ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

  ONCE

  Upon Another Time

  By

  Rosary McQuestion

  Text copyright © 2012 Rosary McQuestion

  All Rights Reserved

  www.rosarymcquestion.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Book cover illustration copyright © 2012 by Sallie Scharding, Scharding Design, www.schardingdesign.com

  “I don't often use the word "captivating" in describing a book, but today, I will.”

  ~Book Applause

  “Totally absorbing feel-good book. Once you start you have to keep reading this enthralling book…”

  ~Geoffrey West, Journalist & Author of Jack Lockwood Mysteries

  “Left me wanting more! This novel is undoubtedly an enjoyable gentle romantic comedy with its quirky portrait of delightfully imperfect Aubrey.”

  ~Alizaren

  For my brother Paul who lives among the angels—I will one day see you again.

  And to my husband Tom for all his love, encouragement, and support.

  Acknowledgments

  My appreciation and thank you to Lynda Miller for her wonderful editing skills and to designer extraordinaire, Sallie Scharding for the beautiful book cover.

  Death is not the end, but only the beginning.

  The butterfly is symbolic of many things, depending upon what part of the world you live in. Some cultures associated it with a miracle of transformation and resurrection, a change in one’s life. In early Christianity, the butterfly was a symbol of the soul. In Japan, a butterfly is seen as the personification of a person's soul whether they are living, dying, or already dead. One Japanese superstition says that if a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, the person whom you most love is coming to see you.

  The butterfly best represents the story you are about to read.

  See character bios at www.rosarymcquestion.com

  One

  Two, one thousand, three, one thousand, four, one thousand…

  I paced around the coffee table counting in my head, hoping that breathing into the small paper lunch bag would clear my mind and stop my panic attack. But one noisy thought kept drowning out even the swishy rustling of my taffeta cocktail dress, telling me I wasn’t stable enough to go out on a date. Not stable was putting it mildly. The mere thought that the ghost of my dead husband was haunting me made my breaths come out faster, and the bag I was breathing into become soggier. It was absurd on so many different levels--one being I didn’t believe in ghosts.

  Someone like me, a hardworking lawyer, a well-respected figure in the local community, and a sensible, caring mother to a six-year-old son didn’t dabble in such ridiculous notions. In my line of work, I dealt with hardcore facts and solid evidence. Yet, I was conflicted. An invisible presence wasn’t something I’d ever contemplated, but I couldn’t ignore the peculiar things that had happened around the house.

  Case-in-point--my house is a nineteen thirties English Tudor, so it’s common to hear creaks and groans from the floors and beams. However, one night three weeks ago, while in my study researching a pending lawsuit case, the house was quiet as a tomb. It was as if it had taken a deep breath and held it, while an odd feeling that I wasn’t alone had sent a shiver running through my body. The only light in the dark room was coming from the glow of my computer screen. A glance over my shoulder showed nothing other than the faint outline of the hand-carved marble fireplace. I turned slowly in the direction of the French doors, fearing someone was outside in my garden, perhaps with his face up to the glass staring in on me. But all I saw was the moon glowing through the wavy Victorian water glass like golden waves.

  As soon as I turned back to face my computer, a scent similar to the acidic sweet tartness of freshly squeezed limes and tangerines swirled in the air. The scent was reminiscent of men’s cologne, the same cologne my husband, Matt, used to wear. All at once, my mind traveled back to the day he died. My heart beat wildly, and I became all thumbs while fumbling to switch on the desk lamp.

  The fragrance was fading and at the same time, something I can’t explain had called to my subconscious. My eyes were drawn to the built-in bookcase on the opposite side of the room, and to a photograph of Matt taken one week before his death. The shutter on the camera had caught the sparkle in his amber-colored eyes, as he looked up from checking the shackles and pins that fastened the rigging to the hull on our sailboat. A thatch of windblown sandy colored hair, streaked blonde from that hot summer spent on the water, had blown across his forehead.

  Eerily, it felt as if the photograph was speaking to me in some type of enigmatic communication when on the back of my neck I felt moist, warm breath. A voice whispered in my ear, “Aubrey, find me.”

  A tiny high-pitched scream managed to eke past my paralyzed vocal cords. My heart pounded. Not only had an invisible presence spoken to me, but I recognized the voice. A vacuumed draft whooshed through the room and sucked the sheer drapery against the screen on the open window--as if something had escaped outside into the salty night air.

  My brain stumbled as my body bolted toward the window. The full golden moon spread its glow clear across the dark waters of Fogland Beach. A white illuminated image hovered at the water's edge. It looked like the outline of a man, perhaps my neighbor with a flashlight, is what came to mind. But when it streaked up toward the sky like a comet, I was pretty sure it wasn’t the guy next door.

  As I stood in shock, drowning in a sea of air, I suddenly caught my breath and blurted out, “Was that Matt’s ghost?” Why I had said it, I don’t know, because believing in ghosts would have been like believing in Leprechauns and a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. However, there was no mistaking Matt’s voice.

  That night, three weeks ago, was the beginning of everything. At whim, my heirloom music box, a gift from my deceased grandmother that had not worked in years, started pinging out the melody of “Moon River.” Mysterious wind chimes would wake me in the night, and Matt’s whispering plea for me to find him seemed to echo from every room in the house. Then there was my newly minted, freakish ability to hear what people were thinking, which added to my worry that I was schizophrenic. With voices inhabiting my head like annoying little gremlins, I could only guess that witches and monkeys flying on broomsticks would be next.

  So, there you have it. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind nor was I looking forward to spending the evening with a blind date set up by my best friend, Laura Wentworth.

  Seven, one thousand, eight, one thousand, nine, one thousand...

  The paper bag billowed and collapsed like a living lung, until finally with much frustration I twisted the head on the bag and popped it. Not only did I feel as if I was going completely insane, but going on blind dates has always been a waste of time. Yet, Laura always thought she knew best when it came to my non-existent love life, and therefore I’d always given in to her.

  Think, I told myself, while trying to come up with an excuse for canceling the date, when a great breath of draft passed through the high-ceilinged great room. My heart began to race. A light citrusy scent sprinkled the air, when all at once the wail of Westminster chimes rang out in a loud, crystal clear, exceedingly musical tone.

  I spun around to face the glass-domed anniversary clock, my heart beating with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. I fixated on the clock’s rotating crystal pendulum, and thought back to the day Matt bought the broken clock. It was at an estate sale a couple months before he died. He’d never got around to fixing it. I could
n’t bear to have the clock live on when my husband never had the chance to hear the beauty of its chime, and therefore never had it repaired. But there it was, chiming as if it’d just awakened from a deep slumber.

  The heels of my stilettos barely made a sound on the hardwood floor, as I slowly walked toward the clock sitting on the fireplace mantel. At the strike of the seventh chime, I lightly touched my trembling fingertips to the glass dome. And then I saw him. He was standing to the side of the fireplace, not four feet from me and somehow everything seemed flawlessly clear and fantastically real. A rushing sense of release shot through me, as if some inner catch sprung open to loosen my fear. The same anticipatory spasm of joy I felt when our son, Nicholas, was born was what I felt at that very moment I saw Matt’s spirit.

  With my hands cupped over my mouth, I stood in disbelief at seeing that familiar broad, deep smile that always made the corner of his eyes crinkle. His ruffled hair was sun-kissed, his complexion not paper white, but deeply tanned against his sky blue, button-down Stafford shirt. He wore brown loafers and was dressed in the clothing I had chosen for his burial. He despised suits.

  Matt was one of those brilliant, sexy men who had a streak of mischief in his otherwise military-like polite personality. He spoke in a deep, soft voice with a slight New Jersey accent and when he’d turn on the charm, women found him totally irresistible.

  I brought my hands down from my mouth and smiled back at him, thinking this could not be happening. Yet I felt the same girlish excitement and flutter in my heart I’d always felt each time I’d look at Matt.

  Was I supposed to say something? Do I need to move my mouth? Do I just use my mind to speak? Is this for real?

  All at once my head filled with his deep, soft voice, “Aubrey, find me.” His voice had a metallic quality, as if spoken in an empty room with a tin ceiling.

  My mouth fell open as I stared at him with a mix of shock and awe, when I felt a tap to my shoulder.

  I whirled around to see Laura.

  She gave me an assessing look. “Hey, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” she said as the brow between her eyes creased.

  “Ghost?” I repeated through strained vocal cords that bumped my voice up a couple of octaves. “Why would you say that?”

  “Um, it was just an expression,” she said, as her head cocked to one side like an inquisitive puppy trying to understand a new command. “Is something going on that I should know about?”

  I took a quick glance over my shoulder. Matt was gone.

  “Going on?”

  “Yes, as in you’re keeping something from me. I can feel it.”

  Best friends, we’d known each other most of our lives and I was dying to tell Laura what was happening, but I couldn’t find the words. Maybe it was because of my years of therapy, and our backgrounds being so different, but I knew for a fact she'd think I was as cuckoo as a bird.

  You see, Laura was a solid blue chip who could trace her heritage back to the Mayflower. Stepping into her parents’ house for the first time at thirteen, I felt as if I’d entered Camelot. Her mother wore minks and diamonds and drove a BMW convertible, a far different lifestyle than my mother who wore pink dyed rabbit’s fur, mood rings, and drove a Volkswagen bus.

  Conversation around the dinner table at Laura’s house centered on getting good grades, the stock market, and her father’s next business trip. Dinner, if a tofu casserole could be classified as such, at my house always included talks about protest marches and parallel universes filled with otherworldly beings.

  “Well, are you going to tell me?” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Ah, everything’s fine. I take it the guys are waiting in the car. So, c’mon let’s go.” I tugged on her arm to usher her along.

  “Stop,” Laura said, and yanked her arm from me. Her chin tilted up slightly while staring at me. “For weeks you’ve been giving off this strange vibe. We’re not leaving this house until you tell me what’s going on.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Somewhere in the house, Buster, my Main Coon was meowing. I glimpsed the anniversary clock on the mantel, sighed deeply, and looked Laura square in the eye. Perhaps there was no right way to tell Laura about Matt, and I couldn’t very well lie to her.

  “Well, if you must know. A few weeks ago, back in June, I was staring out the window at the second full moon we’d had that month. Anyway, I turned away from the window and felt something furry between my ankles. Buster tripped me and I fell and bumped my head right about here,” I said rubbing my fingers over the spot on the back of my head. “And that’s when things become very strange and I began hearing voices in my head. Well, not voices like commanding me to kill or anything having to do with the Zodiac, but more like thoughts. Like words popping into my head, not in the form of an actual voice, still I could tell who was thinking what because…well what I’m trying to say is I’m able to hear what people are thinking. But it’s not all the time…I mean…well it’s not a regular occurrence. Then there’s my grandmother’s music box, the one I keep in my bedroom…well, you know it doesn’t work, but sometimes it turns itself on, and these mystical sounding wind chimes wake me up in the middle of the night, but most amazing--which I still cannot believe--is that I’ve seen Matt’s ghost. He’s trying to connect with me and I think…”

  The words died off my lips as I stared into Laura’s unblinking, luminous green eyes feeling as if all of what I said had fallen off into some deep, black hole.

  Laura’s eyebrow jumped. “Hmm, now it all makes sense,” she said, while slowly shaking her head.

  The look of empathy was in her eyes. I knew it! She thinks I’m insane. She’d given me the same look the time she called my shrink after my OCD episode. I had gone into hysterics after cleaning the house like a crazy woman and running out of dusting spray, which I tried to explain was actually frustration over Buster spraying the coffee table.

  “Aubrey, I am so sorry. I feel awful. I of all people should have realized how tortuous it must be for you to go on blind dates. I just realized it totally goes against the grain of your control issues. I hope you understand I was just trying to help,”

  “Huh?”

  “I get it. You’re stressing because of me. I’m sorry you had to make up that ridiculous story just to show me how ridiculous I’ve been in playing matchmaker for the past umpteen years.”

  Did she not hear a word I said?

  “I promise I’ll never interfere again,” Laura said, as she rubbed my arm. “Forgive me?”

  Probably information overload, I thought. Laura’s generous lips spread into a wide smile as she tucked a tendril of platinum hair behind her ear.

  “Of course,” I said, as we retreated from the house without further comment.

  ****

  On the ride to the restaurant, while the others chatted on about the weather and politics, I kept wondering why Matt would be haunting me. Was it because his death really was my fault like I’d thought all along or was it because I wasn’t in touch with reality? Maybe my OCD was twisting my thoughts making me imagine things. Perhaps something got screwed up in my head after fantasizing for the past six years that one day I’d see Matt and we’d talk and I’d find the answers to what really happened right before his accident. Answers I desperately needed. And because he died shortly after the coast guard helicopter rushed him to the hospital, I never had the chance to say any final words and tell him how much I loved him.

  We arrived at the restaurant and I forced myself to stop laboring over my self-inflicted guilt, or even attempt to make sense of just seeing my dead husband suddenly materialize after six years.

  “Don’t you just love the décor,” Laura said, while David spoke to the leggy, redheaded hostess about our reservations.

  “I suppose,” I said, as Jack, my date, closed in on me so tight that he popped my air space bubble making me feel uncomfortable. I moved away from him to check out the lobby walls that displayed various black and
white photos of classic movie stars like Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Maureen O’Sullivan, and a slew of others. The décor seemed reminiscent of the nineteen thirties with a romantic art deco styling. The dimly lit dining area had red-velvet canopies over velvet-lined private booths with candlelit tables, which all seemed a little over the top.

  However, for Laura, a former debutante whose teen years were chronicled in the society columns of the Providence Journal, she was right in her element in upper crust restaurants. You know the kind with the “organic, grass fed, cage free, weekly massaged” beef flown in from half way around the world. Whereas, I would have been just as content to stay at home and pop a frozen Lean Cuisine into the microwave.

  Once seated at our table, I couldn’t help but notice all the waiters gliding around the dining room so effortlessly taking orders while dressed in full Love Boat regalia. In the center of the room, a pianist tickled the ivories on a black baby grand. Service was fast, as it wasn’t long before my drink order arrived. Emotionally, I was a mess and downed my cosmopolitan like a sailor whose ship had just pulled into port.

  While David, Laura, and Jack were still conferring with one another over the wine list, I’d made up my mind about Matt. What I was experiencing had to be real--that seeing Matt was real. Granted, a dead husband trying to relay a message to his wife was hardly a monopoly with the Sylvia Browne’s of the world connecting with the dead at will. However, I was just an ordinary person. I’d always thought of ghosts only in the fictional sense like The Ghosts of Motley Hall and Ghostbusters, and suddenly it was as if I was on some paranormal reality television show.

  I couldn’t make sense of why Matt would ask me to find him when he was right there in front of me thirty minutes ago. Besides, somehow after years of being dead, he had found me! I felt a little cheated when Laura interrupted what could have been my only chance to ask Matt what had happened the day of his death and tell him how much I missed him, that I will never stop loving him. Not being able to remember what had taken place right before the accident on Block Island magnified my obsession in wanting to speak with Matt. My psychiatrist diagnosed my memory loss as psychological trauma. My OCD was rooted in guilt over Matt’s death. Somehow, I felt his death was my fault, but didn’t know why.