Mirror of Shadows (19 page)

What have I done
?

Chapter 19

The Ladies Auxiliary of Dead Oaks Hollow had a successful meeting regarding their latest charity work, collecting coats and blankets for the homeless shelter. Marlin was nominated to deliver the goods collected, namely by Meme. Armed with four huge boxes, Marlin headed to the homeless shelter after work to deliver the articles of warmth for the ladies.

A volunteer helped him unload the boxes from his SUV, and on his second trip to the car he walked into Jeremy in the hallway.

“Mr. Howard,” he said with surprise.

“Jeremy, are you here doing charity work?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” he said rather embarrassed.

“You’re not staying here, are you?”

Jeremy nodded.

“Why?”

“Ella and I had a bit of a falling out and I had nowhere else to go, so…”

“Oh. Do you want to talk about it?” Marlin asked.

“No,” Jeremy said.

“Hmm. Well, if you’d like, we have a loft above our garage. It’s nothing special. It used to be a studio for Meme when she was painting everything under the sun. It’s got a bed, it’s quiet and it’s warm.”

“That’s nice of you, Mr. Howard, but I can’t pay you and you’ve done so much for me already, I really couldn’t accept.”

“Oh, you could and you will or I will be hearing about it from Meme until the cows come home and I don’t expect that anytime soon. Now go grab your things. I have another box to bring in but I’ll meet you out at the curb.”

“I…”

“I told you, I’m not accepting
no
, so you just best get your stuff.”

Jeremy smiled at Marlin’s stubborn kind-heartedness and nodded in acceptance.

*****

Ella was devastated by Jeremy’s departure. The house was huge, empty, and cold without his presence. From day one, Jeremy had been with her in the house and maybe because of that she felt somehow it was his house too. She remembered that first day, exploring the house in the dark, before she found the mirror and went screaming out the door and into Jeremy. She was scared then and now she was scared again and very alone.

She hadn’t noticed before how much the house moaned and creaked. The glass and wood expanded in the heat of the sun and contracted as it cooled in the sun’s absence. When the sun finally did go down, she had practically every light on in the house and her imagination wreaked havoc on her senses. She even went so far as to lock the bedroom door, barring it with a chair, but not before she brought all of Boo’s accoutrements in the room—kitty box, food, and water.

She knew she didn’t have to be alone, since she had received about twenty calls from Matt she’d refused to answer, but she needed time away from him to figure out what it was about him that misguided her into doubting the one person she trusted with her life. No, she needed to be away from him for a while—away from his influence and his double-talk. She couldn’t think of any particular instance where Matt had out-and-out accused Jeremy; it had been more like a subliminal suggestion. She didn’t understand it at all—any of it.

It took a long time to fall asleep that night with her ears on acute alert, but as the moon laid a lazy, arcing path across the black velvet sky, she finally fell under its spell and slept. She dreamt of her last experience with the mirror, of finding Willow’s grave and falling into it and atop of Willow’s bones. Before she could make heads or tails of anything, she found herself walking the familiar path down the stairs and the fog-covered floor to the hallway where the mirror had been taken down. She noted on this journey that despite the fact that she had turned on every light in the house, it was dark. She didn’t know if that meant these truly were dreams that included the mirror, or if she really did walk downstairs during each of these occasions.

Either way, she found herself once again in front of the mirror, despite the fact that Jeremy had put it up in the attic yet again. The black shadows swirled around her reflection like a thick, heavy smoke with tentacles that streaked black across her face. The shadows then engulfed her reflection as if a heavy black ink had been poured over the glass. It began to glow green and the shadows grew agitated and pulled away from the center and moved out to the edges revealing what Ella assumed to be the back of Willow. She was in the small house near a hearth. It was the cottage in the woods where the ruins were now. It was exactly as Ella had imagined the chimney and hearth to be—beautifully masoned; pieced together with such precision and care.

A fire roared in the hearth. A large, black-hinged crane held a large, cast iron lidded pot of some slow cooking stew over the flames. Willow was relaxed and humming to herself as she puttered around the hearth. With a smile and a look around she raised a gold chain from around her neck up and over her head, rubbing the gold pendant lovingly between her thumb and forefinger. She looked around suspiciously once more, and then set the pendant into the indent of the keystone in the hearth. By doing so, she had triggered some kind of mechanism that made a piece of stone protrude from the underside of the hearth. She removed this piece and pulled out a document. When she was done admiring it, she folded the document up and put it back into its hiding place and replaced the piece of stone, making it flush with the hearth once again, concealing its secrets from prying eyes.

The shadows in the mirror migrated back from hiding at the edges and once more filled the glass with blackness. Her eyes suddenly opened and she found she was in bed with the morning light streaming in from the windows and Boo pawing softly at her lips and licking her cheek.

*****

Standing in front of the mirror combing out her wet hair after taking a shower, Ella caught a glimpse of the gold pendant around her neck—her grandmother’s necklace. A realization hit her…the necklace looked very much like the pendant Willow had around her neck and used as a key to the hearth.
It couldn’t be the same, could it?
Willow’s was still around her skeletal remains in the ground near the big oak.

She quickly removed the chain and inspected the pendant. It was definitely the same shape and it could indeed be a lily-like shape within, but it wasn’t possible, was it? She sat down and tried to remember the story her grandmother had told her about where she got the necklace. It had been given to her, by….by…her grandfather, yes, that was it—he’d said he had it made just for her after one his mother had lost.

She finished combing her hair and dressing then went up to the attic to look at the picture of Willow once more. She was hoping maybe she was wearing the pendant in the portrait so she could get a better look at it. She was wearing it, but it was too small to see any real detail. Feeling a bit disappointed, she decided to head down to the kitchen for something quick to eat and then she would go into town to pick up a box of overlooked items of her grandmother’s that Marlin had forgotten to give her. Apprehensively, she went down the familiar hall and sure enough, that mirror was back on the wall.

Was someone trying to make her think she was crazy? That had been Matt’s theory about Jeremy. Or maybe she was crazy and no one needed to help it along. It made her mouth dry and her heart race at either explanation that popped into her head—either someone had been in the house last night or the mirror had a mind of its own. Neither thought comforted her.

She obviously had some connection to this mirror since it kept showing her the past; maybe, as Jeremy had suggested, it was a gateway for Willow to communicate with the present to try and resolve some issue she could no longer resolve on her own, with the hope that Ella could help in some way.

When she rolled this concept around in her head, it made her feel less averse to the mirror’s presence. If somehow this whole thing was helping someone, she could live with that—she just hoped she wouldn’t go insane before the issue at hand was resolved.

She grabbed a bagel and her purse and headed for town.

*****

Having not slept very well, Ella was in dire need of some caffeine and it seemed so silly to make a whole pot of coffee for one person. Plus the kitchen coffee pot always brought to mind Jeremy dancing around the kitchen in his boxers and it made her too sad. She stopped at a little coffee house that Meme had said made a mocha to die for. She was only inside for a few minutes but when she came out she found her mother over the hood of her brand new car, keying the word ‘Brat’ into it.

“What are you doing?” she yelled at her mother.

Patricia stumbled over her words and was caught off guard. She had likely hoped to do her dirty work and then be gone before Ella came out.

“I’m advertising,” she said, obviously rather proud of herself for coming up with such a quick quip.

“Advertising? Advertising what?”

“I’m letting the town know just what a selfish child you are, buying yourself a fifty thousand dollar car when your mother can barely get her junker to start every morning.”

“You drive a Beemer, Mom. I hardly call that slumming it. Besides, I didn’t buy the car,” she informed her.

“Uhh…well…what?” Patricia said, confused by the comment.

“I didn’t buy the car; it was a gift from the Howards. After my accident on the hill they wanted to make sure I had a car that was safe and was better equipped for the terrain,” Ella added.

“Accident? Yeah, I guess I did hear talk of something like that,” Patricia said, back peddling a bit. “You still deserve to have everyone know how horrible you’ve been to me, not helping me out, all that money just sitting there and you don’t even have the decency to send a little my way.”

“You know, Mom, I really don’t want to deal with this right now, I have to go.”

“Oh sure. You can’t be bothered with the only family you have left. I’m so sorry. You could have at least offered me some of that fancy coffee,” Patricia blurted as Ella unlocked the car.

“You are something. Are you back on drugs or what? You just keyed my car. How was I supposed to know I was supposed to pay you with a cup of coffee for the lovely addition on my hood? Here. Take mine,” Ella said, handing Patricia the mocha. She got in the car and started to pull away when Patricia threw the mocha at the windshield, making a horrible mess.

Ella shook her head and drove to the nearest gas station to wash off the coffee and then proceeded to Marlin’s office.

Chapter 20

Ella entered Marlin’s office and gave him a big hug.

“Sweetie, how are you?”

“Okay,” Ella said sadly as she flopped into the big leather chair across the desk from him.

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“It’s not exactly been a great day so far.”

“Oh? It’s only ten o’clock,” Marlin said, looking at his watch wondering how bad it could be when the day had only just started.

“Exactly my point,” Ella said.

“How’s the new car? You still like it? Is it running okay?”

“It’s great. I love it, aside from the new addition I got today,” Ella proclaimed.

“Oh? What kind of addition?”

“Mom keyed the word ‘Brat’ into my hood while I was inside the JavaBean,” Ella said sadly.

“Geez. I swear that woman has the mentality of a 6 year old. We’ll get it fixed up and it will be good as new. Don’t you worry,” Marlin said.

“It’s not just that, it’s everything. Everything is upside down right now. I had this horrible fight with Jeremy and I said some things that I shouldn’t have and I don’t think he can forgive me. He moved out and everything.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Well, it’s complicated but more or less I accused him of trying to kill me.”

“You did what? Why? You don’t think that, do you?”

“I don’t, but I said it. I was confused. I am confused. I found Boo’s collar in his toolbox and Matt suggested that Jeremy was behind Boo having gone missing and then went on to back it up with the fact that Jeremy’s tools always seem to be involved with the attempts on my life and he is always magically there when something happens.”

“Yes, dear, to save you. If it hadn’t been for him, you might be dead now,” Marlin reasoned.

“I know that, I do. But Matt has this way of making his theory sound so plausible, you feel like it couldn’t possibly be false. I don’t know. It sounds so bizarre. As soon as I said it out loud to Jeremy I realized how ludicrous it was. I tried to apologize, but he was so hurt and I feel just horrible. I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not sure it can be fixed. I’m not sure I deserve to be forgiven for saying such awful things,” Ella cried.