Widow's Tears (32 page)

But I do care about Ruby, and I was beginning to worry about her. As
I said, I have seen her with the tarot cards and her Ouija board. She stays pretty much on the surface of whatever psychic experience she's involved with. At least, that's the way she's described it to me. She'd prefer to dabble. She's afraid of “going deep,” as she puts it, afraid of getting sucked into the depths of something dangerous, something she can't pull herself out of. I hoped that wasn't happening here. She was very pale, and as I watched, she sank deeper into her chair, and the faint glow that surrounded her seemed to dim. A little while ago, she'd said that she had resisted Rachel's efforts to win her over physically—whatever that meant. But what if this Rachel-thing had somehow gotten its tentacles into her psyche and was manipulating her, perhaps in the same way Rachel had manipulated the young Hazel? Ruby is tough, but she's also exceptionally sensitive. If her emotions were engaged, she might be seduced and overtaken by a stronger psychic power.

I leaned forward. “Ruby,” I said quietly, “maybe it's time to take a little break. You can come back and do more of this later. How about it?”

But Claire had an agenda. She didn't want to interrupt this…this séance or whatever it was. “Okay,” she said urgently. “Okay, I get it, or part of it, anyway. But if this is all true, how do I get Rachel to leave? What does she want?”

If she heard me, Ruby didn't give any sign of it. In a thin, reedy voice, she replied, “She's been waiting for someone to live in the house and help her.”

I shivered. Did that mean that Ruby thought that this ghost wanted
her
to come and live in this house? If so, that was the scariest thing I'd heard in a long while.

But Claire heard it differently. “Help her? Me, help that ghost?” Claire gave a short laugh. “Well, if
that's
what she wants, I somehow missed it. She might have been a little clearer. What kind of help?”

Ruby sighed, and I saw that her lips were trembling. She was on the verge of exhaustion. Whatever was going on here, whatever she thought she was doing, the effort was costing her a great deal. “Ruby, please,” I pleaded. “Let's take a break.”

Ruby wasn't paying any attention to me. “She wanted Hazel's help, but Hazel wasn't strong enough.”

“Not strong enough?” Claire spoke almost sarcastically. “What kind of heavy lifting does she have in mind?”

I thought that it might have been psychic strength that Ruby was talking about. Hazel had apparently been very young when she came here. Perhaps she had simply given in to Rachel's grief—perhaps had even enabled her, in the same dysfunctional way that families can enable an addict.

Ruby went on as if Claire hadn't spoken. “She wanted your help but she couldn't get through to you. She's been trying to get your attention, but she couldn't make you understand.”

Claire's sarcasm became irritation. “Get my attention?” she repeated sharply. “You're telling me that all that pan banging and harp playing and bell ringing is her way of getting my
attention
?”

“And the puddles.” The light around Ruby seemed to become a little brighter. Her voice sounded stronger, too, as if this exchange with Claire was somehow giving her more energy—and perhaps more confidence. It occurred to me that there might be more going on here than I had realized.

“The leak in the ceiling, too,” Ruby added. “And the wind. But instead of getting your attention, it just made you angry.”

Claire huffed out her breath. “Oh, come on, now,” she said, sounding annoyed. “That's a bunch of horse pucky. I wasn't angry. Frustrated is more like it.” She had found a word she liked. “Yes, that's it. I was
frustrated
, especially after I had to spend all that time mopping up those stupid puddles and trying to figure out what to do about that damp ceiling.”

“Claire,” Ruby said gently. Just that one word.
Claire.
It was an admonition.

Claire laced her fingers together, and her voice softened. “Well…okay, maybe it was more than frustration. But wouldn't you be angry if all your wonderful plans for a place to live and work were being thwarted by pans rattling and bells ringing? After all, it's not like I have a gazillion options. I don't have anywhere else to live, and finding a good-paying magazine job in this economy is pretty nearly impossible. If she was going to behave that way, I—”

“Claire,” Ruby said again.

“Okay, okay.” Claire sighed. “If I'm being totally honest, I guess I have been pretty pissed off, ever since Brad died, actually. My shrink said that was a lot of what was behind the pills and the drinking. I was angry at Brad for dying. For dying and leaving me all alone, with a mountain of bills.” A tear trickled down her cheek, and she swiped at it with the back of her hand. “I loved being Brad's wife. I never planned on being his widow.”

“Yes,” Ruby said. “And then this house came along. ‘A gift from heaven.'” A wisp of a half smile passed across her lips and was gone. “A gift from one widow to another, but with strings attached. Rachel tried to let you know what she needed from you, but you were so angry, she couldn't get through. She didn't want to give up, though, so she—” She stopped. “Do you see now?”

A lot of this was going right over my head, but Claire seemed to understand. “So she got me to bring
you
here,” she said. “Is that it?”

“What do you think?” Ruby countered. It was her own voice, and her eyelids were lifting. She was coming awake.

“I think that's right!” Claire leaned forward. “I think she knew that you saw her years ago, when you were a child. She maybe even knew that you were Colleen O'Reilly's great-granddaughter.”

“Yes. She knew then that I could help—someday. But not then. I was just a kid. I had to grow up and…” Ruby's voice grew sad. “I had to suffer my own loss. I had to know what it was to grieve, too.”

Know what it was to grieve? Ah, I thought. Colin's death. The loss of her love, her lover, from which she had not yet fully recovered.

Claire chuckled ruefully. “So I suppose the last time I saw Rachel—on the widow's walk—her message finally got through. She was telling me to call you and ask you to come.”

“You could say that,” Ruby replied. Her eyes were open now, and she was sounding like herself, not nearly as spacey as she had a few moments ago. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “You're not sorry you called, are you? You're not sorry I came?”

“Sorry?” Claire's eyes widened. “Oh
no
, Ruby. Calling you was the best thing I've done since I've been here. You've changed the way I see everything, in just a few hours.” She gave Ruby an expectant look. “Okay. So now that we've got that straightened out, what does she want us to do? If we do it, will she go away and leave us alone?”

“Not us,” Ruby said. “You.”

“
Me
? But I can't—”

“Yes, you can. And if you do, she'll finally be able to let go. She'll be able to leave this place.” Ruby paused, half-turning her head as if she were listening to a correction, then nodding. “Well, not leave—at least, not entirely, and not right away. But she will agree not to intrude on your use of this place. She'll stop trying to get your attention.”

“Coexistence with a resident spirit.” Claire made a face. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“We coexist with them all the time, Claire,” Ruby said. “Not always like
this,
it's true. But they're all around us, and sometimes they need us. When that happens, we must do what we can. Like now.”

Coexisting with the dead? Well, maybe. But I wasn't scoffing. I could hear the conviction in Ruby's voice and had to respect her belief, which comes from a dimension of experience that I have no knowledge of—not personally, that is. I watched her carefully, wondering whether this experience, this encounter with Rachel, might mark a turning point for her, as it apparently did for Claire.

“Well, I suppose.” Claire sounded as if she, like me, was not convinced. “But I still don't know what I can actually do.”

“You can do this,” Ruby said comfortably. “In fact, you're exactly what she's been looking for, which is why she's been so…well, pushy, I guess you'd say. You're a writer. You have lots of publishing experience. And you've been planning to write a book, haven't you?”

“That's true.” Claire frowned. “But I'm not sure what kind of book I—”

“No buts.” Ruby sat up straighter. “Rachel has a book in mind.”

“A book!” Claire exclaimed blankly. “A book about
what
, for Pete's sake? What could a ghost possibly—”

“A book about the hurricane. About what happened to her family, her neighbors, the whole city of Galveston. She wants you to tell her story.”

“But I don't
know
her story,” Claire protested. “And if she thinks she's going to set up shop in my head and start dictating—”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Ruby said hurriedly. “No dictation. But she
has
made some notes. In fact, she's made quite a lot of notes. And there are clippings and photos and old letters.” She gestured toward a table against the wall. “It's all in that stack of scrapbooks and papers over there—a treasure trove of historical material, most of which doesn't exist anywhere else. Hazel was supposed to be helping her with it, but she just didn't have the writing skills. And Rachel didn't, either. She tried, back when she was still alive, but her feelings about the story just kept getting in her way—and anyway, her spelling is atrocious. So she wants you to do it for her.”

“Oh no,” Claire groaned. “Don't tell me this is all about my being a
ghost
writer?”

It was too much. I couldn't help it. I snickered.

Ruby gave me a long, hard, and very dirty look. “Rachel doesn't think it's funny,” she said stiffly.

“And neither do I,” Claire said in a huffy tone. “Ghostwriting is serious business. Nobody does it for fun.”

“Sorry,” I sputtered. “I apologize. But this is just too crazy for words, Ruby. I think all three of us must be certifiable. We're sitting here acting as if we've been communicating with a ghost who wants to employ a writer to tell her story because she—”

“Stop, China,” Ruby said firmly. “You have already apologized. Don't make it worse.” She turned back to Claire. “Rachel would like you to know that you can handle this any way you want.”

“What are you?” Claire asked wryly. “Her agent?”

Ruby paid no attention. “She says that you could fictionalize it—turn the whole story into a novel about the storm. Or you could write something more factual, with photographs and newspaper clippings. She saved everything she could find. She even wrote to relatives and collected the photographs of the family and the house that she'd sent them before the hurricane.” Ruby leaned forward. “Personally, I think she might have been a bit obsessive about it, but I suppose that was part of her problem. Anyway, you'll find plenty of research material, already organized.”

The wind had momentarily calmed, but the rain seemed to be coming down harder, thudding against the walls and the windows with that steady, relentless thrumming that people in the Gulf states are far too familiar with. When you're outdoors in one of these tropical downpours, it feels like you're standing under a waterfall. You're drenched to the skin in seconds. If you're caught on the highway, your windshield wipers will give up in
despair. The only thing you can do is pull as far off the road as you can get and turn off your lights to lessen the chance that you'll be rear-ended.

“Research materials, already organized.” Claire's laugh was ironic. “Sounds like she has it all planned. But I don't suppose I should be surprised. Any ghost who goes around hurling lightning bolts at trees to get a writer's attention—”

“She didn't have anything to do with that,” Ruby protested. “It wasn't
her
lightning bolt. Not all natural phenomena are
super
natural, you know. Some are just…well, just ordinary. Just natural.”

“Oh,
right
,” Claire said, adding skeptically, “Maybe it would be a good idea if I had a contract. Do you think? I mean, how do I know that if I write her book, she'll go away and—”

“Not go away entirely,” Ruby corrected her. “It might take a while to release herself from this place, and even then, she would like the freedom to come and go.”

I refrained from rolling my eyes at the thought of a roving ghost traveling here and there.

Ruby went on. “But she does agree that she'll stop trying to get your attention. You can go on with your plans for the bed-and-breakfast.”

“Well, sure,” Claire replied argumentatively. “She can
agree
to it while we're sitting here. But that doesn't mean she won't start ringing bells and crying in the night once you've gone back to Pecan Springs. How do I know I can trust her?”

Ruby lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “I guess you'll just have to get started on the project and see what happens. If there's a problem, I'd be glad to come back and—”

She didn't get to complete her offer. She was interrupted by the loud crash of smashing glass, very close. Claire almost jumped out of her skin.

“That sounded like the window at the end of the hall,” she said, resigned.
“I need to find something to put over it, so the rain doesn't flood the hall and ruin the beautiful wood floor.” She gave Ruby a chiding look. “That's why I always had to mop up after Rachel. I'd hate for that floor to get damaged, even if it was only ‘phantom' rain.” Under her breath, she muttered, “Sure looked wet to me.”