Refreshed by her shower, and dressed in jeans and a blue chambray shirt, Christy went upstairs, where Nona met her in the hallway.
“Supper will be ready soon, and a friend is going to join us. I hope you don’t mind. There’s time now for you to see my favorite room.”
She didn’t feel like meeting anyone tonight, but of course there would be visitors in her aunt’s home. She couldn’t be a recluse and hide from people, though she hadn’t expected to meet Nona’s friends so quickly.
“Who’s coming?” she asked hesitantly as she followed her aunt.
They’d reached a big room at the rear corner of the house, and Nona paused to put a reassuring hand on Christy’s arm.
“Eve Corey is a good friend. She’s closer to your age, and I think you’ll like each other.”
“Of course,” Christy said, and tried to dismiss her nagging uneasiness.
Nona’s studio was a long, wide room, divided into two sections by a pair of Chinese screens. The nearer area served as a sitting room; the farther was where Nona worked at her painting. A slanting roof offered two skylights over her easels.
Nona went ahead, turning on lights. Weather windows, two panes thick, looked out upon darkening treetops at the back of the house. Several paintings stood about on easels—evidently work in progress. Nona had always liked to keep several projects going at once. She would move from one to another, until a painting absorbed her so completely that she worked through to its finish.
Breathing the familiar smell of oil paints and turpentine, Christy felt immediately comfortable. The seeming muddle of Nona’s worktable, where brushes and palettes and bottles stood about, was a familiar disorder never to be disturbed by others, since Nona knew exactly where everything was.
One easel had been hidden by a green cloth flung over it, and Nona went to stand with her back to it, almost protectively. “Something new,” she said. “Something I’m not sure of yet, so I don’t want anyone to see it.”
Christy turned to other easels and glanced at several finished canvases set against a wall.
“They’re all on the same subject.” She voiced her surprise. “Don’t you paint anything but roads these days?”
“Red roads! They fascinate me and have ever since I moved here—the red roads of Virginia. Of course, these are back roads and there are endless variations. I’m to have a showing of this series in Charlottesville next month, and I’ll need to complete three more before then.”
In one watercolor a road of red earth ran beside a railed fence, beyond which cows grazed on a hillside meadow. In another, the road wound its way through high grass, to be lost among mountain folds. Still another road circled a small pond where ducks paddled. All were rural mountain scenes, with always a red road winding through. There were no human figures—and there seemed a loneliness and quiet about each scene. Settings that should have been serene and peaceful somehow were not. These were paintings deceptive in their country simplicity, the mood of each somber and mysterious. Where that quality came from Christy wasn’t sure.
“What do you see when you paint these?” she asked her aunt. “Are they from life or your imagination?”
“Both, of course.” Nona gestured toward a separate row of canvases set face out against the wall. “Tell me what you think of these.”
In an oil with a twilight aura, the road came to a sudden end in tall weeds, going nowhere. In another, a ribbon of road climbed to the top of a wooded cliff, where it vanished into space. A third road led into a covered bridge but never emerged on the other side. In the lower right-hand corner of those she had completed was Nona’s special signature, bold and clear: HARMONY. Yet these were not harmonious paintings.
“Well?” Nona was waiting. Not that it ever made any difference to Nona what others thought of her work.
“They’re compelling. After the first bucolic impression, I want to go deeper into what they mean. I want to know where those roads go, and why some of them end so abruptly. They’re unsettling. I’m not sure what you’re doing or what you mean.”
“That’s the mystery of any road.” Nona sounded pleased, and her turquoise earrings danced with the turning of her head. “You never know what lovely surprise or unexpected disaster waits for you around the curve. I didn’t want to paint pretty country scenes—these reach much more unsettling depths. Of course I don’t know where my roads go, and I’m not sure I want to. I’d like them to tantalize and promise, and pull the observer into them. You may not see the fantasy right away, but it’s always there. These are secret roads and they keep their secrets, even from me.”
“I’m not sure I like them,” Christy admitted. “They make me uncomfortable.”
“That’s what I intend. You’ll remember them and go on wondering what’s going to happen in those hidden distances. Come and sit down and we’ll talk a bit until Eve arrives.”
On the Chinese screens that separated the sitting area from Nona’s work space, waterfalls tumbled steeply down gold panels, to end in white spray over stylized black rocks. All was inked in with sparing lines. Formalized mountains poked starkly into the sky, and small figures on little white horses rode endlessly down precipitous paths between twisted pine trees. Beyond the screens, a small sofa upholstered in wheat-grained cloth with a faint rose stripe, a drop-leaf oval coffee table of polished wood, and several chairs invited the visitor to rest and talk.
“There’s good energy here,” Christy said. “I can feel it around me. There’s no dis-Harmony here.”
Nona nodded, pleased. “Sometimes when everything gets too tense with my painting I come here and let it all go away.”
Christy went to stand before a cork board hung on the birch-paneled wall. Here were clippings about Harmony and her work, as well as snapshots of friends. She recognized a group photo she had sent her aunt, taken when she was dramatizing a story for children at a library back on Long Island. The rapt faces of the small listeners were a study in themselves. But all that had been before witches and goblins began to creep in.
The next color photo—an enlargement—arrested Christy’s attention. Here was the touch of fantasy again, though this was the picture of an actual woman. Her face showed delicate features, with wide, startled eyes, as though she hadn’t expected to be photographed. Long fair hair, caught back with a violet ribbon, had released a strand, lifted by a breeze to trail across one cheek. Her dress was long and white, with eyelet embroidery and a violet-ribboned yoke. A nightdress, perhaps? Her feet scarcely touched rough grass, and she raised her arms as if dancing to music only she could hear. Behind her a stand of woods seemed darkly secret—the trees very still, watching her.
A familiar sense of something about to be revealed stirred in Christy. “Who is that?” she asked her aunt.
Nona went abruptly to the board and removed the pins that held the picture. “I must put this away. Her name was Deirdre, and she was just as ethereal as she seems here. Never mind—we have other things to talk about. Come and sit down.”
Nona spoke in the past tense of the woman, but casually, as of someone who had moved away, and the stir of warning died in Christy.
She chose an upholstered rocker and settled herself comfortably. Nona dropped onto the sofa, propping a cushion behind her and stretching out long legs on the coffee table. When a book was shoved aside by her foot and fell to the floor, Christy rose to pick it up and saw that it was Rose Vaughn’s Little Red Road that Harmony had illustrated. She sat down to leaf through the familiar pages.
“Such a beautiful book! It’s deserved the acclaim it’s won. Children love the story, and they love your pictures when I show them the book.”
“Rose’s death was a tragedy. I still miss her, though it’s eight months now since it happened.”
“You wrote about her accident—a terrible shame. She lived around here, didn’t she? I hope you’ll do more work like this with other writers.”
Nona took the book from her and closed it with a firm snap. “I haven’t the heart to work with anyone else. Rose was working on something—a story about llamas. I believe she’d completed it, though she never showed it to me.”
“Can’t you still illustrate it?”
“It’s disappeared, and Oliver, Rose’s husband, says he couldn’t find it among her things. Donny loves this book.”
“Donny? Is he the small boy I saw outside on the deck downstairs? I tried to make friends with him, but he wouldn’t talk to me—except to tell me to go away. When I said we might get acquainted later, he gave me a black look and ran off.”
“I’m sorry. Donny has problems right now. He lives close by with his father, Hayden Mitchell. Rose was his special friend, and her death hit him pretty hard.”
“You said it was a fall—how did it happen?”
“That’s the miserable part—it never should have happened at all. Like most accidents. Rose loved to hike and often went out alone, since Oliver doesn’t care much about physical activity. She should have known better than to go off without telling anyone where she meant to climb. They didn’t find her for three days. As a matter of fact—” Nona broke off and shook her head. “Never mind. I can’t really talk about it. Not yet.”
“Did she live in Redlands?”
“Yes. Over on the mountain above Victor’s cabin. Poor Oliver. He still lives in their house, and it’s been a dreadful time for him. He teaches English lit at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and he’s a writer himself. Though I’m not much in sympathy with his articles on parapsychology. His debunking is passionate and wrongheaded—I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about. Rose understood better—you can sense it in her stories.”
“She did other stories?”
“Several earlier ones. If I ever illustrate another book for children I’d like to do one of Rose’s tales. But Oliver doesn’t want them published.”
“Why not?” Christy was beginning to dislike Oliver Vaughn.
“They fly too strongly against all that down-to-earth realism he prides himself on. He doesn’t approve of fairy tales for children. He doesn’t understand that fantasy is right brain. It stretches the imagination and helps it to grow. His nothing-but-realism credo stifles it and builds walls around it. I’ve had a few rounds of argument with him, but we get nowhere.”
Nona sat up, suddenly alert. “There—that’s Eve coming now. Let’s go meet her.”
Christy had heard nothing, but Nona’s inner faculty was working, and a moment later the door chimes sounded. Nona led the way out to the front deck. “Come around this way, Eve,” she called, and added to Christy, “Eve works for Hayden Mitchell, Donny’s father.”
Eve Corey waved and started toward the kitchen door where Nona stood. She was probably in her mid-thirties and she dressed as though she cared very little about what others thought. The afternoon had turned warm enough for shorts, and she hadn’t bothered to change. Patched denim revealed plump legs and well-padded hips. Her face was round and devoid of makeup and she wore her brown hair in a straight cut below her ears, with slanted bangs across her forehead. At the moment she looked upset and irritated.
“Come in and tell us about it, Eve,” Nona said. “Christy, this is Eve Corey. Eve, Christy Loren. What’s happened to upset you?”
Eve was tall enough to carry her weight fairly well, and she moved quickly, assertively. As she strode into Nona’s red-tiled kitchen, Christy could sense her vitality—an excess of energy that surrounded her—at the moment, angry energy.
“Want me to fix the salad?” Eve asked. Her Virginia accent was only a hint—musical and pleasing. “Maybe tearing up lettuce will make me feel better. I just had a run-in with Victor Birdcall. How you can stand to have that man working for you I don’t know.”
Nona raised an eyebrow at Christy, undisturbed. “We keep out of Eve’s way when she gets mad. What did Victor say to upset you?” She handed Christy woven place mats to arrange on the table set in the bay of windows, and opened a drawer to indicate silverware.
The refrigerator door slammed as Eve took out salad greens and carried them to the sink.
“Victor thinks Hayden should drop the search for Deirdre and let her stay missing. Of course he’s wrong, and I said so. He shouldn’t go telling Hayden and Donny stuff like that. Even though we’ve combed the woods and hills around here and haven’t found a trace, we can’t give up.”
Nona cast a wary look at Christy. “It’s been two months, hasn’t it?”
“Six weeks.”
Christy repeated aloud the one word she’d focused on: “Missing?”
“Let’s not talk about this now,” Nona said quickly. “We don’t want to spoil our meal.”
Moving automatically, Christy finished setting the table, thrusting back a new wave of anxiety. She’d sensed something evasive in Nona ever since she’d told her aunt what had brought her here.
“It doesn’t matter, Christy.” Nona watched her uneasily. “This has nothing to do with you. Don’t even think about it.”
Eve went right on. “Doesn’t it seem strange that we’ve had two disappearances in less than a year?”
“Rose was found,” Nona reminded her. “That was a fall—an accident. While Deirdre could have run off anywhere in her whimsical way.”
“Helpless little Deirdre, who needs her husband and even her young son to look after her?” Eve shook her head vehemently. “Not likely. Besides, nobody can stop Donny from looking. Not after what happened with Rose. That’s what scares him. He’ll go on and on until there’s an answer. And now Hayden’s letting his work go, which means that I’m taking on most of it at the plant nursery. Donny’s staying out of school on various pretexts, and things are going to pot. It would be better to find her dead than to go on like this.”
“I’m lost,” Christy said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sorry. I suppose I should have explained.” Nona lifted an earthenware casserole from the oven and set it on a trivet. “As soon as your salad’s ready, Eve, we can eat.”
“Explain now,” Christy insisted. “Please.”
“Oh, all right.” Nona gave in. “Hayden Mitchell runs a tree and plant nursery not far from Redlands. He’s put in all these flowering bushes for me, and he’s really creative, imaginative—an artist with growing things. Eve works as his assistant, and she’s pretty good herself at all this horticulture stuff.”
“I just have a knack for getting things to grow,” Eve agreed. “But you’re marking time, Nona. Tell her about Deirdre.”
“Not now.” Nona was firm, and Christy understood her aunt’s reluctance, though Eve didn’t. She thought of the photo she’d seen of a slim, almost ethereal woman in a white gown and bare feet, her long fair hair lifting in a breeze.
“Why did what Victor said upset you?” Nona asked Eve.
“Victor always upsets me. But this time I started wondering if he knows something he’s not talking about. I asked him right out, and he scowled as though he’d like to hit me. He has a vile temper, and I don’t think you should trust him the way you do, Nona.”
Eve mixed salad greens as she talked, and now she brought the big wooden bowl to the table.
Nona gestured them both to chairs. “I’m not worried about Victor.” She pulled off the flowered scarf she’d tied around her head, and graying hair sprang up in little clumps, somehow making her look less indomitable—as though the scarf provided her with an armor, a defense.
Christy sat where she could look out the window toward the ever changing view. In growing darkness the mountains formed a black silhouette, like a scalloped cutout set against the backdrop of a lighter sky. Far across the dip of the valley, house lights shone among the trees. Houses that weren’t visible by day.
Eve followed the direction of her gaze. “That’s where Victor lives. He built his own log cabin over there in the woods. Oliver Vaughn’s house is higher and a little farther along on the right. He’s stayed there since Rose’s death.”
Through open windows a breeze stirred the good scents of Nona’s cooking. She had baked chicken with broccoli and mushrooms in her own special stock, seasoned with lemon juice and dill. Hot corn bread added its own appetizing aroma, and Christy found that she was hungry in spite of her uneasiness about all she was learning.
“Now tell Christy about Deirdre Mitchell,” Eve repeated, undeflected by Nona’s hesitance to explain. “You really must, you know. Sooner or later she’ll meet Hayden.”
Nona set down her fork and gave in. “What happened was sudden. One night Deirdre got out of bed while Hayden and Donny were asleep—and simply disappeared. She put on sandals and slipped a coat over her nightclothes, but she didn’t take anything else. Which makes her disappearance seem all the more ominous. She intended, obviously, to return to bed.”
“It wasn’t all that unusual for her to go outdoors in the middle of the night,” Eve said. “We all knew that. She’d stay out for a half hour or so playing her games—dancing with her spirits—barefoot on the grass in the moonlight! That’s what she claimed. She was one of those full-moon people. Or sometimes she’d go out at dawn when the sun was rising on the dew. It’s a wonder a copperhead didn’t get her!”
“That was Deirdre’s style,” Nona said tolerantly. “Just as it’s mine to paint red roads. As for snakes, Deirdre always claimed they were her friends and she was safe with them. She really did seem to have an affinity for wild things. I sometimes thought that cat of hers was half wild.”
“That’s another funny thing,” Eve said. “That Siamese disappeared along with Deirdre.”
Nona explained to Christy. “That’s something that worries us. The cat always stayed close to her—so why hasn’t it been found either? Anyway, Christy, I never meant to have all these unhappy events spill out on your first night here.”
The stirring under the surface was alive now in Christy, as though something dark waited to spring out at her.
Nona knew what was happening. “Don’t, Christy. Don’t let it take over. You can stop it, you know. Give yourself a little breathing space.”
“What does that mean?” Eve asked bluntly.
Christy raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “Tell Eve, if you like. It doesn’t matter.”
Reluctantly, as they ate, Nona related the story of what had happened in Christy’s life during the last two years, and Eve listened intently. When Nona was through, Eve regarded Christy with growing excitement.
“Perhaps you were sent!” she cried. “Perhaps it was meant that you should come here and help Hayden and Donny.”
Nona said nothing and her silence made Christy all the more uncomfortable.
“I haven’t any talent for finding people who disappear because of accidents,” she told Eve.
“But what if something worse has happened to Deirdre?” Eve persisted.
“That’s enough for now.” Nona pushed back from the table. “If you’re through, let’s clear the dishes and I’ll fix the dessert.”
Eve gave up for the moment. “Okay. How does it work, Christy? You can talk about that, can’t you? How do clues come to you?”
Christy carried dishes to the sink, wishing she could sidestep all of this.
“It’s not idle curiosity,” Eve added. “I feel terribly sorry for Hayden and Donny—so if there was any chance of your helping—”
“I can’t tell you how it happens,” Christy broke in. “I don’t know where the pictures come from or why they come. They’re suddenly there, whether I want them or not, and I begin to sense something. I don’t feel anything now about Deirdre, and I don’t want to. When it happens it can be shattering. Worst of all, I never have any feeling that I’ve helped.”
“You don’t need to think about any of this until you’re rested,” Nona assured her. “Eve, why does Victor feel that the search should stop?”
Eve scowled. “Who knows? He gets hunches, but he makes me mad the way he acts—as though he has some deep, inner knowledge that nobody else can have. I don’t know if he really knows something or if he’s putting me on. I just wish he’d go back to New Mexico, or wherever he came from.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Nona said. “For dessert we’re having yogurt with honey and nuts and a sprinkle of carob. Agreeable?”
Nobody objected, and when she’d spooned the mixture into sherbet glasses, Eve carried them to the table.
“I’d better fix an extra dish,” Nona said. “Someone’s coming.”
A moment later they heard a car on the gravel driveway, and Eve rolled her eyes at Christy as Nona switched on the outside lights.
“I don’t know how you do that.” Eve went to look out toward the driveway. “It’s Oliver Vaughn.”
“Oliver was Rose’s husband,” Nona reminded Christy as she went out on the deck.
A moment later she returned, followed by a tall, slender man, perhaps in his early forties. He carried a tote bag filled with books that he set down on the tiles as Nona introduced him to Christy.
His interest as he took her hand seemed especially intent. “You’re Liliana Dukas’s daughter, aren’t you? Nona has told us about you, though I gather you haven’t followed in your mother’s footsteps.”
“Sit down, Oliver,” Nona directed. “I know you hate yogurt, but have some anyway. At least you drink coffee.”
Oliver Vaughn was good-looking enough to have been a movie actor out of the past. Today’s actors were stamped in no such beautiful pattern. His pale, silky hair contrasted with dark eyes as heavily lashed as a woman’s. His straight, classic nose looked as though he might be disdainful of much that came under it.
“I brought over the extra copies of Rose’s book you wanted,” he told Nona. “I’m clearing out her things, and I know you can use more copies of Little Red Road.” He sounded matter-of-fact, but Christy sensed that Oliver Vaughn might be suppressing a great deal of emotion under his cool demeanor.
Seated, he didn’t seem as tall—it was his legs that were long. Under a blue pullover his shoulders rounded a little, as though from bending above a desk.
“Thanks,” Nona said. “I’m very glad to have these.”
“Can you use any help, Oliver, sorting through Rose’s things?” Eve offered. “I can manage the time.”
He shook his head. “I want to do this myself. I’m going to put my house up for sale and move into Charlottesville as soon as I can.”
“Must you move?” Nona asked. “I should think Redlands would be ideal for a writer.”
“You mean because it’s so quiet that nothing ever happens here?” He raised an eyebrow derisively and turned to Christy. “You may have heard that this hasn’t been a happy place lately. I lived here because of Rose—because she loved the isolation. Now I’d rather get away. I don’t want to be here when they find Deirdre.”
“What makes you think she’ll be found?” Nona asked.
“It’s inevitable, isn’t it? Where could she go in sandals and a nightgown?” There was something about the way he spoke that made Christy look at him quickly, but his bland expression told her nothing.
He ate a mouthful of yogurt, made a face, and went on. “I saw your mother in an interview on television last week. What do you think of her work?”
“Before you commit yourself, Christy,” Nona put in, “you’d better be aware that Oliver’s second vocation is the exposing of fake psychics. Lili would really baffle him.”
Christy smiled, sidestepping his question. “My mother lives her life as she pleases, and that’s fine with me.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Oliver said. “I’ve just finished writing an article about this so-called channeling—where spirits who come from God knows where and have special identities are supposed to speak through human channels.”
“Perhaps God does know,” Nona said mildly. “Even though you don’t think it’s for real.”
“Oh, I’m sure some of these people get carried away by their own fantasies,” Oliver said. “I’ve checked some of the prophecies psychics make at the beginning of every year, and mostly they’re wrong.”
“Of course there are phonies in every field,” Eve put in. “But you see what you want to see, Oliver. Rose heard her own voices—”
“Rose was different.” Oliver dismissed her words. “Every artist, every writer, experiences inspiration—something that comes from the unconscious. How, we don’t know. But these aren’t voices from outer space, or put into us mysteriously.”
“How do you know that?” Christy asked. “Who really knows where inspiration comes from?”
He regarded her with his cool, rather distant air, and again she sensed some tension in him, barely suppressed. Oliver Vaughn was far from being an open, easily read person.
“People like Dukas speak with changed voices and claim that entities are speaking through them—coming from elsewhere. The scientific mind knows that this is nonsense.” He was emphatic.
“Then you think my mother is a fake?” Christy asked.
“I don’t know enough about her. That’s why I’d like to meet her, perhaps put her through a few tests, if she were willing.”
“She wouldn’t be,” Nona said. “I know my sister and she wouldn’t waste her time. She uses whatever she has for purposes that count. It doesn’t matter to her if there are those who don’t believe.”
Oliver smiled without warmth. “All of which brings her a great deal of publicity and wealth. That’s one of the things that makes me skeptical. Forgive me, Christy, but this sort of enterprise can become pretty big business these days, taking money from the gullible.”
“You only see one side!” Eve protested. Her attitude toward Oliver seemed an odd mixture of affection and impatience. “We all have to earn a living, and sometimes money comes more easily in one profession than another.”
“Except,” Oliver pointed out, “that this pretends to be an altruistic gift—all for the benefit of mankind.”
Even though this man put her off a little with his skepticism, Christy had always shrunk from these very aspects of her mother’s work. Lili, of course, dismissed the money earning airily. All that was incidental, she said, and she couldn’t help or control those who handled her scheduling and programs. There was a large staff who had to be paid, and she trusted all of them. Yet it had seemed to Christy that the entourage that surrounded her mother might be all too willing to sop up whatever came their way. Perhaps they even used Lili, but this was not something Christy could do anything about. She was sure that her mother was not the greedy one in the picture.
Nona glanced at her watch. “I didn’t know whether to mention this or not, but since we’re talking about her, Lili’s to be on a program that’s coming on TV in about five minutes. Shall I turn on the set? Would you like to watch, Christy?”
Watching Liliana Dukas “perform” was not Christy’s favorite way of spending time, but Oliver Vaughn’s attitude and remarks had rankled. It might be interesting to see her mother answer him herself.
“It’s fine,” she told her aunt.
Eve jumped up eagerly. “Do let’s! Dukas always fascinates me. So here’s another chance to check her out, Oliver.”
He didn’t seem particularly eager as he trailed after them to the living room. His aloof manner gave him an air of being removed from whatever was happening around him. Yet Christy, walking beside him, could sense the vibration of some inner turmoil. She felt a curious urge to put a quieting hand on his arm to reassure him. A disturbed and unhappy man was masquerading under the guard he wore.
Nona’s living room was large, with cream walls and a high ceiling. An electric fan hung beneath the central light fixture, its blades quiet on this cool evening. Soft green wall-to-wall carpeting gave the room a sense of quiet and peace, even though small tables and bookcases were busy with dozens of ornamental objects that Nona had collected in her travels around the world. Christy remembered the African pictures brought from the French Congo before it became an African nation, the lacquer boxes from Japan, and the great carved fish of gray Vietnam marble.
“This is my museum room,” Nona told Christy. “Its the first time I’ve had a place to set out all my treasures. Do sit down, everyone.”
Christy moved away from Oliver, whose tension continued to make her uncomfortable. She chose a hassock near Nona’s armchair, while Eve and Oliver sat on the couch. Nona touched a button that raised a screen over the television set in one wall. A satellite dish outside brought in the world, and Nona began to change galaxies. Perhaps Lili’s “channels” were just as real as these, Christy thought, if one possessed the ability to understand such mysteries.
Nona found the proper channel, and Bill Mathison’s middle-aged, affable face came on the screen. His show had the special quality of being live in these days when most programs were recorded. So one never knew what might happen next, and he often invited controversial guests who dealt in the esoteric.
Once the commercials were out of the way, Mathison introduced his panel. The only man was Thomas Ardle, “debunker” of psychic matters, and a man Christy detested for his prejudice and ability to twist everything to his own views. She wondered if Oliver Vaughn was like that, and found herself watching him across the room. There seemed a deep suffering in this man who had so recently lost his wife, and she wondered if his mind could be opened to the help and comfort he might receive from someone like Lili. Probably not, since Rose, with all the sensitivity and awareness that showed in her writing for children, hadn’t been able to convince him.
“Get on with it!” Eve told the screen, squirming with her usual impatience. “Let’s have Dukas!”
Christy had never heard of the woman who was next introduced—rather wispy and other-worldly—perhaps given force by the entities who spoke through her. Liliana Dukas, secure in her fame, came last on the screen in the introductions, confident, smiling warmly, exuding a quality that Christy thought of whimsically as “electric serenity.”
How strange, she thought, that the old childish longing could arise whenever she saw her mother after a lapse of time. Memories swept back—memories of a vibrant, beautiful whirlwind of a woman who swept lovingly into her daughter’s life—and then flew off on her own affairs, leaving Christy lonely and empty. Now the unwelcome longing was almost as sharp as when she had been a little girl.
From her chair, Nona watched her knowingly, and Christy smiled at her aunt. If it hadn’t been for Nona, she’d have felt even more bereft through all her childhood.
Once the introductions were over, Dukas was to be interviewed first, and she smiled kindly at the critic, who scowled back, determined to remain unimpressed. There was a radiance about Lili, an outgoing generosity that always brought a sense of helpless admiration to Christy, no matter how much she might want to resist and resent all that charm.
Dukas was still beautiful in an old-fashioned way, not minding a few extra curves to her full figure. She could wear timeless clothes that enhanced her voluptuous appeal, and tonight her long dress was of a royal blue that the camera loved. A shimmering blue that contrasted with heavy coils of dark hair that she had never allowed to turn gray. Lili’s face seemed as smooth as that of a young woman, and even her hands appeared flawless, devoid of wrinkles or conspicuous veins.
“Dukas sure takes care of herself,” Eve murmured, hiding her own bitten nails under the hem of the man’s shirt she wore over her shorts.
With her usual grace, Lili answered the host’s questions and then settled herself in her chair and closed her eyes. She could do this very quickly, as Christy knew. In only a moment or two she began to sway a little—an almost infinitesimal movement that stopped as she began to speak.
The voice was of a different caliber from Lili’s, and the entity who came to Lili was called Josef. He could be outspoken and was not one to suffer nonsense gladly. Lili herself had none of his acerbity. The host’s questions were of no great depth, meant to entertain, and Josef disposed of them almost carelessly. Nothing of particular importance was said, until Thomas Ardle was invited to ask a question.
“What does Dukas do with all the money she takes in because of you, Josef?” he asked.
“That is not our concern,” Josef said loftily, removing himself from the plane of such earthly matters. His interest, he went on curtly, lay in how he could help, through Dukas, those who needed him.
Christy smiled, almost sorry for Thomas Ardle, who would be no match for either Lili or Josef. Ardle’s debunking talents might work on haunted houses, or the bending of spoons, or other feats that might or might not be trickery. But how did you “expose” someone who was channeling? Lili didn’t often make prophecies that could later be proved or disproved. Her gift lay in healing, in offering advice and comfort to those who had suffered a loss or needed guidance.
Josef went on in his slightly stilted way, ignoring the next question Ardle asked him. “There is someone listening now who is suffering greatly. A man who has lost his wife in recent months. He needs to take care and be warned. We wish to warn him that her death may not have been an accident.”
Josef stopped speaking and Lili opened her eyes, immediately with them again. She would know what had been said—never an unconscious channeler.
Ardle burst into angry words. “What kind of thing is that? Means nothing! There must be hundreds of men—thousands!—listening out there who have lost their wives. It’s harmful to warn of something that may not be true at all. How do you know who will take this to heart?”
Christy looked intently at Oliver Vaughn and saw that his hands were tightly clasped and white at the knuckles. He looked as angry as Ardle did. The other woman had come on the screen, but in Nona’s living room no one watched her.
A note of malice crept into Eve’s voice when she spoke. “Maybe Dukas meant you, Oliver. I’ve always felt that Rose would never have fallen when she was out hiking. She was never the careless type.”
Oliver looked positively ill, and Christy knew that Eve’s words and her mother’s had struck home.
The doorbell chimed suddenly, startling them all.
“I’ll see who it is,” Nona said. For once, she hadn’t been aware of someone coming.
Oliver was staring at Eve as though still listening to her words, but now he chose to deny them. “That’s crazy,” he told her roughly. “Everyone loved Rose. There isn’t anyone who wanted to harm her.”
“I suppose not.” Eve sounded unexpectedly contrite. “Forget I said it.”
But none of them could forget what Liliana Dukas had said, and little attention was paid to the second woman being interviewed. Nona rejoined them, bringing with her a man whom Christy hadn’t met, though the others knew and greeted him.
“This is Donny’s father, Hayden Mitchell,” Nona told Christy.
Hayden was not as tall as Oliver, and he was more sturdily built, with wide shoulders and strong cheekbones in his tanned face. His eyes were dark brown, intent in their regard, and his brown hair showed a bit of unruly curl. At least, he smiled more readily than his son, though the relaxing of his wide mouth was fleeting.
“I’m sorry,” he told Nona. “I didn’t realize you had company until I saw the cars on the driveway. Then I thought I might as well come in anyway and show you what has turned up.”
Ardle had appeared on the television screen again, his voice cutting through the room, compelling attention, so they all turned to watch.
“I’ll switch it off,” Nona said. “Then we can listen to Hayden.”
Prompted by some inner urging, Christy spoke abruptly. “No—please. Lili will be on again and I’d like to hear her, if Mr. Mitchell doesn’t mind.”
At Nona’s bidding, Hayden sat down reluctantly, and the television stayed on. Christy, however, found herself watching the man instead of the set, and when no one explained what was happening, Hayden took something white and soft and filmy from his pocket.
“Donny found this today,” Hayden said. “It’s a scarf that belonged to his mother. He came across it near the stream below this house. I went down there with him to look around, though we didn’t find anything else. Donny says this was caught under a bush, so searchers missed it, but Deirdre must have been down there. The water’s low in the stream, so it’s not deep enough for her to have fallen into. I don’t know what to make of this.”
Hayden spoke without expression in his face or voice—a screen, perhaps, for whatever lay beneath, though his dark eyes seemed intensely alive and, Christy thought, strangely wary.
“Christy”—Nona spoke hesitantly, a note of pleading in her voice—“if you would just touch the scarf . . .”
Christy jumped up from the hassock and started toward the door. “No! You can’t do this to me, Nona! Take it away—I won’t touch it!” She understood now what her aunt’s talk about not running away had meant.
“What are you talking about?” Hayden demanded, his voice ragged. “What are you up to, Nona?”
Christy backed toward the door, her hands behind her. On the screen Lili appeared again and she closed her eyes as Josef’s voice emerged, answering Mathison’s last question.
In her mind Christy breathed a quick prayer for help—perhaps to her mother. There had been telepathy between them a few times in the past. At once Lili’s eyes opened and she looked straight at the camera. In Nona’s living room there was sudden silence.
Josef was gone, and Lili spoke in a soft, penetrating voice. “Christy is in danger. I want her to leave that place as soon as she can—tomorrow at the latest. There are clouds around her—a dangerous mist!”
Mathison jumped in at once. “Who is Christy?”
Lili only shook her head and returned to the program as though there had been no interruption.
Christy cast a frightened look at the screen, aware of Hayden’s fixed attention, questioning and curious. But she had nothing to give him and she couldn’t face any of them a moment longer. She rushed out of the room, unable to respond except by flight, and hurried down to her bedroom.
There was no key or she would have locked the door. She threw herself across the flowered quilt and closed her eyes, covered her ears with shaking hands. She had to shut herself away. Lili’s power had reached out to her in response to her own plea, and Lili was usually right. Not for anything would she touch the scarf that had belonged to Deirdre Mitchell. Nor could she face that stark look in Hayden’s eyes. Her instinct was to distrust him entirely, and for some reason to be afraid. A reason that had nothing to do with the scarf.
Upstairs in the living room the four who remained stared at one another, and Nona went to turn off the television set. Quietly she explained to Hayden why Christy had come and why it was probably wise if she never touched Deirdre’s scarf. It had been a mistake, she admitted, to ask that of her niece. Then she looked toward the windows. “Someone’s out there.”
A moment later they heard a tapping on a window to the deck.
“May I come in?” Victor Birdcall asked, and Eve, at a nod from Nona, went quickly to the door to let him in.
There’s no need to fear her. Even if she holds the scarf it will tell her nothing. It’s been washed three times, so she can’t sense anything of Deirdre. It’s only a red herring I put there for Donny to find. They’ll never look in the right direction now.
If she listens to the warning from Dukas she’ll leave tomorrow. Then everything will be safe. For all of us.