Petals on the Pillow

PETALS ON THE PILLOW

Eileen Rendahl

© Copyright 2013 Eileen Rendahl

Cover Design by
Be My Bard

Graphics by
Teresa Sprecklemeyer

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For my sister, Marian, for getting me to watch
Rebecca
with her on
Masterpiece Theatre.

For my sister, Diane, for unflagging belief in me based on no evidence whatsoever.

For my parents, Frank and Debbie, for making me believe that I could do anything if I just tried hard enough.

For my children, Teddy and Alex, for making sure
I always have a reason to get up in the morning.

For my niece, Sophie, a bright spot in all of our lives.

For Andy, for making me believe that broken hearts might just be able to heal.

PROLOGUE

Cold water closed over her head. She fought against it, fought against her trailing clothes and against the frigid tem
peratures. Her dress twisted around her legs as she scissored them desperately through the water, the sodden fabric keeping her from her full range of movement. She’d kicked her shoes off. At least she thought she had. Her feet felt so wooden and numb, she couldn’t really tell anymore.

For one blessed second she broke free o
f the pounding waves and gasped air into her screaming lungs. The relief was incredible as the oxygen rushed into her body, the sensation nearly indescribable. Then the water pulled her under again to fight the cold some more.

God, she was tired. She wondered how long she’d been out here. How long had it been since she’d headed from the warm and well-lit kitchen out to the forlorn little dock? Had anyone missed her? Would anyone notice in time? It seemed as if she’d been out here in the water for forever and more. She dragged herself upward again with leaden arms, hoping against hope to pull another breath into her desperate body, to somehow make it back to the dock or to see someone coming toward her. With a little bit of hope, she thought she might be able to convince herself to keep fighting. If she could get her head above the waves, maybe she’d see a light bobbing its way down from the big house to her little boathouse on the edge of the Sound.

Instead, below her, down in the depths of the water, a light began to glow. It flickered and with each flash grew in strength. It circled her legs, dragging her downward. She felt its pull even as she stretched her aching arms toward the surface. She fought the light, too, now, along with the cold and the waves, but she was so cold, so incredibly, bone-achingly cold, and she could tell that the light was wonderfully warm. Its heat reached her even as she broke through the surface once more.

The cold of the water doubled her over in a powerful cramp before she could fill her lungs. The circle of luminescence beneath her grew, seductive in its warmth.

Her lungs burned. Blood pounded in her ears. Her body screamed for oxygen. Over the roar in her own head, a sound reached her. It came from the light below her. Warm and soothing sounds drifted up to her ears. Whispers of comfort rose from the light.
What is it?
she wondered. Her arms and legs paused in their twisting and windmilling to try and catch what voices came from the light.

The welcome warmth of the light reached her, overwhelm
ing her, sapping her will to fight. She opened her mouth, and with the dark water that rushed into her lungs came a wave of peacefulness. As quickly as it took the water to fill her lungs, all the fighting ceased to be important. All that mattered was the serenity of the moment and the knowledge that she would not have to struggle anymore.

She felt as if she was floating. She viewed herself from far above the roiling water. The sensation of being cradled in pow
erful arms filled her soul, like a baby buoyed in the loving arms of its mother. She rose farther, headed toward the stars that whirled above her like a wild kaleidoscope of fragmented light.

A baby.
The thought stabbed through the lulling comfort of the light. Her baby. She had to warn Harrison. And Betsy. Who would protect Betsy now?

From the strange half-world that Elizabeth St. John had entered when she let the dark water of the Puget Sound rush into her body, she struggled against the light. Her fight contin
ued anew.

Chapter One

Something rustled under the bushes. Twigs snapped and leaves crackled under the feet of something live, but unseen, as it made its invisible escape. Kelly Donovan whirled around, half expecting to find someone—something—staring back at her from under a shrub, but there was nothing there except waving leaves in the stiffening breeze.

Fat gray clouds scudded across the sky. Low and pregnant with the promise of rain, they pressed down on the dense growth of pine and fir that surrounded her. The bushes rustled again. This time she knew it was only the wind. Still the breeze raised goosebumps on her bare arms and she hugged herself to stop the shiver that swept through her.

“What do you want to do, Kell?” Lisa asked. “Hoof it, I suppose.” Kelly smiled down at her friend’s anxious face and then back up the hill before her. “It’s not that far.” Kelly looked through the iron gates that had stopped their progress from the little village on the other side of the island to the great house that stood alone on this isolated hill. The drive twisted away from them, a single ribbon winding through the overgrown woods. Branches coiled out of the dense growth to intrude on the narrow pathway as if malevolent arms were trying to grab even this slim slice of civilization back into the wild. The house loomed at the end of the half-mile of tortured gravel beyond the bars.
House.
Kelly nearly snorted. The place could hold a half-dozen of the little three-bedroom bungalows that clotted the neighborhood where she’d grown up, yards and all.

“You know, we could get back in the car and be home in Seattle by nine. They’d never even know you’d been here,” Lisa suggested.

Kelly looked sidelong at her. “And do what for the summer?”

“Stay with me and my folks,” Lisa answered, head bobbing eagerly, brown curls bouncing around her cherubic face. She looked younger than her 24 years—something she often used to her advantage and that occasionally came back and bit her squarely on the behind. Right now, she was using her best
ingénue stare on Kelly, but they’d been friends too long for it to have much effect. “You know they’d love to have you. Come on, Kelly, it’d be fun. We’d still be roommates. It’d be just like school, but with better food.”

“Would you and your parents also love to support me? You seem to be forgetting the small matter of my financial situa
tion.” Kelly fell willingly into the role of older, cynical friend. The cynicism wasn’t much of a stretch, but she only had two years on her friend and roommate.

Lisa’s pink lip extended into the beginning of a pout. “You wouldn’t have to pay for rent or food. You could practically flip burgers for the summer and save enough money for school in the fall.”

“I might be able to make enough money flipping burgers to cover living expenses next semester at school, but you’re ignoring the fact that I have other commitments, too. Besides I’m sick of food service jobs.”

Lisa’s lip pushed out further. “Fine, then. You could paint pastel portraits at the mall. God knows you’re fast enough to rake in a bundle at that once word gets around about you. Once people saw your stuff, you’d be rolling in work and you could paint all summer. You know, Kelly, you could probably quit school and do that full time and be fine.”

“It may yet come to that.” Kelly jabbed her thumb at the gate’s buzzer, cringing a little as she noticed the nail was chewed to the quick and a smudge of brown paint ran down the side of her hand. It wouldn’t exactly make a great impression.

That was assuming, of course, that she’d get to make any impression at all. No answering hum or click signaled the unlocking of the gate. Kelly squinted her eyes, but couldn’t make out even a flicker of light in any of Hawk Manor’s dozen or so gracefully proportioned windows that faced this way. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if the shades were drawn or if the interior was simply dark. They were just regularly spaced dark slashes in the monumental gray stone of the building.

Lisa sighed and tucked a strand of dark hair behind one ear. She turned her back to the house and leaned against the gate. The iron spears were easily twice her height and the massive stone columns they connected towered above them. “If you ask me the whole thing is a little weird.”

“I didn’t ask,” Kelly replied as she started to unload her cases from where she’d crammed them into the back of Lisa’s Geo Metro earlier that day. “Besides, you already told me. About twenty times before the semester even ended and about twenty more on the drive up here.”

“You’re really going to lug all your gear up that hill?” Lisa asked. She looked at the pile of cases, bags, and portfolios Kelly had stacked up by the only opening in the bars and then back up to Hawk Manor, her expression doubtful.

“I don’t think your car is going to fit through this pedestri
an gate, and the welcome wagon from the manor doesn’t appear to be rolling its way down. It doesn’t look like I’ve got any other choices.” She hauled her suitcases through the little gate inside the larger one and glanced at her watch. “You better turn your tail around and head for the other side of the island unless you want to spend the night, too.”

Lisa shivered at the thought. “I hate to leave you here all alone. It’s creepy.”

“Yeah, well, I’d hate to explain to Ma Jackson why you missed the last ferry back to the mainland.”

“Not a pretty picture, is it?” Lisa smiled and to Kelly it was just like sunshine breaking through the clouds. Lisa had been her roommate for the entire three years since she had started her graduate work at the Seattle Institute of Art and was more like a sister now than a friend. Sisterhood had also spread to include sharing Lisa’s mother, the indomitable Ma Jackson.

Lisa pulled Kelly’s camera bag out of the trunk of the Metro and placed it on the top of Kelly’s pile of gear just inside the gate. The two women hugged.

“Don’t dawdle getting this Cinderella mural done, okay?” Lisa sniffed in Kelly’s shoulder. “I have a funny feeling about this whole thing.”

“I know.” Kelly gave her friend a squeeze. “It’s only six weeks, Lisa, not a lifetime.” She grasped Lisa’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Besides you don’t think I want to spend any longer than I have to in that dusty old mausoleum, do you?”

Lisa shook her head and slipped into her little car.

A little thread of something—fear, loneliness—wrapped itself around Kelly’s heart and tightened as she watched the bright blue of Lisa’s car flash away between the trees. It was easy to act brave with little Lisa by her side, but with her gone the uncertainty of the whole situation hit Kelly in the forehead like a brick. Alone. At an isolated manor on a barely habitable island in the middle of the Puget Sound. Kelly hoped like hell there really was someone home and she wasn’t going to end up spending the night in the woods.

For one brief second, she almost ran screaming down the hill waving for her friend to stop and take her away from this place. Instead, she straightened the Guatemalan vest she wore over her plain white T-shirt and shouldered her gear. Looking up the slope at Hawk Manor, Kelly began to trudge up the hill.

Lisa was right, of course. The whole thing was a little weird. Well, not weird exactly, but definitely irregular. But then the few things Kelly had heard about Harrison St. John all seemed a little irregular. Once a scion of Seattle society, since his wife’s death he had chosen to live as reclusive a lifestyle as his money and influence would allow. Even Kelly’s commission had been arranged without any personal contact whatsoever. Apparently that was how Mr. St. John wanted to keep all his communications. And from all appearances, whatever Mr. St. John wanted, Mr. St. John got.

Not that, all other things equal, this would be a bad place to spend time, Kelly mused as she re-adjusted the strap of her camera bag where it
dug into her shoulder. The house was beautiful. The central section rose three stories with white columns that soared up in front like graceful birds. Two perfectly symmetrical wings of gray stone extended out on either side. The lichen that clung to its walls made it seem as though the building had grown right out of the ground on which it stood. That ground sloped away to the water below. It was a massive structure, clearly designed by a master architect. Kelly’s artist’s eye took in the careful manipulation of proportion and the subtle attenuation of columns and windows that made the huge home look like it was about to soar off its hilltop and over the Puget Sound that crashed against the rocks below.

For Harrison St. John, however, all other things weren’t equal. Kelly wondered how, considering what had supposedly happened here, he could stand living on this island with the water surging all around him.

Kelly’s arms started to ache. The battered, scraped and very heavy case of paints, brushes and solvents pulled her left arm painfully. She set it down for a second to rest. She sat on the carton and rubbed her shoulder. Her hair tumbled over her forehead and she shoved it back impatiently. The amber curls practically crackled in the electrified pre-storm atmosphere. Over Kelly’s head, the clouds massed together in giant thunderheads. The wind whipped the smell of the sea to her as she sat on the top of the hill, its salty taste registering like bright copper on the back of her tongue.

Kelly stood and straightened the big portfolio’s strap cross
wise across her chest, settled the camera bag back on her shoulder, and then picked up her supply case in one hand and her suitcase in the other. When she was about halfway up the hill, it started to rain.

For about thirty seconds, the drops fell in soft little caress
es, sliding down Kelly’s cheeks like pats from a dowager aunt. Then they started to pound down on Kelly’s head and shoulders with the force of a thousand separate hammers. Each drop separate at first, and then simply a deluge. She ran. Not that it would do any good, of course. The rain came down too hard and too fast for Kelly to be anything but soaked by the time she reached the huge double doors of Hawk Manor. She hit the doors gasping for breath just as lightning streaked behind her. Thunder rumbled its answers and the wind gusted the rain right through the columns, stinging Kelly’s face even in the protection of the portico. She pounded on the doors, heard nothing but an echo inside, and without waiting any longer for an answer, she tried the huge, brass-plated knob.

It turned in her hand.

Soaked, furious and cursing people who locked their gates even if they didn’t lock their doors, Kelly stumbled over the threshold of Hawk Manor lugging her belongings with her. The wind slammed the door shut behind her with a crash that was followed immediately by a muffled silence. She looked around herself, trying to keep her jaw from dropping. Magnificent was simply the only word that could describe the space in which she now stood, dripping and panting.

She stood in the middle of a huge rotunda, open all the way up to the domed ceiling three stories above. Outside the storm still clearly raged. Rain lashed against the windows, branches waved frantically in the strong wind and lightning flickered, but Kelly heard next to nothing. It was as if the rain didn’t dare to make a sound as it pounded down on Hawk Manor. In the murky light from the rotunda’s clerestory windows, the white walls and columns reflected back a strange and eerie blue. The imperfections in the hand-wrought plaster walls created wave
like patterns around her. Kelly had the uncomfortable feeling of being underwater. As she stared around her, the sensation grew until she felt almost as if she needed to gasp for breath. The silence settled around her like an oppressive force, like the pressure of water lapping against her inner ear that one feels lying on the bottom of the deep end of a pool. Kelly dropped her suitcases to the floor, wincing at the echoing crash they made against the cool gray marble, but grateful for the way the noise broke the spell of the hall’s muffled silence.

Just then, a red-taloned hand descended on her shoulder.

Kelly shrieked and whirled. The woman behind her looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of a magazine article on how to dress for success in women’s business fashions. The Chanel suit draped her tall, slender frame and her nearly-white blonde hair was pulled back in the smoothest chignon Kelly had ever seen. The heavy gold jewelry at the woman’s wrist and throat jangled softly and gleamed as it caught the light when she stepped back from Kelly, her scarlet red mouth a startled “O” shielded by her perfectly manicured hand.

Kelly stared at her, unable to force a sound through her throat. The other women seemed equally speechless and before either of them could find her voice, a baritone echoed down out of the shadows behind the second floor balcony. “What is it, Kendra?”

“I believe, Harrison,” the woman said, a smile beginning to tweak at the corners of her carmine lips, “that ‘it’ is the artist.”

A man emerged from the gloom. And, oh, what a man. Kelly’s breath caught in her throat as he strode out of the shad
ows into the subdued light. The file photos in the newspaper articles Kelly had looked up on the Internet didn’t nearly do him justice. Tall and broad-shouldered, Harrison St. John was elegant in a way that made his expertly tailored charcoal gray business suit nothing more than an accessory. He had a face that belonged on an ancient Roman coin and jet-black hair that gleamed even in the murky light of the balcony. His face and hands flashed white against the somber suit in the blue light of the storm, making it seem as if he floated effortlessly out of the darkness. A dark prince surveying his kingdom. He leaned his arms against the balustrade and cocked his head quizzically to one side. A lock of blue-black hair fell across his forehead in a manner that was at once both boyish and thoroughly masculine. “I’d forgotten she was to arrive today. Why is she so wet?”