In Love With a Haunted House (Contemporary Romance) (8 page)

Lonnie was gone and Mallory and Blake were standing in front of the house. Mallory’s mother came out on the porch, saw them standing there and gave them a little wave of her hand before going back inside.

“Your mother seems nice,” Blake observed.

“She’s a big romance reader. She’s probably hoping you have a horse stuck somewhere in your back pocket. That way you could just ride off into the sunset with me, all your armor clanking as we go.”

“I don’t have a horse or armor, but I do have a lot of other things.”

Mallory turned to face him, suddenly shy. She looked up in his eyes and said, “What are we doing?”

Blake said, “I do believe it’s called falling in love.”

“I thought it was losing my mind.”

“I hear the two have a lot in common.”

“Blake, we hardly know each other. What if this is just some crazy infatuation that wears off?”

“How will we know if we don’t try?”

The man had a point. Mallory looked back at the house and as she stared at the window of the bedroom that had belonged to Shannon Lewis she saw a tiny slender flame flare up.

“Do you know she never gave up on him? Until the day she died she waited for him to come back to her. My mom said that when she was a little girl people still talked about all the séances and stuff she used to hold in the hopes of bringing his spirit to her.”

Blake put his arm around her neck and pulled her close to him. She was just tall enough that her head came exactly to his chin and she filled up all of the spaces left by the curves and turns of his own body. It was as if she had been made to be beside him, she fit there so perfectly and he knew she felt the same but was afraid to say so.

“Did you know they met at a bus stop and from the moment they met until the moment he was shipped out to fight, they were almost always together? Even when he was supposed to be on base, locked down, he snuck out and went to her. He could have been court-martialed or labeled a deserter. It was a hell of a risk but he had to take it, he could not leave her alone. He slept right beside her in her bedroom at Gray Oaks.”

Mallory had not known that and she stared at him, saying, “You know about all of that? I thought nobody knew. He was here, at Gray Oaks? I don’t think anyone knew about that.”

“My dad’s parents knew all about it. When I was about fifteen my grandmother was dying and she told me about it. She said it didn’t matter anymore—that everyone who could have been hurt by the truth was either dead or too old to care.”

Mallory could not contain her curiosity. “How did they meet?”

“George, my grandfather, was riding in a car with some friends of his when he saw Shannon, who had just gotten off the bus at her stop, walking along the sidewalk and eating an ice cream cone. One of his friends whistled at her and she flipped him the bird, something girls just did not do in those days. It tickled George to no end so he made his friend stop the car and he got out and he walked beside her all the way to her house. When they got here he went inside and told her parents that he was going to marry her.”

Tears rose up in Mallory’s eyes. “They didn’t know each other but he wanted to marry her, they fell in love at first sight. How did they do that when love at first sight does not even exist?”

“Oh, yes it does. They are proof of that. Love at first sight is incredibly real. They were with each other almost every day. They poured their hearts out to each other and they got to know each other without all the things that usually get in the way.

“George had already shipped out when Shannon found out she was pregnant but she thought he would come home and she could keep my father. It was all they talked about in their letters, raising him here at Gray Oaks.”

“How do you know that?” Mallory asked.

“My grandmother got the letters that she sent to my grandfather from the War Department. They were with his body and they got shipped back with his body after he died. I read those letters, and I know my grandfather really wanted to come home and to be with her. His parents were not exactly keen on the idea and when he died they got together with her parents and they all decided that it was the best thing, giving my father to them.”

The tears ran down Mallory’s face. “She spent her whole life in that house waiting for George to come back to her, and she had to know that he never would.”

“Maybe he will one day. Maybe, maybe he just got lost. Maybe he’s trying to find his way back.”

Mallory said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he did find his way back, if he could come back to her?”

Blake said, “Yes, it would.”

The candle in the window blew out. The crickets sang in the grass and the leaves on the old oak trees whispered as they rubbed together in the slight breeze. The smell of magnolia and honeysuckle lay over everything. From somewhere in the distance they heard a child laughing and they could smell the faint scent of somebody’s dinner cooking from one of the other houses.

“This was the best place to grow up.”

Blake looked askance at her. “You mean at your house or on the street?”

“On the street, in this neighborhood. The funny thing is, I never realized how much of a part of this neighborhood she was until now, and now she’s gone.”

Blake said, “Somehow I tend to doubt that she’s really gone. She did say she would never leave this house until George came to fetch her.”

“I wish there was a way we could help him get home, get back to her.”

“Mallory, I know it’s soon and I know we don’t really know each other. It’s like history is repeating itself all over again and this time we have a chance to do it right. I want that house, you want that house and I think only a fool would not know that we want each other.

“We could try it. We could work on the house together and if we hate it or each other we could agree to not do it.”

Mallory took a deep breath and looked at the house and then look back at Blake. “I think we could try.”

**

The sound of saws filled the air and Mallory dodged a man carrying out a huge basket of trash. The house was coming along, but in the beginning stages of restoration it looked like the house was in worse shape than ever.

It was a little discouraging, in truth. Mallory was slogging through a kitchen stripped of the terrible appliances and the bare sections of wall were showing signs of warp and rot. Repairing that was going to cost more than they had imagined. The floors had dark stains and discolorations and the windows needed replacing; at some point Shannon had boarded them over and then took the boards down again, leaving nail holes and small cracks in the sashes and glass.

The cabinets were in sad shape, they were almost separating from the wall. They showed signs of mold along the edges. The dishes that had been in them had all been good china but quite a lot of it had been broken and cracked beyond repair. The pieces that had been good had been washed and were awaiting new cabinets to go into. Someone had suggested that they sell the pieces so that they could get money to make more repairs but neither of them had been interested in doing that.

Mallory opened a closet, expecting to find a hoard of canned foods or something like that but instead she found something far better: a stack of paintings. Not just any paintings either—paintings that had Shannon’s name on the bottom.

Thumbing through them, Mallory realized two things immediately: Blake had been wrong in thinking that his grandmother had not ever seen his father…or him. She had, somehow, and she had painted them.

“Blake! Come here!”

He did and when he got into the kitchen she burst into laughter all over again. He was covered in plaster dust and sawdust, his hair was almost white from it and his eyes peered out of it like two blue searchlights.

“You’re going to pay for that laugh,” he warned her good-naturedly.

“Look what I found,” Mallory crowed.

Blake looked through the paintings, his face going solemn as his fingers followed the brush strokes. “My grandparents lied to me.”

“I don’t think they did. These look like they were made from photographs, not from life. See, look here, here are some paintings that she did from life—that’s my mom, see? That’s me, as a little girl. I remember that day—it was Easter and we were having a big neighborhood party in the backyard. She must have drawn the outlines that day and then painted it in later. But there’s a difference in the paintings of you and your dad, they were done from photographs. The paintings are all of the two of you posed, never just hanging out or whatever. This looks like a school photo, like she painted you from a school photo.

“Maybe your grandparents actually sent pictures of you to her.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Maybe she asked.”

Blake just looked at the paintings. His grandparents were dead and had been for years, they were never going to be able to answer his questions about these paintings so this was going to remain a mystery. But it still made him feel better to know that his grandmother had known he was alive. The paintings of him stopped right around the time he turned six… Wait, that had been when his grandmother died!

Was it possible? Had his grandmother had the kind of mercy that only a woman would have for another woman who had lost her child? Had she snuck around and sent pictures to Shannon? He supposed it was possible, anything was after all.

It was a mystery, yes, but it was one whose solution was not important at all. What mattered was that his grandmother had known of his existence and had cared enough about him to paint his face, his little body. And his father’s as well.

“Can we hang them once we get the walls finished?”

Mallory would ask that question. Her eyes were fastened on his in a sincere and hopeful gaze. It wasn’t just that she thought these paintings should be hung up because they were of him and his father, she wanted these paintings hung up because she honestly liked the paintings. He knew she really appreciated art, she’d been dragging him into the local museums and craft shows in search of things for the house. He knew that she knew good art when she saw it.

“Of course we can. They should have been hung all those years. I’m guessing she didn’t hang them because it was painful to look at them.”

Mallory frowned. “Do you think she’s going to mind us hanging them up?” Neither of them bothered trying to dismiss that question as silly. They both knew that Shannon was still there, still in the house and if she didn’t like something, well…

Blake said, “I guess we’ll know soon enough if she doesn’t want them up, won’t we?”

“Yes, we will.”

Blake went back to work and so did Mallory. As she worked she allowed herself to think of what it was exactly that she was doing. She knew, as an accountant, that what she was doing was absolutely insane. She and Blake had agreed to keep the house as it was, not to divide it up at all. They had pooled their money and bought the house outright. Then they had begun doing the work, most of it themselves in order to keep costs down.

They both had gotten jobs as well: Mallory was doing the accounting work for several of the firms in town and Blake was working as an architect at a local firm whose specialty was building large, modern subdivisions (a job he actually hated but did because it paid him enough to afford the renovations on Gray Oaks). So they did the work on the house as they had time.

As a result summer had faded into fall and it was now edging into winter. They were hoping to have the house done completely by Christmas but they had run into a few obstacles along the way, including larger power bills than they expected and longer work hours on their regular jobs than they would’ve liked. On top of that, for an entire month they had been forced to stay at her mother’s house because the hot water heater had not only gone out, most of the plumbing pipes had exploded right along with it.

After Mallory and Blake had both earned a fairly large bonus at their respective jobs, which they had also pooled together, they found themselves in the enviable position of being able to hire a few people to come in and help them. The work was moving a lot faster now, for which they were both grateful. Even though the house did look like it was a wreck they both knew that it would soon be put back together and better than ever.

Because they were forced to be together, to deal with a high amount of stress and to do without a lot of things that other people might’ve considered necessities, they had formed a bond that neither of them could have expected when they first came to Golden to bid on the house.

Mallory’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud knocking on the door followed by an impatient trilling of the old doorbell. Figuring it was either a delivery man or a nosy neighbor wanting to know how long the racket was going to continue, she went down the hallway through the foyer and to the door, opening it without checking to see who was outside.

Her mouth literally fell open. She could feel her jaw just about touching her breastbone. It just could not be, and yet it was! For a moment she seriously wondered if perhaps her mother, ever the practical joker, was pulling a prank of epic proportions on her. She dismissed that thought quickly, though, even her mother was not this prankish.

Jim’s cold eyes took in her bedraggled appearance and disapproval practically shone out of his entire thin face. “Mallory, how are you?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve had a little time to think things through and I’ve decided that perhaps I was hasty.”

She blinked, she blinked again. Her jaw left her breastbone but only because her teeth clenched together over some words that she was sure would stun the elderly lady walking her dog past the house. It took her a few moments to regain her composure long enough to speak and when she did her voice was deceptively pleasant.

“Jim, I’m not sure why you’re here and quite frankly I don’t care. However, you’re interrupting me in the middle of something very important and I don’t really have time to talk to you so if you don’t mind I’m going to get back to what I was doing.”

She tried to close the door but he stuck out one foot and kept the door from closing. Mallory took note of the fleeting expression of pain that crossed his face when the door edge met his foot. She wasn’t sure if the pain was due to the heavy door meeting his foot or if he was in pain at the thought of the scuff that would be on his Italian leather.

“Mallory, do not be hasty. I know you’re angry with me and you have every right to be. I would never invalidate your feelings by suggesting that perhaps you should have gotten over them by now.”

“Then don’t. Quite honestly, Jim I have gotten over them and you too. So why don’t you take yourself back to Chicago and see if you can’t find yourself another woman to fuck over?”

His face took on a wounded expression. “Is that how you honestly feel? Do you honestly feel as if I harmed you?”

“I think you would’ve liked to have harmed me, Jim. Only, I figured you out easily. I figured out that you weren’t worth my heart much less any damage done to it. There are a lot of things in life that are worth that, but you are not one of them.”

She took a step back, meaning to swing the door shut but again his foot prevented it from doing so. His face took on a slightly menacing expression as he said in a voice colder than any she had ever heard him use, “Has it ever occurred to you that most of that was your fault?”

“Is that why you came here, Jim?  Did you come here just to unburden yourself of your guilt and to make yourself feel better by placing all the blame on me?”

“I came here because you refuse to process this whole thing with me.”

“Process the whole thing with you, Jim? I’m sorry. I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say.”

His voice was petulant, whiny even. “You left before I could collect my thoughts and get back with you and have a conversation with you about the whole situation. You just up and left and you didn’t even bother leaving a forwarding address or anything else.”

“You are a piece of work.” Mallory was so angry she was shaking all over and her hair was standing up on the back of her neck. “You changed your phone number and you moved out of our house and I don’t recall you having left a forwarding address either. What did you expect? That I would still be sitting there in that damn apartment waiting for you to come back, to process with me?

“Do you know what I think you’re trying to say to me right now, Jim? I think you are trying to say to me that you want to scream and yell and attempt to make me feel guilty. I think you want to try to manipulate the situation and while I’m not sure for what purpose, I know there is some purpose to this. Why don’t you just spill it out right here, right now?”

“You don’t have to behave this way.”

“You didn’t have to be such an asshole.”

“Do you know how hard I looked for you?”

“No and I don’t care.”

Blake spoke up from behind her. “Mallory, is there something going on here that you need my help with?” He seriously doubted it, in fact he was a little worried but not about her, about the safety of the man standing in the doorway. Mallory had an expression on her face that said she would like to kick him in a place both soft and vulnerable.

“No, nothing at all, Blake. Oh wait, Blake meet Jim—my ex—from Chicago.”

Oh, so this was the guy. What had she seen in him? He was thin and sallow. He looked as if he spent two hours a day brushing his hair in just that perfect direction and if his clothes had any more starch in them they could’ve walked away entirely unaided from his body.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

Jim bared his teeth at him as if he were a feral little dog. “Are you the reason why my fiancée ran away from Chicago?”

Mallory spat out, “You are the reason I left Chicago. You broke up with me, moved out of our apartment, told me that you needed space and time and that you didn’t think you were ready to commit to me and that I was a lousy cook. I hardly think Blake had anything to do with it.”

Blake was getting a little tired of this man on his doorstep. It was obvious that Mallory was far past the point of being aggravated by Jim. Before he could make a move to do anything about that, the house took that long breath and Blake grabbed Mallory, wrapping her body into his with one strong arm while shouting at Jim, “You better run for your life, mister. I think the house is a little pissed at you.”