In the Blink of an Eye (11 page)

Seated in the bedside chair, Rupert looks up from his newspaper, startled by the sound of Nan's voice. Her head is turned away, facing toward the window.

“Nan?” He leans toward the bed, touching her shoulder, feeling her protruding bones despite the layers of clothing and blankets. “Are you awake?”

No reply.

He rises and walks to the foot of the bed, peering at her face in the lamplight. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted, almost slack.

“Nan?”

No. She's asleep. She must be dreaming.

As he returns to his seat, a faint groan escapes her.

“Nan? Darling, what is it?”

Is she in pain? Rupert looks at his watch. It isn't time yet for another dose of morphine.

“Katherine,” she moans, her voice ragged.

“No, Nan.” He goes to sit beside her, brushing back from her face what little hair hasn't been ravaged by the chemotherapy. “I'm here, darling. Rupert is here. I'll take care of you.”

Her eyelids flutter, as though she's making an effort to return to consciousness. But she swiftly gives up, sinking further into the sleep that comes more frequently now, yet is anything but peaceful. Her breathing is labored, testimony to the malignant cells that have invaded her lungs, multiplying, lingering, in a slow strangulation that nobody can stop. Not Nan. Not the doctors. Not Rupert.

Helpless, he turns away, walking toward the window. He parts the curtains to look out into the night He can see nothing past the rain streaming down the glass.

Don't you think it's time you called Katherine?

Damn Pilar for coming here, for suggesting that.

Did she say something about it to Nan? Is that why their daughter's name is suddenly on her lips? Does she sense that it's time . . . ?

“No!” Rupert's voice shatters the silence.

His wife doesn't stir.

No. He won't let Nan go. Not yet.

He stares vacantly at the flooded pane.

Pilar was kind to come here and read to Nan. And she was only trying to give him helpful advice.

But what does she know?

She thinks she's been in his shoes. She thinks she understands his pain.

She doesn't understand anything.

If only she would stay away. If only everyone would stay away, and leave Rupert alone with Nan.

If only they could go home.

“We will, Nan,” he says aloud, his voice hushed this time as he turns to look at her. “I'll bring you home. I promise. First thing tomorrow, I'll talk to Paine Landry.”

F
INALLY,
J
ULIA HEARS
Paine's heavy footsteps creaking back down the stairs.

“Is Dulcie all tucked in?” she asks as he comes back into the room wearing a distinct frown.

“She made me sit with her until she fell asleep. That's why it took so long. Did you know there's no shower head on that old bathtub?” he asks abruptly.

Yes, of course she knows. She knows the bathtub too well. Can't stop seeing it in her mind.

Paine catches the look on her face. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring up—”

“It's okay.”

But it isn't. Will she ever hear anyone mention the word
bathtub
again without being blindsided by a gruesome vision?

She tells Paine, “Iris didn't take showers.”

“What about the people who lived here before? You can't tell me that nobody in this town has ever heard of a shower.”

The way he says it—
this town
—sends a fresh ripple of dislike rumbling through her. Ever since she connected with him at the restaurant, she's sensed an air of contempt about him. He obviously doesn't like it here. Whether that has to do with the old-fashioned, no-frills surroundings or with the issue of spiritualism isn't clear—nor does it matter. Not to her.

Lily Dale is her home.

If he doesn't like it here, he should leave.

“Some of us actually do take showers,” she says icily. “I can't speak for the Biddles.”

“The Biddles?”

“The family that owned the house before Iris did. You can ask them about it when you run into them. And you will,” she adds ominously. “This is a small town.”

Meaning, he'd better watch his step. He can't go around slinging veiled insults about the place and its people without the locals picking up on his disdain.

He takes his own cup of coffee from the counter and sits down across the small wooden table. Apparently her warning has escaped him because he says, with the tone and expression of a classic skeptic, “So you're a medium.”

She nods stiffly.

“Will it offend you if I say I don't believe in that?”

“You're an actor, right?” she shoots back.

He nods, looking bemused.

“Will it offend you if I say I don't believe in
that?”

“What I do is different, Julia.”

“It's your career. Mediumship is mine.” She looks moodily down at her coffee. She's had better. Much better. He's made it bitter. Too strong.

“I'm sorry.”

Surprised, she looks up from her cup, momentarily thinking he's talking about the coffee.

She isn't expecting an apology about his skepticism.

“I can't help it,” he tells her. “I guess I'm just too practical. I never believe anything unless I can see it.”

“Really? It's a good thing Dulcie doesn't think that way.”

The second the words are out of her mouth she wishes she could take them back.

Yet, strangely, he doesn't seem insulted. In fact, he almost sounds impressed when he says, “Good point. But Dulcie's cut from a different cloth than I am. Than Kristin, too. She's more like . . . I don't know. Just not like us,” he says quietly.

Julia senses that he was about to say Dulcie is more like Iris. Something stopped him. Perhaps the fact that he doesn't—didn't, she corrects herself grimly—know Iris very well. She only visited them in California a handful of times. But Julia is aware that she was always writing letters to Dulcie, and sending gifts, and calling.

“So Dulcie isn't a born skeptic?” Julia asks Paine.”Does she believe in spirits?”

“And Wild Things, and God, and fairies, and leprechauns. You name it,” he says with a smile.

“How do you suppose that happened?” she asks dryly.

“You got me. My father's a levelheaded banker. My mother's a pragmatic accountant. They weren't big on whimsy. Santa Claus and the tooth fairy never came. We never went to church.”

“So you were raised agnostic?”

“Atheist,” he corrects. “I doubt any of Dulcie's spirituality or other creative beliefs came through my bloodline. Must have been Kristin's side.”

“You realize that Iris wasn't a medium, right?”

“But she believed in them.”

Julia nods. “Her husband was an incredibly gifted, world-famous spiritualist. But then, you must know that”

“I do.”

“And you think he was a fake?”

Paine takes a sip of his coffee and makes a face. “It needs sugar.”

“I don't think that would help.”

He smiles.

So does she. Yet she asks again, “You think Anson Shuttleworth was a fake, Paine?”

“I don't know what to tell you, Julia. I don't believe that people can communicate with the dead. I think there are a lot of people out there taking advantage of widows who are desperate to talk to their husbands, and parents who need to connect with lost children . . .”

“You're right, Paine.”

He raises an eyebrow at her.

“There are plenty of fakes. More than a hundred years ago, with the birth of spiritualism, con artists went to great lengths to trick people during seances. They still do. But there have always been legitimate mediums, too. People who choose to use their gift to help others—and to make a living. There are also lots of genuine mediums who never put their gift to use. They simply choose not to acknowledge it—just like Kristin.”

“What?”

“I said, there
are
fakes, but—”

“No. What did you say about Kristin?”

“That Kristin apparentiy chose not to acknowledge her gift?”

“
What
gift?”

It dawns on Julia then.

He doesn't know.

Didn't Kristin ever tell him?

Perplexed, Julia thinks back to their childhood. To that Halloween night when Kristin saw something—someone—in the Biddle house.

Could that have been the only clairvoyant experience she ever had?

Julia finds that impossible to believe.

But Kristin lived with this man for years.

They had a child together.

Why would she keep something like that from him?

“Julia . . . ?” Paine is waiting, watching her.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I just assumed that Kristin was . . .”

“A medium? No. Like I said before, she was like me. She didn't believe in any of that stuff.”

Did he say that earlier? He must have. Julia hadn't realized what he meant when he said Dulcie was different.

Now the implication sinks in.

Dulcie is different.

Dulcie, quite possibly, has a gift.

A gift she won't know what to do with, unless somebody helps her. Somebody who understands. The way Grandma helped Julia.

“I didn't know that,” Julia murmurs, realizing Paine has stopped talking and is waiting for her to say something. “Kristin and I never really talked about it, so—you must have known that we never really had much contact as adults. I don't know why I thought I knew anything about her.”

“She was a hard person to know,” Paine says quietly. “Sometimes even I wonder how well I knew her.”

Julia looks into his clouded eyes, wondering what he means by that.

“Did Iris ever tell you why Kristin and I weren't married, Julia?”

“Iris? No, she never told me why.” Uncomfortable to be discussing something so intensely personal with a man she barely knows, Julia senses that he needs to talk about it. Maybe not even necessarily with her. But she happens to be here. And she'll listen.

“It was because Kristin didn't want to be anyone's wife,” Paine says simply.

Selfish.

It's the first word that pops into Julia's head.

Kristin could be selfish.

She was so many other things, too . . . had so many traits that made her infinitely likeable. But her own needs always came first.

How like her, to prefer to live her life solo, free to walk out on this man if the mood struck her. And what about their daughter?

Julia doesn't know what to say, other than, “That does sound like Kristin. But I knew her mainly as a rebellious kid.”

“I doubt she changed all that much over the years. She was reckless and carefree, and she was hell-bent on staying that way.”

“Even after having Dulcie?”

“
Especially
after having Dulcie. It was as if she wanted to prove that she wasn't going to get stuck in a conventional life. She refused to consider marrying me and being a full-time mom . . .”

I know, Paine. She told me.

But Julia doesn't tell him what Kristin told her that night three years ago about her relationship with Paine. It would feel wrong, somehow—like a betrayal.

“She wanted to keep acting, and working, too—she was a waitress. Not that she had any choice, Julia. I mean . . . I've never made much money. But that wasn't what stopped her from marrying me.”

“And it wasn't that she didn't love you enough, either,” she muses, remembering the way Kristin's eyes lit up when she spoke of Paine and Dulcie.

“Did Kristin tell you that, Julia?”

“No,” she says hastily. “But I doubt that she would have stayed with you for so long, or had the baby, if she didn't love you.”

He turns his head away. “She didn't want the baby. When she found out she was pregnant, she—she fell apart. She kept calling the baby ‘it.' She kept talking about having to make a choice . . .”

“And you talked her into having the baby?”

He doesn't answer that directly. Instead he sits forward in his chair, looks at her again. “Have you ever seen the musical
Man of La Mancha
?”

“No.”

He takes a moment to make his point, his thoughts obviously drifting, a faint smile on his face.

“I met Kristin in summer stock when we were both just out of college. We were at Chautauqua Institution. Do you know where that is?”

“Of course.” The summer colony is as world-renowned for the arts as Lily Dale is for spiritualism. It's less than a half hour's drive from here, and Julia does recall that Kristin was enrolled in a summer theater program there years ago, after they had drifted out of touch. During Kristin's few visits to Lily Dale that summer to visit Iris and Anson, Julia glimpsed her from a distance, sun-bleached hair, tanned and gorgeous. She remembers being awed as ever by the aura of glamour about her, and being too intimidated to approach her.

“The first show we were cast in together was
Man of La Mancha
,” Paine tells her. “I played Don Quixote, the male lead. Kristin was the female lead. Aldonza. I'm not going to get into the whole plot, but the point is, Don Quixote was in love with his dream girl.”

“Aldonza?”

“No. Dulcinea.”

Dulcinea.

It's Dulcie's full name. Iris always called her that.

“Don Quixote saw Dulcinea in Aldonza,” Paine explains. As if that makes sense.

“What?” Julia doesn't get it. She can feel Paine's impatience—that he wants her to understand. That this is important.

“Dulcinea is only a vision—a figment of Don Quixote's imagination—but he's convinced that she exists.” Paine sips his coffee, barely seeming to notice the bitterness now. “That was how I felt when I found out Kristin was pregnant, Julia. Even though she was calling the baby ‘it,' and telling me that she wasn't sure if she would terminate the pregnancy, I knew that she wouldn't. I knew the baby was a girl . . .” He swallows hard, his voice hoarse when he continues, “ . . . and that she would be born, and that not only would I cherish her, but Kristin would, too. It was
my
vision.”