A Stillness of Chimes (36 page)

Cassie glared at the bedside clock. Five? Seriously, she was awake at five?
Eastern?

She’d stayed up half the night talking to Drew—wonderful, adorable Drew—but then she’d tossed and turned for hours, trying to imagine their unsettled future. Might as well get up and keep looking for that blasted Jean Naté, but she was starting to doubt Laura’s crazy accusations.

Wrapped in a warm robe she’d snagged from her mom’s closet earlier in the week, Cassie padded slowly down the hallway toward the bathroom and tried to decide which room to search next. She didn’t want to make a lot of noise while her parents were sleeping.

Then she noticed a light under the door to the scrapping room.

Her mom wouldn’t be up so early … would she?

Slowly, Cassie turned the doorknob. Slowly, she opened the door.

In her favorite flannel pajamas, her mother was sound asleep in her comfy swivel chair in front of the cabinet where she kept her supplies. Her mouth was open, and she was snoring ever so faintly.

Cassie tiptoed across the room to the worktable. A half-finished scrapbook lay open to pages devoted to photos of Trevor. They were artistically arranged, embellished with stickers and shiny confetti, and captioned neatly.

“Halloween—Trevor as Captian Jack,” one of the captions read. The misspelled word was glaringly obvious.

Cassie looked back at her mother and was struck by the odd placement of her chair, smack-dab in front of the cabinet. As if she were guarding it.

Pondering her options, Cassie realized she couldn’t open either of the cabinet doors without nudging her mom’s legs aside and waking her up. But there’d be no better way to startle her into an unrehearsed reaction.

Cassie approached, quickly but quietly. She bent over and opened the right-hand door until it bumped against her mother’s leg.

“Oops,” Cassie said cheerfully. “Sorry. ’Scuse me.”

“Mmm?”

“Scootch over a little, please.”

Still half-asleep, Ardelle obeyed. She even scooted her chair a little, making things easier. But when Cassie opened the door fully, Ardelle came fully awake.

“Get out of my cabinet!”

“Too late.” Cassie reached for the tiny bottle of Jean Naté. “Oh, Mom. What else have you got?”

Sean ached with fatigue as he and his brother trudged back to the construction site, just past dawn. What a waste of time. They’d sat on the cold ground all night but hadn’t seen or heard anything except that faint, metallic ping. And birds and bugs. And—maybe—someone laughing at them.

Long before dawn, birds had started calling. Mosquitoes woke up, hungry. A big, hazy peach of a sun came up. Hoping for a sign of life, they’d stayed a few more minutes. No dice.

Keith, facing a day of work on no sleep, drove away first. The taillights of his truck disappeared around the curve as Sean was still climbing into his own truck.

A quarter mile down Porter Road, he spotted Granny Colfax walking the other way. There wasn’t much traffic yet, just a few people headed out to start their ordinary days. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one of those.

He swung into Laura’s driveway and rubbed his eyes. What was her car doing there? She was supposed to be at
his
house. But a few lights were on inside, and everything looked normal. Maybe she woke early and came home to feed the cat.

He climbed out and headed up the steps. The door swung open. She stood in the doorway, wearing her mom’s black-and-white bandanna.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.” He stopped two feet away from her, noticing the circles under her eyes. “Sleep okay?”

“Um, no.” A faint blush stole across her cheeks. “I was up all night. Mostly.”

“You didn’t stay at my house, did you?”

She shook her head.

“Why not? This is the second time you said you’d stay somewhere else and then reneged on it.”

“I wanted to be here in case my dad came back. And maybe he did. At three in the morning.” Her eyes flickered to his left. “I opened the door, and somebody was on the porch.” She pointed. “Right there. Whoever it was, he ran right past me.”

No wonder they’d had no luck by the cabin. Elliott had been at the house? On the porch?

“You opened the door in the middle of the night?”

“I was letting Mikey back in, all right? And then my dad—or whoever it was—came from the corner of the porch. I screamed and slammed the door. He ran off the porch, limping. I yelled through the door because I thought it might be Dad.” Her lips trembled. “But he didn’t come back.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“No, it was too dark—”

“Dark?” He looked up at the porch ceiling, where the high-intensity bulbs should have been blazing until full light. “What happened to the security lights?”

“I turned them off so if anyone was out there, they couldn’t see me.”

He shook his head, but he couldn’t chide her. He’d done the same thing—but not at three in the morning.

She jerked in a short, sharp breath, her bravado dissolving. “I sl-slammed the door so fast. I—No! Mikey!”

The cat had darted outside again, past both of them. Now he was hightailing it toward the road. For an old cat, Mikey sure could move.

Laura ran down the steps, doing the “Here-kitty-kitty-kitty” routine that usually brought the cat on the double. Not this time. Mikey was gone in seconds, disappearing into the tall roadside weeds.

“We shouldn’t have been standing there with the door open,” she said, stomping up the steps. “He’d better not get hit.”

Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so edgy. He couldn’t blame her, but he wasn’t in the mood to worry about a cat.

He held the door open for her and followed her into the warmth of the house. “What time did this happen?”

“About three.”

“Three. That’s right. You told me.” Several hours after he and Keith had heard the noise near the cabin. So that could have been Elliott too.

Or Dale. Or a stranger. The man on the porch might have been a stranger too.

Or even Ardelle. Was it possible? Nothing had gone missing since he’d changed the locks, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try to get in. She didn’t live within walking distance anymore, though.

It was already nearly full light. Afraid they were running out of time somehow, Sean paced the room, trying to think. Trying to focus.

“If it was your dad, why didn’t he answer when you called out?”

“I don’t know, Sean. Same possibilities we’ve talked about over and over again. Maybe he was more afraid of me than I was of him.”

Sean shook his head, still trying to put everything together, and remembered the theory that had occurred to him in the middle of the night. If Laura was right about Gibby and Jess, it could explain not only Elliott’s disappearance but also his reappearance. Maybe he’d wanted revenge on Gibby but hadn’t wanted to hurt Jess by acting on the impulse while she was alive. But if Elliott had somehow learned that she’d passed away, he might have resurfaced … just when Gibby would be in town.

Far away, a faint clang reminded Sean that the weekend was on its way. The PA system would start the canned music soon. Tonight the live bands would play. Main Street would be blocked off and swarming with tourists and locals. Downtown would smell like funnel cakes and cotton candy and beer. It seemed like some faraway planet, some silly world he used to live in.

Laura’s hand on his arm jolted him. “What’s wrong, Sean?”

He tried to smile. “Just about everything.” Reaching with his other hand to pat hers, he noticed a yellowing bruise at her elbow. “What happened there?”

“It’s nothing, really. Just a bruise.”

Her strange evasiveness piqued his curiosity. “How did it happen?”

“I … well. You know, sometimes bruises just happen and you hardly remember how, later.”

But this one completely encircled her arm in a pattern all too familiar.

“The truth, Laura.”

Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath, and she met his eyes. “Remember the day I gave you the songbooks? The day I ran into Dale in your driveway? He thought I was rude, so he grabbed my arm as I was walking away. That’s all.”

“That’s
all
?” Sean took her arm gently and examined the bruise. “He’s not getting away with this.”

“It’s no big deal,” she said, but there were tears in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid you would overreact.” She gave him an impish smile. “So prove me wrong, okay? Don’t overreact.”

“Our definitions of that word probably aren’t the same.”

“I know, but let it go. Please. A little ol’ bruise won’t matter if this is the day my dad comes back.” She dabbed the corners of her eyes with her fingertips. “Maybe he’ll sleep under his own roof tonight.”

She was pale. Exhausted. Shivering, probably not from cold but from nerves. Sean pulled her into his arms and leaned his head against hers, feeling her damp hair on his cheek and smelling her shampoo.

“Whatever happens, we’ll go through it together.” Closing his eyes, he flashed back to a hot August day. Laura, Cassie, and Tigger, their hands piled together with his, making a promise. “We’ll always be there for each other. Remember?”

Laura nodded but didn’t speak.

“When I say always, I mean always. The rest of our lives.”

She stiffened. She seemed to stop breathing.

He held his breath too, waiting. She had to know he was talking about marriage.

She looked up, her eyes shining with tears. “I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

She lowered her gaze to his chin. When she finally spoke, he could hardly hear her. “Your father.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Refusing to acknowledge that Dale is your father doesn’t change facts. And even though I know you’re nothing like him, I still … I worry. He must hate me like he hates my dad.”

“Don’t worry about it. Dale hates everybody.”

“He hates my dad in particular. For rescuing you.”

“Laura, we’ve been close since we were kids. I thought you’d always been able to get past how vile Dale is. But now—we don’t have to stay here. If you want me to move to Denver—or anywhere else—I will.”

She finally looked up, her eyes dark with sorrow. “What if my dad’s back in Prospect? What then?”

“Then we’ll figure something out. Together.”

A long shriek of squealing tires twisted in the air.

“Mikey,” Laura said with a catch in her voice. “Mikey’s been hit.”

“Or missed.” Sean looked out the window. “I’ll go see. Not just about the cat but about any signs that your visitor might have left behind.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. Please. We still aren’t sure who we’re dealing with. Stay inside, doors locked. I don’t care if the cat learns to speak English and comes back and says pretty please, don’t open the door to anybody but me.”

He stole a quick kiss and left her standing there. He ran to the road and looked in both directions but didn’t see a cat carcass anywhere.

He’d be elected gravedigger if the cat had finally bought the farm. He was already Laura’s locksmith, bodyguard, and detective. Who had time to run a business? Or talk a woman into marrying him?

From the window, Laura watched Sean cross the road, his hair rippling in the wind. He slowed on the grassy shoulder and climbed the steps to the churchyard. At the top, he checked the view in all directions. He descended the steps and started down the road, walking fast.

Somewhere on the north side of town, a slow-moving freight blew its mournful whistle. The train would roll through Prospect, past the streets that were blocked off for the weekend. Past the kudzu jungle that had overtaken the berry patch. The train would pick up speed and keep going, leaving the town far behind.

Wherever her dad was, he heard the whistle too. He was out there, somewhere. Listening.

Ardelle’s yellow convertible swung into view and came to a stop behind Sean’s truck. Cassie was at the wheel.

Forcing her face into some semblance of serenity, Laura opened the front door. Cassie hurried up the steps, holding a small cardboard box. One of those old, bronzy-green garden markers stuck out of it. Her face was pale; her hair unbrushed. No makeup, no jewelry, and her eyes were puffy. She might have just rolled out of bed, or maybe she’d been crying for hours.