Red Lily

those stars, at least at first. It was slower, and scarier. He makes me laugh and think and dream and tremble. And there was a time during that longer, slower climb that I looked at him, and my heart warmed again. I’d forgotten what it was like to feel that warmth inside the heart.”
    “He’s a good man. He loves you. He watches you when you come into a room, when you walk out of one. I’m glad you found him.”
    “So am I.”
    “With Daddy? What willow was it?”
    “Oh, it was a big, beautiful old tree, way back, beyond the old stables.” She paused, looked toward the ruin, gestured. “John was going to come back sometime soon after,carve our initials in the trunk. But that next night lightning struck it, split it right in two, and—Oh my God.”
    “Amelia,” he said softly.
    “It had to be. It never occurred to me before this, but I remember there hadn’t been a storm. The servants were talking about the tree and the lightning hitting it when there hadn’t been a storm.”
    “So even then,” he said, “she took her shots.”
    “How mean, how petty of her. I cried over that tree. I fell in love under it, and cried when I watched the groundskeepers clear away the wood and pull the trunk out.”
    “Don’t you wonder if there were other things? Small, violent acts we passed off as nature or some strange quirk, all while we thought of her as benevolent?”
    He studied the house now, thought of what it was to him—and what had walked there long before he was born. “She’s never been benevolent, not really.”
    “All that hate and anger stored up. Trapped.”
    “Leaking now and again, like water through a crack in a dam. It’s coming faster and harder now. And we can’t put it back in, Mama. What we have to do is empty it out, draw out every drop.”
    “How?”
    “I think we’re going to have to break the dam, while we’re the ones holding the hammer.”
    I T WAS TWILIGHT when Hayley wandered through the gardens. The baby was asleep, and Roz and Mitch were taking monitor duty. Harper’s car was there, so he was somewhere . Not in the carriage house, because she’d knocked, then poked her head in and called.
    It wasn’t as if they were joined at the hip, she reminded herself. But he hadn’t stayed for dinner. He’d said he’d hadsomething to do, that he’d be back before dark.
    Well, it was nearly dark, and she was just wondering.
    Besides, she liked walking in the gardens, in the gloaming. Even under the circumstances. It was soothing, and she could use a little soothing after running the story he’d told her about the bracelet over and over in her head.
    They were getting closer to the answers, she was sure of it. But she was no longer sure it would all end quietly once they had them.
    Amelia might not be content to give up her last links with this world and pass on—she supposed that was the term—to the next.
    She liked inhabiting a body. If you could call it inhabiting. Sharing one? Sliding through one? Whatever it was, Amelia liked it, of that Hayley was sure. Just as she was sure it was something as new for Amelia as it was for herself.
    If it happened again— when, she corrected, ordering herself to face facts. When it happened again, she was going to fight to stay more aware, to find more control.
    And wasn’t that what she was doing out here alone, in the half light? No point in pretending to herself this wasn’t a deliberate move. A sort of dare. Come on, bitch . She wanted to see what she could handle, and how she would handle it when no one else was around to run interference. Or be hurt.
    But nothing was happening. She felt completely normal, completely herself.
    And was completely herself when sounds out of the shadows made her jump. She stopped, caught in the crosshairs of fight or flight, ears straining. The rhythmic, repetitive sound made her frown as she inched forward.
    It sounded . . . but it couldn’t be. Still her heart beat like wings as she crept closer, envisioning a ghostly figure digging a grave.

    Amelia’s grave. It could be. This could be the answer, at last. Reginald had murdered her, then buried her here on the property. She was going to be shown the grave—on unconsecrated ground. They could have it blessed or marked or—well, she’d look up what was done in cases like this.
    Then the haunting of Harper House would be over.
    She picked her way quietly around the ruins of the stables, edging as close to the building as she dared. Her