By the time we got back to Jerome, I was feeling a little better — mostly because Connor had called Lucas from the road with the information on my great-grandmother’s possible family name. Lucas then promised to pass it on to the private detective right away. And since the man had done such a good job of locating my paternal grandmother, I had to hope he could do the same thing here.
On Monday we headed up to Flagstaff, partly to get out of the way of the remodeling crew, and partly so we could be on hand in case something happened with the house, or Lester the P.I. dug up something for us. But we didn’t hear anything on either front, and I found myself getting discouraged all over again. In fact, I felt close to tears half the time, which was ridiculous. Was I going to be a complete mess for the next six months?
It’s just hormones, I told myself. Don’t worry about acting crazy. Everyone’s expecting it from you anyway.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Connor and I did do a little packing around his apartment, mostly of nonessential stuff that wouldn’t be missed if the title search dragged out longer than planned. It was fun to look at old sketchbooks of his to see how his style had evolved over the years, and it was even more fun to dig out his high school yearbooks and giggle at his over-long emo-looking hair.
“Actually,” I said, studying him closely as he shoved the yearbooks into a box and shook his head, “you’re almost there now. Are you planning to cut it anytime in the near future?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, running a hand through the heavy black strands, which were now long enough to tuck behind his ears. “Do you want me to?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure. You’re kind of hot with it long.”
“I am?” he inquired, green eyes glinting.
I knew that look. “Yeah, you are.”
He reached for me then, and we rolled over on the rug, kissing, fingers fumbling with buttons and zippers that were suddenly in the way. For some reason I’d thought being pregnant might kill my desire for him, or at least mute it a good deal, but that didn’t seem to be the case here. I still wanted him just as badly as that first time we’d reached out to touch one another, on a spot only about a foot from where we lay now. His hands roamed over my bare flesh, caressing me, and I reached out to wrap my fingers around him, feeling the hard evidence that the slight rounding of my belly didn’t bother him at all. And then we were joined, moving together, the soft whir of the ceiling fan overhead the only sound besides our ragged panting.
We were just pulling our clothes back on when Connor’s phone rang. He shot me an apologetic look and went to pick up his cell from where he’d left it lying on the dining room table. I didn’t mind, actually; we were waiting on too many important calls to ignore one now.
“Hey, Lucas,” Connor said, and I pricked up my ears even as I finished buttoning my jeans. Man, I’d already bought them a week before, and they were already feeling tight. Dr. Ruiz had obviously been a little premature in her concern over my lack of a healthy weight gain.
Elastic waistbands, here I come.
Connor told Lucas, “No, nothing important. Just packing a few odds and ends.”
“Is that what you’re calling it these days?” I joked.
He shot me a grin before saying, “Oh, really? Okay. No, I understand. It’s fine. I know he’s doing the best he can. Thanks for the update.”
That didn’t sound good. “What is it?” I asked as he ended the call and stuffed the phone into his pocket.
“Just an update on the hunt for your father’s Navajo relations. Apparently Bedonie and Begonie are both very common names, and since we don’t know for sure which one it is, it’s going to take Lester more time than he thought. He’s working on it, but it’s tough because of the name problem, and because the Navajo clearly aren’t thrilled to have some P.I. poking around in their business.”
“Well, it’s not like he’s trying to bring a criminal to justice or something,” I protested. “All he’s trying to do is find my relatives.”
“Yeah, we know that, but to the Navajo, it probably just sounds like a cover story. So he’s having to tread cautiously. That’s all.”
I had to admit to not being very knowledgeable about Navajo politics, so I decided to let it go for the moment. Clearly, Lester was doing a good job under difficult circumstances. I was impatient to find my father, if he really was on the reservation at all, but I told myself it was fine, that we still had six months to get everything resolved. All the time in the world.
So why did it feel like time was running out?
The next day we did get a piece of good news, though — the title search was completed, and now all we had to do was sign off on the paperwork and initiate the money transfer.
All. That was a joke.
I didn’t recall there being a great deal to do when I inherited Great-Aunt Ruby’s house, maybe because it was simply an inheritance, and her will had been very clear. Yes, I’d signed a few papers, just to make everything legal, but that was about it.
Now, though, I sat in the realtor’s office and put my signature to what felt like an unending pile of papers with teeny type — “initial here…sign here” — until I felt like my eyes were about to start bleeding. “If it’s like this when we’re not even getting a mortgage, how many papers do you have to sign if you’re actually taking out a loan?” I asked plaintively.
Connor looked like he was holding in a laugh, and the realtor gave me an indulgent smile. “Quite a few more, I’m afraid,” she replied.
I held in a sigh and went back to signing.
Eventually, though, it was all done, the transfer of funds processed, every “i” dotted and “t” crossed. After what felt like all afternoon but was probably closer to an hour an a half, the realtor pushed a set of keys and a couple of remote controls — for the garage, presumably — toward us.
“You’re all set,” she said. “Congratulations.”
Feeling a little stunned at the speed with which everything had happened, we headed out toward the parking lot. Then Connor threw his arms around me, lifted me up, and spun me around. I let out a startled squeak and burst out laughing.
“Put me down, you nut,” I told him.
Which he did, but not before he gave me a hearty kiss. “I guess I just can’t believe that we actually have that house. I mean, we could drive down there right now, unlock the door, and walk in.”
And so we did, wandering through the rooms, making notes here and there on the few pieces we didn’t like or thought we should replace.
“We’re definitely getting a new bed,” I said, gazing around the master bedroom. “Sleeping on someone else’s bed is just creepy, especially someone who’s getting a divorce. Who knows how many fights they had while lying in that bed. It’s bad juju.”
“I agree. I’ll put that on the list for tomorrow. There’s a place in town that’ll do same-day delivery. It’s where I got my bed. Are you okay with another one just like it?”
Connor’s bed was super-comfy. “Sure.”
“Then that means we can probably be here — really be here, starting on Saturday.”
I gazed around, taking in the stone fireplace, the gleaming wooden floors. Yes, I had the house in Jerome, but in the back of my head it was still “Great-Aunt Ruby’s house,” despite all the remodeling I’d done and was currently doing. This place — it was ours, Connor’s and mine, and I vowed then that we’d be happy here for whatever time we had together.
But no, I shouldn’t be thinking like that. Everything with the house had gone smoothly, and so I had to believe it would happen that way with the search for my father, even if it was taking a little longer than I would have liked.
We went back to the apartment and called Lucas with the good news, and then I phoned Sydney as well, and made dutiful calls to Margot Emory and my aunt.
Margot took the news with equanimity, only asking when I thought I’d be back in Jerome, but Rachel didn’t handle it quite so well.
“I just can’t believe that you really did it,” she said. “Your place is here, Angela.”
“And it will be, for half the year. And the other half I’ll be here in Flagstaff, as is only fair. Everyone will learn to adapt over time.
She didn’t reply right away, and I could tell she was thinking basically the same thing I’d been thinking only a short while earlier…that there might not be all that much time to work with.
But she didn’t bring it up, thank the Goddess, and so after a few more reassurances, I hung up, glad that was over with.
“Hungry yet?” Connor asked, bringing me a glass of water.
“Silly question. I’m always hungry.”
“Then let me go out and get some tapas. No point in trying to cook something, not when we need to start packing the kitchen tomorrow.”
I nodded, and he went out, promising to be back in a few minutes. That was an optimistic estimate, since it was now verging on six-thirty, and even a Thursday night could be busy, especially on a mild summer evening like this one.
Not that waiting had to be bad. I settled down on the couch and began to reach for the remote, glad of a chance to rest and relax for a few minutes, only to see a pale flicker at the corner of my vision. Startled, I got to my feet, and realized the pale flicker was the ghost Mary Mullen in her white dress, standing in front of the window.
“Mary!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”
She didn’t blink. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Here.” Her gaze seemed to wander over the living room, pause on the fireplace, and then move back toward me. “You and Connor. You’re leaving.”
“Well, yes,” I said, feeling inexplicably guilty. “Because of the babies.”
Her expression turned dreamy. “Oh, yes, the babies.” Then the faraway look disappeared so quickly it might have been turned off with a switch. “Why can’t you stay here with your babies? I had two children here. There was plenty of room.”
I didn’t really feel like getting in a discussion with her over the inadequacies of a two-bedroom walk-up when it came to raising twins. Times had changed a lot since she’d had to look after two small children. Fumbling for an excuse, I said, “Well, but it’s much busier here than when you had your little girls. I’m afraid I don’t think it would be safe for the babies. All that traffic.”
She seemed to accept that explanation, nodding slightly as she moved soundlessly from where she stood in the living room to pause next to one of the dining room chairs. Running a hand over the back — or appearing to, anyway, as I was fairly certain she couldn’t actually touch it — she let out a sigh and said, “I still miss them so very much.”
“I know,” I said in soothing tones. But as the words left my lips, I felt the oddest sensation deep within me. Not the babies moving; of course it was far too early for that. No, it was more like the stirring of the prima power, awakening from where it seemed to have slept for the past few days, somehow telling me I needed to do something to help Mary.
But what do I do? I asked of the power, as if it was a separate entity living inside me, rather than a gift I had inherited, one as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or the sound of my voice.
Tell her it is time to stop being alone.
That was all, but I thought I understood. I didn’t want to leave her here with no one to talk to. The chances of someone else who possessed my same gift coming to live in the apartment were very slim. Yes, Connor had mentioned offering it as an affordable rental to any one of a number of Wilcox cousins currently attending Northern Pines, but our plans hadn’t gotten much past the discussion stage. At any rate, no Wilcox I’d heard of was able to speak to ghosts, and so even if one of the cousins moved in, Mary would once again be relegated to watching only, unable to communicate with the living person who shared her home.
“Maybe,” I ventured, trying to find the right words to tell her she didn’t need to exist in this limbo any longer, “maybe it’s time for you to be with them.”
Her fine penciled brows lifted. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that they’ve been waiting for you — waiting such a long time. Your girls need their mother…and your husband needs his wife.”
“But they left me,” she protested, her tone almost petulant. “I waited and waited here — ”
“I know, I know,” I broke in. “But it’s sort of like” — I racked my brains, trying to think of an analogy she’d understand — “it’s like you made a plan to take the train, only you got off a stop ahead of them. So they’ve been waiting for you at their stop all this time, while you’ve been here, thinking that they must be horribly late. All you have to do is go meet them at their station.”
Blue eyes widening, she nodded. “Of course. Ralph was so absentminded, he was always forgetting the timetables for the trains and such. I can see how he would have gone to the wrong place to wait for me.”
The power pulsed within me again, and I asked, following its inner guidance, “What would Ralph be wearing to meet you at the station? And your girls?”
“Well, if it was Sunday, he’d have on his good black suit, and that fedora of his I loved so much, the one with the green feather. And the girls would be wearing the dresses their Nana smocked for them, and their patent-leather shoes, and — oh, my!”
I could understand why she’d let out that shocked exclamation, because the window that overlooked the street suddenly didn’t seem to be a window any longer, but rather a portal through which a pure white light blazed. And out of that light stepped three figures, the tallest one in the middle, flanked by smaller shapes that resolved themselves into two small girls, probably four and six at the most, wearing, as Mary had described, darling smocked dresses in pink and blue, and the shiniest patent-leather Mary-Jane shoes I’d ever seen. The man with them wore a black suit, his fedora cocked at a jaunty angle.
His hazel eyes widened as he caught sight of Mary, and he cried out, “Mary! Oh, Mary — is that you?”
Tears streamed down her face. “It is, Ralph. Oh, my darling, I thought I would never see you again!”
She ran to him, and he took her in his arms, holding her close. In that moment they looked very solid — or perhaps it was more that they were solid to one another. The two little girls ran to them, reaching up with their arms to be hugged as well, and the whole family embraced in the middle of the living room, while the white light continued to pour in from the place where the window used to be.
At last I said softly, “Ralph, you’ll be taking Mary with you now, won’t you?”
He nodded. His face was pleasant, not handsome, but something in the way Mary was gazing up at him told me she thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “Yes, I will. I’ve been waiting a long time for her.” He turned, searching her big tear-filled eyes. “Are you ready, my dear?”
“I am.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and took the hand of the little girl wearing blue, while he clasped the small fingers of the younger child in pink. “I’m sorry I didn’t come with you from the beginning.”
“You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”
He began to lead them toward the light, but at the last minute Mary paused and looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine. “Thank you, Angela,” she said, and they walked into the light, the radiance blazing brighter and brighter until I had to shield my eyes from that retina-scorching glare.
Then they were gone, the window just a window, the living room returned to its regular self, the abandoned remote sitting on the coffee table. I began to laugh, and then for some reason, the laughter turned to tears.
And that’s how Connor found me when he returned, his hands full of takeout bags. Just me standing in the middle of the living room, crying for no apparent reason.
“So how did you know what to do?” he asked some time later, after he’d calmed me down enough for me to tell him what had happened.
“I — I don’t know,” I confessed. “It was sort of like…well, when we had to confront Damon. Somehow the power in me understood, even when I didn’t. I guess I just felt so bad for her, thinking of her being here by herself after we moved out, and it woke up something in me. Sorry — I know that sounds kind of crazy.”
“Not as crazy as you think.” Quietly, he picked up the last bacon-wrapped date and set it on my plate. I flashed him a grateful smile. He reached over, touched my hand for a brief second, then went on, “Just like you said, you’ve had the power come to you when you needed it. For whatever reason, you understood it was time for Mary to move on. So…you helped her.”
“But that’s not my talent!” I protested. “Talking to ghosts, yes. Helping them cross over? That’s what a medium does, isn’t it? We McAllisters had one once, but she died when I was just a little girl. I even tried a few times, thinking I could coax a few of our ghosts into moving on, since it was so clear that they were clinging to what was familiar in Jerome rather than facing the next step in their existence. But I could never get them to listen to me. Not until now, I mean.”
Connor seemed to ponder my comments for a moment, one index finger tracing idle swirls on the tabletop. “We don’t have anyone like that, either. Nor anyone who can talk to ghosts like you do. Most of our powers seem to be concentrated pretty firmly in this world, for whatever reason. I know you think your talent is just talking to ghosts, but people grow and change. Why not their talents, too? Maybe yours are simply…evolving.”
“I’d say yes, but I’ve never noticed that about any of the McAllisters. What they do is just…what they do. So my aunt never loses anything, can tell you down to the square inch where anything is in the apartment or the store, or even Tobias’s place, come to think of it.” I smiled, recalling the time he’d dropped a contact lens and she’d gone unerringly to the very spot where it had fallen. “And Margot can cast illusions so real you’d swear you could touch them — until your hand goes right through the wall she conjured, or whatever.”
“So that’s her talent,” Connor murmured. “I was sort of wondering. Now we’ve got to get her and Lucas together. They’d clean up in Vegas.”
“I’m serious, Connor.”
“So am I.”
There didn’t seem to be anything for it except for me to smack him in the arm. He managed to wince and chuckle at the same time. “Anyway,” I went on, trying to shoot him an evil glare, one that wasn’t very effective because I could feel my lips start to twitch with answering laughter, “what I was trying to say is that I know what the people in my clan can do, but it’s the same thing they’ve always done. It doesn’t really change. Our powers start to show up when we’re around ten or eleven, sometimes later, but after that, they are what they are. So I don’t see how mine could suddenly morph into something new.”
He lifted his glass of mineral water, polished it off, and then poured himself some more from the bottle sitting on the table. Afterward, he tilted it slightly toward me, offering me some. I shook my head. The fizzy bubbles were starting to get to my stomach. “Well, remember what Maya said?”
I shook my head, not understanding what he was getting at.
“She said nothing like this had happened before, that never had a prima and a primus been together the way we are, so we’re basically in uncharted territory.”
“But she was only talking about us being together,” I pointed out. “She wasn’t talking about our talents.”
“Okay, maybe, but take it a step further. Maybe the mere fact of us being together, being joined like this, is doing something to our talents…having them, I don’t know, evolve or something.”
That sounded vaguely ominous. Not that I’d always enjoyed being able to talk to ghosts, but at least I was used to it by now. Although I was happy for Mary, glad that she had finally been able to reunite with the ones she loved, my role in her moving on made me uneasy. I’d already had enough changes in my life. I didn’t really want to cope with the possibility that I myself might be changing, too.
“Well, if that’s your hypothesis,” I said, “then it should be easy enough to prove. Try taking on the appearance of someone who isn’t your approximate size.”
Now it was his turn to look uncomfortable. He didn’t protest, though, only asked, “Like who?”
“How about Maya herself? She’s at least a foot shorter than you are.”
He expelled a breath, then nodded. “Okay. Let me think about that for a second.” His lids dropped, as if he were trying to visualize her with his mind’s eye and didn’t want any interference from the outside world.
And there was Maya sitting at the table with me, her dark eyes glinting with mischief.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed, and Connor winked back into existence, replacing the Maya illusion that had been there a second earlier.
“So I’m guessing it worked,” he said.
“That’s for sure.” Pausing, I studied him for a few seconds, making sure he looked exactly like himself and nothing else. Which he did, from the sweep of the heavy black hair at his brow to the finely sculpted lips, those lips I loved to kiss. “Did it…feel…any different?”
His head tilted slightly as he considered the question. “Maybe. I was definitely seeing the world as she would see it — you know, from about a foot lower down. That did feel kind of strange.”
I supposed it would, for someone used to seeing things from a commanding six-foot-three. “Anything else?”
“Not really. I mean, I visualized Maya in my mind, the same way I visualized Lucas when I took on his appearance. And it just…happened. But I’d never been able to do anything like that before.”
So it seemed we were both changing…or at least our powers were. What that meant, I had no idea.
Although we really didn’t have that much stuff to move, several Wilcox cousins I vaguely recognized from the Christmas party came over with their pickup trucks and SUVs to assist with transferring our things to the new house. I didn’t know if they were just trying to be helpful, or whether what they really wanted was a peek at their primus’ new digs. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for their help, because pretty much everything was taken care of by the time four o’clock rolled around. Connor shared a beer with them, then waved goodbye as they all took off, leaving us alone in the new house.
“Well,” I said.
“Well, indeed.” We were standing on the front walkway, watching as the last of the vehicles disappeared around a bend and into the trees. Connor reached out and brushed away a wisp of hair that had escaped my ponytail. His expression was hard to read — tired, yes, but there was a peace to it I hadn’t seen for a long time. But then a corner of his mouth lifted, and he asked, “Do you want me to carry you over the threshold?”
“Connor, I’ve been in and out of the house all day,” I replied. “Do you think it matters?”
“It matters to me.”
I laughed. “Okay, then. Just be glad we’re doing this now and not when I’m seven months pregnant.”
“True.” And he scooped me up in his arms, lifting me like I weighed nothing, then carried me through the open doorway. After pushing the door shut with one foot, he set me down in the entry. “Maybe I’m doing this backward,” he said, “but I really do want to make it official.”
Before I could do anything but stare down at him in stupefaction, he got on one knee and fished a small black box out of one pocket.
“Connor — ”
“We’ve danced around this, Angela, and there’s no reason to do that anymore. We’re together. I can’t imagine a life without you. So will you marry me?” And he opened the box, revealing a beautiful ring, obviously an antique, with a filigreed mounting of either white gold or platinum, and a square-cut diamond flanked on either side with emerald-cut sapphires.
I didn’t even stop to think, my heart answering as the words rose to my lips. “Oh, yes, Connor, I’ll marry you. Of course I will.”
He slid the ring on my finger, and I reached out and took both his hands, pulled him back to his feet, brought him toward me so I could kiss him again and again and again. And then his arms were sliding around me, lifting me, and he carried me upstairs, through the welter of boxes in the master bedroom, to the bed that had been delivered that morning and which I had just finished making up.
That bed definitely got a proper christening.
Afterward, we lay there for a while, feeling the breeze blow in through the open windows, a breeze that smelled of pine and sun-warmed grass. I gazed down at the ring, thinking how perfect it was, how perfectly it fit me. “How did you pick it out?” I asked, turning my hand so the light from the window struck the diamond, scattering sparks all around the room.
“I guess it sort of picked me out. There’s a shop around the corner from the tapas place that sells antiques but also has a selection of antique jewelry, and when I was out I stopped in to take a look. Can’t even say why, really — it was just an impulse, I guess.” We exchanged a smile at that comment; lately, our impulses seemed to be directed by a higher power. “I saw the ring, and just thought it looked like you. I couldn’t really imagine you wearing some mass-market ring from a regular jewelry store.”
How well he knew me. If he’d bought me something like that, I would’ve worn it, because it had come from him. But this ring was an individual, something I knew I’d never see coming and going.
“Also, I know you like blue, have all that turquoise jewelry, so I thought the sapphires were nice.”
“It’s perfect,” I told him. “Just like you.”
“You’re going to give me a swelled head if you keep talking like that.”
“I’d rather give you a swelled something else.”
My hand moved lower, touching him, feeling him already growing hard as my fingers brushed against his shaft. He chuckled, shifting so I could reach him better, and I listened as his breathing quickened, felt my own body throbbing in response, the warm golden rush of heat going all through my veins. It seemed right to make love here, in this house that was ours, with the amber light of late afternoon slanting through the trees and making everything seem as if it were adrift in an enchanted forest, in a place of perfect peace, perfect harmony, perfect joy.
And then, content, we fell asleep in one another’s arms.
The ringing of Connor’s phone roused us both. I startled awake, blinking into the half-light of late dusk, a little disoriented. Then I remembered where we were. The new house. We were home.
Connor muttered a curse, then fumbled for the phone on the nightstand, nearly knocking over the lamp in the process. His reflexes were good enough that he was able to grab it before it crashed to the floor, though, and, still grumbling, he righted it before finally grabbing the phone.
“It’s Lucas,” he said after glancing briefly at the display.
“Then you’d better get it, I suppose.”
He tapped the screen and then held the phone to his ear. “No offense, Lucas, but this had better be important. We just moved everything over, and — ” Falling silent, he seemed to listen intently, at last saying, “Okay, we need to write that down. Angela…?”
I made a flailing motion with my hands. Right then I had no idea where anything I could write with might be, belatedly realizing that I’d dumped my purse on top of the dresser hours ago, and that I should at least have a pen in there, if not any actual writing paper. Grabbing my underwear, I sort of hopped into them as I crossed the floor and retrieved my purse. The pen had of course drifted to the bottom, but eventually I dug it out and gave it to Connor. No paper was to be had, but then he seemed to spy the discarded packing slip for the mattress on the floor, and leaned over to pick it up. Scribbling furiously, he said, “You’re sure? I don’t want to drive all the way out there and then…. No, okay, you’re right. Well, I’ll tell Angela. Thanks for everything, Lucas.” He hung up and turned back toward me, as I’d slipped under the covers once I’d given him the pen.
“What is it?” I asked.
A pause, during which he reached out and cupped my cheek, ran those long, sensitive artist’s fingers of his along my jaw. “He just heard back from the private investigator.
“He found your father.”