Across the Winds of Time (7 page)

“Miss. Are you all right? Miss?”

Several more taps followed. I heard the fairly normal, albeit concerned words, and I uncovered my face to look at the window again. The pale face belonged to that of a very senior lady who wore a black dress and black pillbox hat with a froth of net, reminiscent of Jacqueline Kennedy. An old-fashioned outfit to be sure, but smacking of this century. I loosened my grip on the steering wheel.

“Are you all right, miss?”

I swiped at my wet face with embarrassment. Next to the woman stood another older female, also in black, though she eschewed a hat over her short silver curls.

“Is there anything we can do for you, miss?”

I threw a quick searching look in the direction of the bench under the giant oak tree, but Darius seemed to have vanished. Or maybe I just couldn’t see him anymore. I shivered again, bit back a cry of despair, and unrolled the window.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry.” I forced a watery smile. “I’m just crying. You know how it is.” I attempted a light shrug, but the weight of grief made it difficult.

The first lady, leaning on the walker, straightened just a bit as if it pained her to bend.

“Yes, of course, dear. We’ve just been visiting our husbands ourselves. Do you have someone dear here?”

Her words brought me to the verge of a new round of sobs, and I coughed to stem the imminent flow of tears.

“No, no. I’m just doing some genealogy research, that’s all.” Feeling somehow trapped in my car, I popped the lock, opened the door and stepped out. Drained of energy, I leaned against the car with self-consciousness as the older women examined me from head to toe...though I sensed more with a sense of concern than judgment. “My sister and I have been visiting cemeteries in the Midwest, looking up some of our ancestors,” I murmured weakly.

The older women nodded sagely.

“I see,” said the shorter of the two. “We’ve done that as well, though I’m afraid we didn’t have to look very far. All our ancestors are here.” She gave a throaty chuckle and spread her arms to encompass the cemetery.

“I’m Cynthia Dawson, and this is my sister, Laura Hale.” The smaller of the two women reached out a white, blue-veined hand which Molly took gently. “Our families have been here for generations. Is there someone we can help you find?”

I stole another glance over my shoulder toward the bench, but Darius seemed to have vanished. Still, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Was he watching from somewhere? Did he even exist?

I blinked to stop a new flood of tears.

“No, not really,” I replied. “I don’t think we have any ancestors here at this cemetery. It’s a beautiful cemetery though. I love the wind here.”

Cynthia gave a short titter. “Oh yes, the wind. It never stops blowing. I’m glad you like it.”

“Don’t mind her, Miss...” I supplied my name to Laura. “She’d rather move down to a condo in Florida. Always did like the big city.”

“I can’t wait,” Cynthia hooted, a twinkle lighting up her otherwise faded blue eyes. “All we have to do is get that museum piece of ours rented or sold, and away we go.”

I relaxed for the first time in over an hour. The normality of the two women seemed to ground me into some sense of reality.
He’d just been a figment of my imagination, hadn’t he?

I caught Cynthia eyeing me with a speculative gaze.

“You wouldn’t be looking for a house to buy, would you? An old broken down Victorian house?” A suggestive tilt of one eyebrow and an infectious lift of her lips brought a responding grin from me. Could they be talking about the old Victorian house I’d fallen in love with just this morning? Somehow, that seemed like a lifetime ago. I perked up.

“As a matter of fact, I did see one in town that caught my eye. Well, actually it’s not that far. Down the road here.”

“That’s our place!” Cynthia squealed. “It’s been in our family for over a hundred years, but our children have all moved away and none of our other relatives want to buy it. We have no idea what to do with the thing. We haven’t lived in it since we got married. Our parents passed about twenty years ago. Since then, we’ve tried to keep the grass mowed and plumbing running, but the house is getting kind of old and lonely.”

“So, you liked it, huh?” Laura grinned.

I saw the gleam in their eyes and warded them off with raised hands. “Now, wait a minute, ladies. I said I liked it, not that I wanted to buy it. I had no idea it was that old. And I don’t even live here in Iowa. What would I do with a house in a strange town where I don’t even live?”

“You could fix it up and rent it?” Cynthia reached out to pat my arm. “It would give you some extra income.”

I stared at the women with rounded eyes. “Who would rent a huge house way out here? It’s kind of isolated, isn’t it?” I remembered wondering that very thing when Sara and I first drove through the town yesterday.

Laura nodded and sighed. “Yup, that’s the problem. We don’t know anyone who wants to live out in the country either. Everyone wants to live in the cities.”

“Including both of us, I might add, Sis,” Cynthia chimed in. She shifted her large black pocketbook to her other arm while balancing precariously on her walker. “Well, Molly, even if you don’t want to buy the old house, why don’t you come by for a tour? As you say, it’s just down the road...and I can see the gleam in your eye.”

Anxious to leave the cemetery and avoid the possibility of a reappearance by the strange man named Darius, I willingly agreed. And I did so want to see the inside of the house.

“I’ve never been inside a Victorian-era home. That sounds wonderful.”

“Great,” murmured Laura. “Let me back this big car out, because I can see I’ve been blocking you. No wonder you were crying.”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t crying about that,” I demurred as I climbed back into my car. I watched the older women totter over to the car, Cynthia on her walker with her huge handbag draped over her arm.

While I waited, I pulled down the rearview mirror and stared at my pale and strained face. My eyes were swollen. What was I doing? Going to look at an old house with two ladies who were obviously bent on talking me into buying it? Near a cemetery that held, at best, a deranged man? At worst...a ghost? At the very worst...a figment of my imagination, a lover from a dream? I slid my gaze in the direction of the swaying oak tree. Or maybe I was the one who was deranged.

It seemed as if half an hour passed before Laura managed to get the big black town car out of the cemetery, and I worked on my patience while I waited for them. I pulled out behind them with a last glance toward the bench beneath the tree. Nothing. He was gone.

Less than half a mile down the road, Laura slowed—if that were possible—and turned into the driveway of the house. I followed and pulled in behind them. I edged my smaller car next to Laura’s vehicle, which had stopped just short of the front porch. I climbed out of the car and walked around to the right side of the town car to help Cynthia out while Laura hoisted the walker out of the back seat.

“Hell, orange kitty,” Cynthia called as the marmalade cat I’d seen earlier jumped on top of the railing of the front porch to greet them. “He’s not our cat. I’m allergic, but he just appeared recently and hangs out around the house all the time. Seems happy enough.”

I held out my arm while Cynthia leaned on it heavily. As we moved, I eyed the cat whose tail jutted skyward as he began an enthusiastic prance up and down the railing. “He looks healthy. Someone must be feeding him,” I murmured.

“Oh, we do. Laura and I put some food out for him once a week when we go to the cemetery. I think he gets his water from the pond at the side of the house. We’ll have to get someone to take over for us when we finally do sell the place and move down to Florida.”

Walker in tow, Laura joined them at the foot of the wooden stairs leading to the front porch. She helped me pull Cynthia up the three wide wooden steps. On closer inspection, the porch was much bigger than I had originally thought. The paint, once white, was indeed cracked and peeling. Laura opened up Cynthia’s walker, and we followed the shuffling Cynthia down the length of the porch to the front door. She braced her hip against the walker while she rummaged about in her handbag for the key.

“Now, where is that thing? It’s an older key, not hard to find,” Cynthia grumbled.

“Here, let me,” said Laura. “I don’t know how you find anything in that suitcase of yours.” Laura chuckled as she took the purse from Cynthia and fished out the skeleton key, which appeared to be of brass. I eyed the antique key with admiration bordering on reverence.

Laura inserted the key in the keyhole of the old varnished oak door. She rattled and shook it until it finally turned.

“It’s old,” she murmured unnecessarily with a rueful glance in my direction.

“I know. That’s what is so great about it,” I breathed.

“Our parents actually never locked the door when we were young,” Laura said. “There really wasn’t much call to lock things up in those days.”

“Not like today,” muttered Cynthia as she put her walker in gear and pushed in through the front door. Laura gave way and let her enter, urging me to follow Cynthia in. We paused just inside.

Sunlight from the open door behind us spilled onto the old oak floors, highlighting the shine where the remnants of a high varnish still remained in a large square pattern in the middle. It seemed obvious a small carpet had covered much of the floor just inside the door, protecting it from wear and tear. We stood just to the right of a steep wooden staircase, which bore remnants of the same highly polished varnish as the floor.

“That’s the living room off to the right there. The dining room is through there,” Cynthia pointed past the staircase to an open doorway to the far end of short hallway. “And the kitchen is to the right of that. You can get to the kitchen from the dining room, the living room and from another door leading to the porch on the other side of the house.”

I dropped my jaw at the sight of the massive fireplace on the south wall of the living room. The white paint on the wooden mantel was now grimy and cracked with age, but the hearth still held court over the room.

“What a huge fireplace! It’s gorgeous.”

“Kept us warm many a night, I’ll tell you that. There were a couple of blizzards where we all huddled down here together and slept on the floor. Kind of like a family slumber party!” Cynthia crowed.

“No central heating?” I gulped.

“Not in those days.” Laura sighed. “I know we should have had some put in over the years, but neither one of us lived here as adults...so it didn’t seem worth the effort. We tried to talk my parents into central heating...but they saw no need for it after so many years of living here.”

Suddenly, an orange shape darted past us and ran down the hall into the dining room, leaving small footprints on the dusty floor.

“Bad kitty!” Cynthia scolded as she took a halting step forward. “I guess we should have shut the door.”

“I’ll go after him,” I offered, no stranger to cats as my next door neighbor was taking care of my own calico, Sassy, who was more than aptly named.

I moved quickly and hurried down the hall, which led into an empty room with large windows on two sides, which I assumed to be the dining room. The kitchen opened to the right, and orange kitty eyed me from a door that presumably led to the outside. I approached him slowly, and the cat bolted, heading toward the living room.

I raced through the living room just in time to see the cat running up the stairs while Cynthia and Laura watched me with a suspicion of laughter on their faces, though they did their best to control themselves.

“I’ll get him, I swear,” I panted as I grabbed the large oak newel and poised on the first step to see the cat sitting at the top of the landing. He bent to lick his tail once and meowed loudly while he watched with interest.

“Come here, kitty. Kitty, kitty, kitty,” I coaxed. I eyed the old wooden stairs with suspicion, but they looked remarkably sturdy. Tentatively testing the first one, I pulled myself up by the newel. The steps felt solid—as if they had just been built.

“Come on, kitty,” I urged with some impatience. I followed him up the stairs at a slow pace, wondering if the twitter I heard behind me at the bottom of the stairs came from Laura or Cynthia.

I reached the landing and began the next ascent. “If I don’t get you out of here, you’re going to get locked in. Forever. I’m not kidding.”

I watched him run just past my head on the second floor as I moved up the stairs. When I reached the top, I turned to see that he’d run into another open doorway—probably a bedroom just to the right of the staircase. Several open doors along the hallway enticed me, but I was determined to catch the cat. The oak floors on the second floor also appeared to have had a lustrous shine at one time, though they were now scratched and dulled. Nothing a good sanding and another coat of varnish wouldn’t take care of.

I followed the cat into the room and came to a halt. Orange kitty sat on the large sill of a huge bay window situated on the south side of the room. A white-painted wooden window seat nestled below it.

Forgetting about my pursuit of the cat for a moment, I crossed over to the window to peer out, driven by an excitement I did not understand. Down below in the garden, a small pond sparkled under the rays of dappled sunlight that were allowed in by a huge oak tree, which shaded the right side of the house. Beyond the garden, I could see the rolling hills and dales of the nearby farmlands, with seemingly endless fields of corn. And occasionally, the oak tree parted just enough to allow me a glimpse of white stones on the hill of the cemetery beyond.

I sank down on the window seat and unconsciously reached out a hand to pet the cat as I stared out the window. The view was mesmerizing—at once tranquil and scenic, charming and beautiful—everything a gal could want from a bay window.

The cat purred as he looked out the window alongside me, seemingly content to soak up the midday sun streaming through the window.

“I don’t know if Sassy’s going to like you, Marmaduke. She likes to rule the roost.” I scratched the newly named cat’s ears and watched the sun highlight the tombstones in the distance. “Just give her some space when she gets here, buddy. You’ll be fine.”