Rose for Rose: Book Two in the Angels' Mirror Series (27 page)

Forty

Wood Village, Oregon… August 29, 2013

Eugenie stepped into the restroom a moment to catch her breath. There had been so many customers, she was sure it had to be a record.

The sounds of clanking dishes landing in the sink combined with Rhoda howling in the yard behind the kitchen. Thankfully, the chickens couldn’t be heard over the din of customers coming in and out. Most of the time, rain or shine, she could hear them complaining and talking for hours on end.

After taking a few deep breaths to try to calm down, she checked her face in the mirror. There were red splotches, and the dark spots that had shown up a few days before were still there. Only now, they seemed even more evident.

When she’d phoned the doctor’s office, they said it wasn’t anything to worry about, but with Mark’s betrayal, Rose’s departure, and her move to Angelique’s, she’d wanted to make sure.

She just hoped she didn’t have to quit either of her jobs because of her health. Now that she’d be essentially on her own for a while as they tried to sort things out, it wouldn’t do her any good to lower her income. Besides, the day she’d left, she found out Mark had allowed his licensure to practice mental health lapse. He’d have to re-up if he wanted to make a living in his field, now, and he hadn’t even sounded like he wanted to.

And the last few days, he’d kept murmuring something about the missing girl he was
sure
didn’t really get killed by his friend.

Was he really obsessed with this whole thing? Seriously? When he had a family, and it was expanding now?

After quickly splashing her face with cool water, Eugenie took some deep breaths again, stretched, and went back out to work her tables.

At least she’d be done in another hour.

Her feet were killing her!

“Table five, ready to go,” Carolinia called out, startling her. The little bell was tapped again, and another table was called out, this time, one of hers. She swiftly moved to the counter corner and retrieved the tray, carefully carried it over to the guests at table seven, and set it down.

“Alright, let’s see. I’ve got two plates of Eggs Benedict and biscuits,” Eugenie said, watching their faces. When a nod from the far right and a finger on her left went up, she placed the plates. “I’ve got one chicken fried steak with French fries and green beans,” she continued, and placed it in front of the thin man who’d ordered it. “And so this must be yours,” she finished, putting down a plate of curried lamb over couscous, naan, and a side of greens, followed by a yoghurt cup to dip the bread in.

“Thanks,” the robustly built man who had ordered it said. His white-blonde hair glistened in the light, and it reminded her of Rose.

A pang of grief swept through her, and she smiled before walking away to wait for another order.

Please, Lord, help Rose and Jeanette to be safely back in Massachusetts now. And if not now, soon. And please, help them to call and let me know they arrived safely,
she prayed silently as another set of customers walked in the door. She watched in silence as Noah led them to a table that she’d cleared ten minutes before.

Since it was her table, she grabbed some menus and, making sure they were clean, took them to the waiting couple. They looked familiar; regulars.

“We actually know what we want already,” the elderly woman said, combing back her thin ebony hair with a thick-wristed hand. She smiled. “Nice seeing you again, young lady. You look like you’ve been ill. Are you alright?”

The gentleman who sat with her was as thick-haired and thin as she was plump and thin-haired. Both seemed to be in their late seventies or early eighties.

“I’m alright, thank you, ma’am. Just a little morning sickness lately, but I’ll be fine,” she replied before she could think of a better response. “So you know what you want?”

“Yes. The same thing we get every time we come.”

Eugenie tried to think back on the times they’d ordered. It was usually… uh-oh.

Here it came.

“We’d like spinach salads with crackers instead of croutons, and we’ll split a Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken, please,” the woman said with a smile. “And congratulations.”

From across the room, and over the din, she heard Leopold and Clementine chiming up, simultaneously. “Clemy hates crackers,” the bird said of herself, while Leo proclaimed that “spinach is for wimps!” A few people laughed, and Eugenie joined in, but honestly, it got old every time anyone ordered the spinach salad.

Eugenie probably heard it fifteen times a week or more, and she was a part-timer. Sometimes she wondered if couples like this one ordered it just to hear the Amazons speak. After all, they were entertaining.

When she got to the counter, she almost ran into Effie, who shared her shift. The woman shrugged her shoulders and kept moving.

“Table two,” Carolinia rang out, dinging the bell, even though they were both standing right there. She then took the order slip from Eugenie’s hand and smiled.

It was Effie’s table.

She’d have a few moments to breathe.

“Hello, Darling,” Clementine continued, “call 911. Clemy hates crackers!” and at that, as if on cue, Leopold began his siren imitation.

This time, there was a bigger chuckle.

A few people yelled out to the birds to quiet down, and others encouraged it. Finally, the smiling man from table seven walked over to the jukebox and popped in a dollar. The first track he selected wasn’t part of their 50’s selections, but it was Leopold’s favorite song.

Ice, Ice, Baby.

Leopold began to strut and dance around in his cage, as usual, and Clemy got out an occasional phrase.

Here we go again!

Just as Eugenie was about to check out, a familiar face stopped her in her tracks.

What was Justice doing here?

He’d never even been here, had he?

After he was seated, she stopped over to say hello.

“Hey, I was just heading out, but thought I’d say a quick hello. It’s Justice, right?”

The man was handsome, though she had tried not to notice over the years. Maybe she’d ignored it because she’d been dating Mark when she’d met him.

“If you don’t have anything to do right away, would you like to join me; get off your feet,” he asked, holding a hand out in welcome.

He had to know she was pregnant, but did he know she and Mark had separated?

Did it matter if he knew?

She was tired, and a break sounded nice before driving all the way to Vancouver. “Sure,” she said hesitantly, setting her purse down in the booth across from him and scooting in next to it.

“Don’t mind if I do. So, is this your first visit out here?”

“Actually, yes,” he said, his brown eyes glitteringly bright. They looked as if they were dancing, and they mesmerized her. “But I had a mission I wanted to accomplish. I’d hoped you’d be here because I wanted to talk, and…”

Talk? To her?

Why would he want to talk with her? Had Mark put him up to this? “Oh?”

She could hear the sarcasm in her own voice, and instantly regretted it.

Justice looked at her quizzically and put his palms up.

“Hey, truce! I’m not sure what it was I said, but I’m not here because of anything to do with Mark, if that’s what you’re thinking. I came here because the… the you-know-what is here and I wanted to see if I could take a look at it,” he told her. “It has to do with… well, okay, that does have to do with Mark, but not how you think. Would you at least give me the opportunity to explain, and maybe it will help you understand my visit?”

He was here because of what? The mirror?

Why didn’t he just say so?

At least he wasn’t here to make a move on her. Not that she’d have minded at the moment.

Forty One

Forty-five minutes later, the rest of the customers gone, Justice sat sipping a cup of coffee in his booth while Eugenie spoke with Noah and Carolinia about why he was still there.

“I know someone should have told you about all this before,” she said, “but I didn’t know how much you did or didn’t know, so… here goes, I guess.”

As if on cue, Malagasy and Mia started whistling like a kettle – one of the few noises they ever made – and Eugenie didn’t have to turn around to figure that at least one of them was shredding the newspaper in their cage.

That was a near-constant when they were awake.

“Yes, we’re listening,” Carolinia said, her hand reaching out to Eugenie’s. She looked down at their hands, and started to cry.

How was she going to tell them they got a mirror with… with… strange behavior patterns?

“Might I interject?”

Justice stood a few feet from them now.

She hadn’t even heard him approach.

“It’s just that… I might be able to explain this a bit more… concisely and with terms that are a little less… academic,” he said, smiling easily.

For a minute, Eugenie thought she was going to faint. She didn’t have to tell her boss? Someone else would do it after all?

A sigh escaped her lips as Noah nodded for Justice to continue.

“So, here’s the thing, Mr. and Mrs. Torrance,” he said. “You’ve met Edward, right,” he asked. They nodded, and he continued. “Of course you have; they helped you acquire the mirror in your hallway. Well, the thing is…”

“Edward isn’t from our time. He somehow got transported through that very mirror during a thunderstorm, and someone else, a girl of fifteen, has, too,” Eugenie finished for him, rushing through it, surprising even herself.

The Torrances glanced from Eugenie to Justice and back again. “So you’re saying,” Noah asked with his Texas drawl coming to the surface. “Edward and some teenager
both
came through that very mirror into our time?”

The man turned and pointed toward the general direction of the restroom. Since the mirror was directly across from it, they all knew he understood.

With a jerky nod, Eugenie felt bile rising in her throat as she tried to reply. She felt so sick and nervous that nothing came out when she opened her mouth.

“Why, Dear, we already knew about Edward, but what is this about some girl?”

Justice came to the rescue again. “It happened a few weeks ago, here at the café. You had left a few minutes before, and there was a storm out. Eugenie stayed behind to fly the birds… do you remember?”

“I remember the night, but… why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“If you hadn’t known about Edward’s strange experience, would you have believed me,” Eugenie said, her voice barely registering in the air.

Carolinia smiled sympathetically at her, and then glanced at her husband. “She has a point, Dear.” Then, to Justice, “So what is it you want with this mirror, young man?”

“I just need to look it over myself. I haven’t had the right opportunity to, and I thought I’d wait until…”

“Until there was a time you could get here at close to closing?”

“Among other things, yes. Exactly.”

“So now that we’ve gotten the okay, first, I’d like to thank you, again, Eugenie. I know you must be tired, and feel free to just stay off your feet. Besides…” Justice said, smiling at her even as he ducked a swoop from one of the birds. “If there’s a storm in another time, maybe, just maybe, someone will come through the mirror again. If the mirror’s there, I mean.”

After another pause, he continued as he walked toward the hallway to look at the mirror. “Wish I’d been here the tenth when we had all that lightening. I guess it was the most strikes we’d had in…well, at least for the year. Not sure in how long.”

It had rained on and off the past few days, just a little, and there was a threat of storms, but no guarantee of them. Either they’d come, or they wouldn’t, and Eugenie certainly hoped that if there were, she wouldn’t get another surprise. At least if she did, someone else was here this time with her. She thought she’d have a heart attack last time.

Eugenie finally nodded as she watched his tall, somewhat muscular figure disappear behind the wall. Not wanting to miss out on anything, she decided to follow him, even though he was right; her feet were killing her!

Once she stood at his side, she watched as he ran his hands along the edges, starting at the bottom and working his way toward the top, where the angel was. In the dimmed lighting, there was a spooky yet almost romantic quality to the mirror she hadn’t really noticed before.

It had always spooked her, but not from its looks.

She had heard a variety of stories about it since a few days before it was transferred to the café and ever since, she tried to steer clear if there was even a hint of rain in the sky. But she hadn’t thought much about other times, when there was a storm somewhere and some-when else, where the mirror was, until Rose had startled her that night.

“There’s a little warping to the wood, and it looks a lot older than I thought it might be. The construction… I’ve never seen anything like it, and the glass… see that,” he said, pointing. “IF you look closely, you’ll see it isn’t really what we call glass today. It’s… well, I studied the history of mirror-making a little yesterday and it doesn’t even look like the photos I saw then, either. It’s like… there’s an extra ingredient to this or something. It’s weird.”

Tentatively touching the glass along one of the edges, where a smudge wouldn’t be as evident, Eugenie trailed her fingers along one of the little chips there. He was right. This felt so different from anything she’d touched, and it looked… almost as if someone had poured Vaseline all over it or something; not in the color, since she could see, but in the texture. Yet it was as smooth as running water.

“How odd,” she said.

What else could she say? She’d never studied mirror-making, and as smart as she was about psychology and food prep, what did she really know? Nothing mechanical, that was for sure, and nothing really about design other than the few things she’d picked up from Paloma.

It still amazed her how so many people could be talented in things she couldn’t even conceive anyone able to do, yet she saw it every day.

Like Angelique with her roses; she was so passionate about them, she’d brought cuttings from every single bush she’d had in Mississippi and now, a year after she’d moved, they were all on the grow. And then to top it off, the woman had gotten several new ones that were older, and were blooming this year.

If I ever tried to help tend roses, I’d probably kill them on accident
, she thought, and laughed to herself.

“What’s so funny,” Justice said, looking at her with a twinkle in his eye.

A dimple creased his cheek, and she gasped in surprise and delight. How had she not noticed that before?

“I was just thinking what would happen to poor Angelique’s roses if I ever tried to…” Oh, man! This was someone who knew Mark! She didn’t want Mark knowing she was at Angelique’s. He’d come right over and pester her. He’d already called her office and cell at least half a dozen times each.

She felt a blush rising in her cheeks, and tried to find the words to explain things.

“No worries. I don’t plan telling Mark where you’re at, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he returned. After a moment, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “I want you to be safe and happy, Eugenie. I know you might not believe this, but I don’t know if I even want Mark in my life anymore after what Jason and Edward told me yesterday.”

Curious, she looked up into his eyes.

Man, those eyes. She could drown in them. Instead, she forced her eyes away from his again.

She had to remember she was married, even if she rather wished right now that she wasn’t. Mark was her husband through thick and thin, for better or worse, and they were at worse and thin right now.

That didn’t give her a right to start falling for someone else!

“What did they tell you?”

“They told me Mark’s still obsessed with my friend Rosemary. She was…. Well, that guy Mark’s been writing, he….”

Suddenly it dawned on Eugenie.

Justice wasn’t even interested in her; he was still in love with a dead woman, just like Mark!

The same one, though?
She shivered.

That was creepy.

What was it about men that made them hold on if it was someone so unavailable they’d never see them again, but run from someone they proclaimed to love? She just didn’t get it.

A sudden boom brought her to her senses.

Malagasy flew overhead, and she turned to recage them. The rest of the birds would have to wait until the storm was over, and maybe even the next day, though she knew they all needed more exercise than they were getting. But she couldn’t help it. She was supposed to be home an hour ago, and instead had offered to bird-sit while they flew just so Justice could investigate the mirror more effectively.

How was she to know whether or not there’d be another storm?

Lightning flashed, but it wasn’t too close. The dogs began to bark, and Eugenie turned back to Justice. “I’m sorry about your friend. I didn’t know you were that close to her. Is that where you met… um…did you and Mark know each other before all that… happened?”

“Yeah, we did; we met at the trial, I mean….. But today’s the anniversary of… well, at least it’s the day they found….” He pulled in a deep breath and moved to sit down in a booth, double checking the seat to make sure there weren’t any bird droppings on it.

Eugenie sat across from him. “Do you want to talk about it, or…?”

“Sure… what do I have to lose? See, the reason I came tonight wasn’t just to check out the mirror. I’m hoping… somehow, and some way, since there’s a storm, and it’s the anniversary, and Rosemary’s body was never found, that…”

Another chill ran up Eugenie’s spine.

Was he thinking what she thought he was thinking? Did he really think it was possible that Rosemary escaped and was still, somehow alive?

Was that why…?

Suddenly, it all made sense.

Mark’s obsession; the more frequent letters between him and Arthur; the extra hedge of secrecy. Did Mark think she was still alive, too? Eugenie knew that he’d been searching for her, but… hadn’t that been simple curiosity?

Because it was impossible.

If Arthur was convicted of Rosemary’s murder, they had to have some kind of evidence she was dead, right? And not just that she was… missing?

“Where do you want me to begin?”

“Where do you want to begin,” she asked in return. “Just wait a second, and I’ll grab us a snack. I think I still have part of the lunch I brought with me.”

As she stood, she glanced out the window and watched the rain as it plinked along the parking lot. Thunder sounded again, a little closer, followed five seconds later with a flash of lightning.

So, the storm was about five miles away, was it?

Wait
, she thought,
am I doing it backward?

Gingerly stepping around a couple of bird messes she’d have to mop up before leaving, she went into the back of the kitchen to the refrigerator and grabbed a couple cups of yogurt and a baggie of carrot and celery sticks. It wasn’t much, but it was certainly better than nothing. And if that wasn’t enough, she knew they could have a couple slices of the pumpkin pie left over from earlier in the day.

Since it had to be made fresh daily, anyway, all it meant was two less pieces for the animals the next day.

A sudden roll of thunder and crack of lightning caused her to drop one of the yogurts onto the counter. Thankfully, it was still closed and didn’t roll to the floor. She took the opportunity to set the rest down and head for the silverware bins for some spoons.

“Need any help in there?”

“I think I’ve got it, unless you want to make some tea or something,” she replied, trying to catch her breath. Her feet ached, and she just wished she was back at Angelique’s taking a nap… or better yet, just zonked out for the night.

She hadn’t slept too well the past few nights.

After a moment, she heard his footsteps coming closer. “Maybe I will. Want anything to drink? I can get those,” he said.

“Just water. I need lots of water, and I’m sure I haven’t been getting enough, despite how often I’ve had to…” She stopped midsentence. What was she saying to this man? They knew each other, but not well enough to talk about her restroom habits.

A warmth rose through her, and ended on her cheeks. By now, she was sure she was beet red.

It always happened when she stuck her foot in her mouth like that.

A soft chuckle met her ears.

“It’s all good,” Justice said before his chuckle turned into an all-out guffaw. She joined in the laughter a few moments later, suddenly realizing how trivial her concern had been.