In the Blink of an Eye (4 page)

Iris told Paine that it was no big deal, really. That she certainly didn't marry Anson for his money in the first place—not that he had much then, either. She told Paine that she and Anson fell madly in love at a time when he was coming out of a bitter first marriage, and she was lonely and beginning to wonder if she would ever find Mr. Right. She also mentioned that she didn't regret marrying Anson, but hinted that their early years together were rocky.

“But we stayed together,” Iris said contentedly. “That's what you do when you're married. We made it to the end—until death did us part.”

Now everything they had belongs to Dulcie. It isn't a fortune, but it will help. That's for sure. Paine intends to put the money from the royalties and the house sale away for Dulcie, for college. He's always wondered how he'll afford to send her.

Thank you, Iris,
he says silently.

The road winds past a few small houses. Then tiny Cassadaga Lake appears on the left, its gray, choppy waters lapping at the grassy shore mere yards from the road.

That's where Kristin drowned.

Kristin, who couldn't swim.

Kristin, who lived recklessly in a lot of ways, but knew her limits and feared the water.

So what the hell was she doing alone in a rowboat in the middle of the night without a life jacket?

He'll never know.

The first time he was here, he was too shocked by her death to speculate about the circumstances. But over the past three years, as his grief ebbed, he's spent more time wondering.

Now, as he glances out at the water, full-blown doubt and confusion threaten to take hold. He fends off the troubling thoughts that assail him, needing to get through one thing at a time.

One death at a time.

And for now, it's Iris.

Grimly, he keeps going, grateful for Dulcie's silence.

They pass a quaint country restaurant called Lazzaroni's Lakeside on the right and, on the left, a sprawling white clapboard building with long porches and a sign that reads
LEOLYN HOTEL
.

Directly opposite, the road widens abruptly at the entrance gate to the village.

He slows the car, recalling the staggering pain of his last journey to Lily Dale.

“Are we there, Daddy?”

“Yes.” His voice is hoarse.

Oh, Kristin. What happened to you here?

“
What do you see, Daddy?”

He clears his throat. “A little white gatehouse, with a boy inside.”

“A little kid?” She sounds surprised, so hopeful that he wonders if there will be kids here, kids she can play with. Kids who will be kind to a motherless little blind girl.

“Actually, he's a teenager, Dulcie.”

“Oh.” Then, “What's he doing?”

“Remember I told you this is a private community? So you have to pass through the gate to get in and out. His job is to let us in.”

“What else do you see?”

He doesn't want to tell her. Not yet.

He just stares at the sign that reads welcome to lily
DALE, LARGEST CENTER IN THE WORLD FOR THE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM.

“
R
UPERT!”

Nan's voice, urgent, is stronger than it has been for days, blasting over the small white receiver on the rolltop desk in front of him. The baby monitor is Pilar's idea. Their former neighbor had bought it to use when her young grandchildren visited her, but suggested that Rupert borrow it now that Nan is virtually confined to her bed. This way, he's never out of earshot if she needs him—and she does need him, more and more frequently.

“I'm coming,” he calls, running his hand through his shock of white hair as he rises from his swivel-bottomed leather chair. He hurriedly puts aside his checkbook and the stack of monthly bills and glances at the clock. It's nearly five-thirty; time to start dinner—after he tends to Nan, of course.

He makes his way through the quiet, orderly house to the small back bedroom adjacent to the kitchen.

There, lying in the hospital bed he rented for her months before it became necessary, his wife is propped against several pillows. Though he spends almost every waking hour at her side, he is struck anew by the drastic recent changes in her appearance. Some part of him clings stubbornly to the image of Nan before cancer had ravaged her, leaving her body shriveled and skeletal, her nearly bald head concealed by a turban, her face swollen from the drugs that can't save her now.

Nobody has come right out and told him how far gone she is. But he suspects.

No . . .

He knows.

“
What do you need?” he asks gently, walking over to the bed and touching her thin arm through the blanket

“The bathroom,” she says weakly.

“Emergency?”

She nods.

He reaches for the walker near the bed. It would be far more efficient to carry her than to allow the painstaking excursion across the room and around the corner into the small half bath off the kitchen. He longs to haul her into his arms the way he used to so many years ago; then out of playfulness and not bitter necessity.

He takes care of himself, and these aging bones are strong. Strong enough to lift her—or so he keeps telling himself, and her. But she won't listen. She's stubborn. She needs to do this—all of this—on her own terms.

He helps Nan out of bed and into her robe that hangs on a hook behind the door. Not the pink cotton summer robe she's always worn at this time of year, but a newly purchased dark-colored fleece one. Despite its weight, he suspects that it fails to keep her warm enough on a day like today. After less than a week's reprieve of summerlike weather, today again feels more like autumn than June. The windows are closed and he won't be surprised if the furnace kicks on tonight.

Rupert has never minded the harsh climate of western New York, choosing not to leave Lily Dale in September with almost everyone else. He and Nan have always stayed on, cozy together through the snowy winter months, preferring the forced isolation, really, to the more temperate but fleeting warm-weather season when Lily Dale is packed with tourists.

But now, seeing her thin shoulders shiver, he wonders if it might have been good for Nan to spend some time in the southern sun.

Maybe in September—

No. It's too late for that now.

Nan is restless, yes.

But she doesn't want to go South.

She wants to go home.

“You okay?” He holds her elbows for a moment to steady her as she grips the walker.

“I'm fine.” She offers him a wan smile that breaks his heart. “When do I see Doctor Klauber again?”

“Saturday. Day after tomorrow.”

“Good.”

No. Not good. Rupert doesn't want to hear what the oncologist has to say.

They begin the tedious journey toward the doorway, Rupert a step behind her, his hands outstretched, hovering at her hips, to catch her if she sways. Her walker thumps rhythmically on the hardwood floor.

“One good thing about this house—you don't have to climb steps,” he comments, for something to say. He instantly regrets it, unable to see her expression from his position, but sensing her dismay.

It's been just over three years now since they moved from the house where they lived the better part of the last four decades. If it were up to Rupert, they would never have moved, but he'd done it for Nan, thinking it was best.

When the rigorous chemotherapy had weakened her hipbones a few years back, she struggled to make it up and down the stairs several times daily. Rupert couldn't stand to watch her suffer, and finally decided it would be best to move to a smaller, single-level home. Within a year of their move to this one, on Green Street, Nan had two hip replacements. The surgery bought her more quality time. She was able to get around more easily until her health began seriously failing just after the new year.

Nan desperately misses their old place; still calls it home, unable to adjust to this one-level lakefront house. She never did feel comfortable in the master bedroom where Rupert now sleeps alone in their full-size bed for the first time in their married life.

Moving her to a different bedroom was her oncologist's idea, not his. But of course Dr. Klauber was right. The master bedroom is much farther from the front and back doors.

It's hard enough as it is for her to cover the short distance from the back bedroom to the driveway, and she refuses to let him rent a wheelchair and install a ramp at the back door. Partly, he suspects, because she can't face the harsh reality that her health is rapidly, and irrevocably, deteriorating. But also because the ramp would mean they're here to stay.

Until this summer, he's assumed that they are.

Now, in the wake of Iris Shuttleworth's sudden death, their old place—a rattletrap Victorian several blocks away, on Summer Street in the heart of the village—stands vacant once again.

Should he tell Nan his idea? He's tempted to blurt it out—to give her something to look forward to, maybe something to fight for.

But no. He can't tell her. Not until he knows for certain. And he won't, not until after Iris's granddaughter and her father arrive from California. They should be here any day now, according to Howard Menkin, the attorney for the Shuttleworth estate. Then Rupert will approach the young man—who isn't even Iris's son-in-law, because he had never married Kristin Shuttleworth—and see about the house.

Paine Landry is an outsider. Why would he want to settle in a remote lakeside village devoted to clairvoyance and psychic phenomena?

Of course he won't.

If all goes as planned, he'll turn over Iris's cottage to Rupert, and he can bring Nan home to die. He only hopes Paine Landry doesn't take long to make up his mind, because he knows in his heart that Nan doesn't have much more time.

“You okay?” he asks her around a lump in his throat as she inches the walker forward.

“I'm fine.”

No, she isn't.

Everything hinges on a stranger's decision.
Everything.

He only hopes Paine Landry makes the right one.

A
S
J
ULIA STEPS
onto the porch of her small cottage, a bell tolls loudly, reverberating through the village.

Knowing instantly what the chime means, she turns to glance up at the sky. Sure enough, gray clouds that have hung low over the lake all afternoon now look threatening. The bell signals that the regular five-thirty services will be held in the auditorium instead of in the usual spot, at Inspiration Stump. The secluded spiritual retreat sits at the very edge of the community, surrounded by the towering trees of Leolyn Woods. There, the audience assembles along rows of park benches in the open air. Facing them, a handful of mediums gather beside the historic tree stump now encased in cement to protect it from the harsh western New York elements.

On days like today, however, services are held in the antique auditorium nearby. It's a shorter walk for Julia, but she prefers the more reverent outdoor setting to channel the fragments of spirit voices that fade in and out of her head like a wavering radio frequency on the verge of being consumed by static.

She has been a practicing psychic medium for almost a decade now, having passed the rigorous requirements necessary to become registered at Lily Dale.

There was a time, when she was growing up, when she thought she would ultimately leave this place. Just as Kristin swore she would never end up in her father's profession, Julia never expected to follow in her mother's and her grandmother's footsteps to become a medium.

When she was in high school, facing the grim reality that her mother couldn't possibly afford to send her to a four-year university, she had taken secretarial classes, thinking that she could maybe move to Buffalo—or even New York City, and work for one of those rich businessmen you see in the movies.

After graduation, with that goal still in mind, she had attended Jamestown Business College. But gradually, the voices in her head—the voices that had always been there on some level, she later realized—became louder, demanding to be heard. It was Grandma who, when Julia finally confided in her, explained what was happening—and what to do about it. Grandma said Julia had a gift, and that she shouldn't throw it away.

So, she learned shorthand and computer skills by day.

And by night, under her proud grandmother's tutelage, she developed her talent for communicating with dead people.

As it turned out, it is her calling. And once she got used to it as a profession rather than a hobby, she realized that it's like any other job. It has its bad points, but it certainly has more good—most importantly, that Julia is able to help people. The part of her that has always needed to nurture others is almost entirely fulfilled by the nature of mediumship.

The only part of her that isn't fulfilled, in fact, is the part that remains restless after all these years—still dreaming that there might be more to life than this shabby little lakefront community that is, like Hollywood, a one-industry town.

When Kristin was here three years ago, and Julia was pumping her for exciting stories of life in L.A., she had insisted that it wasn't the least bit glamorous once you got used to it. Acting was just a job, like any other job.

Being a medium is the same for Julia. How can it not be, when she grew up in a family of mediums and lives in a town dedicated to spiritualism?

She enjoys her life, and if she spends the rest of it right here where it started, in this gated community on the shore of Cassadaga Lake, she will probably be content.

It would be nice not to spend it alone, though. Now that Grandma has been dead for almost two years and Mom is retired in Florida, Julia can't help feeling lonely. Especially during the long winters.

She figures the time will come when she heads South with the others as soon as September rolls around. But she isn't ready for that yet. She has always liked the change of seasons, the snow, the icy gray days when you don't feel guilty curling up on the couch with a book from morning until night.