Writ on Water (31 page)

“I won't forget,” Chloe promised as more people ran into the room and a nurse took her firmly by the arm and propelled her out of the way.

“Nancy!” MacGregor choked.

Chloe stood outside the door for a moment, but found the sounds beyond the curtain to be unbearable. Not knowing what else to do, she fled for the waiting room, hoping Rory was there.

She was terribly afraid that this time, MacGregor really was dying.

Death is an evil—the gods have so judged;
had it been good, they would die.
—Sappho

MacGregor was dead. The words, though not the acceptance of them, had been all that had occupied Chloe's mind for the last three days while arrangements for MacGregor's cremation and memorial service were made. Because there had been no one to go with her to the cemetery while she continued her work, even if she had had the heart to be there with MacGregor dead, there had been nothing to do except stay at the house where all Riverview mourned MacGregor's passing with old-fashioned crepe bows on the doorknockers and shrouded mirrors. Even the grandfather clock in the library had been stopped, so its chimes did not strike. It was creepy and depressing.

Roland Lachaise had arrived at Riverview on the day following MacGregor's death, but rather than being a comfort to her, her employer had
looked so bereft that Chloe spent much of her time trying to comfort him on his loss instead of the other way around.

And, after all, why should he comfort her? He didn't know that she was also bereaved. There wasn't any good way to make clear the bond she had formed with MacGregor without explaining everything that had happened at Riverview, including Claude's disappearance and Isaac's murder. So she said nothing. Instinctively, she had a feeling that anyone who had not been in the trenches with them the last couple of weeks could ever understand the union that had evolved between her and the Patricks because of their shared wariness of Sheriff Bell.

Her days were understandably lonely, but she was all alone in the evenings too. That was much worse. Rory had not sought out her company at night since the day MacGregor died, a fact that bothered her tremendously, though she supposed that perhaps he stayed away lately because of Roland being in residence and having some misguided chivalrous impulse to protect her from her boss's displeasure at her unprofessional behavior. It was a nice thought, but Roland was bound to suspect something when she failed to return to Atlanta by the end of the week.

Whatever his reasons for avoiding her at night, Rory wasn't around a great deal at any other time either. And when he was . . . It wasn't that Rory was cold to her. He was always kind during the
day when she bumped into him, but he was obviously distracted when they talked and he was often away at the nursery for hours at a time.

At first Chloe had blamed his daytime distance on grief and the emotional drain of the logistics of orchestrating a sufficiently grand passage into the afterlife for his father. But Rory was managing those details, and also running his business, without any apparent difficulty. And as time went on, and some of the emotional cloud lifted from around her brain, Chloe began to think again.

Was Rory was avoiding her? Not Riverview and its ritualized unhappiness, but her?

If so—
why?
Did he regret their affair? Or was it something else? Something connected with Claude and Isaac that hadn't been aired when they were telling each other the truth?

Of course, Rory had never said that he was telling her the truth. The admissions had all been on her side.

It was only after this suspicion entered her besotted brain, and she started thinking back with an eye for detail, that she recalled her last conversation with MacGregor. Given her undivided attention, a paradigm shifted, and the seed that had so painfully occupied her subconscious for the last week finally sprouted. It began to heave its tendrils of doubt out into her waking thoughts, and other, unpleasant explanations for Rory's avoidance of Riverview began presenting themselves.

The fruit of knowledge—or at least of her
supposition—was bitter. Once she tasted the crop of speculation, all her ugly suspicions and insecurities popped out again, demanding to be examined. Horrors propagated like weeds. She couldn't dig them out fast enough to ever get ahead, and Chloe was finally forced into asking herself some of the nasty questions she had shelved after becoming Rory's lover. Her tidy explanation of what had happened with Isaac and Claude, which had begun to crumble when it was subjected to mental pressure, was melted down completely in the crucible of logic.

Instead of fighting her intuition, she now began to listen to it when it whispered. And open to accepting unpleasant facts, she began to have strange visions every time she stood idle—snippets of scenes like trailers for a B movie. The most persistent image was of Roger rubbing at Claude, rubbing at Claude's bedroom door, then rubbing on the black door that led into tomb forty-six. It was like a connect-the-dot puzzle, or a math equation: a equals b, b equals c, therefore a equals c.

At first she wondered if she weren't receiving some guidance from beyond the grave, but forced herself to immediately eject such irrational credulities from her brain. She was
not
her Granny Claire, and she couldn't afford such superstition about the dead if she were to continue with her present line of work. If she believed that the dead could talk to her, could invade her brain
with messages, she would never be able to set foot in a cemetery again.

But the spells—the mental pictures—persisted, and minus the presence of paranormal interference, no tangible reason for the strange and ghastly visions that presented themselves could be found. It was as if the apparitions had inserted themselves into her psyche and would not go away, not even when she slept.

Yet, in spite of everything, the nightmares and suspicions, she wished that Rory was there with her. Maybe his presence at her side would keep the hallucinations away when she slept.

And maybe, her conscience said sharply, she needed to know the truth to end the indisposition.

Proof either way was attainable, but for days she did not seek it out. The exorcism of discovery might work to end her visions, but it seemed too rude a thing to do while observing MacGregor's death.

And . . . she was afraid.

Of course, the very fear that made her hesitate to know the truth was also a shameful goad. Thanks to Granny Claire's insistence that Chloe was going to start having the Sight, would one day have to testify for the dead and dying, she felt she had to act to disprove the notion of psychic channeling. Having some form of ESP she could accept—but not messages from the dead!

There were other matters at stake, too. Could she walk away and leave her crazy fear unchallenged
and still retain any self-respect? If she backed away from this situation, wouldn't the horror only mature and breed other fears when she went on to a new job and her imagination again caught fire? And more practically, if she let the cemetery grow over without investigating, if she never knew for certain what was in tomb forty-six, could she ever really forget what had happened here?

But on the other hand
. . . Chloe got up and took a turn about the bedroom, feeling confined and restless.

Could she live with the answers if her new fears proved factual? And whatever would she say to Rory if they were correct? True or false, could she ever face him again after proving her lack of trust? There was historic precedent to consider. The messenger often got blamed for bad news.

Chloe looked out her bedroom window. It was dark enough for twilight, though it was only just past noon. The clouds overhead brooded. The storm the Munsons had predicted earlier that week had finally arrived, and the Atlantic billows were swollen with rain. She could only wonder why the tempest hadn't broken yet. Perhaps it waited on MacGregor. Maybe the storm would hold back its violent tears until after the memorial service.

Maybe it held back so she would have a last chance to tell someone about the car in the river
.

It was a foreign thought. Chloe shivered.

“Gran?”

“And why haven't you come to me about this nasty problem?” the voice of Granny Claire asked, as the light in the room dimmed. Chloe was willing to bet that though these bulbs had dimmed by half, the rest of the house remained bright.

Of course, there was a better explanation. She was imaging things. Chloe didn't turn from the window. Her grandmother wasn't really there—couldn't be there—so it didn't matter if she refused to look behind her.

Still, hallucination or manifestation, she felt compelled to answer.

“Take a wild guess, Gran. Why wouldn't I come to you in my hour of need?”

“Because you're still young and perhaps as stupid as I always feared.”

“Yeah, that must be it. It couldn't have anything to do with you being nasty and hurting me every chance you got.”

“Nasty I may be, but I know one thing. You can't order this power, girl. All you can do is find order in it. There are tools that can help. I can help, if you quit being stubborn and ask me. . . . I can't believe you're my only heir.”

“Fine. Then, help. Tell me what to do.”

“Not so fast. What do you want—truth or happiness? And try not to be a fool. Tell me what you really want.”

Chloe's brows pulled together. The nasty voice
certainly sounded like Granny Claire was actually in the room.

“Of course it's really me, you idiot girl. I don't have to
be
there to
be
there. It's all part of being psychic and sharing blood. Did you listen to anything I told you?”

“Fine, you're here but not here,” Chloe whispered desperately—to her grandmother, to her subconscious, or just to her imagination. “I want truth then. If you know it. Tell me what happened. What does Rory know?”

Her grandmother snorted, and Chloe could feel her anger and contempt like a physical blow.

“I'm disappointed in you, but hardly surprised. You're afraid of losing Rory and so you lie—even to yourself. You don't want the whole truth, so it's a coward's truth you shall have.” The room darkened further. “You can quit worrying. You're safe with your young man. He's as innocent as you are in this matter. You can be happy, too, if you ignore anything unpleasant that comes bubbling up in your dreams. He's very wealthy. Keep your mouth shut and grow some irises and live in a dead man's mansion.”

Chloe snorted. “Like that will work if I keep dreaming.”

“If you're going to be an ignorant fool, you may as well be a rich one,” Gran insisted.

“I'm not a fool—and anyone would be afraid to know these things. Anyone normal. Go away,”
she said. “I don't want you or your Sight. Neither has ever helped me or made me happy.”

“Suit yourself. You always do. But the Sight is there to stay. You're going to have to make peace with it.”

And as suddenly as she had arrived, Granny Claire was gone. Chloe looked down at the courtyard as the room behind her returned to normal brightness.

Inner vision gave way to outer vision, and she finally grew aware of what her eyes were seeing. There was a harsh wind waiting out there. With no rain to toss about, it had discovered some autumnal leavings to sport with, and it drove the desiccated remains before it with dry clatters. They rose up in giant arcs, graceful and tawny with the odd storm light showing through their skeletal veins. One dead maple pressed itself against the glass and clung there desperately as the wind tore at it.

She laid a hand against the pane, her fingers trembling slightly as she traced the curled edges of the buffeted leaf. Poor thing, naked and shivering, forced to hard places against its will. It reminded her so much of her own helpless situation.

Only, she wasn't helpless. Not really. That was just her reaction to an old ingrained fear of her grandmother. There were two hours yet before the service. Plenty of time to go to the cemetery. If that was what she wanted to do.

Granny Claire was wrong about her. She wasn't a coward. Chloe sat down abruptly and pulled off her heels and stockings. God help her, but she
had
to know if her suspicions were true. She wouldn't tell Roland—wouldn't tell Rory—she would just go and find her answers.

She would deal with the consequences of knowledge later.

Chloe stared at the strange light that filled up the rustling woods and bathed the monuments in a green haze. She wondered distantly if the nightmare color was all in her head. There was certainly a shrieking disharmony between the peacefulness of the abandoned cemetery and the horrible suspicions in her brain.

Today she didn't linger at any of the monuments, especially Nancy's library. She was on a mission and went straight to Edana and Calvin's tomb.

The dark vines along the path had grown feral and had lost all sense of their former borders until they overgrew most of trail to tomb forty-six. This new storm would trigger more hysterical growth. In a week, the cemetery could be swallowed. It was what Rory wanted.

Chloe sniffed the rank and musty air. It reminded her vividly of the nightmare she had had before coming to Riverview. The air was full of the smell of ghosts and other hauntings . . . and it was new. Until a week ago, the cemetery had been a peaceful place. Now restless spirits walked.

It seemed an omen that Roger was already there at the lordly gray death house, waiting for her on the steps, tail twitching impatiently.

“Have you been waiting long, cat?” she whispered.

Her hands shook as she pulled out the stolen key and walked carefully over the creeper-covered path. She half expected the vines to wrap about her ankles and drag her back from the tomb. Yet nothing touched her as she walked, and she made it to the dark wood door that separated the dead from the living without being molested. She paused there, giving herself one last chance to turn back, not to violate the trust that had been placed in her, the chance not to know the horrible truth.