Dovecote

by Oleson, Anne Britting;

  “Moore,” he said, not looking up. “First aid kit? Kitchen?”

  Gwynn nodded. He drew a folded handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

  “Hold this there. I’ll be right back.” He straightened and pushed past the policemen, one of whom put out a hand to detain him.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Moore, if you would, please,” he said mildly.

  Colin only looked down at the hand as though it were something noxious. “I’ll be right back.” Then he pushed through the kitchen door.

  “You know this man?” the officer asked.

  A rather obvious question. “He’s my wood man,” Gwynn said.

  THE OFFICERS TOOK the brick along with their statements and departed, the strobing light disappearing.

  “Why’d you tell them about the dead dove?” Gwynn demanded. She still huddled in the wing-backed chair, still wrapped tightly in the duvet from the big bed upstairs.

  This time it wasn’t tea or coffee, but milk he’d warmed in the kitchen. He handed her a mug. The steam coming off the drink smelled vaguely of vanilla. “Drink this. No caffeine. Maybe you can get back to sleep.”

  Gwynn shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll sleep again tonight.” She didn’t really want to sleep again, perchance to dream. She took a sip from the mug anyway, felt the warmth of the milk glide down her throat and spread. She glanced over at him where he sat on the sofa, leaning forward, his own mug untouched on the coffee table. Waited.

  “Because you didn’t,” he said, when she remained silent.

  There was a question there, one he didn’t need to ask, but she refused to answer. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told the officers about the dead dove on the front step.

  “It happened,” Colin assured her. “I was there. I saw it. You didn’t imagine it.”

  His words were pointed, and prescient.

  “I know I didn’t imagine it,” she retorted defensively. “Of course I didn’t.”

  “They were going to dismiss the brick as hooliganism. Some drunken yob late out of the pub, tossing bricks. You know how it goes. They wouldn’t have stirred themselves further.” He turned his mug in a circle, and, seeing the damp ring it left, wiped the surface with the heel of his hand. Absently he took a coaster from the holder and slipped it under his drink.

  “And the dead dove matters?”

  Colin eyed her. “It’s a pattern. Someone is targeting you.”

  Gwynn took another drink from her milk, savoring the vanilla. She didn’t think she’d ever feel warm again. Or safe.

  “I opened the gate,” she murmured.

  He turned to face her with those steady grey eyes.

  She felt her face flush.

  “My great-aunt said that,” she whispered.

  “You’d better tell me,” he said.

  GWYNN TOLD HIM about the dream, about the conversation with the woman she’d known was the other Gwynn, though she’d never seen her in life. Only in reflection.

  “How do you know it was her, then?” he asked.

  Carefully she described the woman to him, down to the steel-rimmed spectacles.

  “Yes. That’s Mrs. Chelton.” He glanced quickly toward the door to the dining room and back again.

  She caught the look. Remembered what he had said when he’d arrived that late afternoon with the tool box. You’ve got company. Remembered how she thought she’d seen the reflection beside her own in the dining room window.

  “You’ve seen her,” she said.

  Instead of answering, he picked up his mug as though to take a drink, but then set it down on its coaster again. He looked into the cup of his own hands.

  “Once,” he said finally.

  He knew what she meant. He knew when she meant.

  “So it wasn’t nothing that afternoon.”

  “No. It wasn’t nothing.”

  The realization hung between them, filmy, nebulous.

  “Then what was it?” Gwynn asked. She was clutching her own mug so hard her knuckles ached. “I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe the dead are still with us. I won’t believe that.”

  Slowly Colin stood, walked to the doorway, and looked into the dining room. He had his hands in his pockets, and he leaned now against the door frame as though waiting for a visitor to come through. Or for the vision of Gwynn Chelton to reappear, to make herself known to them. In the light from the table lamp, his face was shadowed, his cheekbones chiseled.

  “You know,” he said, each word weighted, “you might not have a choice.”

  21

  “I THINK,” COLIN said slowly, “that we can separate things into two categories.”

  Gwynn looked at him over the rapidly cooling milk. Waiting for more.

  “The things we can’t explain,” he said, a challenge in his expression, “and the things we can attribute to human agency.”

  Still she waited.

  “Footsteps on the stairs when you’re alone in the house, doors opening and shutting, crashes from upstairs. Mrs. Chelton in the window, once for you, once for me. The brambles, the gate, the feeling at the dovecote.”

  “We don’t need to explain feelings,” Gwynn protested.

  Colin held up a hand. “Just listen to me. Then there’s the dead bird and the brick. I know you don’t believe in ghosts. But the first list is in the realm of the unexplainable. The second is in the realm of angry human action.”

  “Who is angry enough to do that?”

  Colin cocked his head, raised an eyebrow. “I think we both know, don’t we?”

  Gwynn grimaced. “I guess we do. But why would Paul Stokes do those things? It’s not—normal. He could just wait and see what the challenge to the will does for him.”

  “You said the James Simms told you there was very little case for Stokes and his challenge,” Colin reminded her. “Perhaps he’s just taking a two-pronged approach. If he can’t get the property legally, he’ll try his damnedest to drive you out. To make your life here miserable.”

  She drove a distracted hand through her hair. “That’s ludicrous.”

  He only shrugged. “The other alternative is that it’s a random stranger or strangers, just tossing things at your cottage on a whim. Do you buy that?”

  Colin had a point. She set the empty mug down.

  “I’ve never met such—malevolence.”

  He came back slowly to his seat on the sofa across from her chair.

  “There is malevolence in the world,” he said. “There is evil. And it’s not some disembodied idea. Evil is done by people. Regular people.”

  GWYNN WOKE UP stiff and groggy, with the duvet wrapped around her and pillows tucked under her head. For a moment she kept her eyes closed, feeling surprisingly warm, until she heard the muffled thunk of the wood stove door and realized the fire was burning full-force. She smelled bacon. Something with eggs. She opened one eye.

  For a large man, Colin went about the room with little noise; he barely disturbed the air through which he moved.

  “For a moment I thought you were Mary,” she said, yawning.

  “Not half so good-looking,” he replied, skirting the coffee table to look at her with narrowed eyes. “How’s the cut feel?”

  She rose slowly to a seated position, put a hand to her temple, and winced. “About that good.” She pulled the comforter more closely about her shoulders. “Do I smell breakfast? That’s why I thought you were Mary. Had nothing to do with your looks.”

  Colin shot her a glance. “It’s Sunday. She’s at church.”

  “You don’t do church?”

  “Should. After a gig.” He left the room. She heard him moving softly around the kitchen.

  “You were playing last night?” she called after him.

  “Over to the White Hart,” he answered. After a moment he returned with a plate, which he set on the table before her. Bacon and an omelette. “Eat this. Good for shock.”

  “That’s how you happened to be by at two in the morning?”<
br />
  He shrugged. “Village is dark. You see police lights, you go look.” He sat down, looked toward the window. “Especially if you have a bad feeling.”

  Her head shot up.

  “What do you mean?”

  Colin only shook his head. “I don’t know.” He did not look at her. “You keep asking me that question, and I don’t know the answer.” His gaze remained focused on something beyond the glass. She turned her head. All she could see was filmy gray October sky.

  “LAST NIGHT,” HE said thoughtfully, “you said several times that you don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I don’t. I can’t.” Gwynn sounded desperate, even to her own ears.

  “Can’t?”

  Gwynn shook her head violently. “If there were ghosts, I’d be haunted.”

  “By?”

  Colin still wasn’t looking at her. She refused to answer until he did. She waited. After a long moment, he turned away from the window and she glared into his grey eyes.

  “My husband. He died six years ago.”

  Colin was very still. He seemed to recognize her sudden anger as having no fixed direction, and he simply stood and let it swirl around him.

  “I didn’t love him. I failed him. He was bipolar, and I wanted to leave him.” The words were garbled, confused, and they tumbled out any which way.

  “Did you?”

  “No.” She swallowed. “I stayed with him. Until he died. Chose to die. But he knew.”

  Suddenly Gwynn saw again the orchard, saw Richard, the inexpertly fashioned, but effective, noose. Her angry husband, who had hanged himself. She dropped her head in her hands.

  Gwynn Chelton knew. She had to have known.

  “What is it?”

  She drove her nails into her skin. “I was widowed young. No children. I never remarried.”

  SHE HAD NEVER admitted all of that to anyone, and now she felt shocked at the words. Richard. She hadn’t loved him at the end. She had failed him. Her love had simply worn out. She had wanted to leave him. Then she had found him in the orchard behind the house. Hanging, neck distended. Dead. Beyond what help she could give when she screamed and tried to hold him up, tried to scrabble for the knot.

  Colin had not moved. He still gazed on her face, expressionless.

  “So he would haunt me. My husband. If I allowed it. If there were ghosts.”

  I might as well have killed him, she thought.

  “Eat your breakfast,” Colin said.

  Gwynn stared at him. “God damn it! I’ve just told you this and all you can say is to eat my breakfast?” She wanted to hurl the plate across the room at him.

  “You need your strength,” he said calmly. “Gwynn. Listen to me. You might not believe in ghosts—you might not allow yourself to believe in them. But“ and he took a deep breath—“that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in you.”

  SO GWYNN ATE the omelette, finding it filled with tomato, cheese, and onion, and surprisingly fortifying. While she ate, Colin went upstairs with a broom, a dustpan, and a box he brought in from the back of his truck. She heard him moving about in the bedroom overhead, cleaning up the glass. He’d done a quick fix in the middle of the night with a plastic bin liner, but now, in the light of Sunday morning, she could hear him taking care of the rest.

  “Only one pane,” he said when he reappeared, the box of glass clinking with each step. “Shattered the living hell out of it. But it’s easily replaced. If I can get hold of Harvard—he can cut a piece down to the shop if he’s about.”

  He made the call on his cell, the conversation brief, terse, and barely intelligible. While she listened, Gwynn ran her hand idly through her hair, finding more bits of glass.

  “I’m going to get it, and I won’t be long.” Colin retrieved the box, his hand on the door. “Lock this behind me.”

  Leaving the plate on the coffee table, Gwynn did as she was told, then took herself up to the bath for a quick wash. She pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt; toweling her hair, she examined the broken window. It was, as Colin had said, only a single pane; he’d pulled the jagged edges from the frame and scraped out the putty. She put out a shaking finger to touch the scarred wood, and as she did, her eyes caught the movement in Eyewell Lane below.

  Paul Stokes leaned against the door frame of The Stolen Child, the smoke rising lazily from his cigarette. As though he sensed her gaze, he slowly raised his head to look up to the bedroom window. And then, equally slowly—and Gwynn could not be mistaken about this—he smiled and raised a hand in salute.

  22

  “COME ON, THEN,” Colin said, the window freshly glazed, the dishes washed and put away. “We’ll get away for the day. Different place, different ghosts.” He looked down at her bare feet. “Wear sturdy shoes.”

  Gwynn glanced at him sharply, but his face was impassive. Still. Again. Always.

  “What if he throws another brick?”

  “Nothing we can do. But he won’t. No fun if you’re not here for it.”

  He had a point. Gwynn donned her hikers, shrugged into her wool pea coat, and followed him out the door, checking twice to make sure it was securely locked after her. He had the work truck, but the front seat was clear, and she snapped her seat belt into place as he climbed in behind the wheel.

  “A bit of a ramble, and maybe a pub lunch,” he suggested, pulling out onto Eyewell Lane and heading down to the intersection. He took a sharp turn onto Alexander Road.

  “I don’t know as I feel all that up to walking,” Gwynn protested, looking out the window as the houses thinned and the trees thickened.

  “You will,” Colin said. “Trust me.”

  Did she? Trust. What an awkward idea. She turned it over in her mind, as though examining a rock or a brick thrown through the window. She supposed she trusted Colin Moore as much as she trusted anyone, but then, she hadn’t been all that close to anyone since Richard’s death. It was easier just to keep her head down, keep pushing forward.

  My husband died young. I never married again.

  That was the first Gwynn. That was her, too. She pondered now: how much had her great-aunt known about her? Had the other Gwynn recognized the parallels in their lives? She would never know for certain, but she had an inkling.

  THEY DREW INTO a carpark and followed the signs to the path, Colin stopping to pay the entry fee. Gwynn was glad she’d worn her hiking boots; the day was damp, and the path was, too. She followed close behind Colin, who kept his hands stuffed into his coat pockets until they came to a particularly steep stretch; then he put out a steadying hand to Gwynn, which she took. His grip was firm, no-nonsense. He released her when the path eased up, and she discovered she missed his hand as soon as it was gone.

  She heard the rush of water long before she saw it. The falls opened out before them suddenly, and she gasped.

  The air was full of water, mists rising up and falling down. She held her hands out, lifted her face up. It was cool, soothing. The rush might have been the blood in her veins, the thoughts in her head.

  Colin was watching her. “Trust me?”

  Gwynn looked up at the falls, the water tumbling from somewhere up in the greenery. There was no one else around. Then she looked up into his face, the water beading up on his forehead, his cheeks. She could feel the condensation on her own skin.

  “Yes,” she said.

  For the first time since she had met him, she saw Colin smile fully, a slow deliberate lifting of the corner of his mouth; his grey eyes acquired more depth.

  He took a step forward, took his hands from his pockets, and cupping her chin, bent to kiss her.

  “I love this place.” His hand found hers, and he turned to gaze up at the falls.

  Gwynn said nothing. She had no words.

  “TELL ME HIS name,” Colin said, still staring upward to the point where the water leapt from its rocky stream bed and tumbled down whitely to them.

  Again Gwynn reveled in the feeling of the moisture on her face, clinging to her skin
. It was a baptism. The mist felt green, alive, like the mossy stones they’d clambered over to get to this pool, like the undergrowth, like the trees. She wondered how long it would take her, standing here, to grow moss between her fingers, to become the female version of the Green Man.

  “Take me up there,” she said instead of answering, following his gaze with her own. “Can you?”

  He nodded once, his grey eyes flickering to her and away again; then he turned toward a path that snaked away into the trees. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his coat in the way he had, and she found herself shoving her own fists into her pockets like him as she fell in behind.

  They were silent as the sound of the waterfall quieted behind them, muffled by the greenery. The path passed further into the trees before turning slowly back to the left and following the contour of the hillside. It was faint, but Colin walked it confidently, as though it were more than familiar to him. His steps rustled in the damp leaves underfoot; liking the sound, Gwynn shuffled a bit to emphasize it. Colin threw a glance over his shoulder at her, his expression knowing. One corner of his mouth lifted again. Soon the muscles of her thighs began to burn with the effort of climbing, and she placed her feet more carefully.

  Atop the hill, the rush of the water grew louder again, and they followed the sound and the path until they reached a level clearing. The ground was soft and slippery now beneath their boots. The air tasted of fecundity; her lungs felt opened. She ran her hands through her hair and felt it curl slickly around her fingers.

  The top of the waterfall was deserted, and Gwynn followed Colin wordlessly until he stopped at the edge of the stream and stooped to thrust his hands into the rushing water. She too squatted and put her fingers in, feeling the bone-chilling cold, feeling the power of the movement as the water sped up in its quest to hurl itself over the rocky ledge.

  “Can you feel it?” Colin asked, raising his voice to be heard over the rush of water.

  Gwynn nodded, not knowing what he meant, not caring.