Mrs. Amos opened the door at Thea’s knock, and a smile met her faded blue eyes.
“Oh, dear me. You’ve come for a visit! Bless you!”
Thea slipped inside the house, the warmth of the front room almost suffocating her. While her elders must be chilled, Thea missed the fresh air that had been shut out behind her.
“How is he?” she inquired politely.
Mrs. Amos looked over her shoulder, her lace cap dangling around her ears, with white wisps of hair framing her face as she returned her attention to Thea. “He’s restless, to be sure. He wants to return to the studio and keeps grouching that he has appointments to fulfill. Whatever those may be. I ask”—Mrs. Amos put a conspiratorial hand on Thea’s arm—“how many photographs can one man take in a town this size? I’ve no idea. He doesn’t realize that if our children didn’t wire us funds, we’d be most destitute.”
Thea gave an empathetic smile to the old woman, not for the last time wondering what inspired Mr. Amos to stay in Pleasant Valley when it seemed his family had long left the town behind them.
“Come.” Mrs. Amos led her through the front room to a bedroom in the back of the small two-story house. A well-worn carpet runner, which had seen better days, lined the hall.
The door to the bedroom stood open and was quite narrow, revealing a bed, wide enough for only one person, against the far wall. Thea also noted a single window with lace curtains, a small bureau cluttered with knickknacks, and an end table with a stack of books on top. Mr. Amos, propped against pillows, greeted her with a cranky frown.
“What are you doing here?” he grumbled.
His wife flustered around him, straightening his blankets, tugging on his shirtsleeve to pull it down to his wrist.
Mr. Amos gave her hand a light slap. “Stop your mollycoddling! I’m not dead.”
“You were dead enough to see the Lord himself, I daresay,” Mrs. Amos shot back, though her wrinkled face was still wreathed in a patient smile. “Dear Simeon brought you back to the land of the living.”
Mr. Amos glowered at her. “I’ve not been resurrected. You exaggerate, old woman.”
“And you grumble too much, old man.” She gave him a pat on the shoulder and sidled past Thea. She gave a wink and whispered, “Enjoy yourself, my dear.” Mrs. Amos then disappeared down the hall, leaving Thea standing there in the doorway.
“Well, now that you’re here.” Mr. Amos speared her with a look. “What is it you want?”
Thea drew a deep breath and entered the room, standing awkwardly over him until he pointed to a chair in the corner. She slid it over toward the bed and lowered herself onto it. Taking out Mr. Fortune’s newly developed photograph, she handed it to him.
Mr. Amos took it from her, his eyes glossing over the picture. “He came back, eh?”
Thea nodded. “I’m quite proud of the photograph. He cooperated and didn’t show me any disdain.” She’d expected Mr. Fortune wouldn’t want a woman photographing him. Mr. Amos raised an irritable brow. “I’d have denied him services if I had the resources to afford it. Can’t stand the Fortunes. Highfalutin ninnies in a town of lessers, they are. So they think anyway.” He handed the photograph back to her. “You should be proud of it. Figurin’ as you take pictures of the dead, a live one is bound to look a lot better.”
Thea bit back a smile. After years of following Mr. Mendelsohn around and always feeling rather assaulted under his elderly gaze that lingered too long, she thought Mr. Amos a welcome relief. He was grumpy. A harmless grump with an edge of grandfatherly fondness that laced his words by way of soft eyes.
“I want you to know, Mr. Amos, I’ve been keeping up with your appointments. All of them.” Thea made sure she emphasized the word all. She didn’t think he’d want her mentioning the asylum out loud.
Mr. Amos frowned. “Whaddya mean?”
“Well,” Thea explained further, folding her hands in her lap, “you will have no lost revenue from the appointments in your books. I will be sure to keep them and develop the photographs for you. As well as your—your other ventures.”
“What other ventures? What’re you talkin’ about?”
Thea hesitated. Simeon had said he was working with Mr. Amos, hadn’t he? Yes. It was Mr. Amos’s camera equipment. The photo album of patients in the back room.
“I’m working with Simeon,” she admitted, lowering her voice.
Mr. Amos’s eyes widened. He braced himself on either side, his hands pressed against the mattress, raising himself into a sitting position. “Now, you listen here . . .” He glanced toward the door, as if someone might be standing there, listening. Thea looked too. There was no one. “You leave Simeon alone.” Mr. Amos wagged his finger at her.
Thea tipped her head in correction. “Simeon requested I help him. It was at his behest.”
Mr. Amos’s scowl deepened. “Then he’s just as crazy as—missy, that place ain’t—you just best not,” he struggled to finish his command.
“Whyever not?” she couldn’t help but ask.
Mr. Amos eyed her. For a long moment, he said not a word. Finally he opened his mouth, bordered by unshaven gray whiskers that covered some of the gauntness in his cheeks. “I said I’d photograph the patients. Not more than a few weeks ago. The missus and I . . . well, money has been scarce lately.”
Thea waited.
Mr. Amos adjusted the blanket around his waist.
“I’ve had a fondness for Simeon,” he continued. “For years. The boy always shadowed my shop—back in the day when things were a bit brighter here in Pleasant Valley. Before . . . before Simeon’s parents passed, and the darkness of those rumors started up again. But that place? That place isn’t a place for you. You stay away from it. From Simeon. From the Coyles, you hear?”
“But why?” Thea pressed. Simeon was almost as timid as a man could be, and Rose was ethereal and lost in her grief, but fulfilled by her work at the hospital.
Mr. Amos shook his head. “You trust me, Miss Reed. Nothin’ good comes from befriending a Coyle.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that.
“I don’t believe it,” Thea argued.
Mr. Amos skewered her with a stern glare. “Believe it. There’s more to that family than meets the eye. The Kramers. The Coyles. Misty Wayfair.”
“Do you know what it is?” Thea ventured, holding her breath.
Mr. Amos stared at her, then turned his head to look out the window.
“Seems strange, don’t it, that a dead woman wouldn’t lie in peace? That she’d haunt a family—a town—like a vengeful spirit?”
“If you believe that sort of thing,” Thea responded. Mr. Mendelsohn’s devoted superstitions quickened her heart.
“I don’t believe that sort of thing!” Mr. Amos turned back to her. His eyes were direct. Firm. Convicted. “Yet, it keeps happenin’. Someone keeps taking them. One by one. There’s no explanation for the Coyles dying, and their passings are too coincidental in my book. First their father, Mathilda Coyle herself, their mother, and now Mary? No. No, I don’t believe that sort of thing. But there’s got to be an explanation. God knows, as a man of faith, our eternal destination isn’t limbo. I know where I’m going when I die, by the grace of God himself. And I know that Misty Wayfair is as dead now as she was fifty-odd years ago. So, if it’s not Misty Wayfair, then who is it? I ain’t never heard of that many people in one family passing away in such strange ways, you know?”
A coldness settled over Thea. She swallowed, but it seemed apprehension had lodged in her throat. Suddenly the concept of Misty Wayfair became far less ghostly, and far more human.
Mr. Amos nodded slowly. “Someone murdered Misty Wayfair way back when. They’re all connected. And there are only two Coyles left, ya hear? Whoever wants to avenge Misty Wayfair all these years later? I don’t think they’re gonna stop with Mary. And if you’re with them—”
“Then I’m just in the way,” Thea finished.
Mr. Amos patted his heart. “T
his malady may be God’s way of tellin’ me to back off before they take me too. Poor Simeon and Rose. Thought I could help. Thought I could keep them safe, but—it’s comin’ for them.” He met Thea’s eyes. “And, whoever it is, they ain’t going to stop until every Coyle is buried in the cold, hard ground.”
Chapter 24
The river swept by with the persistent turbulence that imitated the tension lying just beneath the surface of Pleasant Valley.
Dinner with Mrs. Amos had been a kind gesture from the old woman, and Thea wanted to stay. Mrs. Amos had invited her to sit and read aloud the Scriptures, with Mr. Amos listening on with closed eyes. Thea hadn’t been exposed much to the Word of God, and it bewildered her that while reading, a strange sense of peace came over her. Something in the Amos house was different. Yet it was less a ghostly spirit and more, as Mrs. Amos declared, the whispering Spirit of God. If so, then He made the unknowns less frightening. Dangerous, yes. Imposing, for certain. But terrifying? No. She could sense that even crotchety Mr. Amos believed God had not lost control, and while he vehemently urged her to stay out of the asylum and away from the Coyles, she could see Mr. Amos also questioned what her part was in it all. As though her Creator had some exceptional plan for her life.
It was a lovely thought, if one fancied pursuing the idea of a Creator. Thea might have sidestepped the notion a month ago, but now? Perhaps it had merit after all. Considering everything else she’d been taught left her spiraling in a whirlpool of confusion and aimlessness.
Now, Thea wandered down the street toward the boardinghouse. The summer sky was still alight. Townsfolk mingled about, collecting at the Methodist church for the evening’s midweek prayer service. A couple of Kramer Logging wagons rolled through town at the end of the day. Thea took refuge in their distant company.
The river continued its endless journey. Thea considered it, debated, then chose to follow the river’s course. She headed to the riverbank, peering into the depths of the less frantic pools, to the smooth stones beneath the water. Stones Simeon Coyle etched with words of what now-deceased patients might have been like—in another time, or place, or really, another life.
“Are you lonely?”
The simple question, voiced by someone behind her, startled Thea. She jumped, twisting as she did so, her gaze colliding with the gray eyes of Simeon himself. He’d come out of nowhere. Like a ghost himself.
Was she lonely? Of course she was. But she dared not admit it to Simeon, who one moment she felt she could trust even with her deepest secrets, but in the next moment she realized with surety she really didn’t know him well at all.
“Are you?” She turned her attention back to the waters. To the tiny whirlpool that swirled at the base of a boulder in the middle of the river.
Simeon edged his way out onto a slick-looking rock and squatted. Dipping his hands into the cool water, he let it stream through strong fingers. He appeared more relaxed in the evening light, the orange sky in the distance, with the woods silhouetted as a dark mass in the foreground.
“More often now, yes,” he admitted, then plunged his arm up to his elbow, pulling forth a smooth, oval river stone. He wiped it on his pant leg and stood.
“What will you etch on it? And for whom?” Thea asked.
Simeon’s face muscles jerked, causing his eye to close in an unbidden wink. He gave her a sideways glance, almost like he knew there would be one more twitch and then he could face her, his faculties in control once again.
“There was an older man who passed last year. He would sit at a window and stare out. He would cry. For no reason.” Simeon balanced his way back to the rocky and jagged riverbank. He handed the stone to Thea. “I will carve the word comfort on it.”
Thea rolled the stone in her hand. Its dampness leaving her palm cool. She could almost envision the word etched there. See the stone laid at the base of a grave marker in the lonesome burial ground of the hospital.
“You assume death brings comfort, then?” Thea handed it back to him.
Simeon’s fingers grazed hers. He didn’t react, but every nerve inside her tingled at the touch. As if something magnetic connected them. Opposites and yet replicas of each other. Lonesome. Awkward. Private. One driven to find answers, and one haunted by a story he seemed to ignore.
“Death brings no comfort. At least to those left behind.” Simeon gave a small laugh. A dry one that resonated the undertones of grief. “Mr. Amos told me there is hope in the hereafter. That God provides a way to know Him. To experience peace.”
He stopped, and their eyes met.
“Do you believe that?” Thea truly wanted to know, considering the direction her thoughts had taken during the Scripture reading at the Amos home.
Simeon narrowed his eyes. “There is reason in it, though some might argue it’s a weak man’s way of coping with life. But, I’ve also seen too much sorrow to believe God is happy with it—with us. I mean, if He created it all, then wouldn’t He have a purpose for it? I think, as mankind, we have thoroughly ruined a good plan. Now, the Creator must fix it. One person at a time. It is no simple miracle.”
“What if we don’t let Him fix us? What if I don’t believe I am broken?” But she did believe it. Circumstances taught her she was broken long before she ever contemplated if the Creator might have more merit in existing than a wayward spirit passed on in the afterlife. If it were true, then part of her wanted to believe that God really had created her, had a reason for her, and maybe even wanted her.
Simeon shrugged. “I’m no scholar. I just know . . .” He stared across the river. “When you see death face-to-face, you wish to know what lies after. I know one ghost exists. It is the ghost of my soul, suspended, with a choice to make. To acknowledge a Creator, or to acknowledge only myself and assume I am all I have.”
“Maybe that’s why we’re lonely,” Thea ventured. She was tired of being her only constant, her only source of strength. She was so tired.
“I believe it is so.” Simeon met her eyes again.
Thea realized he’d stepped nearer to her. Perhaps to balance on the river’s rugged edge. Perhaps because he felt the same tug toward her as she felt toward him.
The right side of his mouth twitched. Just enough to draw her eyes. She rested them there and, without thinking, raised her fingers and laid them over the corner of his mouth.
Simeon stilled.
She watched his lips, carved like a strong man’s but set in the face of one whom life had beaten into submission with its violent whip of tragedy. “Has your face always . . .” Thea asked without finishing.
“No,” he whispered, his lips moving beneath her fingers.
“When did it begin?” It was none of her business why his face would jerk, why his shoulder would suddenly seize upward toward his ear and pull his head down toward it as if latching together for seconds at a time.
He didn’t answer. Perhaps because she’d not removed her fingertips from his mouth. Thea tried again. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” Simeon responded.
Thea could feel him. His chest inches from hers. Not touching, and yet close enough to sense his very soul lifting and combining with hers.
“Then why?” Thea slowly withdrew her hand, but this time Simeon’s lifted and clasped her wrist with a gentle but firm grip.
“My father—he was not a kind man.”
“He hurt you?”
“Many times, yes.”
“And Rose? Mary?”
“Often.” A low response.
“And he damaged you? That’s why your body—”
“He frightened me,” Simeon admitted. “As a boy. Terrified me. When I am nervous, or unsettled, it becomes more pronounced. I don’t know why.”
Thea noticed his shoulder lift a bit, and Simeon struggled to right it.
“Are you afraid now?” she whispered.
He stepped closer, her wrist still held in his grip between them. Simeon lowered his face, compelling her to lift her eyes from his
malady and to his gaze. Thea did.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Of what?” Thea frowned, searching his face.
“Of you.”
Thea froze as Simeon released her wrist, but he did not step away.
“I shouldn’t frighten you,” Thea argued, though her voice was hardly above a whisper. And her conviction was as much to convince herself as to convince Simeon.
His eyes narrowed, the right eye almost shutting in a wink. Twice, three times, four, and then it steadied. “You’re like a sailor’s siren, Thea. Dangerous. I don’t know why, but you call me with a silent song. I’m afraid you will wreck me.”
Thea’s breath held, suspended between them. “I’ve done nothing to you,” she breathed.
Simeon’s fingertips lifted and grazed her cheek. “And that is why I fear you. Because you will. And that will be my undoing.”
Sleep had become a taunt. Something Thea attempted to grasp but was left with an empty arm extended. She rose, washed her face in the porcelain basin on her bureau, dried it with a clean linen, then brushed through her long, honey-colored hair. She’d watched herself in the mirror, noted the shadows growing under her eyes, questioning all things.
To the right of the basin and its pitcher rested Mrs. Mendelsohn’s letter. It was what had brought Thea to Pleasant Valley to begin with. To lay to rest—she’d hoped—the mystery that was her mother. Now? She stared at her reflection, wondering if her mother’s story somehow held hands with the tragedy that seemed to surround Pleasant Valley like a shroud. Like the black crepe draped in a parlor room, covering mirrors and paintings, embracing a loved one’s casket, casting a thin, see-through film over life. Just blurry enough to confuse, to darken, and to make one wonder.
Thea reached out and laid a palm against the mirror. Against her reflection.
The Curse of Misty Wayfair Page 22