So Lynne was here and neither she or Wilda was very happy about it.
She hadn’t dressed for company. Still wearing the shorts and pullover (no underwear) that she’d put on first thing this morning, her feet bare, she felt as though she were a little underdressed for a party. Wilda always made her feel that way.
A polite smile failed to add mobility to the perfectly made up face, nor warmth to the artificially lashed eyes. “Thought I’d just stop by and see how you’re doing, Lynne.”
Without waiting for an invitation, she pushed past Lynne, effectively communicating the message that this house was her responsibility and she only tolerated the summer tenant reluctantly.
Her dark eyes flashed quickly around the room and Lynne was sure she was checking for any damage. She moved on to the kitchen. Things were neat enough, only a couple of unwashed glasses in the sink and a few crumbs on the table. The broken lamp would be a matter to discuss later.
Wait ‘til I really start working, Lynne thought with wry humor. She was famous for a desk piled with papers and books and a sink full of dishes when she really got into a project.
Mom said her youngest daughter could immerse herself so deeply in her work that she forgot about the everyday life going on around her. For Mom, who was a serious researcher herself, this was a compliment.
Wilda sniffed, obviously disapproving, and Lynne wondered if she was disappointed because she couldn’t find evidence of misbehavior.
It was time to draw a line in the sand. “Mrs. Walsh, my work requires a great deal of concentration. I prefer not to be interrupted.”
The black eyes snapped with indignation. “This house is my responsibility. I must check on it regularly.”
“You might call,” Lynne said pointedly, not backing down an inch. Her privacy and comfort for the summer was at stake in this confrontation. “Then we can work out something that will be convenient for both of us.”
Obviously Wilda wasn’t interested in replying to this very reasonable request. Again without invitation, she went over and seated her elegant form on the sofa. “It’s just so sad,” she said. “The house misses Maud.”
“Since she’s been gone for several decades, it’s probably adjusted by now,” Lynne responded to this ridiculous comment.
Wilda ignored her. “Dear Maud,” she mourned.
Lynne could put numbers together. The way she had it figured Wilda must have been a little girl at the time of Maud Bailey Sandford’s death.
“You ever actually see her?” she questioned cautiously.
“Not that I can remember!” Wilda stiffened with indignation as though Lynne had suggested she was old, “but she was my grandparents’ friend and I’ve always felt we had a special connection, both being writers and all that.”
“I didn’t know you wrote professionally.”
“Oh, just a little column I do weekly for the paper.” She simpered. “I’ll arrange to have a copy sent to you.”
“Thanks,” Lynne said, trying not to sound as disinterested as she felt. After all this had been Maud’s community and no doubt she had been a local celebrity. Maybe she’d pick up some interesting background on her subject for Mom’s book.
Wilda hardly seemed to hear her polite expression of gratitude. She got to her feet, moving restlessly around the room, stopping only too sweep a long slender hand across furniture surfaces as though searching for dust. “Terrible accident yesterday. A friend of ours was hurt. He was driving his truck when this wild driver came careening into him. He was lucky to escape with his life.”
“What about the other driver?” Lynne asked with suddenly sharpened interest. “The one he pulled out in front of?”
Wilda paused to frown. “I told you he ran into Robby. Ran right into him and crashed his little car against the truck. I didn’t hear if he even made it to the hospital. Anyway, he was from out-of-state.”
This was a dismissal. He wasn’t from the community so he didn’t count, Lynne thought indignantly. She could hardly keep her irritation under control until Wilda Walsh left the house and she stood at the window, making certain she actually drove away.
Imagine that man saying the accident was all the other one’s fault! The poor guy last night had been honest enough about saying he was going too fast, so she felt confident he’d told her the truth when he said the trucker had pulled out in front of him from a side road.
Sudden nausea overwhelmed her and Lynne clutched at her offended mid-section. The man last night! So far this morning she’d managed to reduce him to nightmare status. She’d dreamed a ghost had sat at her table and carried on a conversation.
But just now, listening to Wilda, she’d known the other woman was talking about someone she knew. She’d reacted as though there had actually been a ghost at her table last night.
With shaking hands, she made hot tea, sweetened it with honey, and sat down at the table to drink it. When her jangled nerves were sufficiently soothed, she went back to reading the sixteen-year-old Maud’s journal, which was typical enough with its outpourings of emotions and worry over family conflicts. She mentioned the neighbor boy who had given her the mare Salome again, but only in passing. If there was a love affair going on there it had a one-sided existence and was purely on the boy’s part.
Mostly young Maud occupied her days with the studies her mother set before her and working on the ranch, the horses being her special interest. Except for the fact that she lived an isolated, lonely existence with little company other than her mother and the farm animals, she might have been any young girl living her life in1905. Lynne saw few signs of the genius that so intrigued her mother and other literature teachers.
Chapter Three
He lay submerged beneath heavy medication and the weight of his injuries, his body useless, but his mind still active. He heard people coming and going as from a great distance, heard a man’s deep voice say, “It’s just a matter of time.”
Time for what, he wondered. Time to live or time to die? It didn’t seem to matter very much and then he heard alarms sounding and people were rushing to his side. Once more he slipped from his body, watching with little interest from above that poor battered man on the bed and then, feeling propelled by a great desire, fled through the halls of the hospital and outside into the open air. It was night once more and this time he raced toward the ranch house where she waited for him.
The house set in darkness except for a little glow that came from the direction where he remembered her bedroom lay. Humor trickled through him. Either she was waiting for him or she didn’t like the idea of confronting a ghost in the darkness. He suspected it was the latter, hoped it was the former.
Outside her door, he tried to knock politely, but his hand slipped through the wood with only a slight rapping sound. Still, “come in,” he heard her soft call.
She rested in bed, lit by a tiny light, a book in her hand. This time she wore clothes, not a nightgown or pajamas and he wondered if she even owned any, but knit shorts and a t-shirt. Obviously she hadn’t wanted to greet him in the nude a second time.
“I thought you might come back,” she said with only a tiny quaver in her voice.
“As soon as I could,” he said wryly. “I don’t seem to be exactly in control of things.”
She put her book aside and climbed out of bed, leading the way into the living room, flipping on lights as she progressed through the rooms. Apparently she didn’t think entertaining a strange man in her bedroom the thing to do, not even if he was dead.
He waited until she settled then found a chair for himself, pleased to find he didn’t seem to sink right through it, but rather to rest lightly, like a feathered creature on its cushions. He felt a sudden need to confess. “I’m not sure I’m a ghost, not exactly. I may be dead, or maybe not.”
She merely looked at him as though straining her eyes to see what must be a sketchy representation of him. He wished he had a mirror so he could see how he looked.
“My most r
ecent memory is of gazing down on myself while doctors worked on my body trying to keep it alive.”
She swallowed hard. “You don’t seem particularly concerned.”
He considered. “The truth is I’d rather be here. There I’m helpless, unable to move or speak and, to be honest, in considerable pain.”
“It was a bad accident. A neighbor told me about it.”
“Then I ran into the truck somewhere near here? Maybe that’s why I come to this house.”
“It was about twenty miles from here, but there are closer houses.”
“And I came to your house?”
She shivered a little as though cold and reached for a knitted throw that adorned the back of the sofa, tucking her legs up under her and wrapping the whole of her body in the brightly colored thing. “Not my house,” she denied. “I’m only here for the summer. It belonged to the writer Maud Bailey Sandford and at her death was left in a kind of trust that’s maintained it all these years.”
He frowned, not hearing anything in those details that connected him in any way to this particular piece of real estate.
She went on. “My mother is a college professor and she writes textbooks. She’s doing one on regional literature and plans a section on Maud Sandford.”
“If she was famous, how come I never heard of her?”
She laughed softly. “Not famous. The average person outside this area probably never heard of her, but her fiction is respected by academic people. Teachers and students. Mom says she was the voice for a generation of Oklahoma pioneers.”
“But there’s not a big market for that kind of thing?” he guessed.
She nodded. “Mom sent me out here for the summer to do her on-the-spot research.”
“Good of you to take the job on. Though this is a cool place.”
She winced visibly. “It’s a punishment. Mom and Dad sent me here because they said I need to do some serious thinking.”
“What awful thing did you do?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she replied, squirming under her wrap.
He didn’t push it. Heaven knows, he wasn’t anxious to discuss his own past or even to think about it. But he couldn’t imagine that this innocent faced girl had done anything so very terrible.
“Do you have family?” she asked suddenly. “Somebody who needs to be told about . . .well, about what’s happened to you.”
“Not really.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“My parents are dead and I have a younger sister I hardly know. She wouldn’t be interested in my sad story.”
She stared at him. “I have a brother and two sisters, all older than me. We don’t always get along, but they would be the first at my bedside if I was injured.”
“That’s your family, not mine. Anyway, Cynthia has good reason for having left me behind.”
She waited for an explanation he wasn’t ready to give and the silence grew long between them.
Finally she protested, “She’s your sister. She has a right to know that you’re dead or whatever.”
“Probably not whatever, not the way they were rushing around at the hospital tonight.”
“You don’t seem too concerned for a man who’s on the edge of life and death.”
“The way I’ve got it figured if I wake up I’m going to hurt a hell of a lot.”
She sighed. “Pardon me if I’m being rude talking about your death and all as though it was an everyday thing, but you did wake me up in the middle of the night and I’m not used to being in a tryst with a ghost.”
“And I’m not used to being a ghost,” he replied testily. “I didn’t come here on purpose just to annoy you.”
This time she yawned. “Maybe we should talk about something else.” She searched her mind for different topics. “Been really hot this summer and dry. My neighbor tells me there’s an awful drought. Somebody had to come in and check water every day. They used to water the cattle from the pond, but it’s gotten so low that they had to dig a well and put in a tank.”
“Your cattle?”
She laughed at the idea. “I’m not exactly a cowgirl. I told you I’m only here for the summer. The way I understand things, the trust leases the pastures to a local cattleman. A man drives by the house and down to the pond every evening to see to the beasts. At least that’s what my neighbor says.”
“Here I am hanging on the edge of eternity and we’re talking about weather,” he complained.
She started, having for an instant fallen asleep. She rubbed her eyes and tried to stay awake for his sake. He might be the most disagreeable man she’d ever met but he was in a difficult position, dying like this with no family or loved ones at his side. She willed herself to sympathy, knowing hers might be the last face he saw on earth. But she was so very sleepy.
“Tell me about what it was like when you were growing up,” she said, yawning again.
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’ll make you feel better.” She yawned again. “Unless you had an awful childhood?”
“It was okay,” he admitted reluctantly. “Maybe better than okay. My mom and dad were the best. Even though they ran a successful business, they took care to give Cynthia and me plenty of time. Good times,” he remembered his voice growing mellow. “We used to go camping up in the mountains. Cyn was practically a baby, she’s ten years younger than me, but she’d try to follow me around while I went fishing and hiking. I guess she was about three when she fell in the river and I had to pull her out.”
Lynne tried hard not to yawn. She looked at the clock. Four a.m. She didn’t suppose ghosts ever slept. “Where did you live?”
“California. Beautiful place, lots of people, not like here.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Wasn’t my choice,” his answer was clipped, dismissive. He didn’t want to talk about leaving home. “Where did you say you’re from?”
She didn’t remember having said, but there was no point arguing. “New Jersey. A place called Bound Brook. My parents are both college teachers and most of my sibs have followed that path, one way or the other. With a houseful of family, my growing up was chaotic but fun, if you didn’t mind being the youngest.”
“Did you mind?”
“Sometimes,” she said, “Like now when everybody’s ordering me around. All for my own good, of course.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Certainly not!”
He considered for a long moment in which she fell asleep again. She woke when he said thoughtfully, “So we agree that we will not talk about the trouble we got into that brought us here?”
She didn’t open her eyes. “Sure,” she said and went back to sleep.
Fondly he watched her, curled up in her brightly colored throw, her short dark hair tousled into curls, long lashes closed against an adorable face. He wanted to kiss that pouted mouth. She looked, he thought, a little like the old movie star Clara Bow.
He’d watched a lot of old movies during his years in prison. Reading, films and his studies, those had been the occupations that kept him sane during the years of enforced isolation, though he wasn’t sure that he didn’t go a little crazy during those early years when he turned nineteen, twenty, twenty one with all thoughts of a normal future gone.
He sat watching her sleep, getting up once when the room chilled to pull her coverlet back into place, surprised that he could manage that physical action, but grateful that he could.
Then he watched over her, guarding her from what fanciful dangers the night might offer as she slept so sweetly and peacefully.
He resisted when he felt the tug that he knew would take him back to his damaged body, but was unable to stop the motion that flew him back to where he lay on a hospital bed, still sunk into an unconsciousness that seemed close to death.
Lynne awakened with a memory of a gentle hand soothing her covering over her and opened her eyes to look for her ghost. Bright sunlight f
looded through the many-paned windows and she saw quickly enough that she was alone and felt an aching sense of loss.
Maybe he was only able to come here in the privacy of night, though she couldn’t imagine why that would be so. More likely he had actually passed over, he had died and gone and she would never see him again.
She could almost wish that for him rather than the suffering he must be enduring in that hospital bed except that it meant she would never see him again.
Amazingly her sense of loss at that thought was overwhelming. She shook off the throw, went in to take a hot shower, dress more carefully than usual in jeans and a western-style plaid shirt. She had to get out of this house and gather some prospective.
She ate a quick bowl of cereal standing over the sink, then took her mug of coffee and went outside. Although it was early, another sizzling summer day was already building.
She’d broken into a sweat by the time she’d walked as far as the pond, still pretty with its lining of trees on the far side and the white rock dam at the far end. A small herd of black cattle, some of them with white heads, grazed down in the pasture and she hoped they stayed there as she had no idea how friendly they were and didn’t relish the idea of having them run over her.
The grass under her feet was crispy and yellowed though it was just the beginning of summer. Even the big trees looked limp and weary, their leaves starting to yellow and fall as though it were autumn.
It was the second year of severe drought and rainfall was many inches below normal.
She wondered what it was like in the year Maud turned seventeen. Though she wanted to think about her ghost and the things she’d learned from him last night, resolutely she opened the journal to where she’d left off and began the day’s work. The entry was dated September 1907. Maud had skipped months in making her entries and Lynne felt an edge of irritation that the teenager hadn’t kept up on her part of the bargain. Now Mom would never know what had happened to her subject during that missing period.
The Ghost and Miss Hallam: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 1) Page 3