The Tale of Halcyon Crane (20 page)

“What was it, then?”

I sang, minor key and all, softly into his ear. “
Say, say, oh, playmate. Come out and play with me
.”

“Whoa!” Will shivered, displaying goose bumps on one arm. “That officially gave me chills. Listen, are you sure you saw what you thought you saw last night? Are you sure you weren’t sleeping?”

“Reasonably sure,” I said. “So, Mr. Attorney, what’s the rational real-world explanation for all the things that have happened to me in the past few days?”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Will sighed. “I’d love to be able to say that the little girl who was outside your window last night is a well-known prankster here on the island who makes a career out of scaring newcomers.”

“But you can’t tell me that, can you?”

Will shook his head. “No, I can’t.”

“I know this sounds crazy, but I’m wondering if she’s one of those dead triplets you told me about. I’ve been learning about my family history, and I know they died in a blizzard right here on the property. Do you think—”

“I really don’t know what to think, Hallie,” he interjected. “The only sort of real-world explanation I can offer is the possibility that your imagination is working overtime.
We had the conversation about the triplets the night we went to the restaurant. Maybe it planted a seed in your mind. You had the encounter with this girl last night, right? You’d been asleep. Maybe it was all a dream. Can you be sure it wasn’t?”

“Well, no,” I admitted. “The thing is, though, I saw the same girl at the inn before we went to the restaurant. Before I even knew about the triplets.”

Will nodded. “Right.”

I went on. “And what about the fact that I closed the shades and turned
on
the lights and the TV last night, but when I woke up this morning, the shades were open and the lights and TV were
off
?”

He smiled. “That proves it was a dream, though, doesn’t it?”

“You’d think so,” I told him, excited now. “Except that when I got out of the shower this morning, I found the shades drawn again and the lights and the TV turned back on.”

I sat there, looking at him expectantly. When he didn’t say anything for a moment, I filled up the silence. “This is the part where you think I’m just fabricating and all of this is in my head, isn’t it? You’re wondering if you can creep away from the crazy woman slowly and safely.”

Will laughed. “I wasn’t wondering that, actually. I was wondering what in the hell is going on.”

“I can’t think of any other explanation. Can you? Other than me being insane.”

“Yes, there’s that.” He laughed. “The old schizophrenia flaring up again. Off your meds?”

I pinched his arm in response.

We chuckled for a few moments, and then he said, “Okay. Let’s say you’ve got a bona fide ghost at the house. What now?”

“I’m not quite sure,” I confessed. “If I was watching this in a movie, I’d be screaming at me to get out.”

“Yeah, the whole little-girl-ghost thing is about as ghoulish as you can get,” Will mused.

We both lay on our backs, looking up at the sky, which was rapidly turning gray.

“So what now?” he asked again.

I sighed. “If only I knew.”

G
iant drops of rain began to fall. As we threw the picnic mess back into the basket, a deep rumble of thunder echoed over the hill and we were drenched by the time we burst through the kitchen door, laughing and out of breath. Before I knew what was happening, Will’s arms were around me, his mouth on mine. His lips tasted like wine and rain and possibility, and for a moment I almost let myself get carried away in the romance of the moment. But something inside me went cold. All I wanted was to be free of his touch.

I put my hands on his chest and pressed myself back toward the wall, shaking my head. “No, Will.”

He looked at me, confusion clouding his eyes. “Hallie,” he began.

“I’m sorry,” I said weakly, staring at the ground.

“No,
I’m
sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean . . . Look, I thought—” His words hung in the air. I didn’t catch them, I didn’t offer a safety net, and I could almost hear the thud as they fell to the ground.

“I should leave,” he said softly, turning his eyes to the door. He didn’t look at me again. He just walked out of the
house and into the storm without a backward glance, and I let him go.

I stood there for a moment, wondering what I had just done.

It rained for the rest of the afternoon. I tried to fill up the time with reading and watching TV and playing with the dogs, but my mind was on Will. The look in his eyes before he left was devastating.

I tried to call him several times but only reached voice mail. Then I took the phone into the living room, made a quick calculation about the time difference, sank into one of the armchairs, and dialed Richard, half a world away.

“Well, it’s about bloody time,” he said gruffly, and instantly I was filled with the warmth of his humor and his caring. “I’ve been worried sick about you. Tell me
everything
.”

And so I did. I told him about the house and the dogs and Iris, Jonah, and Mira and the island itself. I told him about inheriting everything from my mother, and what little I knew about her. I told him about Iris, laughing about her dour demeanor. I told him about the singsong tune I kept hearing and about my strange experiences here in the house and at the inn. And I told him about Julie Sutton.

“It all sounds quite Gothic,” he said. “A huge old house, stuck on an island in bad weather, an unsolved murder, mysterious encounters with ghosts and rude townspeople, even the eerie old maid.”

I agreed, laughing. “It does sound rather Gothic. The house is just gorgeous, Rich. You’ll have to come someday soon.”

A silence, then. I could hear the tiny clink of his spoon against the side of a china teacup. “Hallie.” He was still stirring, which he always did to fill time when he wasn’t quite sure how to phrase what he wanted to say. “What aren’t you telling me? I know there’s something you’re not saying.”

I hesitated for a moment before admitting it. “Okay,” I said quickly. “I met someone and I think I just screwed it up.”

“Ah. That’s the real reason for your call. All this ghost talk was just the preamble.”

I felt a twinge of guilt. I should’ve called him sooner, as I had promised. “I really need somebody to talk to, Rich. Somebody who knows me. Somebody who isn’t weirded out by how much I look like a dead woman. To everyone here, I’m just this freak who died thirty years ago.”

He chuckled at this. “You really do fit in there among the skulking maids and haunted houses, don’t you?”

“Finally, a place where I belong.” I laughed, too.

“All right, freaky girl. Go ahead. Tell me about him. Who is he and what did you do?”

“He’s a lawyer here on the island,” I began. “We were friends when we were kids.”

“That’s starting off very well. Go on.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time together; he was my mother’s lawyer. He’s the one who contacted me initially. We get along great. It’s like we’ve known each other forever. He’s easy to talk to, and . . .”

“And?”

“Well, he’s everything I’ve ever looked for in a guy,” I admitted, both to Richard and to myself. “He’s smart,
thoughtful, funny, and we like to do the same things. I don’t know. He’s a real catch. Plus, he’s gorgeous.”

“Oh. Well, then, I can see why you threw him out, or whatever you did. He sounds perfectly hideous.”

A smile crept across my face. “That’s the thing. There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s just—when he tried to kiss me, I froze.”

“What do you mean, froze?”

“I mean, I froze. I couldn’t respond to him.”

“Why ever not?”

I thought about this for a moment. “I’m not sure. We were having such a great time on our picnic. And then it started to rain. We ran into the house—”

“It sounds quite romantic, Hallie.”

“It was. It’s just . . .”

“What? The right setting, the wrong guy? No chemistry?”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not it, not exactly. There’s plenty of chemistry between us.”

I heard Richard stirring his tea again. “What happened then?”

Poor Will’s face swam into my mind. “He seemed really confused and embarrassed and muttered an apology. And then he left. I haven’t talked to him since.”

More stirring. “I’m going to ask you a question now. You’re not going to like it, but I’m going to ask it anyway.”

My stomach tightened up. Richard has a way of cutting right to the chase, and he is not known for his gentleness in doing so.

He went on. “What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“Well, come on, Hallie. Gorgeous guy. You get along great. He’s got no discernible flaws, and you’ve got chemistry between you. You’re both single. Why not give it a go? I mean, really. What’s the worst that could happen?”

All of a sudden I realized why I had wanted to talk to Richard. “Well, he could be the love of my life, marry me, and then discover I’m not his type.”

Richard sighed. “I wish I were there right now to throw my arms around you, tell you how sorry I am, and make you believe that it’s never going to happen to you again.”

“I wish you were here, too. I wish a lot of things.”

Richard cleared his throat. “I have to ask. Have you dated
anyone
since we broke up?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I’ve been on a few dates, but—”

He cut me off. “Listen, Hallie. You’ve got to get back out there. You are a terrific woman, the best I’ve ever met. You’re drop-dead gorgeous, and now you are a woman of means. You deserve to be happy, my darling. You can’t cut yourself off from love because of me, you just can’t. I cannot have wrecked you. I’d never forgive myself.”

“But I believed you,” I said. “I trusted you, and then my world came crashing down.”

“You’re right. That’s exactly what happened. But the thing is, Hallie, that wall of protection you’ve built around yourself isn’t going to bring you happiness. It might bring safety, but it’s awfully cold and lonely living alone in a fortress. You have to dare to take a risk. You have to risk having your heart broken, again and again and again. That’s the only way you’ll find happiness, my love. It’s the only way.”

I
tossed and turned all night, Richard’s words rattling through my brain. Was he right? Had I really built a fortress around myself?

The next morning, I called Will at the office. Still no answer. Obviously, he was avoiding me. Had I destroyed whatever had been happening between us before it even had a chance to start? I toyed with the idea of marching into town to find him, but the rain hadn’t let up overnight. It was still pouring outside.

No Iris this morning either, and even the dogs had retreated to parts unknown. I was on my own. I sank into one of the kitchen chairs next to the window, looked out onto the rainy yard, and sighed.

Hours passed. I rattled around the house trying to occupy myself; I watched a DVD, read a bit, but always kept coming back to the kitchen window. Staring out seemed to make the most sense; it seemed like the right thing to do. I desperately wanted to talk to Will, but I wasn’t sure what I would say.

Finally, I saw a figure coming up the drive, and a moment
later Will burst through the back door, his clothes soaking wet. “Hallie, I—” he started, the rest of his thought hanging in midair.

“I know,” I said, crossing the room in an instant. I brushed a wet tendril of hair off his forehead. “I’m sorry. I’ve been through so much lately, and I reacted badly.”

He grasped my arms in his hands, finally finding his voice. “I understand you’ve been through the wringer, but you’ve got to understand something. I’m not your ex-husband. And I’m not your father. What you see is what you get; I’m as un-complicated as that. I have no secrets, no hidden life, no agenda. It’s just me, a man who is scared to death because he’s fallen in love with you and you don’t seem to be on the same trip.”

My heart began pounding. I wanted nothing more than to run out of the door, away from the edge of the cliff. But I didn’t do that. With Richard’s advice ringing in my ears, I leaped off the precipice, not caring how hard I might hit the ground. I wound my arms around Will’s neck and pressed my mouth to his, tasting wind and rain and forever. With thunder growling outside and the lights flickering on and off, we made our way up the back stairs to my bedroom and fell into each other’s arms.

Later, Will wrapped himself in a robe and went downstairs to the kitchen to retrieve our wine. We lay in bed together, talking about our dreams, our disappointments, our important stories. But truly, nothing in my past seemed as important as what was happening between us right then.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I finally said, twisting the sheet between my hands.

Will reached up and brushed a strand of hair from my eyes. “I know it’s hard for you to trust me,” he said gently. “But I’ll never let you down like they did.”