A Darker Shade Page 5

  “Uncle Thane—”

  “No.”

  Hailey huffed. “Come on, Liza, let’s take him up to the playroom.”

  “Take him out first,” I said. “Get his leash from your uncle and give him a nice walk. He’s had too much excitement to settle down.” I’d been peed on by Old Mrs. Sutter’s poodle every time company came to the house. I didn’t know a whole lot about dogs, but I knew about excitement.

  Matthew took the girls to the SUV to get the leash and walk the pup.

  “I’m sorry, Thane.” She turned accusing eyes on her brother. “I had no idea he was planning this.”

  Prescott choked on what might have been a laugh. “That was pretty clear. Don’t worry about it. Matt means well, he’s just impulsive. Always has been. I really was planning to get Liza a dog before you and Hailey decided to move in. The company will be good for her.”

  Of course, Liza having a dog and Liza and her cousin sharing one were two completely different things. Why couldn’t Prescott, Jennifer, or Matt foresee the problems that would arise from such an arrangement? If Hailey had her way, the dog would go off with her and her mother whenever they moved out, which would be one more loss for Liza. If Jennifer sent Hailey off to school when she left and the dog stayed with Liza, it would be Hailey who suffered.

  I wanted to yell at them that it wasn’t merely Matt who was shortsighted, but I knew better. Leashing my tongue, I picked up the bags Matt had abandoned on the bottom step and carried them up to my room. At least maybe the novelty of the dog would distract Liza from the ghost book.

  Dinner with Matt was considerably more fun than it had been without him. He kept all of us entertained with stories from life at court, making his career seem an endless parade of laughs. I suspected he was exaggerating some of the tales if not making them up out of whole cloth, but I appreciated the effort.

  After a game of Jenga, Prescott took the girls out to walk Rocky. Jennifer went along, leaving me alone with her brother. Matt poured himself a glass of bourbon from the bar table in the corner of the living room.

  “Anything for you?”

  “No, thanks.” I should go upstairs, but it would be rude to leave the man alone. He settled onto the couch and stretched his legs out in front of him.

  “So, Molly Allworth, tell me about yourself. Jenn tells me you’re from Hartford. This has to be a big change.”

  “It is. But it’s beautiful here.”

  He grimaced. “Wait until it snows. Winter is brutal.”

  “Town’s not that far away.”

  “No. But unless it’s an emergency, you can’t get there. The Prescotts used this as a summer house for several generations. Jenn said Thane bought a snowmobile when he decided to move here year round, but that’s just in case he needs to go for a doctor. You can’t exactly run into town for groceries on it.”

  “So this is the first year anyone’s actually lived here?” My stomach sank. It was one thing for me to be out of my depth—I was used to that on a job—but the families I worked for were supposed to have their systems in place when I got there.

  “Well, not the first. But the first in a while. Changing your mind about sticking it out?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Your family’s not concerned about you?”

  “You sound as if this is the end of the known universe. It’s only Maine.”

  He gave me a rueful grin. “Sorry. That’s the New Yorker in me. It feels a bit like the end of the known universe. And I do worry about Jenn and Hailey being here, so I thought your family might feel the same.”

  “That’s kind of you. But no, my parents are long dead and my sister’s in college in the Midwest. She’s not happy that the phone may go out and she won’t be able to reach me, but I wouldn’t say she was worried. If anything, I worry about her, not the other way around.”

  The words were out before I thought about it. Matt Brahms was remarkably easy to talk to. Probably part of his legal training. He also had a quick mind. I would have to watch myself with him or I’d spill the negative opinions that occasionally snuck into my head. This was an aspect of living in I hadn’t considered. I was accustomed to going home after a twelve-hour shift and chatting with my relatives without fear of censure.

  “So you’ve been her mother. No wonder another child without a mom lured you in.” There was no appropriate response, so I remained silent. Matt studied the amber liquid in his glass as if it held all the answers to the universe. “Are you going to fix my niece?”

  “I don’t think she’s broken. But if you mean am I going to help her regain her voice, I hope so.”

  “Oh, bravo. Nicely said.” The words had bite, but he smiled as he spoke.

  “I say what I mean.”

  “Do you?”

  Well, no. Once upon a time, maybe. But I’d grown up, grown out of that kind of incautious outburst. Learned restraint.

  He laughed when I did not answer. “I thought not. To be fair, you wouldn’t last long if you did. I adore my sister, but she wouldn’t tolerate an outspoken tutor. She doesn’t take well to being contradicted.”

  “And yet you brought a dog. You had to know she wouldn’t approve.”

  He grinned. “Of course I did. But I’m her brother. She wouldn’t turn on me any more than she’d turn on Thane.”

  He was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t determine what. To tread carefully with Jennifer? I’d figured that much out on my own, though it was sweet of him to try to protect me.

  After a tussle over who got to pet the dog last, I ushered the girls upstairs. Hailey opted to use her mother’s bathroom while Liza showered in the shared one, so it all went quickly enough. I had hoped that Liza would have forgotten about the ghost book in the excitement over the dog and her uncle’s arrival, but instead of going to her own room when she was through in the bathroom, she slipped into mine.

  “What’s up?” I knew what she wanted, but she needed to learn to ask, even if she would not use words. Anger flashed over her sharp features, but she was almost as practiced at hiding her resentment as I was. She glanced around until she saw the shopping bags tucked neatly up against the wardrobe and then went over, pulled out the book, and held it out to me.

  “Not tonight.” I took the book and tapped it against my knee. Her eyes followed the move instead of meeting mine. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to your dad about it, and I don’t want to start until he knows what we’re doing.”

  She crossed her arms, cocked her head, and glared.

  “Sorry. We’ll do it tomorrow. Is he coming up to read to you tonight?”

  Her head snapped back. Had I blundered? Was the reading with her father a secret? “I won’t say anything about it to anyone if you don’t want. I heard him last night and thought I might corner him if he was coming up tonight and mention the new book to him.”

  She didn’t respond. I would have to put the book out of her reach, though it would be hard. At twelve, she was nearly my height; any place I could get to, so could she. With anything else, I would have trusted her. She didn’t seem the type of child to sneak around, but the book was clearly too important to leave within easy reach.

  “Good. So that’s the plan. We can start reading tomorrow if you like. Your aunt says you don’t have to start official school until after your uncle Matt leaves, so if you’d like to read together for an hour or so during the day, we can do that. That way it won’t interfere with your time with your father.”

  She nodded slowly and, with a long look at the book in my hand, left the room. Instead of going to clean up myself, I propped the pillows up against the heavy wooden headboard and leaned back against them to see what the book had to say.

  It began with a brief history of séances, spiritualism, and mediumship, then dove into the story of John D. Fox and his family in Hydesville, New York. Fox’s was the earliest studied case of intentional conversation with a disturbed spirit in America. Fox had two daughters, fifteen and eleven. So clo
se to Hailey and Liza that my fingers tingled and my neck prickled reading about them.

  Working out a code of tapping and knocking, the family began to speak with their unwelcome resident using a single knock for yes and two for no. Then they developed an alphabet to use with him for more complex communication. At first, the ghost spoke only to the daughters, but eventually he was convinced to communicate with others, including residents of the town, to whom he told secrets no living being should know about their lives.

  He was, he said, a peddler who had been brutally murdered by one of the house’s previous occupants. According to some sources, bones found buried in the basement of the Foxes’ home proved the claims of the ghost, though other sources refute the claim.

  As an adult, Margaret Fox claimed that she and her sister had made up the haunting, conspiring to frighten their mother by rapping, cracking their knuckles, and dropping objects to simulate the ghost communicating with them. However, skeptics—including the third, older sister, who had left the family by the time they moved into the haunted home—were never able to recreate the sounds heard by family, friends, and investigators of the time, even using the methods Margaret said she and Catherine had used.

  And Margaret herself, in later years, retracted her claim, saying she had made it only to take the spotlight off herself.

  What had I agreed to, promising Liza I would read this with her? I glanced over at the door separating my room from hers and was dismayed to notice that the space beneath was dark. I considered going back downstairs but could not imagine what excuse I would give to Matt and Jennifer for needing to speak to Prescott so soon. Absorbed in the book, I’d missed my chance to tell him I’d bought it.

  Chapter 5

  Given my choice of reading material, it was perhaps no surprise that my mother should visit me that night. She had done so often in the dreams that consumed the early weeks after her death, reminding me of my responsibilities and generally making a pain of herself. In those days, she never showed the ravages of illness. Her eyes were bright and piercing, her skin unlined, dusky and beautiful, and her indomitable will clear in every sharp movement.

  The Em Allworth who arrived that night, however, was a different woman. She hovered over Liza’s bed rather than mine, and when I tried to call to her she laughed at me in a hollow, screeching tone I’d never heard. Her hair, loose, oily, and wild, flew about her head in a filthy halo. Her hands had become the gaunt claws I recognized from her last days. But perhaps worst of all, black mirrors hid her warm brown eyes so that when she looked at me I saw not my mother’s love but a shrouded, heartless reflection of myself.

  She reached for Liza and I knew, with the surety of a dream, that the moment those claws made contact with the child’s fair skin I would lose her. Would lose them both. That the tiny, frail flame of vitality left in Liza would transfer itself to the horror that had once been my mother.

  I flung myself at the mother-thing and reached for her arm. I half expected mist and was shocked when I grabbed bone that snapped in my hands and cut the skin of my fingers, while the rest of her dissolved into a cloud of choking smoke. Surrounded by the bitter, ashy remnants of my own mother, I could see nothing. The smoke smothered me and just as I became convinced I had breathed my last, I woke, choking on my own cries.

  Liza stood over my bed, looking down at me, and I let out an undignified yelp at the sight of her pale skin and dark eyes hanging there in the darkness.

  My pulse was racing and my heart hammered unsteadily, so it took a moment for me to find my voice. And when it came, I still felt ash in my throat.

  “What’s going on, Liza?”

  She blinked.

  “Are you okay?”

  Her eyes narrowed and she studied me. The silence that frustrated me during the day was far stranger and more oppressive in the dark room.

  “Did I wake you?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry. It was just a nightmare.”

  Which, of course, it had been. No matter what Liza believed, dead mothers did not come calling on their children after midnight.

  My alarm beat like a jackhammer against my aching head mere seconds after I closed my eyes. Desperate for coffee, I made my way downstairs to find Matt and Prescott bent over a stack of papers.

  “I told you she wouldn’t go for it,” said Matt.

  Prescott grunted. They both glanced up at my entrance and Matt sprang to his feet.

  “Good morning, Molly.” He squinted. “Or is it? You don’t look as if you got much sleep.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just a new place. You know how it is.”

  “No he doesn’t.” Prescott slid the papers into a manila folder. “Matt’s never met a stranger and he’s utterly comfortable wherever you put him.”

  Matt shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”

  “Are the girls up yet?” I poured a mug of coffee, drank a long draught and refilled it. Food could wait. Coffee could not.

  “Not likely.” Matt grinned. “You have to drag Hailey out of bed kicking and screaming. Her mother was like that as a kid, too.”

  “Has anyone walked Rocky?”

  “I did,” Prescott assured me. “He’s in the kitchen until breakfast is cleared.”

  The dog situation still troubled me, but there was nothing to be done about it at the moment and I had more immediate problems. “Mr. Prescott, can you spare me a few minutes this morning?”

  Matt’s blonde eyebrows practically disappeared beneath the hair that flopped over his forehead. “Mr. Prescott? That’s a mouthful, Thane, really.”

  “I did tell her to call me Thane,” Prescott said.

  I took a sip of my coffee. “I assumed that was for the children. Since Hailey was so insistent.”

  “Hailey was?”

  I laughed at Matt’s shocked expression and some of the night’s gloom faded. “She was quite the little hostess the first night I was here.”

  Matt looked to Prescott for confirmation and he shrugged. “I wasn’t paying any attention.”

  Matt’s eyes twinkled. “Clearly.”

  Prescott rose. “I’ll be in the office. Molly, come in whenever it’s convenient. Don’t knock. I wear earbuds most of the time and won’t hear you.”

  “He’s not a morning person,” Matt said when Prescott had left and I’d filled a bowl with yogurt and fruit. “Or an afternoon or evening person, to be completely honest. He was always the more withdrawn, but between Marianne’s death and Danny’s, he’s gotten even grimmer. It can’t be easy for Liza living here with him.”

  “Always? You’ve known the Prescott family for a long time?”

  “Oh, sure. We grew up together. Jenn dated Thane for a while in high school.”

  “Awkward for family reunions.” The words were out before I thought about them and Matt laughed.

  “It might have been if either of them had cared, but they didn’t. They were just passing the time and the minute they went off to college, Jenn found someone new.”

  “Daniel Prescott.”

  “Oh, no. Danny came later.” He leaned back and craned his neck to look out the door toward the stair. Satisfied that he would not be overheard, he lowered his voice. “Jen married Danny when Hailey was almost five. She never told the family who Hailey’s father was.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around the idea. Pregnancy happened, of course, but Jennifer Prescott was so stiff and buttoned up and starched that I had a hard time imagining her getting carried away to such an extent. But maybe the starch had come later, maybe she felt she needed to make up for the wildness of her youth. Births, like deaths, could reverse a person’s path.

  “And now she’s a single mother again.” The papers I’d been given were no more detailed with regard to Daniel Prescott’s death than they had been about Marianne’s.

  “Yes. There was a car accident. Apparently, a bee became trapped inside with him and Jenn. Danny had a lot of allergies, including to bee stings. The car had every safety mea
sure, so Jenn only shattered her knee. Danny died from anaphylaxis, not the accident itself.”

  “That’s terrible. No wonder she decided to take a year away. She’s lucky they could come here.”

  He made a noncommittal sound, then grinned. “But they’re all lucky you’re here. And so am I. I suspect I’ll be visiting often.”

  My cheeks heated and I could hear my aunt’s voice in my head: keep your head down and don’t cause a fuss. I rather imagined flirting with Jennifer Prescott’s brother qualified for causing a fuss.

  Before bearding Prescott in the office, I darted upstairs, the ancient steps betraying my progress through moans and creaks. I knew he was the type who would not be content to rely on my description of the book. He would want to examine it for himself before coming to any kind of decision. I had secreted it between my mattress and box spring, but once I removed it I faced another problem. Should anyone see me carrying it downstairs, I would be breaking my promise to Liza. I grabbed my carryall tote and stuffed a few random items in with the book as camouflage.

  Just as well, for as I stepped into the hall, Hailey confronted me.

  “What were you doing in my room last night?”

  “What do you mean?” For a second, in the dim hallway light, my mind flashed to the nightmare of my dying mother standing over Liza’s bed and I had to repress a shudder.

  “I was awake. I saw you.”

  “Hailey, I wasn’t in your room. Why would I be?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

  “You must have been dreaming.”

  Her mouth set in a flat, defiant line. “I wasn’t dreaming. I saw you.”

  “Let’s try this. What was I doing when you saw me?”

  For the first time, Hailey hesitated. She shrank away slightly. “You were in the corner. Kind of…swaying.”