Chapter 5
Heidi
The lodge house for Lane Landings rose two stories, was built of log, and had as many angles and crevices as a creative architect could draw into its blueprints. Heidi padded across the wood floor and into the kitchen. The expanse of three broad windows over the sink revealed a view of the lake, bordered by pine and oak trees with maples and poplar dotting in and out amongst them. She paused for a moment to take it all in before turning to the Bunn coffeemaker and tugging the pot from its warmer.
Heidi liked her coffee black, though something about the Northwoods brought out the cozy in her. She adjusted a red-and-navy plaid blanket she’d wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl and retrieved heavy whipping cream from the stainless-steel fridge. Creamy goodness swirled in the Costa Rican blend, and as she lifted the pottery mug to her lips, Heidi wondered briefly if Heaven might be a little bit like this.
She slid onto a barstool. Taking another sip of her coffee, she tugged the letter from her flannel pajama bottom’s pocket.
The handwriting was shaky across the front of the envelope. Heidi ran a finger across it, as if somehow by doing so it would revive old memories long repressed. Memories she would want to remember, instead of the ones she tried to forget.
Heidi Loretta Lane.
Her name in the address field was formal, and she could remember hearing her mother call it with that stern edge in her voice. Loretta Lane. The woman she was named after. Heidi stared at the Return to corner of the envelope.
L. L.
Briar Ridge Memory Care
Pleasant Valley, WI
Years with barely a word from her, and then the letter had shown up in Heidi’s mailbox. Cryptic. Almost desperate.
“Please. You must come.”
So she had. Out of obligation, some concern, and definitely curiosity. Why dementia-ridden Loretta Lane wanted her here in Pleasant Valley was a mystery.
“I’m heading into town.” Vicki’s strident voice matched the pace of her march into the kitchen.
Flustered, Heidi jammed the envelope and its contents back into her pocket.
Vicki didn’t seem to notice Heidi’s sneaky gestures as her hand burrowed in a blue canvas tote on the counter that was crammed with junk mail, rubber bands, odds and ends, and—interesting—Vicki pulled out a ring of keys. It was an unorganized place for her typically systematic sister.
Heidi quirked an eyebrow at her frazzled sibling. Vicki jammed the keys into her purse and shot a stern look toward Heidi.
“We’ve got new boarders for Cabin Two coming in at ten a.m. for early check-in. Brad cleaned it last night, but I need you to take towels over there. Four bath, two hand, and two washcloths.”
Heidi took a sip of her coffee and watched her sister over the rim of the mug.
Vicki continued as she swiped some renegade papers from the opposite counter and stuffed them in her purse. “The boarders upstairs in the main lodge will need new towels. I typically deliver them after lunch and pull the dirty ones. Think you can handle that?”
Heidi bit back a smile and raised her mug. “Towel duty. Got it.”
Vicki froze and eyed her. The assessment was accompanied by a sigh through her nose. “You should visit Mom too.”
“I will.” Infusing a chipper nonchalance into her voice was what Heidi did best.
Vicki blinked. “When I get back tonight, I’ll take you through the ins and outs of running day-to-day chores for the lodge.”
“Capeesh.” Heidi sipped more coffee, leaning against the counter on her elbows and staring out the windows at the view.
Vicki paused, eyed Heidi once more for good measure, and frowned.
“Go!” Heidi smiled, trying to add warmth to her eyes, anything to get her sister to feel reassured enough to leave. “I’ve got the towels.”
“Fine.” Vicki spun and headed out of the open kitchen to the front door. She paused, her hand on the knob, and attempted a smile. “Mom will be happy to see you, you know.”
“I know.” Heidi nodded.
The door closed.
If Mom remembered her. Heidi blinked fast to push back renegade moisture in her eyes. She didn’t want to be here. To be with family, to run a lodge, to be reminded whether by frank words or inference that she always fell just short. Like the prodigal son compared to his perfect older brother.
Heidi cleared her throat, her voice echoing in the empty room. She needed to get busy so she didn’t think too much. Easy morning chores for Vicki and then she’d reread the letter Mom had penned to her. Every single nonsensical word that ended with her plea for Heidi to come.
Returning to her room, she slipped on a pair of black leggings and a buffalo-checked flannel shirt. Socks, knee-high wine-colored boots to offset the red-and-black shirt, and she felt her confidence growing. A few minutes in the bathroom fixed her face, lip gloss, mascara, and a bit of chocolate eyeliner to emphasize her eyes. Hair? Check. It was straight and colored golden blond with the tips dipped in royal blue. She’d seen Vicki eyeing her hair last night. It was well dyed, professional and classy, but the blue? Heidi ran a brush through it before fingering in some styling paste to give it texture. Vicki probably wasn’t a fan of the blue any more than she was a fan of the tattoos.
Heidi exited the attached bathroom and grabbed her cellphone from the nightstand. She hesitated. The photo album beneath her phone stared up at her and seemed to beg to be opened again. A small shiver wrestled Heidi’s body. What was normally compelling now gave her pause. Then again—Heidi reached for the album—maybe she’d overreacted yesterday. Maybe Connie Crawford had as well. A postmortem photograph from the early 1900s couldn’t possibly be her mirror image. Not if one really looked close.
She sank onto a chair and opened the musty volume. The moment she did, Heidi could almost sense the souls of the dead rising from the pages, whispering in her ear, floating about the room, pleading to have their lives rediscovered.
“Stay dead,” Heidi whispered, then laughed at herself. She wasn’t superstitious. Being raised in a very Christian home, with Dad being a pastor and Mom a church secretary, there wasn’t much room for considering ghosts as legit human spirits. Still . . . Heidi ran fingers over the two-toned photograph of a middle-aged woman in starched silk. Still, they had stories. At one time, they had lived, hoped, dreamed, wept, and laughed. Moments lost in the funnel of time. Tiny granules of sand that fell and were lost.
She turned to the page with her supposed doppelgänger. Again, as before, Heidi’s breath was snatched away. She sucked in more oxygen as she studied the photograph. There were actually two women in the picture, though Heidi had been so distracted yesterday she’d hardly looked at the one. The woman to the left—who was very obviously alive by the life in her eyes—was a raven-haired beauty. Thick lashes, perfectly curved lips, iridescent eyes. Beside her, the dead woman with painted-on eyes.
There was no mistaking the similarities. Heidi studied it, even reaching for her cellphone and flicking on its flashlight, though her bedroom was already filled with daylight. Yes. The hair appeared to be the same color as hers, sans hair dye, a mousier blond. The eyes, a perfect almond-shaped imitation. A heart-shaped face with high cheekbones, narrow chin, and full lips. The mole. Heidi leaned closer. It was . . . phenomenal. She really was the woman in that picture! Minus the lifeless face, of course, the pasty skin, and the slightly tilted head that gave her a bit of a zombie-like aura.
Heidi reached between the delicate paper-page frame that held the cardboard photograph in place. She gently tugged it out. The photograph’s footer was simple, the words scrolled in antique print.
Amos Bros. Photography
Pleasant Valley, WI, 1908
Interesting. It was a local photograph. Heidi scrunched her face, recalling the conversation with Connie Crawford. Yes, she’d mentioned going to estate and garage sales.
Heidi flipped the photo over. A feminine script was scrawled on the back of it, as if whoever had owned the photograph saw fit to record details in the event time attempted to erase them.
Dorothea Reed — photographer
Misty Wayfair
She ran her index finger over the faded ink. Misty Wayfair. Perhaps the name of the dead woman in the photograph? Or the living? Misty was a rather odd name for the turn of the century, but then what did she know? Heidi turned the picture back so she could stare into the dead features of her Edwardian look-alike.
“Are you Misty?” Her whisper broke the silence.
Heidi waited, even though she knew the woman wouldn’t answer. Wouldn’t say “yes” with applause for being identified, or shriek in protest and deny the name as hers.
There was no answer.
Only the ticking of the wall clock, the sound of a dehumidifier in the hall kicking in, and—
Heidi’s eyes lifted. Sensing she was being watched. The hairs on her arms prickled. A coolness settled over her, chilled from the awareness of being very alone and yet, not alone at all. She cast glances into the corners of the bedroom, as if an apparition might appear and renounce everything Heidi had ever believed about the nonexistence of ghosts.
She tucked the photograph between the pages, not bothering to insert it back into its paper frame. The album closed with a thud. Heidi stood, clutching it.
Where are you?
She glanced toward her open bedroom door. The hallway was lit, and daylight was not a friend to ghosts. And yet Heidi knew she was not alone. She took a step forward, then froze.
The window.
A woman at the window with massive dark eyes hollowed further by huge shadows beneath them. Her head tilted to the side, watching. Watching her.
Heidi’s scream ripped from her throat, gargled like she was being strangled. Not unlike waking from a nightmare mid-scream and clawing at the air to rake fingernails across the face of an imaginary foe.
The album dropped from her hands.
It was all in slow motion. The album falling to the floor. The photograph floating from its pages and sliding across the carpet. Heidi’s second attempt at a scream. And suddenly, it was all over.
The woman had vanished, as though she’d never been there.
Heidi stood shaking in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around her body.
She looked down. Down at the lifeless woman in the photograph. The woman who looked just like her. The woman who had stood outside her window, soulless eyes peering in.
Heidi pressed the gas pedal down as she pulled away from the lodge. She glanced behind her, thoroughly convinced the woman in the window was chasing her down the curved driveway, screaming with a gaping mouth in a chasm so large an unsuspecting victim could fall into it and never return. Thick forest rose on either side of the drive, unwelcoming to the sunlight that tried to pierce through and warm the earth. She paused only a moment at the end of the drive before turning toward town.
A mile down the road, the clunk-clunk sound coming from a back rear tire alerted Heidi to more problems.
“For all that’s holy and sane and great dane!” Heidi had learned creative cussing from her father, who thought darn was enough to blacklist a person’s soul. She pulled the car onto the shoulder and switched on her hazard lights. Heidi jumped out of the vehicle and rounded it. She couldn’t see anything at the back—at least nothing obvious to indicate the source of the clunking sound. Hopping back in, she unhooked her iPhone from its clip on the dash and speed-dialed.
She’d seen her brother-in-law, Brad, for all of five minutes last night. Good thing he liked her and was a mechanic. After an assurance either he or someone would be out to meet her to take a look and give her a tow if needed, Heidi settled in her car to wait.
Alone.
On the side of the road.
She flicked the locks.
On retrospect, she should have called the cops. But then the woman had vanished. Completely. She’d simply been there one moment and evaporated the next. You couldn’t call the police on a ghost, and, assuming logic prevailed and it wasn’t a ghost, the woman had done nothing wrong besides peek in her window.
Heidi blew a breath through her lips. It was probably a lodge guest. Wondering where their towels were. The ones Heidi hadn’t bothered to swap out in her mad dash to leave it all behind.
She glanced into the woods through the passenger side window, then through the driver’s side window at the woods on the other side of the road. Maybe this was why she preferred Chicago. A person could see there. Buildings, public transportation, huge billboards, and lights. It was occupied by humanity. Here, it was just trees and trees and more trees, with patches of small fields in between them. Like little glimmers of openings before being suffocated by woods again.
Movement at the corner of her eye startled her. Heidi stiffened, staring into the trees. She sagged with relief. A tawny doe stepped from the woods, her eyes huge. Behind her, a gangly fawn, spots dotting its fur like a paintbrush had slapped on white paint. Heidi shifted in her seat, and the doe caught sight of her movement. With a bound, she darted across the road, her fawn scampering behind her, long legs tripping and skidding as it went.
More silence, and then finally, ahead in the distance, a pickup truck heading her way. Heidi was sure it was Brad, until it came closer into view. A gray Silverado, its front fender rusted where it was dented. It pulled to the side of the road, the hood of the truck nose to nose with the hood of Heidi’s much smaller Honda Civic.
The man in the driver’s seat was not her brother-in-law. Heidi rechecked the locks as she surveyed the forms through the truck’s windshield. Odd. A yellow tabby cat perched on the dash, more of a kitten really, its yellow eyes studying her as intently as Heidi studied it. The driver’s side door opened, and before the human could descend from the vehicle, a dog leaped out. A long-haired mutt that looked to be a cross between a collie and maybe a German shepherd?
Oh heavens. The dog was missing an eye!
Heidi sank lower in the seat. What was wrong with this place? Ever since she’d set foot in Pleasant Valley, everything was just off.
A man stepped out from the truck. Work boots, greasy jeans, a black T-shirt with a dingy gray flannel shirt left unbuttoned over it. Baseball cap so filthy it looked like he’d dipped it in an oilcan before putting it on his mahogany-brown hair. Stubble all over his unkempt face, and eyes—oy! The steel gray eyes—Heidi didn’t know whether to melt or be terrified. The man could be no less than six-foot-two with the build of a logger. There was no smile on his face. He was impassive.
Heidi yelped as his fingers rapped on her window. He bent at the waist and peered in. She peered back.
“How about you open your window?” His bland statement was more of a no-duh command. He didn’t seem amused.
Heidi turned her car key so the battery sprang to life and she could roll down her window an inch. Just an inch.
“Are you Brad’s sister-in-law?”
Oh, thank God.
Heidi nodded. “Yes. I am. Where is he?”
“Busy.” The man moved back a few feet and raised his brows to indicate she should realize she was safe and to step out of the car.
No way.
One, she was from Chicago and wasn’t stupid. Two, he could kill her with one swipe of that permanently grease-stained hand. Three, she’d already had the fright of her life this morning, and for all sakes and purposes maybe he was a ghost too.
Heidi avoided asking him if he was dead. That probably wouldn’t come across as friendly.
“It’s my back tire. It’s making clunking sounds.”
He blinked.
Heidi tried again. “Over there. The back tire? On the passenger side.”
He just stood there. The dog meandered over to his side and sat down, staring at her from its one good eye. Heidi shot a glance at the truck. Yep. The cat was still watching her too.
“Did Brad send you?” Heidi yelled through the crack in the window, even though the conversation they’d already had sort of made that obvious.
The man nodded. His arms were crossed over a very broad chest.
“Okay, soooooo . . .” She dragged out her words. He didn’t move. “My tire?”
The man blinked and then, with a barely concealed sigh, rounded the car. She watched him in the side mirror. He squatted next to the tire, bent and looked under the vehicle. Grabbing at something, he tugged and pulled and then stood, apparently finished with whatever he’d found.
He rounded the car, dog at his heels. Bending, the man’s mouth descended to the crack in the window. Heavens, his lips looked like they’d been carved from clay and hardened beneath the hands of Michelangelo himself.
Heidi looked away.
“A stick.”
“A what?”
“You had a stick wedged between the muffler and the chassis.”
“Oh.” Heidi mustered a smile and shrugged, embracing her ignorance. “Well, I thought maybe it was the tie rod.”
“That’s on the front wheels.” His correction was disinterested. “You all good then?”
He really was Brad’s ministering angel. Although, Heidi frowned, angel wasn’t exactly a proper description. She rolled her eyes at her own heightened sense of erratic caution. Overreacting and assuming everyone was out to assault her was a bit ludicrous. She unlocked the car and opened the driver’s door.
“I’m sorry.” She draped her arms over the door, making sure her rear end could take a quick drop and land back onto the driver’s seat if necessary. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just—well, a girl’s gotta be cautious.”
The man eyed her for a second, then muttered, “Then I wouldn’t have opened your door.” He turned on his heel and headed back toward his truck, dog marching beside him.
“Hey!” Heidi hollered after him. His retort had stung. She wasn’t used to acquaintances—strangers—reprimanding her, let alone allowing it to bother her. But for some reason, his rebuke did. Maybe because it made sense.
He turned, question in his eyes.
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” He opened his door. “Just watch out for sticks next time.”
His words were delivered with zero humor.
“What a—wow,” Heidi mumbled with a frown as the man stepped aside to let the dog hop into the truck. “What’s your name?” she ventured. Not that she cared. But if Brad asked her later about the man he’d sent, it’d help to refer to the guy by name.
The man tugged at the brim of his soiled hat. “Rhett. Rhett Crawford.” He climbed into the cab and slammed the door.
Heidi watched him back up and then spin the truck around and head back toward Pleasant Valley. She was fast regretting ever coming here. And, she hadn’t even seen her ailing mother yet.
She slid back in the driver’s seat and shut the door. It was best to follow Rhett Crawford back into town. Not because she wanted to follow him, but because she needed population. People who breathed and could form a smile. She needed warmth, spontaneity, fun. Anything to get her mind off the ghostly vision at her window, the dead woman, and the idea that Pleasant Valley wasn’t pleasant at all. It was a grave that had somehow opened and was planning to exhume all its secrets. Secrets no one even knew it had.