The Greatest Gift (A Darcy Sweet Mystery) (5 page)

"Do you understand?" he asked.

Darcy was startled out of her trance.  With a deep breath she came back to herself, pushing up and into reality like a swimmer surfacing from a deep dive.  Her lungs burned to fill with air and her heart thumped hard in her chest.  The world spun and refused to stand right side up.

"Darcy?  Darcy
are you all right?"  Her mother's voice was frantic and she was suddenly grabbing Darcy by the arms and pulling her up from the floor.

Crying out, Darcy nearly fell over onto her knees.  Her legs were numb from sitting in one position for so long.  Feeling rushed back into them
on pins and needles as vertigo swept over her.  Which way was up?  "Mom," she said weakly, her tongue thick.  "Mom, don't!  I can't…I need a minute."

Her mother supported her until her knees stopped shaking.  When she was able, Darcy gingerly hobbled over to the couch and sat down.  "You can't pull me out of a
communication like that, mom.  You have to let my body ease back into the world of the living.  Otherwise I can get physically sick or fall over on my face and break something."

It was then that Darcy noticed how pale her mother's face was.  She hadn't been prepared for what she'd seen.  Her daughter, deep in a trance, probably looking like she was dead.  How long had she been in the meditative state?  Holding her head with one hand she turned to the clock on the wall and found it was almost noon.  Hours.  She'd been in that state for hours.  During a
communication, time could seem to move slower or faster than it really did.  She could be in that state for just a few minutes and live a whole lifetime.  Or, she could spend a day lost to the trance and have it feel like only a few seconds.

To a ghost, time had no meaning.

"Mom, where's Smudge?" she asked.  It was all she could do to get that question out.  A headache had bloomed with throbbing intensity behind her eyes.  She needed aspirin and caffeine, and a nice soft pillow would be great.  First, though, she was worried about her cat.  Where was he?

"He jumped away as soon as you, uh, woke
up," her mother explained.  "Dear me, Darcy.  Is it always like this?  I mean, when you go talking to ghosts in your head?"

She had to laugh at the way her mom said that.  Talking to ghosts in her head.  Well.  She guessed that was as close to the truth as anything else.  "Sometimes.  Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder."

As if she could tell what Darcy had been thinking, her mother ran to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water and two aspirin.  Darcy took them gratefully, even though a nice tall glass of soda would have been better.

"Did you find out what you needed to know?"
her mom asked.

Darcy swallowed back the aspirin,
then drank the rest of the water in one long swallow.  "Sort of," she answered.  "At least I have a place to start."

Puzzle pieces that didn't fit.  That's what Darcy had.  Lots of them.  The door in Belinda's living room that lead to a downstairs space.  A poltergeist. 
Dominic's strong love for Belinda.

Right now the pieces didn't even form a picture, let alone anything useful.  She'd need to talk to Belinda again. 
Just not now.

Now, she was meeting
Jon.

Hard to think of it as a date.
  "Meeting" was the best she could come up with.  Her stomach was in more of a knot now than it had been when her mother had pulled her unexpectedly from her connection with Dominic.  It had been a while, a few months, since she'd seen Jon.  It was a little unnerving to see how nervous she was. She and Jon had lived together, for Pete's sake.  There was no reason to have these butterflies just going to lunch with him.

Her insides did another little flutter as if to show her how wrong she was.  It made her laugh and scold herself for acting like a child.
  It didn't keep her from twisting her ring around her finger like a good luck charm.

The La Di Da Deli had a meager selection of lunch sandwiches and that sort of thing but there weren't all that many places in Misty Hollow to sit down and grab a bite to eat.  There had been others when Darcy first came to live here, like the Hot Dog Shack, but now there wa
s only Clara Barstow's deli and Helen Nelson's café a little further up the street.  Jon probably would have taken her somewhere fancier over in Oak Hollow, but they'd blown that chance.

She sighed as she pushed through the door to the deli, making the little bell above the door ring.  Would things between Jon and her ever change?

Today, like on most Sundays, the deli had a moderate crowd in it.  Darcy recognized a few people as she scanned around the room for Jon.  They waved, she waved back, and hoped they didn't think she was being rude when she didn't take the time to talk. 

She couldn't help the way
her breath caught when she saw him.  He was wearing dark blue jeans and a black t-shirt that outlined his muscular body.  It wasn't very often that he dressed down like this.  He was almost always in slacks and dress shirts as if he was expecting to get called into work at any moment.  Just the fact that he wasn't dressed like that today meant so much to Darcy.  It was like he was saying he was here just for her.

He had been concentrating on his coffee cup, just sitting and waiting, but when he saw her
he smiled.  It was that smile that he always gave only to her.  His dark hair was gorgeous and his blue eyes pierced her from across the room.  She felt like it was the first moment she'd met him all over again.  Like none of the stuff since then had happened. 

Only, it had.

Such a simple thought, but it was enough to bring her back down to earth.  Jon was here.  He was making the effort.  That was a start, but that was all it was.

She went over to him, sitting in the chair opposite him at the little round table. 
She'd showered and changed into a slim white summer dress and even put on a little makeup.  Not something she did very often, but she had wanted to look nice for Jon.

Butterflies fluttered
through her stomach again.  Jon was the only man who could make her feel like a little girl with first date jitters.  "Hi," she said to him, hoping her coiled emotions weren't obvious on her face. 

"Hi," he said back
.  "Sorry about yesterday.  That burglary case is really taking up a lot of my time."

"You always did put everything you had into your work."

"Not everything."  His smile put a thousand different meanings into those two words.

They ordered lunch, making small talk about things in their lives.  Darcy told Jon all about her mother's upcoming wedding, and about how well the book store was doing now, and the other little bits of life here in Misty Hollow that he'd been missing out on.  He talked about his new job and his cases.  Funny, she thought, but when he talked about this great new job he had left her for, he didn't sound happy.  Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part.

The waitress came back with their orders—a club sandwich for him and a chicken salad sandwich for her—just as Darcy was starting to tell Jon about Belinda Franco.

"Oh, Belinda?" the waitress said, breaking into their conversation.  "She's such a dear woman, isn't she?  So full of life. 
Especially at her age."

Darcy was surprised. 
The name on the waitress' tag was Rita.  Darcy knew her from around town but didn't really know her.  She'd only been working here at the deli for a few weeks, if Darcy remembered correctly.  Rita Casey, a niece or granddaughter to one of the members of Darcy's book club.  She was a plump, red-headed woman with far too much blue eyeshadow on and several rings with diamonds and emeralds in their settings.  She set the plates down and went to head off to another table.

"Wait, Rita," Darcy said.  "How do you know Belinda?"

"Oh, that was my job before this one.  Be right there, honey."  Rita held a finger up, talking to someone who had called for her attention.  Then she turned back to Darcy.  "See, I was Belinda's house cleaner for about a year.  Upstairs and downstairs, too.  I absolutely love her to death.  Nice woman.  She paid me good, too.  Enjoy your meals."

Then she went off to the other table.  Darcy watched
her for a moment, wheels spinning in her mind.  When she turned back she found Jon smiling at her.

"What?" she asked him.

"I forgot how much I miss watching you do your thing."

"Doing my thing?"  Darcy arched an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth curling up.  "What's that
supposed to mean?  I have a thing?"

"Yes, you do.  You were always great at investigating without really questioning people.  I have officers working under me now who could learn a few
things from you."  He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed it, then added, "I missed you."

She turned her plate
on the table but didn't pick up her sandwich.  "You could have come home anytime."

He nodded.  "I know.  I was trying to work through some things.  Plus, you know, I thought this job would be good for me."

"Thought it would?" she said, pouncing on those words.  "You mean it wasn't?"

"Oh, no," he protested immediately.  "I didn't mean it like that.  It's a great opportunit
y.  Senior Investigator.  It's a higher rank than I could ever get here in Misty Hollow short of becoming Chief.  The work is challenging and I have men working under me.  It's a great opportunity.  It's not that at all."

"Then
what?"

"I thought it would be fulfilling," he admitted.  "I thought it would help me work through…you know.  All that stuff we left between us."

All that stuff.  That was putting it mildly.  "Do you remember," she asked him, "when we had just started dating?  One of your old cases came back up, the one where the murderer was leaving cryptic poems.  Remember?"

"I remember," he said.  "There was a lot of suspicion that I was involved in that.  You helped clear my name."

She smiled at the memory.  "Right.  Then, when it was over you told me that you didn't have any more secrets in your life.  Remember that?"

His smile soured, but he nodded.  "Yes.  That's what I told you.  I kind of forgot one or two, didn't I?"

"Yes."  She bit into her sandwich now.  It tasted good, fresh and tangy, but she hardly noticed.  She just wanted an excuse to collect her thoughts for a moment.  When she swallowed, she said, "Your sister.  Your father.  Those were things you should have told me about, if you were serious about being with me."

Jon played with his fork.  "I know.  That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. 
Now, I mean.  I know I screwed up.  The way we left things, that was my fault.  I shouldn't have sprung those things on you like I did."

"It w
asn't all your fault."  She meant it.  She had run the scene over several times in her mind.  Their final argument, when he had walked out of her life.  "Jon, we could have worked through it.  All you had to do was stay and work with me."

He was staring at his half eaten sandwich, at the
table, at the door to the deli.  Anywhere but at her.  "What if I said I wanted to come back?"

She was stunned.  At first she didn't know what to say.  He took the pressure off her
as he reached across to hold her hand on the table.  "I'm serious, Darcy.  I've thought about this every night since we split up, and every night I get more and more certain that I did the wrong thing by taking the job over in Oak Hollow."

Darcy's fingers tingled where his hand touched her.  She was sure her face must be red right up to the tips of her ears.  He was saying exactly what she wanted to hear. 
All the right words in all the right ways.

Before she could try to put her
own thoughts into words, Rita came back over to their table.

"Anything else for you two?" she asked them.  "The sandwiches okay?"

Jon sat back, taking his hand away, and Darcy wished they had met somewhere more private where they wouldn't be interrupted.  Suddenly she was aware of a dozen pairs of eyes around the room, watching.  "No, thank you," she said to Rita.  "We're good."

"All righty then."
  Rita winked at her, then snapped her fingers.  "Hey, Darcy, could you tell Belinda I said hi?  Maybe mention I'm still available to help her out around the house if she needs it."

"I suppose I can do that."  Darcy man
aged a smile.  A thought had occurred to her. "Why did you stop working for Belinda?"

Rita leaned in closer in a conspiratorial way.  "Oh, she said she was running out of money.  Fixed budget, and all that, you know?  But I heard different."  She lowered her voice to a whisper.  "Supposedly there was
a lot of money that her husband left to her.  The man was a real tightwad from what I heard.  Had lots of money to pass on.  So, when she's ready to have someone help her out again, you tell her I'm ready to come back."

Rita certainly sounded eager to
get back into Belinda's employment.  "I'll tell her," Darcy promised.  Rita winked a thank you and went off again.