Whispers (19 page)

She did look great. The years had been good to Corrine, filling out the bony girl into a curvy woman. She’d always had a bright smile and almond skin. Now she accented her dark eyes with shadow and the dusky lips with lipstick and the overall effect was wowza. They’d never been close friends, but she’d always liked Corrine.

“
It’s busy,” Gracie said.

“
Christ almighty, this isn’t busy, it’s insane. I’m usually doing my nails in between customers.” She looked at Gracie for a moment. “I was sorry to hear about your grandma Beck.”

There was little sincerity in the sentiment, but it made sense to Gracie. Though she didn’t know why, Grandma Beck had never liked Corrine, even when she was a child. Grandma had felt that way about a lot of the kids in her school. She wouldn’t have had any friends if it had been up to her grandma.

“
Thank you,” Gracie said.

Someone gestured for her and Corrine nodded back. “Go ahead and find a table. I’ll be right with you.”

As they approached the table where Analise sat, Gracie felt a tightening in her stomach. Familiar faces turned like beacons to watch her pass through. It had been years, but she recognized nearly all of them, even those whose names had been erased by time.

“
Blast from the past,” Reilly mumbled as he put on his own smile and wave show.

They stopped at the table where her daughter sat. Chloe perched on the edge of her seat, directly opposite Analise. She held Analise’s hand, palm-up as she stared down at it with fixed concentration.

“
What’s going on?” Gracie asked.

“
She’s reading my palm,” Analise exclaimed, bright-eyed.

Gracie couldn’t help the feeling that gripped her as she watched Chloe peering into her daughter’s hand, “reading” her future. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew the woman was up to something. And it couldn’t be good. She also knew that such a person could easily use a palm reading to try to manipulate a vulnerable young girl in the name of her future. For this reason and others she hadn’t had time to analyze, her voice was sharp as she said, “I asked you to stay away from my family.”

Chloe looked very different from the old, white-haired woman who’d stepped into Gracie’s room last night. Today she wore a brightly colored tunic that billowed from an empire waistline and floated down to her lap. Blousy sleeves gathered at her wrists and covered part of her birdlike hands. A pair of royal blue pants matched her athletic shoes today and another brightly patterned turban covered the thinning white hair. She’d put on makeup with a heavy hand that accented the dark pearls of her glittering eyes. Gracie wondered if it also hid the shadows beneath them.

“
Do you know why you resent me so much?” Chloe asked. As always, her voice was melodic. But this morning her smile was slight and somehow sorrowful. Not quite pitying, but full of compassion.

“
Intrusion,” Gracie said. “I resent the intrusion.”

Chloe nodded, lowering her eyes. “That’s fair enough. But you should know I wouldn’t be intruding if it wasn’t necessary. You think I’m a joke. You think I’m here for some”—she waved a small hand in the air—“nefarious purpose, but that isn’t why I’ve come to this place. I have my own ghosts, Gracie Beck. And I want them laid to rest.”

She glanced at Bill in a gesture that was at once commanding and helpless. He rose and held her chair as she stood. She gave one last searching look at Gracie, and then she moved away. All eyes watched her part the sea of white faces. She walked with a regal grace that somehow transcended the rubber-soled shoes.

I
have my own ghosts….

What the hell did that mean?

“
Hey,” Brendan said loud enough to silence the tables nearby. Chloe paused and looked at him. “What about me?”

The sight of him caught Gracie by surprise. He’d changed just since this morning, though she couldn’t put her finger on how. He was still the same blond-haired, blue-eyed young man, and yet something was different about his eyes, about the way he stood, the way he watched. Was it the weight of responsibility that straightened his back and squared his shoulders? The reality of a baby and mouths to feed? A part of her hoped so and a part of her wanted to die from the knowledge. Her baby was having a baby and this boy would be a father.

Chloe hesitated, appraising him with something like wariness. He thrust his hand out to her and Gracie sensed her recoil, though she didn’t move a muscle.

“
Another time,” Bill said softly. He guided Chloe to a seat at a table near the empty dance floor.

“
You didn’t let her finish,” Analise complained. “She didn’t finish reading my palm.”

“
I don’t want her around you.”

“
Why?”

Corrine chose that moment to approach their table and take their order, saving Gracie from an explanation she didn’t have.

“
Do you know her?” Corrine asked, looking over at Chloe with a frown.

“
Not really,” Gracie answered. “She’s staying at the Diablo.”

“
She gives me the creeps. She said she can read me. She said she knows why I’m outside the circle. What crap.”

Gracie nodded.

“
She also said if I went home I’d find my wedding ring, but I had to do it now. You think she’s for real?”

“
I don’t know. I doubt it.”

“
I’ve been looking for it for a month.”

“
But why would you have to go home now to find it?”

Corrine shrugged, still looking back at Chloe. “She’s nuts. Anyway, what’ll you have? Menu hasn’t changed much. Burgers or burgers.”

Gracie was surprised to realize she was hungry. Very hungry. She and Reilly ordered burgers. It was an easy choice.

“
What did they say about your grandma?” Analise asked when Corrine had left.

“
She wanted to be cremated. She wants her ashes spread at the hot springs.”

Brendan’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding?” he said.

All three of them looked at him. “No, why?”

He laughed softly. “Just a creepy place to spend eternity, that’s all.”

His words seemed weighted, but with what, Gracie didn’t know.

“
I have to go to the bathroom,” Analise announced. She stood and so did Brendan. Analise frowned at him. “I can find it on my own.”

He smiled and took her arm anyway. She looked for a moment like she might jerk it from his grasp, but after an exasperated sigh, she let him lead her to the rest rooms. Did he plan to stand outside the stall while she went? Gracie and Reilly sat in silence for a few moments after they’d left, maybe both pondering the same question.

Finally, Reilly asked, “Why do you think she wanted her ashes spread out at the ruins?”

“
I don’t know. Maybe to be close to my mother….”

The thought had been in Gracie’s head ever since Eddie told them where Grandma Beck had died.

Analise chose that moment to reappear at the table. “Why would that be close to your mother?” she asked.

Gracie’s eyes fluttered down and she bit her lip. “What happened to your mother, Mom?” Analise asked again. “You told me she died when you were born.”

“
I told you she died when I was a baby.” Analise had assumed it was during childbirth and Gracie had never disillusioned her.

She took another sip of her soda before meeting her daughter’s curious gaze. Brendan looked on with an expression she couldn’t read.

“
My mom died out there too. At the hot springs,” Gracie said at last.

Analise’s eyes and mouth rounded to Os. “How?”

“
I don’t really know. It’s a dangerous place.”

Gracie looked away, not wanting to explain about her mother. Too raw after the visit to the mortuary to invite any more painful memories.

“
C’mon, Mom. What happened to her?”

Gracie gave a soft, humorless laugh. Analise had been trying to pry the lid off Gracie’s past for months now, ever since she’d given her that charm bracelet and told her it was a family heirloom. She’d wanted Analise to know that somewhere they had history. She hadn’t wanted it to be here and now, though.

So far Gracie had managed to sidestep the direct questions, but there was no way around it now. She would have to tell the story—she owed it to Analise. And perhaps it was time.

“
I’ll tell you what I know, but it’s not much, Analise. To this day no one really knows what happened to my mom.”

Gracie paused, searching for the place to begin. It wasn’t easy because there was no beginning or end. The story was a series of events that might or might not have been connected. Hard to explain that to someone sitting on the edge of her seat waiting for a tale to be spun.

“
What I know for certain is that she was at the ruins and I was with her. It’s not known how she got out there, though. I was just an infant and it was August so it had to be scorching hot. She certainly wasn’t taking a walk, but no one knows for sure what she was doing.”

“
I think it’s haunted out there,” Analise said.

Gracie looked at her daughter’s pale face, wanting to ask why, but not really wanting to know the answer.

“
What Grandma Beck told me was that she just disappeared one night.”

“
What about your dad? Where was he?”

Gracie sighed. “I told you I don’t know who my dad was, Analise.”

“
Yeah, you’ve been a wealth of information,” Analise said.

From his expression, the sarcasm caught Reilly by surprise, but not Gracie. Analise was whip-smart and since she’d hit the teenage years, she’d had no qualms about cutting someone to the bone with her wit. But Gracie couldn’t reprimand her for it this time. She was only speaking the truth. In her own way, Gracie was every bit as tight-lipped as Grandma Beck had been.

“
My mother dated a local man named Michael Young. Everybody called him Digger because his family owned the mortuary—still does. We went to see his son before coming here. From what I’m told he was a very nice man but he was older than my mother. Quite a bit older. When she got pregnant, everyone assumed he was the father, but she’d never tell who it was for sure.”

“
Why?” Analise asked.

“
People said she was afraid Grandma Beck would make her marry him and she’d decided she didn’t like him enough for that. My mom was a grown woman by that time, though. Old enough to decide who she was going marry, I’d think. Again, no one ever knew for sure what the reason was.”

Brendan leaned forward and said, “Kind of a pattern, wouldn’t you say, not knowing who your dad is?”

It wasn’t true. Gracie knew who Analise’s father was. She just never saw what good could come of sharing the knowledge. She went on as if Brendan hadn’t spoken. “She’d quit seeing Digger long before I was born and he never made any claims that he was my father—that I know of anyway. He was a widower and he was raising a son from that marriage. Generally, people thought he was a respectable, if strange, guy and if he was my father, he would have done the ‘right thing.’ Which, I guess, is what my mom was worried about.”

Gracie thought about what the “new” Digger had said today. His father had never gotten over Gracie’s mom.

“
How old was his son?” Analise asked.

Gracie thought about that for a moment. Mike junior had been a man in his forties when she’d left Diablo Springs. “I guess he was close to my mother’s age. Maybe a little older.”

“
That’s gross,” she said.

“
Anyway, I was only a few months old when my mother disappeared. No one saw her leave the house and she never came back. They combed the town, the hills, and the ruins searching for us after Grandma Beck discovered we were gone. Diablo Springs gives small town new meaning in case you haven’t noticed. Every available man, woman, and child was out there beating the bushes looking for us.”

“
But they didn’t find you?”

“
Not at first. After a couple of days, the sheriff started questioning people. He went to Digger’s house and found that he was gone too. His son hadn’t seen him since around the time my mom and I vanished.”

Analise’s eyes rounded.

“
So the story goes, on the fourth day Grandma Beck just woke up from a dead sleep, grabbed her hat and shoes and started walking out to the ruins—still wearing her nightgown. She was like a woman possessed, is what they say. The people who saw her followed her. By the time she got to the ruins, the sheriff was there and trying to talk her down. He figured she’d gone crazy with grief and was going to throw herself into the pit or something. She walked right up to this sinkhole and pointed to it. She told the sheriff that her daughter was in that hole and if he wanted to live to see another year, he better get her out.”

Analise said, “And did he?”

“
Find her—us? Yes. They dug into the sinkhole and it opened onto a cavern and my mom was in it, unconscious. She was holding me. She’d kept me alive by nursing me until I’d drained her dry. She died on the way to the hospital without ever regaining consciousness.”

Gracie inhaled, forcing down the rise of old guilt and hurt. Rational or no, she’d always felt her grandmother blamed Gracie for killing her mother and had never forgiven her for it.