“Whoever you are, show yourself,” Danielle demanded. The rocking chair stopped rocking. “We know you’re here. Who are you?” Danielle held her arms protectively around the nursing babies. She looked at Walt. “Does Max see whoever it is?”
Walt glanced down at the black cat, who stood by the empty rocking chair, staring at it while his tail swished. Walt called out Max’s name. The cat turned to him, and the two stared in silence at each other. After a moment, Walt shook his head. “He doesn’t see anything.”
The bedroom door abruptly opened. Walt stepped to the open doorway, looked out into the hall, and saw nothing. After a moment, he turned back into the room and looked at Danielle, who still held the twins. They had each fallen asleep.
“Did it leave?” Danielle asked.
Walt shrugged. “I guess.” Confused, Walt walked to Danielle and took Addison. He gently patted her back while Danielle stood up with Jack. They walked toward the cribs.
“This is bizarre.” Danielle laid Jack in his crib. “I’ve been seeing ghosts most of my life. The key word: seeing.”
“I’ll confess, I’m comforted by the fact Eva insists a ghost won’t harm an innocent.”
Danielle reached out and ran her fingertips across Jack’s pink cheek and watched as he slept. “I guess.” She glanced over to the adjacent crib, where Walt had placed their sleeping daughter. Danielle frowned and then looked back into Jack’s crib.
Noticing Danielle’s change of expression, Walt asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Did you put the stuffed animals in the cribs when we put the babies down earlier?”
Walt looked back at the cribs. A stuffed teddy bear sat in the corner of Jack’s crib, while a stuffed lamb sat in the corner of Addison’s crib. He shook his head. “No. I didn’t.”
Danielle removed the stuffed animals from the cribs, tossed them on the floor, and walked over to the rocker she had been sitting on earlier and sat down. She pulled the quilt off the other rocker and used it to cover her lap.
“What are you doing?” Walt asked.
“Until we figure out what is going on, I’m not leaving my babies alone.”
“You can’t sleep on a chair all night. I’ll go down to the living room and get the playpens. We can set them up in our bedroom. They can sleep in there with us.”
“Don’t leave,” Danielle pleaded, not wanting him to leave her alone in the nursery with the babies.
Walt smiled and then took a seat on the empty chair. “Ghosts rarely scare you.”
“I kind of understand how poor June felt today.”
“What do you mean?”
Danielle snuggled up in the vintage quilt; her bare feet pushed against the floor, making her chair rock. “It’s sort of different when you can’t see them. I’ve always been able to see when there is a ghost. But witnessing paranormal activity and not seeing where it’s coming from, that’s different.”
“The only difference now, they’ve made their presence known.”
“What do you mean the only difference? The difference is I can’t see them.”
Walt reached over from his chair and patted Danielle’s left hand while he, too, rocked. “No. You couldn’t always see when there was a ghost in the room with you. There were many times—before—when you didn’t know I was in the room with you.”
Danielle frowned at Walt. “Really? Like when?”
“At night, sometimes. I liked to watch you sleep. But I didn’t want you to wake up and find me standing there. I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Gee, Walt. That sounds sorta creepy.”
Walt chuckled. “I suppose it does.”
“Were you stalking me?”
“I was a ghost, Danielle. Ghosts haunt. Haunting is a form of stalking.”
Danielle wrinkled her nose. “And it’s creepy.”
Walt chuckled again. “I suppose it is. But the difference between a living person stalking someone and a ghost, a ghost won’t harm an innocent. You can’t say the same thing about living people.”
Danielle glanced toward the cribs. “Are our babies safe?”
“I was thinking about that.” Walt leaned back in the rocker and stretched out his legs while his hands rested on the chair’s arms. “Why does someone typically set a stuffed animal in a crib with a baby?”
“I suppose they’re trying to comfort the child. But I don’t like the idea of a stuffed animal left with an unsupervised baby. I read a tragic story about a baby who smothered to death under a stuffed animal in his crib.”
Closing his eyes, Walt leaned farther back in the chair, making it rock. “You’re talking like an overprotective mother. Which is not a bad thing. But considering our elusive spirit set each stuffed animal in a far corner of each crib, the chances of Addison or Jack reaching the stuffed animal at this age is not a significant risk. And I have to wonder if the ghost placed the stuffed animals in the cribs for our benefit, not for the babies’.”
“Why would they do that?” Danielle asked.
“Because I’ve also been thinking about that knocking. Had the knocking happened when the babies slept, I’d expect the sound to jolt them awake, and then they would start crying. Had our visiting ghost noticed the babies waking up, rooting, and felt they were hungry, and knocked on our wall to wake us up. Maybe that’s why they put the stuffed animals in the cribs. They were trying to find some way to comfort the babies until you came and could feed them, and signal to us they mean no harm.”
Danielle rocked in silence while considering Walt’s words. Finally, she said, “While I like your theory of a shy ghost that’s a kind and helpful spirit, it did hurl the stuffed animal at June. Scared the crap out of her.”
Walt opened his eyes, stopped rocking, and looked at Danielle. He smiled. “Come on, Danielle, haven’t there been times when you wanted to throw something at June?”
* * *
Chris Johnson, aka Chris Glandon, had talked to Heather Saturday night after she returned home from Marlow House. She had told Chris how she’d made dinner for Walt and Danielle that night, trying out a new recipe. Somewhere during the conversation on food and baking, Heather mentioned she wished she would have thought to pick up some cinnamon rolls for Walt and Danielle, as Danielle had mentioned during dinner she hadn’t had cinnamon rolls since before the babies were born.
Chris offered to stop by Old Salts the next morning and pick up some fresh cinnamon rolls for Walt and Danielle. Heather liked the idea and suggested she and Brian join them in the morning. With the chief being out for medical leave and his replacement being arrested for murder, Brian had been working long hours, but he had Sunday off.
On Sunday morning, Chris arrived at Marlow House with his pit bull Hunny and a large sack of cinnamon rolls. Chris used his key and let himself in the back door and left Hunny outside to sniff around. Chris entered the kitchen and dropped the bag of cinnamon rolls on the kitchen table and walked to the coffeepot. No one had made coffee yet, so Chris filled the pot with water.
Hunny entered the house through the doggy door just as the coffee started to brew. Snatching up the bag of cinnamon rolls, Chris left the kitchen and headed down the hallway, Hunny trailing behind him. Chris wondered if Walt and Danielle were still sleeping. But when he walked into the living room, he saw them sitting together, huddled on the sofa, reminding him of a pair of exhausted homeless vagrants. Nearby sat two portable cribs, each holding a sleeping baby.
Walt and Danielle looked up at him yet said nothing. Chris walked to the sofa and stopped. In a soft voice, he said, “Damn, you guys look like crap. Rough night?”
“What are you doing here?” Danielle asked in a less than friendly tone.
Chris held up the bag with the Old Salts logo.
Danielle’s eyes widened. “Tell me those are cinnamon rolls.”
“I brought you cinnamon rolls.” Chris grinned and tossed Danielle the sack. She quickly opened it, pulled out a fresh sticky roll, and handed the sack to Walt.
Chris glanced over at the playpens and looked back at Walt and Danielle. “You guys want some coffee?”
“Please,” they chorused. Now holding a cinnamon roll, Walt set the sack with the rest of the rolls on the coffee table.
Chris left the room while Hunny greeted Walt and Danielle with a wet nose. Several minutes later, Chris returned with three cups of coffee. He set them all on the table and then picked up one and handed it to Danielle and then handed another to Walt. After taking a cinnamon roll for himself, Chris took it and a cup of coffee with him as he took a seat in a recliner across from Walt and Danielle.
“Brian and Heather are coming over. We figured you’d be up by now. This baby thing rough?”
“It’s not the babies.” Danielle took a sip of coffee, set the cup on the table, and used her free hand to try straightening her morning hair while her other hand held what remained of her cinnamon roll. “It’s the ghost.”
“Ghost? What ghost?” Chris asked.
Walt told Chris about last night’s haunting, beginning with what June and Kelly had witnessed.
“Heather told me about what happened with June and Kelly, but she said Kelly threw the stuffed animal.”
“That’s what we thought before last night. We eventually brought the babies down here,” Danielle said. “Walt was going to bring the playpens upstairs to our room. But I fell asleep in the rocker.”
“And then it came back,” Walt said.
“What happened?” Chris asked.
“Like Danielle said, she had fallen asleep on the rocker. I didn’t want to wake her, so I tried to doze but couldn’t get comfortable. I got up and noticed the quilt Danielle had put over her had fallen to the floor. When I went to pick it up, well, our ghost did it for me.”
“What did it do with the quilt?” Chris asked.
“It covered Danielle up again.”
Chris arched his brows. “Well, that’s kind of nice.”
“It woke me up. And we realized the ghost had obviously returned. I tried talking to it again. But nothing. I just didn’t want to stay upstairs, so we came downstairs and put the babies in the playpens. We curled up here to sleep.”
“Did the ghost follow you back down here?” Chris asked.
Danielle shrugged. “I don’t think so. Nothing’s happened down here.”
“How about when you were asleep?” Chris asked.
Danielle glared at Chris.
Chris frowned. “What?”
Walt let out a sigh. “That’s why we look so terrific. We couldn’t get to sleep. We haven’t slept all night. Danielle was afraid something might happen to the babies if we dozed off.”
“I thought you said Danielle dozed in the rocker?” Chris asked.
“That was only for about fifteen minutes,” Walt explained.
Chris looked at Danielle, who continued to glare in his direction. He flashed her one of his charming smiles and said, “Well, not only does a lack of sleep do nothing for your appearance, it doesn’t help your disposition, either.”
Walt wrapped his arm around Danielle and pulled her close. She looked as if she might cry. “If you make her cry, I’m going to hurt you.”
“Fair enough. But when Brian and Heather get here, I want you two to go upstairs and try to get some sleep. We’ll watch the babies. Just let us know when you think they’ll need to nurse again. I don’t want to wake you up unless we have to.”
“Are you going to change diapers?” Walt asked.
“No. But Heather will.”
“She will?” Walt asked.
“Sure. I’ll pay her twenty bucks a diaper.” Chris grinned.