Black Rose

bench in the foyer to drag off her boots. David strolled out, sat beside her, and handed her the cup of coffee he’d brought out of the kitchen.
    “Dr. Delish is in the library.”
    “Yes, I saw his car.” She drank coffee, holding the cup in both hands to warm them.
    “Harper’s with him. He snagged our boy for an interview. We had ours over lattes and applesauce cake earlier.”
    “Applesauce cake.”
    “I saved you a big slice. I know your weaknesses. They’re saying we might get some snow out of this.”
    “So I heard.”
    “Stella and the boys are at Logan’s. She’s going to fix dinner over there, and the boys are hoping the snow comes through and they can stay the night.”
    “That’s nice. I need a shower. A hot one.”
    He took the cup she passed back to him. “I thought you might want to ask our handsome professor to stay to dinner. I’m making some hearty chicken and dumplings to ward off the cold.”
    “Sounds good—the chicken—and Mitch is certainly welcome to stay if he likes, and doesn’t have other plans.”
    “He doesn’t,” David said confidently. “I’ve already asked.”
    She chuckled at his broad grin. “Just who are you matching him up with, David? You or me?”
    “Well, being the utterly unselfish person I am—and seeing as the doctor is unfortunately and absolutely straight—I’m going with you.”
    “Just a pitiful romantic, aren’t you?”
    She started up, and only rolled her eyes when he called out: “Put something sexy on.”
    In the library, Harper nursed his after-work beer. It didn’t seem to him that he could tell Mitch much more than he already knew, but he’d answered the questions, filled in little gaps in the stories both his mother and David had already related.
    “I’ve got David’s rundown of the night you saw her outside, in the gardens, when you were boys.”
    “The night we were camping out, David, my brothers, and me.” Harper nodded in acknowledgment. “Some night.”
    “According to David, you saw her first, woke him.”
    “Saw, heard, felt.” Harper shrugged. “Hard to pin it down, but yeah, I woke him up. Couldn’t say what time it was. Late. We’d stayed up eating ourselves half sick, and spooking ourselves out with scary stories. Then I heard her, I guess. Don’t know how, exactly, I knew it was her. It wasn’t like the other times.”
    “What was different?”
    “She wasn’t singing. She was more... moaning, I guess, or making these unintelligible sounds. More like what you’d expect from a ghost on a hot, moonlit night when you’re a kid. So I looked out, and there she was. Only not like before, either.”
    Brave boy, Mitch thought, to look out instead of pulling the sleeping bag over his head. “What was it like?”
    “She was in this white nightgown sort of thing. The way she was last spring when she was upstairs. Her hair was down, tangled and dirty. And I could see the moonlight going through her. Right through. Jesus.” He took a deeper sip of beer.
    “So I got David up, and Austin and Mason woke up, too. I wanted Austin to stay back with Mason, but there was no chance of that, so we all set out to follow her.”
    Mitch could imagine it very well. A pack of young boys, moonlight and lightning bugs and heavy summer heat. And a ghostly figure trailing through the gardens.
    “She walked right over Mama’s evening primrose, straight through the hollyhocks. Through them. I was too wound up to be scared. She kept making this noise, a kind of humming, or keening, I guess you could say. I think there were words mixed in there somewhere, but I couldn’t make them out. She was going toward the carriage house. Seemed to me she was heading toward the carriage house anyway. And she turned, and she looked back. And her face...”
    “What?”
    “Like last spring again,” he said, and let out a little breath. “She looked insane. Horror-movie insane. Wild and crazy. She was smiling, but it was horrible. And for a minute, when she looked at me and I looked back, it was so cold, I saw my own breath. Then she turned, kept walking, and I started after her.”
    “Started after her? An insane ghost? You had to be scared.”
    “Not so much, not that I realized anyway. I was caught up, I guess. Really fascinated. I had to know . But Mason started screaming. Then I was scared spitless. I thought somehow she’d gotten him, which was stupid since she was up ahead and he was behind me. Farther behind me, all of them,