Legacy of Lies (9 page)

My eyes surveyed the room one more time. “1 have no idea.”

Fortunately, I had agreed to work for Ginny from ten to three that day and could get away from the house for a while. I didn’t mention to her the strange things that had been happening, afraid that she might call my mother or insist I stay with her. I was spooked, but determined to figure out what was going on, which meant I had to stay at the house.

Before I knew it, it was three-fifteen and Ginny was shooing me out the door of Yesterdaze. I walked up High Street and had just passed Tea Leaves, when I heard a girl’s voice calling to me.

“Megan. Hey, Megan. Up here!” From a second-story window in the next building, Sophie’s ponytail dangled like a fiery flag. “I want to ask you something. Can you come up?”

“Sure,” I replied. “Is this where you live?”

Sophie laughed and I stepped back to look at the brick building. It was long, with a porch roof running from end to end, extending over the sidewalk. Next to the front door was a brass lantern and sign: The Mallard Tavern, 1733.

“It’s a B and B, bed and breakfast,” Sophie explained. “Mom cleans it and I help out after school. Door’s open.”

I entered the front hall and climbed the carpeted steps, following the sound of a vacuum cleaner. When I arrived on the second floor, the machine shut off and Sophie stuck her head out a door. “The weekenders are gone,” she said. “Mom’s down washing sheets and towels. Come on in.”

The room she was cleaning was homey, with red and white wallpaper, a canopy bed, and chairs pulled close to a small fireplace.

“I looked for you at the dance Saturday night,” Sophie said.

I figured she had invited me up to ask about my cousin. “I’d like to have gone, but Matt doesn’t want
me hanging around his friends. Like I said before, there’s really not much I can tell you about him.”

“Her,” Sophie corrected me.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a
her
I want to ask about.” She shook out a clean bottom sheet. “Avril Scarborough. Do you know her?” She watched my face and waited for my response.

“You mean the ghost?”

“Have you seen her?” she asked.

I walked to the other side of the double bed, caught the edge of the sheet, and slipped it over two corners of the mattress. “Have you?”

“I asked you first,” she said, then laughed. “Once I did.”

“When? Where?”

“Back in sixth grade,” she replied, tugging down her corners and smoothing the sheet. “1 was still hanging out with Kristy then and she had a sleepover. We paid her older sister to drive us to Scarborough House at four in the morning. Avril usually shows up just before dawn in the back wing.”

My breath caught. Then I reminded myself that people would expect to see a ghost in an abandoned part of a house, and people saw what they expected. I had seen what I expected after hearing Alice’s story.

“It was a bust,” Sophie continued. “Everybody got tired and whiney. Kristy’s sister got mad, piled us back in the car, and headed toward town again.”

“So when did you see her?”

“That same night, when we were crossing the bridge over Wist Creek.”

Sophie shook out a top sheet. We worked together to slip it under the lower end of the mattress and pull it up evenly.

“How do you know what you saw?” I asked. “How do you know it was Avril, or even a she?”

Sophie tossed me a pillow, then thought for a moment. “I guess there was something about the shape. It was thin and moved in a graceful kind of way. She seemed more like a girl than a woman.”

“Did anybody else see her that night?”

“Nobody. I got teased a lot,” Sophie added, then shrugged. “I’ve always seen things other people don’t, now I just don’t tell anyone.” We pulled the spread up over the pillows. “I guess you know how that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re psychic, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Me? No!”

Sophie’s wide blue eyes studied me. “I was sure you were. I felt a connection.”

I frowned and saw the color deepen in her cheeks. She picked up her tray of cleaning supplies and reached for the vacuum. “I’ve got another room to do.”

I followed her across the hall to a room that had different wallpaper but a similar arrangement of bed and furniture. Sophie snatched up a feather duster and began whisking it over frames and mirrors. She didn’t look at me.

“I would never have said anything,” she explained,
talking a little too fast, “except I thought you were like me. That’s why I hoped you had seen the ghost. Psychics seem to attract other forms of spiritual energy-they’re like magnets to ghosts. And-well, that’s all,” she said.

I caught her peeking at me.

“Are you sure you’re not?” she asked. “You’ve never been aware of things that other people aren’t? You’ve never had an experience you can’t explain?”

“No,” I lied.

She shook her head. “1 read you wrong.”

“Except,” I said, “some, uh, strange dreams.”

“Miss Lydia says that dreams are shadows cast by truth shining on our darkest secrets.”

“Well, mine aren’t all that mysterious,” I replied. “1 can explain them-most of them.”

I told Sophie about my childhood visits to a house that looked like Grandmother’s and my recent dream of the dollhouse, along with my theories about seeing photos of Mom with the miniature house.

“You could be right,” Sophie said, sounding unconvinced.

“You have a better explanation?”

“You’re psychic-telepathic. When you were little, your mom was watching you play and thinking about herself as a kid at home. You picked up the images and made them your own.”

“I like my theory better.”

“Okay by me,” Sophie said agreeably. She lifted a sheet from a pile on a chair, and we went to work making the bed.

“Who’s Miss Lydia?” I asked.

“The old lady who owns the café next door. Jamie Riley’s mother.”

“Oh!”

“When I was little,” Sophie went on, “and Mom was working here at the Mallard, I’d go to Tea Leaves for my after-school snack. Miss Lydia liked me and talked to me a lot.”

“She sure doesn’t like me,” I said, then told Sophie about my introduction to the woman.

“Don’t be offended,” Sophie advised. “Miss Lydia doesn’t trust many people. A couple years ago she got in trouble for selling her herbal remedies at the Queen Victoria, the hotel across the street. Guests complained. A woman said she got sick, but that can happen with herbal stuff, just like it does with a prescription from a doctor. Anyway, now Miss Lydia only deals with locals and keeps thinking guys from the FBI are coming after her.”

“If she’s psychic, wouldn’t she know they aren’t?”

Sophie didn’t laugh and didn’t get annoyed. “No. Just because you’re psychic doesn’t mean you can see clearly. Sometimes the more you see, the more confusing it is. Images overlap and it’s hard to sort them out.”

We finished making the bed in silence. Sophie kept her head down as if she were deep in thought. When she looked up, her eyes were bright. “How about an O.B.E.? Out-of-body experience? Some people do that, you know. Their spirit breaks free of their body and travels around. Maybe you were curious
about your grandmother and came to see her as a child,”

“Without my body?” I said, looking at Sophie like she was crazy.

“Well, yes and no,” she replied. “Your body would be back where you left it. But if your grandmother were psychically aware, she’d have seen an apparition of you that looked like your body.”

I kept quiet.

“I’m making you uncomfortable,” Sophie observed. She stuck the vacuum cleaner plug in a wall socket. “This is all I have left to do. Thanks for stopping by.” She waited for me to leave, her finger on the trigger of the machine.

“Have you seen
Sheer Blue?”
I asked.

“The movie?” she replied. “No.”

“Want to go?”

She looked surprised, then smiled. “Didn’t scare you away, huh?”

“Not yet.”

“How about Thursday night?” she suggested. “We’re off school Friday.”

“Great.”

The vacuum roared to life and I left. As I walked up High Street, I wondered to myself what secrets were casting shadows long enough to reach into my dreams.

nine
 

When I arrived home that afternoon, I found my grandmother sitting in the kitchen, idly watching her housekeeper fix dinner. Grandmother’s skin was so pale it seemed translucent, her hands clasped but in constant motion, as if she couldn’t keep them warm.

“Are you okay?” I asked, quickly setting down my purse. “Has something happened, Grandmother?”

She didn’t reply.

I glanced over at Nancy. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t know. She won’t say,” Nancy replied, then shoved a runny casserole into the oven. “I’ve tried all afternoon to get her to see the doctor. No use wasting your breath-she won’t go. She’s been spooky ever since I found that little clock.”

“You found the clock?” I asked, my mouth dry.

“Now, don’t
you
get funny on me.”

“Where was it?”

“On the hall table, behind the silk flowers.”

I pulled a chair up close to Grandmother and sat down. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“You don’t look it. I want to call your doctor.”

“I forbid you,” she said.

Nancy gave me an l-told-you-so look.

“As you know, Grandmother, I don’t always listen.”

“You may call, but I won’t go.”

I stood up. “Matt should be home soon. He’ll know what to do.”

Nancy shook her head. “He called and Mrs. Barnes told him he could stay at Alex’s.” The woman sounded exasperated. “She could have told me earlier. All the time I put into that casserole, and her with no appetite and you a vegetarian.”

“I eat meat,” I said.

“Take it out when the buzzer goes off,” Nancy went on. “You can dig around for the peas.”

I didn’t correct her a second time, just waited for her to leave, hoping Grandmother would talk to me then. But as soon as Nancy was gone, Grandmother retreated to her room. I followed her upstairs and told her I would check on her in an hour.

“You will not,” she said, then closed the door. I heard the lock click.

I ate alone in the kitchen that evening, glad to be away from the gory deer in the dining room. Afterward, I went to the library to see the antique
clock. I weighed it in my hands and ran my fingers over its cold metal surfaces, hoping they would remember what my mind did not: Was this the first time I’d held it? Could I have moved it before I went to the rose-papered room? I set the clock down gently, knowing no more than I did before.

At ten o’clock Matt still hadn’t come back from Alex’s. I found the number and called to tell Matt the situation. He said he’d check on Grandmother when he got home. I went to bed, leaving my bedroom door cracked, knowing I wouldn’t sleep.

Twenty minutes later Matt knocked softly on Grandmother’s door, calling to her. The door creaked open. I slipped out of bed and went to the entrance of my room. Though I couldn’t make out Matt’s words, I knew from his tone he was asking questions.

Grandmother was upset and either forgot I was in the next room or didn’t care. She spoke loudly. “I have brought it on myself, Matt.”

He quietly asked her something else.

“I have brought it on myself!” she repeated, sounding frustrated. “Don’t you understand? I’m being punished.”

“But there’s nothing for you to be punished for,” Matt replied, his voice growing as intense as hers.

“God has chosen her as his instrument,” Grandmother insisted.

“God hasn’t chosen anything,” he argued. “You were the one who invited Megan. Things are being misplaced, Grandmother, nothing more. It’s all in your head.”

Her response was muffled with emotion.

“Hush! Everything’s going to be all right,” he said. Then I heard him take a step inside the room. The door closed.

Cut off from their conversation, I closed my own door and rested back against it. Their conference lasted a long time. Finally I heard Grandmother’s door open and close again, then Matt’s footsteps in the hall, heading in the direction of the stairway. He stopped at my door. I knew he was standing on the other side and I waited for him to knock.

When I heard him walk away, I quickly opened the door. He turned around.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

His mouth formed a grim line. “She’s confused. If she doesn’t get better, I’m taking her to a doctor.”

“And you?” I saw how shaken he looked. “How are
you
doing?”

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Do anyway.”

He looked away.

I stepped into the hall. “Matt, why is she acting this way?”

“You should never have come here, Megan.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault?” I asked. “Are you? Please look at me.”

He did, and for a moment neither of us spoke.

“Are you asking me to leave?”

He took a deep breath. “It would be the best thing.”

“Okay, I’ll consider it, but first tell me why she’s upset. I want to know what’s going on.”

He didn’t reply.

“Matt, I can’t help if I don’t understand the problem.”

Still he said nothing.