Sudden Attraction

She blinked. “You did?”

“Yes. Very impressive. People in town were talking about it.”

Again, she was surprised that anybody in Lafayette would take notice of her.

After relaxing her with a little more small talk, Burt addressed the arrangements that her mom had spelled out—in an envelope full of instructions that she’d given him several years earlier.

“Your mom wished to be cremated, like your dad,” he said. “There’s a place waiting for her in the columbarium, next to him.”

The columbarium was a building with rows of little vaults along the walls. Putting Mom next to Dad made sense, particularly because it appeared that the space was already bought and paid for.

“All right.”

Burt consulted some papers on his desk. “And, of course, there’s to be no viewing and no funeral.”

Gabriella stared at him as she struggled to take that in. “What?”

He tapped one of the papers. “She didn’t tell you that she specified a memorial service—six weeks after her death?”

“No. Did she say why?”

“She wanted the shock of her death over, and …” He paused for a moment. “And she felt it would be less expensive. The lead time would give you a chance to prepare some of the food yourself if you wanted to. She thought you could make some of those pecan pies she loved.”

“Uh, yes.”

Lord, Mom had certainly gotten into micromanaging the event.

Gabriella left the funeral home feeling light-headed. She’d braced to deal with her mother’s friends. Now she had plenty of time to get ready for the service. And to plan what she wanted to say.

Her mother always had been detail oriented. She must have obsessed over all this before she started losing her grip. Or had she already felt her mental state deteriorating, and she’d hurried to write down these instructions while she could still think clearly?

Gabriella made a small sound as she realized the implications of Mom’s carefully considered list with its wealth of details. Her mother had been forced to deal with a daughter who didn’t always follow the parental script. In death, she had the upper hand—at last.

BY THE TIME GABRIELLA returned to the plantation house, it was after sunset. The gathering darkness contributed to her feeling of being utterly alone. Neither Mom nor Dad had brothers or sisters. Which meant no aunts and uncles or cousins. It had been a small family, and it would die with her because she wasn’t going to get married and have children.

Did that make her feel sad? Or relieved? She was too off balance to know.

Glad that she had left some lights on in the house, she hurried up the steps to the front door. But walking into the hall was like a sudden shock to her already frazzled nerves.

When she’d come through here with Paula, she’d been focused on her mom’s friend. This time she was alone, and when she stood looking up the steps, an inexplicable feeling of terror swept over her, making her reach out and brace her hand against the wall as she struggled to catch her breath—and scrambled to make sense of what she was feeling.

Her mother had fallen here. The impact of Mom’s death was hitting her again, which was why her temples were suddenly pounding. However, she knew deep down that her attack of nerves wasn’t just from the accident.

Paula had said her mom had climbed the steps and fallen. But why had she gone up? To get something? Or to run away from someone? Or both?

Gabriella couldn’t shove away the notion that another person had been here and something evil had happened in this hallway.

Her speculations immediately went to the tenant—Luke Buckley. Mom had been afraid of him. What if he’d come over here and attacked her?

But why?

Maybe he didn’t have the rent money. They’d gotten into an argument, and he’d killed her …

“Stop it,” she muttered to herself. “You’re just letting your speculations run wild because this is the worst day of your life.”

She clenched her fists, sure that Mom’s sudden death and her own feelings of guilt were making her jump at shadows.

What did she really believe? Nothing she could prove. Not without some evidence. If she went upstairs, would she find anything suspicious? Or was there something incriminating in Cypress Cottage?

She gritted her teeth as she imagined herself spying on Luke Buckley. What if one of Mom’s friends caught her doing it? People in Lafayette already thought she was a little off. Which was one of the reasons she’d known she didn’t want to stay in town once she had graduated from high school.

She’d fled her childhood reputation for being weird by going across the country to culinary school then moving to New Orleans, and she didn’t want it back.

But nobody was here to observe her now. Could she start with some kind of psychic impression of what had really happened in the hall—then back it up with evidence? She focused her attention on the stairs, trying to bring the past few hours into focus. Mom had been here. She’d fallen to her death, but had she been alone?

Gabriella put everything she had into trying to bring back the scene. Even as she focused on her mother in the hall—with someone, she silently wondered if she was sending herself on a fool’s errand. No matter how much you wanted to, you couldn’t see the past. Could you?

She’d never tried anything like that before, but she sensed that the scene was hovering almost within her grasp. Shadowy figures flickered at the edge of her vision. Her mom and a man?

She closed her eyes, straining to bring the vision into focus. Yes, she saw her mom, a look of fear on her face as she rushed up the stairs, trying to get away from the stalker. Gabriella saw him only from the back. Or was she making it all up?

Probably.

Struggling with frustration, she tried to see his image from a different angle. Maybe she could have done it, but a massive bolt of lightning struck nearby, so bright that she saw it through her closed eyelids.

It was followed by a clap of thunder that shook the house.

As the thunder rumbled, the lights flickered out, plunging Gabriella into inky, disorienting blackness.

She pressed her back against the wall, suddenly alarmed by the darkness, just like when she’d been little and Mom had insisted on turning out the lights at bedtime. At night, she’d always imagined ghosts from the past coming back to claim this house. Even the toys on her shelves took on sinister shapes, and the closet door had to be closed before she could even think about sleep.

In adulthood, she’d talked herself out of those juvenile fears. But in her fragile emotional state, the sum of her childhood terrors came rushing back to her as she stood in the darkened hallway.

“Stop being ridiculous,” she ordered herself. “The lights are just out. There’s no bogeyman lurking around the corner.”

But she couldn’t deny why she’d come here in the first place. Mom had called her in a panic, talking about a stalker, and there was a man living right on the plantation property who could be up to no good.

With her heart pounding, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The moon was up, and a small amount of light came through the windows on either side of the door.

When she could see well enough, she crossed the hall and turned the lock on the door. Then she started for the kitchen to get the flashlight that Mom kept in the utility drawer.

Was there anything she could use for a weapon?

They’d never kept a gun in the house, but maybe she should have something with her, like a hammer.

SHE MADE IT TO THE KITCHEN as fast as she could in the dark and opened the utility drawer. The flashlight was there, but when she tried to click it on, the batteries were almost dead. Only a feeble light came from the bulb, and she clenched her fist on the shaft, then shut it off again. All it would do would tell someone where she was, not light her way.

Now what?