“IS she here?” Taylor lingered by the car while Dez stood halfway between him and the cemetery.
She glanced back at him, her face unsmiling, her eyes sad. “I don’t know.” She sighed and rubbed the heel of her hand over her heart. “For the first time, I really don’t know what to tell her, either. She wanted me to help Jacqueline and I don’t know that I can.”
“You tell her that you did what you could,” Taylor said, his voice stark. Then he looked down. “And you tell her that I love her. Can you do that?”
Tears clogged her throat. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“I wish…” He blew out a sigh, shaking his head. “I’ve never really wanted to carry any of the burdens the rest of you carry, you know. I don’t want any of those gifts. But right now, I wish I had something, just enough to see her once.”
Unable to stand the distance between them, even though it was just physical, Dez went to him. “I think you do have a gift, Taylor. It’s quieter. It’s what lets you see others. And I think you help us focus—keep us calmer. That’s a gift. Maybe you can’t see the ghosts or hear the voices. But you do something that lets
us
see them. That’s a gift.”
He turned his face to her hand, rubbed his grizzled cheek against it. “Yeah, I notice you sleep when I’m around. Is that why you think you love me?”
“Think?” She lifted a brow at him. “Jones, there’s no
think
to it. I might have
thought
I loved Will Smith when I was in high school. He’s cute, he’s funny…and I didn’t know him. You, however…you might be nice to look at, but you’re not exactly funny. You’re not always easy to be around.”
She leaned against him and kissed him. Against his lips, she murmured, “And I still love you. That I can sleep better around you, focus better, that’s just a nice benefit. But I’d love you even if there were ten thousand more screaming ghosts in my head whenever you were near. You’re it for me, Jones. I like it that way.”
Then she sighed and looked back at the cemetery. “I have to go in there, at least try to see if I can talk to her now.”
“You don’t think you will?”
“I just don’t know.” She stroked a hand down his uninjured arm and twined their fingers, bringing his clasped hand to her lips. “I guess I go find out.”
She let go of his hand and made her way into the cemetery. The wind, cold and biting, blew through her hair. But it was a regular wind, carrying nothing but the cold of the fall. She lowered her shields and although there were whispers of the departed skittering along her senses, none of them belonged to Anna.
Dejected, she shoved her hands into her pockets and began to wander around through the silent graveyard. The sun played peekaboo with the clouds, coming out every so often to cast slivers of light on the headstones. Every once in a while, a whisper would grow louder, but never real. Never complete. Nothing got loud enough to really
call
to her. None of these ghosts needed her. They were just echoes of themselves.
She hadn’t arrived in time to see them move on, and now she never would.
She’d hoped she hadn’t been too late for Anna—it didn’t seem that could be the case. Anna had been so real, so complete and solid, just hours earlier. But now…
There was nothing.
Turning, she stared back at Taylor. And she knew she wouldn’t even have to tell him. He could tell, just by looking at her.
* * *
SHE sat in the car, staring up at the cottage. But Dez couldn’t climb out. Their
job
here, as far as it went, was done. Ivy was safe. Mark was safe. Tristan had justice—everything that Brendan had done was likely to come out now and Tristan’s family would know he hadn’t killed himself. Although Dez didn’t know if that knowledge would really make things any easier.
Anna—she, too, had whatever peace Dez could give her. Dez wanted to see the girl off to a real and lasting peace, but she wasn’t so sure that would happen. And Jacqueline, damn it, was there anything more she could do there? Dez didn’t know.
But as she sat out there in Taylor’s car, she couldn’t go into the warm, quiet little cottage. She just couldn’t. Swallowing, she looked over at him. “Take me to your house—the manor. I need to go there.”
He stiffened.
“That’s…not a good idea.” His hand tightened on the steering wheel, gripping it with a force that turned his knuckles white.
“Why not?”
“Bad memories, Dez. Too many ghosts. My mom killed herself there, my dad died there. And let’s not forget Anna.” He shook his head. “No. We’re not doing that. It was risky enough taking you there once.”
“Risky?” Dez closed her eyes and rested her head on the back of the seat. “You forget I’m comfortable talking to ghosts. I’d rather talk to ghosts than deal with what’s been going on here the past few days. It’s driving me nuts. I’d rather get back to what I know, what I can handle.”
“You need a break.”
“I can’t take a break.” With a heavy sigh, she looked over at him and shook her head. “You know that. At least not until I try to reach Anna. She’s not all that strong, Taylor. She’s not tied to her grave. She reached me where her body was left, but she wasn’t completely
there
, either. Maybe that’s part of the problem. She’s had to waste too much strength trying to reach out and find me. Maybe I need to go to her. And my gut tells me if I find her anywhere, it will be at your house, where she was happiest.”
His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Happy? Shows what you know about our life. We weren’t ever happy.” But he started the car.
* * *
HIS hands were shaking, Taylor realized.
This was something he didn’t want to do. Not just because of Anna, though. Anna, his father…his mother. Fuck, his mother. Even after all this time, he was still pissed off at her. She’d spent plenty of her time quietly whoring around, damn near
all
of her life in the bottle. And after Anna died, instead of trying to be there for the family she had left, she fell completely into that bottle, and ended up taking her own life.
If ever he was likely to force Dez to meet a ghost, it was when he took her into his house. And he didn’t want her to bear the brunt of his mother’s misery, damn it.
The ten-minute drive seemed to pass in seconds. If he could have figured out a way to change her mind, he would have. But no words would come. Usually, arguing with people, talking them around into doing what he wanted, came easy—and when that didn’t work, he just bullied them into it.
Of course, he’d never had that luck with Desiree Lincoln.
Why would it change now?
As he pulled in front of the graceful old manor, his gut was in knots. “I don’t want you here,” he bit off, still gripping the steering wheel. If he thought it would do any good, he would have just driven off.
He knew better, though. She’d just find a way to come back. Even if she didn’t get inside. If she was going to make contact with anybody here, he didn’t want her doing it alone.
She was quiet, sitting next to him and just waiting. He looked over at her and said again, “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you
in
there.”
“I was in there before.” She stroked a finger across his mouth. “Nothing happened. Besides, it’s not like I don’t deal with ghosts. It’s what I do.”
“But these are
my
ghosts.”
“All the more reason you should want me there…so we can put them to rest.” She rolled to her knees and leaned over, kissed him gently. “Come on, Jones. It’s not like doing this is going to make things any worse.”
He caught her neck when she would have pulled away. With a hard, quick kiss, he muttered, “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
“Hmm. You’re probably right.”
Dez stroked his cheek, a habit she’d developed that somehow managed to make his heart stutter. Then again, what about her
didn’t
do that?
“Okay.” He pulled away and stared through the windshield toward the manor, dread curdling through him. “Let’s get this done.”
* * *
THE silence of the huge house was almost suffocating. Dez could hear the soft thuds of her booted heels on the floor, the softer sound of Taylor’s footsteps, their breathing…nothing else.
She couldn’t even hear the sound of a heater kicking on, water in the pipes. Nothing.
Just silence.
And emptiness. It was a complete emptiness, too. She hadn’t lowered her shields completely but they were down enough to let her get a good, solid feel of things. And there was nothing here to feel. Nothing.
After he’d led her through the house in silence, she looked at him. “Where was Anna’s room?”
He didn’t look at her. His right arm hung at his side, the cast a stark white. His left hand was jammed into his pocket and, judging by the way his veins were popped out on his arm, he had it clenched into a rigid fist. When he spoke, his lips barely moved. “You want to see her room.”
She moved to stand in front of him. Staring at him, she wished she could just tell him,
Okay, let’s go. We’ll just leave…
But she couldn’t. Whether he wanted this or not, he deserved better. Anna deserved better. She had to try. If she didn’t succeed, then she didn’t succeed, but she had to try.
“Want to?” She shrugged. Did she want to spend time inside the room of a child who’d died so terribly young? No. But she knew she probably needed to. “No. I don’t want to. But I think I should.”
Taylor closed his eyes. His voice was gruff as he whispered, “Second floor. Anna’s room was on the second floor.”
* * *
IT still looked the same.
Standing in the doorway, Taylor stared into the pretty white, pink, and gold bedroom that had been his sister’s. Yeah, it had been where she slept, but it had his mother’s touch all over it. Anna had been very much into the girly-type stuff, he supposed, but where their mother had tried to make her into a fragile hothouse flower, Anna, at her heart, had been a daisy. Bright, colorful, and cheerful.
Dez wandered through the room, pausing every now and then to brush her fingers along the dresser, the bed. In the center of the big poster bed, there was a doll. The sight of it was like a punch, right to the heart. There was a line of pristine, perfect dolls along the shelf above the bed. None of them had ever been played with for more than a few minutes.
But the doll on the bed…she’d been played with. Played with. Loved.
Swallowing the knot in his throat, Taylor took a step into the room. Then another. There was a fist around his heart now, one that wouldn’t let go. When he reached out to touch the worn, old little doll, his fingers trembled. Lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed, he picked it up.
“I bought her this,” he said softly. “The Christmas before she died. She’d wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid but Mother wouldn’t buy her one. We didn’t get toys like that, you know.”
A shadow fell across him and he looked up, met Dez’s eyes. She knelt down, resting a hand on his thigh. “What in the world could have been wrong with a doll?”
“It’s not the doll.” He crooked a smile at her. “It’s a
common
doll. We got expensive shit. Collectible things—one of a kind or designer…things that would hold value or look pretty. Screw having fun with it.”
Emotion all but choked him as he remembered the look on Anna’s face when she unwrapped the present. “So I bought it for her. Me and Dad went out shopping and I asked if it would be okay. He just laughed and said,
Just don’t tell your mother you asked me
. She played with it all day long. It went with her everywhere for months after, and she slept with it every night.”
Dez touched the butter yellow hair on the doll’s head. “It looks like she took very good care of her.” She stood up and bent over, pressed her lips to his. “You’re a good brother. I would have loved to have somebody give me a doll. I never had one. Did she ever name her?”
He looked back down at the worn toy. “Yeah. Her name was Laura. Anna loved
Little House
.” He smoothed down the tiny dress and then he stood up. As the blood began to crawl up his neck, he pushed the doll into Dez’s hands. “Here. You take her.”
Automatically, Dez clutched the doll, even as she gaped at him. “Me? You want me to take a doll?”
“I can’t leave it here.” He looked around the room. Shaking his head, he said quietly, “You won’t find anything of Anna’s here. Except that doll. Everything else in here was my mother’s.”
“But…”
Looking back at her, he said, “Take it. Please. I…look, I can’t leave it here. I just can’t. Not anymore.”
Dez looked down at the doll, a soft sigh falling from her lips. Then she stroked a finger over the doll’s chubby cheeks, her smiling face. “She’s got freckles. And blue eyes. And blonde hair.” Abruptly, she started to laugh. “I’m thirty-four years old and I’ve finally got a doll of my own.”
Tucking her into the crook of her arm, she looked around the room and sighed. “You’re right about one thing. We won’t find Anna here. It’s…empty.”