Reunion (9 page)

“Yes?”

Gabriel handed him a card. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Husser.”

“Oh! The man from the security thingy. I’m Stevie, the Jill of all trades around here, if you know what I mean.” Then he gave Gabriel a considering glance. “Are you as straight as you look?”

Gabriel grinned. “Yep.”

“Such a waste,” Stevie murmured. “Oh well, I always say it never hurts to ask. Follow me, big boy. Sadie is expecting you.”

She sat in a chair by the window like a queen holding court. The regalness of her expression was exceeded only by the upturned nose of the Pekingese draped across her lap. The moment Gabriel entered the room, it began to yap.

Continuously.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

Monotonously.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

Sadie frowned and picked up the dog, dangling it from her hands like a mop head without a handle.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

“Stevie, come get Mimi. She’s being a bad girl today.”

The butler took the Peke, cuddling it against his chest as one would a child.

“Poor little Mimi. Doesn’t her like the big hunk…hmmm?”

Sadie frowned at Stevie and then gave Gabriel a nervous glance.

Confident of his place in her life, Stevie cuddled the dog, ignoring his mistress’s glare.

“You just come with Stevie. We’ll find you a treat. Want a treat? Hmmm? Does Stevie’s little sweetheart want a treat?”

“You don’t give her a treat for being bad,” Sadie argued.

“Oh, pooh,” Stevie said. “She’s never a bad girl, are you, sweetheart?” And he kissed the dog square on its flat little nose.

Sadie rolled her eyes as the pair left the room, then gave Gabriel a curious glance, assessing his reaction to her unorthodox household.

When he made no comment, the starch went out of Sadie’s attitude. She leaned back in the chair and smiled. “They both ignore me, but they also suit me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sadie stood abruptly. “Now, about this alarm system business. Explain it to me, young man. These days I’m too old to stand guard at the doors. I want to be able to sleep in my own bed without worrying about thieves.”

He nodded. “That can be arranged. I’ll explain the different aspects of security systems while you show me around, okay?”

Sadie slipped her hand beneath Gabriel’s elbow. “It would be my pleasure.”

It was ten minutes after four when Gabriel got home. He was exhausted, but satisfied with the way the day had gone. He tossed his keys toward a nearby table as he started upstairs—and missed. They fell to the floor in a clatter. Groaning beneath his breath, he went back to pick them up. As he reached downward, his hand passed through a beam of blue light.

“What the—”

He straightened, the keys forgotten, his gaze following the light to its source, and then realized it was nothing more than afternoon sunshine coming through the stained glass window over the front door. Once more he turned toward the stairs, and this time he noticed that the white tiles in the floor of the foyer were marbled with color, as well. He’d probably seen the sight a thousand times in his life, but today, it struck him as remarkable.

The colors flowed across the impromptu canvas, some bright and true, others running one into the other to make an entirely different shade. Mesmerized by the beauty, he turned toward the library, his mother’s name hovering on the edge of his lips. And then it hit him. She was gone.

He took a deep breath and looked back at the floor, trying to focus through tears. Like his life, the colors had begun to blur. His heart hurt. His hands shook. In that brief moment of joy, he’d forgotten that she was dead.

Rage surfaced—at the drunk who’d destroyed his world and at God for letting it happen. His hands clenched into fists. He took a deep, shuddering breath and lifted his chin, as if daring fate to strike another blow.

He was alone.

Laura stepped into the hallway just as Gabriel bent to pick up his keys. She started to call out to him but hesitated when she saw his expression changing from joy to rage. She didn’t know why, but something had obviously triggered a memory he didn’t want to face.

“Gabriel?”

He flinched. Laura. He’d forgotten she was here. Then he wondered how long she’d been watching him. From the expression on her face, long enough to know that he was rattled. It made him mad, both at himself for letting it happen and at her for being a witness to what he considered a weakness.

When Laura saw the telltale glitter of tears in his eyes, she forgot what she’d been going to say. Wanting only to comfort, she touched the side of his face, cupping his cheek with the palm of her hand.

“It gets better.”

Anger continued to spill into his mind, and he let it come, because it filled the emptiness within. Her hand was soft against his cheek, her compassion obvious, but he didn’t want her kindness. He didn’t need her pity. It was safer to rage—safer to hate. If he let himself weaken—even one tiny bit—he might come the rest of the way undone.

He lashed out as he moved out of reach. “What gets better? The nightmares? The loneliness? I know that. I’ll tell you something else I know. Your coming here was a mistake. This psychic business is starting to get on my nerves. The way I see it, you’re not much better than a voyeur. You can see what’s wrong, but you can’t fix it. So far, all you’ve done is assure me that I’m losing what’s left of my mind, which I already knew.”

She took his rebuke and let go of the pain that it caused her, because she knew where it had come from. He was sad and lonely—and she suspected that he was also afraid. And because she’d been where he was now, she forgave. She turned to him, her voice soft but strong.

“I never said I was perfect, and I didn’t come to fix anything. I came at your uncle Mike’s request, remember?”

At that point Gabriel had the grace to flush. An apology was hovering at the back of his mind, but Laura wasn’t through. She fixed him with a piercing stare that tied his belly in knots.

“I know how you feel. I’ve been where you are. It took me several years to remember that I could no longer pick up the phone and hear my mother or father’s voices. I miss them still. But you know what finally gave me comfort?”

He shook his head.

Laura’s chin trembled, but her voice didn’t waver. “When they died, they left something they cherished behind.”

“What?”

“Me. They left me.”

Shamed by what she’d said, he watched as she walked away. When he looked down at the floor, the colors were gone. All the way upstairs, he couldn’t quit thinking that Laura had taken more with her than her dignity when she’d left him standing.

The massive, two-story structure loomed in the darkness, a behemoth of brick and mortar with yellow eyes that glowed behind thin veils and loose shutters.

He stood within the shadows of a nearby tree, watching the silhouettes of the people as they moved about within. He pulled a cookie out of his pocket and began to eat as he leaned against the trunk of the tree. This was a good house. Maybe this was home. He wished someone would come out. If he could see their faces, then he would know. He took another bite, oblivious to the fact that the cookie was stale, and that the trash bin he’d pulled it from had also smelled of fish.

A cool night breeze ruffled his hair, playing with the thick, black strands and feathering them across his forehead. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air, and when he stepped out of the shadows, he had to duck to miss a low-hanging limb.

Dew had dampened the hems of his pant legs, but he didn’t seem to care. The roses dangling from his fist were limp. One of them had started to shed. There was a trail of petals from the tree under which he’d been standing to the doorstep on which he stopped.

Unaware of the doorbell just to his right, he knocked on the door and then waited. No one answered his call. He knocked again, harder.

Moments later, somewhere inside the big house, a dog began to bark.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

A low throb began at the back of his neck.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

His hands began to shake. The sound was coming closer.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

The urge to run was strong, but he needed to know if this was home. His memory was bad, but he felt a strong sense of self within the perimeters of this place, and he was tired of being lost.

A light suddenly flooded the place where he was standing. He blinked and then squinted, shading his eyes from the white burst of illumination. Before he could move, the door opened inwardly. At that point, his hopes fell. The man in the doorway was a stranger, but the feeling that he belonged here was stronger than his urge to run. Even though he could still hear the dog—even though the man grabbed his arm—even though…He stayed.

“Why…if it isn’t the hunk! I couldn’t be so lucky as to assume you’ve had a sudden change of mind. Did you forget something?”

“Is this home?” he asked.

The man’s quick burst of high-pitched laughter that followed his question made him flinch, but his sense of belonging was so strong that he still hesitated.

Yap. Yap. Yap.

The sound was coming closer now, and he pulled away. The man followed him outside.

“Hey, Gabriel…what’s wrong? I was just kidding about the come-on. Are you having car trouble or something? I’d be glad to call a tow for you.”

Yap. Yap. Yap.

Inside his head, the dog’s bark had become a shrill, high-pitched scream with no end.

Reason died.

And so did the dog.

It was over in seconds.

“You crazy son of a bitch!” Stevie shrieked. “What have you done?”

Then he erupted in a fit of rage that ended as swiftly as the dog’s bark had been silenced.

Moments later, there was only one man standing.

Tears streamed down his face as he stared at the man on the ground. His neck hurt. As he touched it, blood came away on his finger.

He shook his head. This wasn’t home. Home was good. This place was bad. He knelt to gather the roses he’d dropped. One of them had lost all its petals. He discarded the stem, leaving it beside the man’s body, then stood and walked away.

This hadn’t been home after all. But home was out there somewhere. He could feel it.

Laura woke up suddenly, gasping for air. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she pulled the covers up beneath her chin and peered into the dark corners of the room in which she slept, half expecting Gabriel to step out of the shadows. To her relief, there was no one there. She thrust a shaky hand through the tangles of her hair, trying to get past the dream. It was impossible to forget.

Gabriel with his hands on her arms—with his hands upon her shoulders—with his hands around her neck.

She shuddered uncontrollably, then rolled out of bed and bolted from the room. If she embarrassed herself tonight, she would apologize tomorrow, but for now, she had to know where he was.

The carpet runner was soft beneath her feet as she ran down the hall toward Gabriel’s room. She arrived to find the door ajar.

“Oh, Lord,” she muttered, and took a deep breath. When she looked inside, his bed was empty, just as she’d known it would be. “This isn’t happening. It was nothing but a bad dream.”

She turned away, staring up and down the hallway, half expecting to see him coming toward his room with a book and a drink. She reminded herself that the house was huge. Just because he wasn’t in his bed, that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he’d been unable to sleep. Then she remembered he hadn’t eaten much at dinner. Maybe he liked to indulge in late-night snacks. With a weary yawn, she started to go back to bed, then felt a rush of air against her cheek. Thinking it nothing more than a draft, she kept on walking. The sensation came again, this time more distinct, as if someone had just breathed against her skin. She stopped.

Go back. Go back.

The words came to her in rapid succession. Before she thought, she had turned around and was headed for the stairs.

This time she thought she heard a sigh, but she kept on walking. She was too tired, and it was too late, to consider the possibility of ghosts. Besides, she needed to know where Gabriel was before she closed her eyes again in this house. She started toward the stairs, praying with every step that it was going to be okay.

The piercing shriek of a siren blasted the serenity of the night. Gabriel woke with a start, wondering why his clothes were damp and his arms were cold. It took a moment for him to realize that he was lying on the ground, and another moment for the realization to soak in that he’d been asleep beneath the stand of sugar leaf maple trees at the end of the grounds.

Unable to believe where he was, he rolled over and then sat up with a groan. It had happened again. As he was willing himself to move, he became aware of a burning pain at the side of his neck and touched it gingerly. Even though it was dark, he could see blood on the ends of his fingers.