed, and the sound was tinged with hysteria. She didn’t dislike Traci, who invariably dotted the
i
at the end of her name with a little heart, but she didn’t want to spend so much as an hour trying to make small talk with the woman, either. “Daddy, this house isn’t spooky. I love the place, you know that. Who told you I was here, anyway?”

Her father sighed. “Ian. He’s very worried about you, darling. We all are. You don’t have a job. You don’t know a soul in that backwoods town. What do you intend to do with yourself?”

She smiled. Trust Ian to make it sound as if she were hiding out in a cave and licking her wounds. “I’ve been substitute teaching for the past year, Daddy, and I
do
have a job. I’ll be in charge of the third grade at Pine River Elementary starting in early September. In the meantime, I plan to put in a garden, do some reading and sewing—”

“What you need is another man.”

Elisabeth rolled her eyes. “Even better, I could just step in front of a speeding truck and break every bone in my body,” she replied. “That would be quicker and not as messy.”

“Very funny,” Marcus said, but there was a grudging note of amused respect in his tone. “All right, baby, I’ll leave you alone. Just promise me that you’ll take care of yourself and that you’ll call and leave word with Traci if you need anything.”

“I promise,” Elisabeth said.

“Good.”

“I love you, Daddy—”

The line went dead before Elisabeth had completed the sentence. “Say hello to Traci and the baby for me,” she finished aloud as she replaced the receiver.

After supper, Elisabeth washed her dishes. By then, the power was flickering on and off, and the wind was howling around the corners of the house. She decided to go to bed early so she could get a good start on the cleaning come morning.

Since she’d showered before going to town, Elisabeth simply exchanged her skirt and blouse for an oversize red football jersey, washed her face, scrubbed her teeth and went to bed. Her hand curved around the delicate pendant on Aunt Verity’s necklace as she settled back against her pillows.

Lightning filled the room with an eerie light, but Elisabeth felt safe in the big four-poster. How many nights had she and Rue come squealing and giggling to this bed, squeezing in on either side of Aunt Verity to beg her for a story that would distract them from the thunder?

She snuggled down between crisp, clean sheets, closed her eyes and sighed. She’d been right to come back here; this was home, the place where she belonged.

The scream brought her eyes flying open again.

“Papa!”

Elisabeth bolted out of bed and ran into the hallway. Another shriek sounded, followed by choked sobs.

It wasn’t the noise that paralyzed Elisabeth, however; it was the thin line of golden light glowing underneath the door across the hall. That door that opened onto empty space.

She leaned against the jamb, one trembling hand resting on the necklace, as though to conjure Aunt Verity for a rescuer. “Papa, Papa, where are you?” the child cried desperately from the other side.

Elisabeth pried herself away from the woodwork and took one step across the hallway, then another. She found the knob, and the sound of her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears all but drowned out the screams of the little girl as she turned it.

Even when the door actually opened, Elisabeth expected to be hit with a rush of rainy April wind. The soft warmth that greeted her instead came as a much keener shock.

“My God,” she whispered as her eyes adjusted to a candlelit room where there should have been nothing but open air.

She saw the child, curled up at the very top of a narrow bed. Then she saw what must be a dollhouse, another door and a big, old-fashioned wardrobe. As she stood there on the threshold of a world that couldn’t possibly exist, the little girl moved, her form illuminated by the light that glowed from an elaborate china lamp on the bedside table.

“You’re not Papa,” the child said with a cautious sniffle, edging farther back against the intricately carved headboard.

Elisabeth swallowed. “N-no,” she allowed, extending one toe to test the floor. Even now, with this image in front of her, complete in every detail, her five senses were telling her that if she stepped into the room, she would plummet onto the sun-porch roof and break numerous bones.

The little girl dragged the flannel sleeve of her nightgown across her face and sniffled again. “Papa’s probably in the barn. The animals get scared when there’s a storm.”

Elisabeth hugged herself, squeezed her eyes tightly shut and stepped over the threshold, fully prepared for a plunge. Instead, she felt a smooth wooden floor beneath her feet. It seemed to her that “Papa” might have been more concerned about a frightened daughter than frightened animals, but then, since she had to be dreaming the entire episode, that point was purely academic.

“You’re the lady, aren’t you?” the child asked, drawing her knees up under the covers and wrapping small arms around them. “The one who rattled the doorknob and called out.”

This isn’t happening,
Elisabeth thought, running damp palms down her thighs.
I’m having an out-of-body experience or something.
“Y-yes,” she stammered after a long pause. “I guess that was me.”

“I’m Trista,” the girl announced. Her hair was a dark, rich color, her eyes a stormy gray. She settled comfortably against her pillows, folding her arms.

Trista. The doctor’s daughter, the child who died horribly in a raging house fire some seventy years before Elisabeth was even born. “Oh, my God,” she whispered again.

“You keep saying that,” Trista remarked, sounding a little critical. “It’s not truly proper to take the Lord’s name in vain, you know.”

Elisabeth swallowed hard. “I k-know. I’m sorry.”

“It would be perfectly all right to give me yours, however.”

“What?”

“Your name, goose,” Trista said good-naturedly.

“Elisabeth. Elisabeth McCartney—no relation to the Beatle.” As she spoke, Elisabeth was taking in the frilly chintz curtains at the window, the tiny shingles on the roof of the dollhouse.

Trista wrinkled her nose. “Why would you be related to a bug?”

Elisabeth would have laughed if she hadn’t been so busy questioning her sanity.
I refuse to have a breakdown over you, Ian McCartney,
she vowed silently.
I didn’t love you that much.
“Never mind. It’s just that there’s somebody famous who has the same last name as I do.”

Trista smoothed the colorful patchwork quilt that covered her. “Which are you?” she demanded bluntly. “My guardian angel, or just a regular ghost?”

Now Elisabeth did laugh. “Is there such a thing as a ‘regular ghost’?” she asked, venturing farther into the room and sitting down on the end of Trista’s bed. At the moment, she didn’t trust her knees to hold her up. “I’m neither one of those things, Trista. You’re looking at an ordinary, flesh-and-blood woman.”

Trista assessed Elisabeth’s football jersey with a puzzled expression. “Is that your nightdress? I’ve never seen one quite like it.”

“Yes, this is my—nightdress.” Elisabeth felt light-headed and wondered if she would wake up with her face in the rain gutter that lined the sun-porch roof. She ran one hand over the high-quality workmanship of the quilt. If this was an hallucination, she reflected, it was a remarkably vivid one. “Go to sleep now, Trista. I’m sure it’s very late.”

Thunder shook the room and Trista shivered visibly. “I won’t be able to sleep unless I get some hot milk,” she said, watching Elisabeth with wide, hopeful eyes.

Elisabeth fought an urge to enfold the child in her arms, to beg her to run away from this strange house and never, ever return. She stood, the fingers of her right hand fidgeting with the necklace. “I’ll go and make some for you.” She started back toward the door, but Trista stopped her.

“It’s that way, Elisabeth,” she said, pointing toward the inner door. “I have my own special stairway.”

“This is getting weirder and weirder,” Elisabeth muttered, careful not to stub her toe on the massive dollhouse as she crossed to the other door and opened it. “Let’s see just how far this delusion goes,” she added, finding herself at the top of a rear stairway. Her heart pounded so hard, she thought she’d faint as she made her way carefully down to the lower floor.

She wouldn’t have recognized the kitchen, it was so much bigger than the one she knew. A single kerosene lantern burned in the center of the oak table, sending up a quivering trail of sooty smoke. There were built-in cabinets and bins along one wall, and the refrigerator and the stove were gone. In their places were an old-fashioned wooden icebox and an enormous iron-and-chrome monster designed to burn wood. The only thing that looked familiar was the back stairway leading into the main hallway upstairs.

Elisabeth stood in the middle of the floor, holding herself together by sheer force of will. “This is a dream, Beth,” she told herself aloud, grasping the brass latch on the door of the icebox and giving it a cautious wrench. “Relax. This is
only a dream.
”

The door opened and she bent, squinting, to peer inside. Fortunately, the milk was at the front, in a heavy crockery pitcher.

Elisabeth took the pitcher out of the icebox, closed the door with a distracted motion of one heel and scanned the dimly lit room again. “Wait till you tell Rue about this,” she chattered on, mostly in an effort to comfort herself. “She’ll want to do a documentary about you. You’ll make the cover of the
Enquirer,
and tabloid TV will have a heyday—”

“Who the hell are you?”

The question came from behind her, blown in on a wet-and-frigid wind. Elisabeth whirled, still clutching the pitcher of cream-streaked milk to her bosom, and stared into the furious gray eyes of a man she had never seen before.

A strange sensation of being wrenched toward him spiritually compounded Elisabeth’s shock.

He was tall, close to six feet, with rain-dampened dark hair and shoulders that strained the fabric of his suitcoat. He wore a vest with a gold watch chain dangling from one pocket, and his odd, stiff collar was open.

For some confounding reason, Elisabeth found herself wanting to touch him—tenderly at first, and then with the sweet, dizzying fury of passion.

She gave herself an inward shake. “This is really authentic,” Elisabeth said. “I hope I’ll be able to remember it all.”

The stranger approached and took the endangered pitcher from Elisabeth’s hands, setting it aside on the table. His eyes raked her figure, taking in every fiber of the long football jersey that served as her favorite nightgown, leaving gentle fire in their wake.

“I asked you a question,” he snapped. “Who the devil are you?”

Elisabeth gave an hysterical little burst of laughter. The guy was a spirit—or more likely a delusion—and she felt a staggering attraction to him. She
must
be ’round the bend. “Who I am isn’t the question at all,” she answered intractably. “The question is, are you a ghost or am
I
a ghost?” She paused and spread her hands, reasoning that there was no sense in fighting the dream. “I mean, who ya gonna call?”

The man standing before her—Elisabeth could only assume he was the “Papa” Trista had been screaming for—puckered his brow in consternation. Then he felt her forehead with the backs of four cool fingers.

His touch heated Elisabeth’s skin and sent a new shock splintering through her, and Elisabeth fairly leapt backward. Hoping it would carry her home to the waking world, like some talisman, she brought the pendant from beneath her shirt and traced its outline with her fingers.

“What is your name?” the man repeated patiently, as though speaking to an imbecile.

Elisabeth resisted an impulse to make a suitable noise with a finger and her lower lip and smiled instead. She had a drunken feeling, but she assured herself that she was bound to wake up any minute now. “Elisabeth McCartney. What’s yours?”

“Dr. Jonathan Fortner,” was the pensive answer. His steely eyes dropped to the pendant she was fiddling with and went wide. In the next instant, before Elisabeth had had a chance even to brace herself, he’d gripped the necklace and ripped it from her throat. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, his voice a terrifying rasp.