There and Now

Jonathan’s jawline tightened momentarily. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told that girl…”

Trista laughed and reached out to cover his hand with her own. “I’m big enough to be alone for a few hours, Papa,” she said.

Jonathan dragged his fork through the lumpy mashed potatoes on his plate and sighed. “You’re eight years old,” he reminded her.

“Maggie Simpkins is eight, too, and she cooks for her father and all her brothers.”

“And she’s more like an old woman than a child,” Jonathan said quietly. It seemed he saw elderly children every day, though God knew things were better here in Pine River than in the cities. “You just leave the housekeeping to Ellen and concentrate on being a little girl. You’ll be a woman soon enough.”

Trista looked pointedly at the scorched, shriveled food on her father’s plate. “If you want to go on eating that awful stuff, it’s your choice.” She sighed, set her elbows on the table’s edge and cupped her chin in her palms. “Maybe you should get married again, Papa.”

Jonathan gave up on his dinner and pushed the plate away. Just the suggestion filled him with loneliness—and fear. “And maybe you should get back to bed,” he said brusquely, avoiding Trista’s eyes while he took his watch from his vest pocket and frowned at the time. “It’s late.”

His daughter sighed again, collected his plate and scraped the contents into the scrap pan for the neighbor’s pigs. “Is it because you still love Mama that you don’t want to get another wife?” Trista inquired.

Jonathan went to the stove for a mug of Ellen’s coffee, which had all the pungency of paint solvent. There were a lot of things he hadn’t told Trista about her mother, and one of them was that there had never really been any love between the two of them. Another was that Barbara hadn’t died in a distant accident, she’d deliberately abandoned her husband and child. Jonathan had gone quietly to Olympia and petitioned the state legislature for a divorce. “Wives aren’t like wheelbarrows and soap flakes, Trista,” he said hoarsely. “You can’t just go to the mercantile and buy one.”

“There are plenty of ladies in Pine River who are sweet on you,” Trista insisted. Maybe she was only eight, but at times she had the forceful nature of a dowager duchess. “Miss Jinnie Potts, for one.”

Jonathan turned to face his daughter, his cup halfway to his lips, his gaze stern. “To bed, Trista,” he said firmly.

She scampered across the kitchen in a flurry of dark hair and flannel and threw her arms around his middle. “Good night, Papa,” she said, squeezing him, totally disarming him in that way that no other female could. “I love you.”

He bent to kiss the top of her head. “I love you, too,” he said, his voice gruff.

Trista gave him one last hug, then turned and hurried up the stairs. Without her, the kitchen was cold and empty again.

Jonathan poured his coffee into the iron sink and reached out to turn down the wick on the kerosene lantern standing in the center of the table. Instantly, the kitchen was black with gloom, but Jonathan’s steps didn’t falter as he crossed the room and started up the stairs.

He’d been finding his way in the dark for a long time.

Chapter Two

Apple-blossom petals blew against the dark sky like snow as Elisabeth pulled into her driveway early that evening, after making a brief trip to Pine River. Her khaki skirt clung to her legs as she hurried to carry in four paper bags full of groceries.

She had just completed the second trip when a crash of thunder shook the windows in their sturdy sills and lightning lit the kitchen.

Methodically, Elisabeth put her food away in the cupboards and the refrigerator, trying to ignore the sounds of the storm. Although she wasn’t exactly afraid of noisy weather, it always left her feeling unnerved.

She had just put a portion of the Buzbee sisters’ casserole in the oven and was preparing to make a green salad when the telephone rang. “Hello,” she said, balancing the receiver between her ear and shoulder so that she could go on with her work.

“Hello, darling,” her father said in his deep and always slightly distracted voice. “How’s my baby?”

Elisabeth smiled and scooped chopped tomatoes into the salad bowl. “I’m fine, Daddy. Where are you?”

He chuckled ruefully. “You know what they say—if it’s Wednesday, this must be Cleveland. I’m on another business trip.”

That was certainly nothing new. Marcus Claridge had been on the road ever since he had started his consulting business when Elisabeth was little. “How are Traci and the baby?” she asked. Just eighteen months before Marcus had married a woman three years younger than Elisabeth, and the couple had an infant son.

“They’re terrific,” Marcus answered awkwardly, then cleared his throat. “Listen, I know you’re having a rough time right now, sweetheart, and Traci and I were thinking that…well…maybe you’d like to come to Lake Tahoe and spend the summer with us. I don’t like to think of you burrowed down in that spooky old house….”

Elisabeth laughed, and the sound was tinged with hysteria. She didn’t dislike Traci, who invariably dotted the i at the end of her name with a little heart, but she didn’t want to spend so much as an hour trying to make small talk with the woman, either. “Daddy, this house isn’t spooky. I love the place, you know that. Who told you I was here, anyway?”

Her father sighed. “Ian. He’s very worried about you, darling. We all are. You don’t have a job. You don’t know a soul in that backwoods town. What do you intend to do with yourself?”

She smiled. Trust Ian to make it sound as if she were hiding out in a cave and licking her wounds. “I’ve been substitute teaching for the past year, Daddy, and I do have a job. I’ll be in charge of the third grade at Pine River Elementary starting in early September. In the meantime, I plan to put in a garden, do some reading and sewing—”

“What you need is another man.”

Elisabeth rolled her eyes. “Even better, I could just step in front of a speeding truck and break every bone in my body,” she replied. “That would be quicker and not as messy.”

“Very funny,” Marcus said, but there was a grudging note of amused respect in his tone. “All right, baby, I’ll leave you alone. Just promise me that you’ll take care of yourself and that you’ll call and leave word with Traci if you need anything.”

“I promise,” Elisabeth said.

“Good.”

“I love you, Daddy—”

The line went dead before Elisabeth had completed the sentence. “Say hello to Traci and the baby for me,” she finished aloud as she replaced the receiver.

After supper, Elisabeth washed her dishes. By then, the power was flickering on and off, and the wind was howling around the corners of the house. She decided to go to bed early so she could get a good start on the cleaning come morning.

Since she’d showered before going to town, Elisabeth simply exchanged her skirt and blouse for an oversize red football jersey, washed her face, scrubbed her teeth and went to bed. Her hand curved around the delicate pendant on Aunt Verity’s necklace as she settled back against her pillows.

Lightning filled the room with an eerie light, but Elisabeth felt safe in the big four-poster. How many nights had she and Rue come squealing and giggling to this bed, squeezing in on either side of Aunt Verity to beg her for a story that would distract them from the thunder?

She snuggled down between crisp, clean sheets, closed her eyes and sighed. She’d been right to come back here; this was home, the place where she belonged.

The scream brought her eyes flying open again.

“Papa!”

Elisabeth bolted out of bed and ran into the hallway. Another shriek sounded, followed by choked sobs.

It wasn’t the noise that paralyzed Elisabeth, however; it was the thin line of golden light glowing underneath the door across the hall. That door that opened onto empty space.

She leaned against the jamb, one trembling hand resting on the necklace, as though to conjure Aunt Verity for a rescuer. “Papa, Papa, where are you?” the child cried desperately from the other side.

Elisabeth pried herself away from the woodwork and took one step across the hallway, then another. She found the knob, and the sound of her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears all but drowned out the screams of the little girl as she turned it.

Even when the door actually opened, Elisabeth expected to be hit with a rush of rainy April wind. The soft warmth that greeted her instead came as a much keener shock.

“My God,” she whispered as her eyes adjusted to a candlelit room where there should have been nothing but open air.

She saw the child, curled up at the very top of a narrow bed. Then she saw what must be a dollhouse, another door and a big, old-fashioned wardrobe. As she stood there on the threshold of a world that couldn’t possibly exist, the little girl moved, her form illuminated by the light that glowed from an elaborate china lamp on the bedside table.

“You’re not Papa,” the child said with a cautious sniffle, edging farther back against the intricately carved headboard.