Steele (13 page)

Kari was in the house, and Beth looked at Steele. She’d never hesitated, not once in her story, to see if either she or Steele were following. Steele was looking at the door his wife went in and smiling. It was a happy smile, one that made her slightly embarrassed. But it was so full of love that Beth felt her own heart melt a little.

“She has made me extremely happy.” Steele looked at her then and smiled. “She will you as well. I can’t tell you how thrilled we all are that you’ve come to visit us. If I had my way, I’d have you live here all the time. But I know that’s going to take some time.”

She nodded, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. “I don’t know if I can do that. So much has happened here that I can’t…it’s still hard for me to think that the man who changed my life forever lived here.”

“Yes. He’s gone now though. And will never harm you again.” Beth nodded and walked with Steele as he moved to follow Kari. Beth smiled, wondering if the poor girl was still talking to them. But when she entered the hallway she saw the one man she had missed more than any other thing in her life.

“Oh Daddy.” He nodded. Her father, who had left her alone so many years ago, was now standing in the big hall surrounded by others like him. She moved toward him slowly and her feet felt leaded, her heart no longer just pounding but nearly leaping from her chest.

“My baby.” Tears blurred her vision as he smiled at her. “I’ve missed you so much. And when we found you, it was all I could do not to show you myself so I could comfort you.”

“You left me.” He nodded and put out his hand. They couldn’t touch, of course, but she did put her fingers over his. “I’ve missed you so much too, Daddy. So very much. Every day it was all I could do not to join you and Mom. If it hadn’t been for Emil, I would have.”

“I’m glad you were strong and that you had her. When I think of all the times that I told you that you were dreaming…well, I know a great deal more than I ever did back then. And now…well, now we can visit all we want.”

Beth didn’t answer him. She wanted to visit with her dad and get to know her son, but she was sure that she’d never return here. There were too many memories; too much that had happened here that she’d never forget. But the woman that stepped to her then was someone she’d missed more than she thought possible.

“Mrs. Aster.” Again the feeling of being loved but not touched moved over her. “You were always such a force. I thought I’d die when I read about your death. But I couldn’t come here, not with them still around.”

“It was for the best, I’m thinking, that you did stay away. And I had to do something to shake up the underworld, didn’t I? I mean, you know how much I loved to make things happen. There was nothing I could do around here anyway.” They both laughed, and Mrs. Aster smiled at her. “You’ve done well for yourself under the circumstances. I have seen your paintings in the homes of some of our friends. Also that big showing you had in Chicago a few years back. Of course, I had no idea it was you, but I thought even then that the artist had known pain like none other.”

“I lost myself in them and that’s what emerged. Emil helped me. She is my muse.” They both turned to look at the other ghost who was arguing with Carlton over something. “She paints them for me.”

“I doubt that. Somewhere you’re there.”

Beth again didn’t answer but watched her friend. She’d never thought of her as a ghost who might miss people like herself, and now she could see that her friend and companion had given up so much to stay with her all the time.

“Come on now. Let’s get you settled.” Beth followed Kari up the stairs. She wanted to tell her it was unnecessary, that she had a room booked at the local hotel, but she didn’t. Her luggage, two smallish suitcases, was lying on the end of the bed when they entered the room.

“He said there was no blue in here.” Kari nodded and looked around as she did. “Good heavens, this room is beautiful.”

It was too. The bed was covered in a large coverlet that she bet was handmade. The dressers, three of them, were large and bright with polish. Beth thought them to be oak, but she’d never known one kind of wood from the other, just knew what she liked. The large fireplace was empty now, but there were two chairs flanking it of a same soft ecru color that the spread was made of. There were small pillows in each of them, both covered in the same material as the bed. There was a small secretary in the corner that held a laptop, as well as a television mounted on the wall that looked as big as her single bed at home. All around the room were pictures, and Beth walked to one set of them on the mantel.

They were of her children. Aster was smiling, and Steele was looking at her fondly. They looked like they were on a boat somewhere. She started to turn and ask Kari about it, but was startled to see she was alone. Alone except for the pretty young ghost that stood near the door.

“I could leave if you want.” Beth shook her head at her daughter. “I asked Kari if I could see you alone. I didn’t know what to say to you, so I thought if I made you cry, no one would see how stupid I was.”

“You’re not going to be stupid.” Aster smiled and Beth did as well. “You look like I did as a child. I never had that spark I can see in your eyes here, but you are my child.”

Aster looked at the picture that Beth was talking about. “Steele and I were invited to all kinds of parties as children. We rarely got to go, but we bargained with them about something…I think it was a party that Mother…Eloise wanted us to attend. We’d go and they’d let us go on this outing. We had so much fun that we didn’t want to leave.”

Beth put the picture back and looked at her daughter. “I never knew about either of you. They told me…when I had what I thought was just a son, they told me he had strangled on his cord and that it was my fault. At the time I believed them; but later, much later, I looked it up. There was nothing I did to have caused it.”

“I’ve been searching around about what really happened that day. Did you know that the men that were in the delivery room were not even doctors? Well, one of them was, but the rest were lawyers. As soon as Steele was born, they took him away to the nursery, and then when I was born, a big surprise, they had to scramble to figure out what to do then. Apparently it was set all along for you to be told you had a still-born. Grandmother had no idea that there were twins before we were born or that you’d been told we were dead.” Beth had already figured that part out. “When Grandmother found out and you disappeared, she more or less blackmailed them into raising us. I guess their plan had been to kill us, but once it was public knowledge that they had us, they were stuck. Anyway, that was what I found out. I think it’s all bullshit myself.”

Beth laughed. She couldn’t help it. Aster was so fresh and young, her temperament so funny and honest. When she sat in one of the two chairs, Aster sat in the other. Beth looked at her and wondered, not for the first time, how anyone could do what the Bennetts had done to them and not go crazy.

“I’d like for you to consider staying here.” Beth started to shake her head. “Father is coming for them. And when he does, he’ll harm Kari in a way that there will be no children for them. There will be nothing much left of her after he’s finished. He has a monstrous hatred for Steele, and he’ll harm whoever he loves to get back at him. He blames his suicide on Steele.”

Beth stood up and went to her cases. She was going to have to go now. If Bennett was coming, she wanted nothing to do with him. Or the rest of them. Beth didn’t owe them anything.

“This is not any of my concern.” Aster didn’t say anything, but Beth didn’t care, she was not staying. “You can’t expect me to come here and fight with him. I have…do you have any idea what he’s done to me? How much I’ve had to change my life just to be able to function again?”

“Yes.” Beth picked up one of the cases and turned to her daughter as she spoke again. “Do you have any idea what he’ll do to Steele if you don’t stay and help? And to me? He will harm us all. Kill Kari, as well as anyone else that gets in his way. And Kari will…she’ll fight him with all she is, only to come up short. I love her and don’t want that to happen, do you?”

“I don’t care.” But she did care. He was her child and if Kari had a child, it would be her grandchild. “I can’t help them. I can’t hardly help myself.”

“Then leave.” Beth nodded and picked up her other case, and stared at where Aster had been. No one was there, not a ghost nor a human. Beth moved to the door and stopped. It was open. All she had to do was walk through it and she could be gone before anyone noticed. But the voices down the hall had her pause.

“I know that we wanted the nursery light green, but I think it would be much nicer if it was white. That way we can add more colors to it when we have him.” Kari giggled as she continued. “I would paint it blue, but you said to wait.”

“What if we have a girl? Did you think of that?” The voices moved out of her hearing range and still she stood there. Beth knew that she had to go, had to go right now, but she moved back to the bed and laid her cases out. She wasn’t going to leave them, not yet. She couldn’t, and she was pretty sure that Aster knew it.

Chapter 12

Nick stared at the headstone. He didn’t understand it, or better yet, he didn’t want to understand it. Looking around the open field, he tried to think where the hell he was and what the fuck was going on. But the name on the marble stone drew him back again.

“Addison Stark. Loving wife and good friend to all.”
The dates were blurred to him, and that was how he knew that this was another of his dreams. But this was the first time a name had ever been given to him.

“Do I know you?” He turned at the sound of the voice and looked at the woman there. He tried to absorb every detail of her he could into his mind, but he knew that no matter how much he tried, there would be nothing left of her when he woke. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. And I think I know you. I’m not sure.” She nodded and walked around him to the stone. “I think this is you, isn’t it? You’re Addison Stark.”

“It is. And I am.” She reached down and ran her hand over the beautifully carved letters that proclaimed her name and life. “You’re my husband then? Stark is your name?”

“I think so. Nick Stark. Nicholas, but I only go by Nick.” She nodded and stood up to walk through the stone to stare at him. “What happened? To you, what happened that put you here?”

“I’m dead.” Nick nodded. “And you’re wrong about going by only Nick. I called you Nicholas. I always have.”

“I don’t know who you are. Not really. I see you almost nightly in my dreams, but I don’t know you.” She smiled, and he could see the reason he had probably loved her. She was simply beautiful. “I’ve dreamt about you a lot, but I don’t ever remember seeing you before. I mean, I’ve seen you, but you’re not there when I wake.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to. We have to meet, and if you save me, then this will never be.” She looked down at her stone. “It’s very lovely, don’t you think?”

“So are you.” She looked at him and grinned. “I call you Addie. I…we fell in love very quickly, though I don’t know how we met.”

“Neither do I. What I do know is that you didn’t want me, that you thought that by not taking me into your heart….” She looked away then, and he turned too. There in the distance was a house, the first one he’d seen in his dreams about the woman. “Do you know where this is? This area, I mean?”

“No. I live with Steele Bennett and his wife.” She looked at him and grinned again. “Do you know him?”

“Everyone does. We have heard a great deal about him since…well, since his sister has been here.” Addie frowned then. “Am I dead now?”

“No. I don’t know why, but I know that you’re not.” She nodded but still frowned. “Do you dream of me like this? Are we having a connection through a dream?”

“I don’t know that either. But I have dreamt about you too. But I will tell you this. I’ve no desire for you to find me. I have no desire to die, but I don’t want you in my life. I don’t need you any more than you do me.” She sat down on her stone, and he had an overwhelming urge to go to her and kiss her. “I die a great deal in these dreams. It’s never…the sex we have is very wonderful, but I never feel as if it’s enough. Then when I die…do you suppose you’re never meant to find me, and we relive this dream over and over forever? It sounds like something that the fates would do to me. I’ve not been a dutiful daughter, and my parents are probably paying them to shit on me like this.”

“I hope not.” She nodded but still looked at the house. “Do you know that place? Have you had dreams about it before today?”

“Yes, I know the place. Very well. As a matter of fact, I want to own it someday. But I won’t. Too much red tape. I think…I’m not sure, but I think that we lived there at one time.” She looked at him. “I died in the bedroom once. You stabbed a stake through my heart as I rode your lovely cock.”

The dream he’d told Steele about but had never finished. “You changed into something else. You were no longer human.”

“Neither were you.” Addie moved toward him and put her hand over his heart before she spoke again. “But you don’t know what I was, do you?”

“What are you?” Her laughter had him backing from her, and as he watched, she began to change, to morph into something he thought he might recognize. Before him now stood the man who had tortured him nearly all his childhood. His stepfather, Dane Glass.

“Do you know me now, little Nicky? Do you remember how much fun we had in your bedroom? How I fucked that pretty little ass of yours until you told on me?” Nick backed away and fell over another stone. “I can see that you do. Do you want me again? I’ve been thinking of you for a very long time, Nicky boy. A very long time.”

“You’re not real. You’re not real.” He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. It was an old habit. Once he had tried to block out the screams from his sister when she was being raped as well. “You’re not real and cannot hurt me anymore.”

A scream tore through the now chilly night. Nick looked up to see Dane grabbing Addie. His fear was so profound that Nick was frozen to the spot. He watched in horror as Dane tore his hand into her chest and pulled her still beating heart from her. Then he licked the blood from it as Addie fell backwards.

“See how much I’m not real? Do you have any idea how long I’ve been haunting you? Terrorizing you so that you wet your pants like you did before?” Dane threw back his head and laughed, spilling blood from his chin down his chest. “I’m going to kill you both for what you did to me. I will not allow you any more happiness than you took from me.”

The heart hit him in the chest. The pain of it, the blinding pain, took his breath away again, and he fell backward. Screaming now, screaming for what he’d done once again, he struggled to get away from the hold on him, knowing it was Dane again.

“Nick.” His name was being shouted over and over, but he didn’t want to go to it. “Nick, it’s me. Christ, man, wake the fuck up.”

He did finally. Nick stared at the man over him for several seconds before he pulled Steele to him and held onto him. Having something real and alive hold him back had him sobbing hard. Even as he realized how ridiculous he must look, Nick held onto his lifeline.

“He killed her and I let him.” Steele might have said something, but Nick was beyond knowing what it was. “He ripped her heart out, and I stood there and watched him. I didn’t do a fucking thing to help her.”

Steele never left him after that. Nick fully expected him to order him out of the house and never to return. But he didn’t. Instead, he held him. Then when Nick pulled away, Steele sat on the bed beside him and waited. Embarrassed now, Nick got up to pace the room, and then when that wasn’t enough, he sat on the window seat that looked out over the back yard.

“I was raped as a child. Not once, but nearly daily until I turned fourteen and got big enough to fight back. My stepfather, Dane Glass, would take me or my sister, sometimes both, while my mother lay drunk or stoned in the other room.” Steele asked him where his sister was. “She died. Killed herself after Mom died. They both died of a drug overdose. Ana was twelve, my mother…I have no idea. I never really cared enough to look it up.”

“You said that he killed her. I thought you meant your sister. He didn’t?” Nick looked out the window thinking about the dream again. “Nick?”

“He killed the woman I was telling you about. The one that I think I’m supposed to fall in love with. I was at her grave. Her name is…Addison. I’m not sure what her surname is, but that’s more than I ever had before.” He turned back to Steele. “He said that he’s coming for us both. For this Addie person and me.”

“He’s dead.” Nick nodded and looked out the window. “How did it happen? Jail? The chair?”

“I did it. I rammed a knife into his chest while he stood over me. I was fourteen then, my birthday. He’d been in my room for about an hour and wasn’t quite finished, he said. Ana was gone. Not dead yet, but gone to someone’s house for something. So that left me. When he finished and had gone to the bathroom for something, I pulled out the knife I had hidden there to use. When he returned, hard and naked again, I felt something in my mind snap. When he came to the bed again, I sat up and slammed it into his chest.”

“Good.” Nick looked at Steele. “Someone should have done it long before then. What happened to you after that?”

“I ran. I was caught, of course, but I ran. The police found me about an hour later. My mother had called the cops on me because I’d killed him. After…they examined me, because of all the blood they said, and found that I had been raped. It was pretty clear to them that I had to do it. But I spent the next two years in foster care until I got out. By then Mother was dead, as was my sister.”

“And the woman, Addison? What happened to her tonight?” He told Steele everything, including being so afraid to move that he let her die. “I don’t think she’s dead, do you?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I just don’t know.” Steele said his name softly, but Nick didn’t look at him this time. “There’s a house. I can see it as clear in my mind as I can her marker. Not her face, of course, but I know that she’s beautiful. The house…the house is one I’ve seen before. I can’t remember where or when, but I know it. There is pink paper in the one bathroom. Towels of the same color hang on the shower door. In the kitchen there are green appliances. I think they called it avocado green back in the seventies. The floor is black and white linoleum, worn and full of holes. The cabinets have no doors on them. Not for any other reason than they were too expensive to replace.”

“You lived there.” Nick told him as a child, he’d never lived in anything but government housing. “Then maybe it was one of your foster homes. Someplace that you lived.”

“I think it’s yet to be seen by me.” He turned then and looked at his best friend. “What if I told you that I think she lives there? That she has lived there for a long time, yet no one knows it? That for whatever reason she’s hiding out there?”

“I’d say that’s as good a reason as any to find it.” Steele stood up and stretched. “I’m up now. Do you want to have a look? There might be something we can find on a missing Addison. What do you remember about the background? Like trees? A mountain?”

When Steele moved out of his room, still talking about what kind of clues Nick could give him, he stood and looked out the window again. She was out there. Somewhere. And he had to find her. Because if he didn’t, she was going to die.

Nick left his bedroom and went down the stairs trying to remember everything. There wasn’t much, but one thing kept nudging at his head. The cemetery where she was buried. He was sure it was the one right outside. The one he’d been sitting near for the last six months.

~~~

Addie watched the car drive off. It was the third one that had been there in the last three months. This time, however, whoever the person had been, had left a for sale sign in the front yard. As soon as the car was out of sight, Addie went to the sign, pulled it out of the ground, and laid it down. She even wiped it clean of her prints before leaving it where it lay.

The house wasn’t hers. She’d only been borrowing it for the last year and a half since she had nowhere else to go. The power, for some reason, had been left on, so she had heat and lights, though she never used the latter, nor did she use much of the former. Heat was something like a luxury to her, and she thought if she got thrown out of this house, it would also be hard to get used to not having. So instead, she stockpiled some blankets for the winter months and did her best to keep the place as unlived in as she could. She supposed it was working.

Going to the upper level of the house, she moved her things out of the cubby-hole that she’d discovered some time ago. She desperately wanted to sweep the floors and wipe down the walls, but that would bring unwanted attention to herself, and she wasn’t going to let that happen again. Taking out her diary, she wrote down the visit and the plate number of the car and what the man had looked like as well. She also dismantled his sign. Putting the diary back in her duffle, she leaned back against the wall where she hid out.

“Someday I’m going to buy this place. Then I’m going to make it a showplace again.” She hated talking to herself, but since there was no one else about, it was all she had. “I have the money now but not the means. I have to keep a low profile.”

That was an understatement. Addie looked at the bag that was hidden deep in the cubby-hole. It was full of money, more money than she had ever seen. But she’d not used it, not one dollar of it, for fear of what it might do to her.

“I won’t be like them.” She glared at the bag. “I only took it because it was mine and I had every right to it. So what if I rarely have two pennies to rub together? I have this as security.”

Her parents had been so wealthy, yet they wanted more. So much so that they were willing to sell her off to the highest bidder, as in a rich fuck of a husband, to get them more. And when they’d told her of their plans, to have her wed the smart lawyer in their firm, she’d told them no. But that hadn’t ended there. No, not for them. The Wests always got their way.

So over the course of three months, three months where she’d endured getting a dress and fittings, picking out bridesmaids’ gowns as well as bridesmaids, she’d stashed away as much money as she could put her hands on…even going as far as to steal money from her father’s wallet several times. But her jackpot had been going to the bank and emptying the account her grandmother had set up for her when she’d come to visit.