Until Death Do Us Part: Haunted Romance Series Book 1

by Leigh, Cassie

  “We have your soaker tub going in, I’d go with the polished chrome faucets, and we can paint the walls that revere pewter color that you said you like.”

  “Oiled bronze is easier to clean,” she commented.

  As if she didn’t hire in for that, but he kept that thought to himself. “Then we’ll go with that.”

  something weighed on Noah’s mind—Millie could see it plainly. When he came home with the tile and vanity, something had changed. It wasn’t that he treated her any different. It was the way they were together that was different; he was quieter, more absorbed in his own thoughts. This wasn’t the first night she noticed the alteration. After the blowup over the closet, Millie observed a pattern. When he spent any amount of time with Claire, he was not as full of the easy conversation Millie had grown to crave.

  Usually, it wore off after a few hours of work on the bathroom that created the original source of tension. Millie observed him as he worked, laying square sheets of dainty round tile. When her husband had brooded like this, he had taken to drinking. So far, she hadn’t spotted any sign of it on Noah. Just the silence.

  Silence she could handle, but from Noah, it unnerved her.

  “I like the pattern on the walls of the shower.” Millie stroked the glossy white porcelain. Her voice was steady, concealing the anxiety pulsating in her chest where her heart now lay still. “The lady on TV called that herringbone. Is that right?”

  Noah sat back on his heels to admire his progress. Reaching up, he dragged his forearm across his brow to mop up the sweat dripping into his thick eyelashes. Millie admired the view of his blue t-shirt stretched across strong shoulders, almost as much as she liked the previous image of his worn denim from behind.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure you’re admiring my tile work?”

  The amused twinkle in his eye filled Millie with relief, and she giggled at the new buoyant sensation that replaced the fluttering nerves. “I may be dead, but I’m certainly not blind.”

  Noah eased back against the wall and stretched out his legs. “Now seems like a good time for a break.”

  “Yes, you’ve been working so hard. I worry about you.”

  Millie hesitated, weighing her words. She could let things go as they were, but she genuinely cared for Noah. If her unexpected jealousy was any indication, her feelings ran deeper than she dared admit. There were needs she could never fill for Noah—no matter what her heart may want—but sounding board was one she could satisfy.

  Fixing her eyes on the stubble that lined his jaw, she pressed on. “You seem as though something is bothering you lately. If you don’t mind my saying, it seems worse when you’ve been with Claire.”

  Noah sighed heavily. “Does anything get past you?”

  “Not when you’ve spent decades observing people as your sole means of entertainment.” Giving up on avoiding eye contact, Millie moved to sit directly across from Noah so that she could look straight into the stormy blue depths of his eyes.

  “Things have been strained lately. She was always a little demanding before the engagement. It just seems to have gotten so much worse. And since I talked her into this house…”

  “I’ve noticed she is quick to remind you whose idea this was.”

  “Every time we’re in the same room,” he lamented.

  Noah’s head fell back against the wall, and he stared up at the ceiling.

  “You’ve worked so hard to please her.” Millie's voice came out small. “I would have been grateful if Harold had done anything for me, let alone what you’ve done to give her everything she asks for.”

  Noah sighed and scrubbed his hand down his face as if to brush off the frustration, as he had wiped away the sweat of his brow.

  “Claire didn’t choose any of this.” His arm swept out, gesturing to the tile that surrounded them. “She demanded high-end, custom everything. More than I could afford, so she dug her heels in. In the end, I made suggestions, and she just agreed to it. Of course, when it’s done, she’ll tell everyone she knows that I was just the muscle.”

  Millie traced the penny-sized white tiles on the floor with one finger. “It’s beautiful, Noah. I look forward to seeing it finished. My mother would have loved it.”

  He smiled at her, and pleasure radiated through her like sunshine that her admiration made him happy.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something, Millie?”

  She nodded her acceptance, and he pressed on. “Since I met you, you’ve rarely mentioned your family. Tonight you’ve mentioned both your mother and this Harold. I haven’t wanted to pry but…Who was Harold?”

  She expected the question to sting or worse pull her into another memory. For once, she felt nothing but emptiness and her surroundings remained unchanged. She opened her mouth once to answer and closed it.

  When she tried again, her voice came out a hushed whisper. “My husband.”

  Noah’s eyes widened, and his eyebrows shot up in shock before he was able to school his expression into something more even-keeled. “You look too young.”

  “I took my life just after I turned eighteen,” she said matter-of-factly.

  He leaned forward, his gaze penetrating and pinched with concern as he braced his forearms on his drawn up knees. “You strike me as such a happy person. I have trouble reconciling the woman I see before me, and the girl who took her own life. Why?”

  Noah’s expression was so full of compassion. This was not an idle curiosity; he really saw her and that more than anything made her want to share her secrets.

  “For you to understand, I’d have to tell you the whole long story.” Millie pulled off her spectacles to swipe at the spectral tears that were already building as she turned inward.

  She looked down at the silver frames clasped in her hands, not brooding, but contemplative. After so many years of forced reflection, she had attained the distance to see most of her life for what it had been.

  “You have my undivided attention.”

  “At the end of the Depression, my parents took boarders when they could, to help make ends meet.” Millie drew her knees up to her chest, careful to tuck her skirt around her. “My father worked but times were hard, and we were a large family. Harold worked with my father, and he came to stay with us. Harold was the first man who had ever noticed me.”

  Millie took a deep breath, dreading the next part, or rather the telling of it.

  Anxious to get it be rid of the burden, the words tumbled out in a mad rush. “I got pregnant, and we eloped on Halloween.”

  She looked up at Noah, expecting to see judgement in his eyes, but found none. While she had been speaking, he had moved closer, almost touching her faded spectral form. His head tilted to one side in what appeared to be consideration, without any of the censure she had expected to find.

  His apparent acceptance gave her the courage she needed to continue. “My parents were angry, but they still loved me, so my father and Harold built a small one-room cottage at the back of this property. I believe you use it as the garage now.”

  “You lived in that tiny one stall garage!”

  Millie almost laughed at Noah’s outrage over her meager living accommodations, especially considering he showed no reaction to her unplanned pregnancy and elopement. For the time she had been lucky to have the cottage, and in church, she had often heard condescending busybodies whisper that it was more than she deserved considering the choices she made.

  “I was happy to have it,” Millie said. “And things were fine at first, but as I grew large with the baby, Harold became distant and drank away his pay every night. If I ate at all, it was scraps my mother had saved. She did her best to keep me healthy for the baby, but she didn’t know how bad it had gotten and my own foolish pride kept me from telling her.”

  “Did he ever hit you, Millie?” Quiet anger filled Noah’s voice.

  Before she could read into his tone and the source of the emotion behind it, her mind flashed to that bitter night in
December. She raised her fingers to trail over the side of her face as though she could still feel the echo of Harold’s hand and the dull ache where her head connected with the wall.

  “Only once,” she whispered. “I learned to avoid it after that. Harold’s sin was neglect, and his weapon of choice was words.”

  The knuckles of Noah’s clenched fists stood out, bone white. Millie wasn’t sure how to feel about this show of emotion from him. She imagined that it was akin to the anger and jealousy she felt towards Claire, but for him, there could be no outlet, no one to berate since the object of that rage was long past dead. If this much of her story made Noah angry, the rest wouldn’t fare much better.

  “Mother and I were pregnant at the same time. She gave birth before me. My son came in April, at least a month before he should have. He was so small, but then I was half starved.” Millie’s voice broke. She looked away, tears of shame stinging her eyes. “My mother nursed him for me…I wasn’t able. We kept him warm in a basket on the over door. None of it made a difference. He died the week after he was born.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Noah offered simply, his tone a somber whisper.

  Millie couldn’t look at him, not if she wanted to finish this. She pressed on, anxious just to finish dredging that part of her life. “Harold became so much worse after that, screaming at me about my failure as a woman and a mother. I don’t know how much of it my father got wind of, but one night Harold didn’t come home, My older brother told me that he and father took care of him down at the pool hall and I’d have an annulment. I should have been happy, but I was damaged goods, a girl with loose morals, and mourning the loss of my son. It became too much to bear.”

  Her tale of woe unburdened for the first time since her passing, the black mass that sat in the void below where her heart had been, lifted and allowed her tears to flow freely. The glistening moisture rolled down her transparent cheeks to disappear harmlessly. She shook with the effort not to sob. There had been no one else to tell. Had she been able to, she still wasn’t sure that she would have been up to it before this—before him.

  Noah reached out with his hand to brush the tear from her face, as though he had forgotten in the moment that the girl in front of him was intangible. His hand passed harmlessly through her, and he snatched it back, cradling it to his chest in surprise.

  “Oh, Millie.” Maybe it was her own desires playing games with her, but those simple words held a note of longing along with the more appropriate feelings rolling between them.

  “Don’t fret over me,” Millie stood to gain distance. “The world has moved on since then, and you should too.”

  Millie smiled weakly as him as she backed towards the door, ready to retreat to the sanctuary of the attic. Noah’s hands rested flat on the floor, bracing his weight, where he had fallen forward in his attempt to comfort her. The tears welling in his eyes brimmed over the edge like a swollen river.

  Unable to stand the reflection of her own sorrow and his empathy, she caved to the base instinct to flee. He called her name, but she couldn’t stop until her back rested against the other side of the closed attic door. When the seconds ticked by in silence, a tiny piece of her heart, no doubt the same one that had urged her to tell him her story, was disappointed he didn’t follow her. She reached up and rested her hand over the imprints her tears left behind on her face.

  She savored the tingling that remained from his attempt to touch her.

  i don’t know how you manage in this kitchen,” complained Claire as she pulled two plates down from the cabinet over the dishwasher, a convenience the space didn’t have the month before. “There’s hardly any storage, and we’re going to have more stuff then we’ll know what to do with from all our wedding presents.”

  Noah unpacked the cashew chicken and steamed rice, handing it off to Claire, as he watched Millie through the open doorway descending the last few stairs. Seeing her, his thoughts drifted to the tingling in his fingers the other night, when he’d felt compelled by her shimmering trail of tears to touch her face.

  Losing a child and being run down by a man who obviously didn’t deserve her was too much for any young woman, let alone the tenderhearted and animated woman he had come to cherish. Depression and life’s cruelty may have driven her to a premature death, but it hadn’t tempered her sweetness.

  “Are you listening to me,” Claire asked, breaking his reverie.

  Noah did a once over of the woman he was supposed to be marrying, hoping for a feeling other than irritation to surface. Her querulous tone and the frustrated rhythm of her lacquered nails tapping on the new butcher-block counters grated his nerves, but that was all. He couldn’t even muster attraction for her in the short jean skirt and red halter-top as she stood leaning one hip against the cabinets.

  She was dressed for going out and had been pissed to find him in stained work jeans and a t-shirt with the sleeves torn off, still tiling upstairs.

  A month ago, the curves that her ensemble put on tempting display would have done him in. The graceful curve of her neck, bare thanks to her upswept hair, and those pouty lips that she kept slick with red gloss would have had him panting like a dog at her feet. How had things ever gotten this far with her?

  Claire’s face scrunched up at his continued silence and his casual perusal of her. She sighed and cocked her head to one side, brows raised in question.

  Noah shrugged, “I don’t think it will really be a problem. Any duplicates from our single lives will get donated to make way for the new.”

  Rolling her eyes, Claire grabbed her plate and moved to the table ahead of Noah.

  He’d found the farmhouse table on Craigslist, sanded it down, and stained the top a rich walnut before painting the base and ladder back chairs “mint sorbet”. Millie picked the pastel paint color, proclaiming it something that her mother would have loved to have in her kitchen. It added a nice feminine touch to the room’s freshly painted white cabinets.

  Claire’s reaction had been just another “why isn’t this custom” argument, a direction he felt this conversation being pulled in now. Lately, it felt as if her visits were just to find fault.

  “I hope you plan on redoing this kitchen next year. I need a gourmet kitchen,” Claire pointed around the room with a fork full of food. “This isn’t it. Frankly, I’m not sure why you wasted your time on this instead of ripping it out now. Besides, where did you get the idea that I’d even like white cabinets?”

  “It’s so beautiful this way. I think you did a lovely job, Noah. She should appreciate your effort more,” Millie commented from the kitchen doorway.

  Noah struggled to keep from smiling at Millie’s appreciation. He doubted that Claire would take it well.

  “I had to pinch and scrape the budget to do what I did. I figured a small update was better than white and gold Formica and avocado appliances.” Noah shoved a fork full of chicken into his mouth.

  “You figured wrong,” Claire said. “I’d rather you spent the money on the bigger closet I wanted upstairs or some other upgrade.”

  Noah took his time chewing, using it to keep his calm.

  He swallowed and waited a beat before he continued, his voice even and tone dry. “Maybe if you didn’t borrow money from the house budget to put towards the wedding, I could have done those things or made the kitchen better.”

  “She stole from you?” Millie exclaimed as she drifted behind Claire’s shoulder. “How can you marry someone who would do that?”

  Claire slammed down her fork in a fit of indignation. “Our wedding is important! Don’t you want it to be special?”

  “It’s just one day. What’s important is the commitment we’re making and our future together, which will be lived in this house.”

  “Um, no,” Claire said, sitting back and crossing her arms in front of her. “This is a starter home. In five years, we’ll flip it and move on to a bigger better one.”

  Millie paced behind Claire, clearly unsettled. “You can’t leav
e. Tell her you’re staying. I don’t want to go back to a big empty house with no one to talk to.” Millie stopped and focused on him. “You can’t leave me.”

  “What gave you that idea? I never agreed to flip it and move on,” Noah replied, an answer for Millie as much as it was a rebuttal to Claire.

  “Why else would I agree to move into a rundown farm house,” Claire shouted.

  “Because of the opportunity. A diamond in the rough that needed some love and a family to bring it back to life. That could be us, Claire.” Noah reached across the table for her hand, but she pulled away and stood up.

  “I don’t need your permission. I tried to make you happy, Claire. Really, I did, but what you seem to forget is that my name and my money bought this house and paid for this renovation. You need to decide if you want a place in this dream.”

  “Maybe I don’t. So, where does that leave us, Noah?”

  Millie drifted up beside Claire once more, hands held over her heart, as if whatever his answer, it held something meaningful for her.

  “I don’t know, Claire. I think that’s really up to you,” he answered softly.

  “Suddenly, I’m not so sure I want to get married next week.”

  Claire grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and marched away. Stopping at the back door, she looked back at him, expectantly. When it registered that he had to intention of stopping her, her lips pressed thin into a tight frown, before her expression hardened and she strode briskly out the door.

  Noah waited to feel disappointment, but he just didn’t. Instead, he watched Millie as she came around the table towards him. Concern over his fiancée should have been at the forefront of his mind. In its place, he worried over this vibrant spirit of a woman, intangible to the rest of the world, but seen and cared for by his heart.

  Millie hadn’t changed in the weeks since he’d met her, just as Claire hadn’t. The ghostly woman he shared so much with had the same blonde bob and wire-rim glasses. The same ill-fitting white dress hung on her thin frame. Her exterior was simple, but she was never plain. Her grey eyes with their flecks of hazel gold reminded him of the sun peeking through a storm cloud, and the soft blush of her cheek was her natural beauty, nothing artificial or painted on.