Did you hear the wailing last night?”
Mrs. Brummel’s question made the spoon freeze halfway to Thea’s mouth. She stared over the silver at the woman pouring her a glass of milk for breakfast. The boardinghouse matron didn’t seem bothered or unnerved. It had been all Thea could do to keep her wits about her after returning to her room last night. She’d tried to convince herself that she’d been caught between that foggy world of the river and the forest, and that the vision she’d seen across the river had been a mistake. An illusion.
But she hadn’t heard wailing.
“No. I didn’t.”
“Oh, you lucky thing!” Mrs. Brummel paused, milk pitcher hoisted in midair, her right hand propped on her hip. She reviewed Thea with her sharp gaze, and the neckline of her black dress rose so high and so tight around her throat, it seemed as if it would choke the woman if she even tried to swallow. “That ridiculous cat.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue.
Thea brought her spoon back down to rest on the edge of her bowl of oatmeal, Mrs. Brummel’s only breakfast option at the boardinghouse so far.
“A cat?” she choked out.
Mrs. Brummel’s thin eyebrow jaunted upward, and her lips pursed. “Martin Amos’s cat, Pip. I daresay, that thing could raise the dead with its caterwauling. He’s looking for a female cat, no doubt.”
A hot blush flooded Thea’s face. She pushed the bowl away from her and tossed the napkin from her lap onto the tabletop. “I’ve much to do today.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Brummel was nosy.
“At the portrait studio.” Thea supplied an answer, though she didn’t need to. What seemed like moments later, Thea had gathered her belongings for the day and made haste from the boardinghouse. She was more than capable of chitchat when it served a purpose, but discussing the romantic adventures of a feline was not something Thea wanted or could focus her attention on.
She shuddered as the toe of her shoe ventured onto the road that split the main street of town. A large wagon rumbled past, with a wave of a brawny hand from the logger sitting high atop the wagon seat. This street really was, for all sakes and purposes, the only street of interest to the public. But she couldn’t help her vision straying to the borders of the forest across the river. The bare legs and feet, the obscure face, the long, dark hair . . . no. She had seen someone in the woods. It had been no illusion. She couldn’t shake the suspicions that she’d caught a glimpse of Mrs. Brummel’s Misty Wayfair ghost. The murdered woman who haunted the Coyles after Mathilda Kramer had married Misty’s lover, Fergus Coyle. Was it for revenge that she haunted them? A hatred for anyone bearing the Coyle name? Thea couldn’t shake the story from her mind.
“A spirit searching is a horrible thing. They haunt until they find rest. Some never do. If there’s something unsettled between them and another, they’ll wander for eternity.”
Mr. Mendelsohn’s words still raked a cold set of fingers up Thea’s spine. This awareness of the afterlife was something she wished she had not been educated in. She’d never seen evidence to support Mr. Mendelsohn’s suspicions. Never a whisper in the night, never a thump or a thud. No articles moved when no one was around. Nothing but the eerie coldness a person felt when they sensed something—someone.
Mrs. Mendelsohn had countered that Thea would position herself on the wrong side of God were she to take up a study of the spirits. That God had banished King Saul for no less, and it was sheer witchery.
Reaching the corner, Thea moved to round it and head toward the back entrance of the studio. It would be unlocked by seven-thirty promptly each morning, Mr. Amos had instructed. The front door, not until nine.
A movement startled Thea, and she palmed the side of the building, freezing in her steps. The lean frame of Simeon Coyle emerged from the studio. He paused and nodded, speaking to someone—more likely than not, Mr. Amos. His left hand clutched a black satchel, worn with scuffed leather at the corners. Large enough to carry his photograph album, or perhaps photographs on cards Mr. Amos had already developed and set.
She blinked. Simeon lifted his hand in a slight wave and turned toward the river. Not toward town, as one might assume, although he was probably not well received there. But neither did he go in the direction of the Coyle home, which was located almost halfway to the main base of the Kramer Logging post.
After a moment’s hesitation, Thea decided to follow him. Regardless of the uneasiness that spread through her at the sight of him dodging the edge of town and heading toward the one-lane bridge that spanned the river, Thea couldn’t put aside the questions rising in her mind. The Coyles were, as Mrs. Brummell had stated, a strange family, and now only two of them remained. If they were being haunted by a ghost, was this why Simeon darted around as though trying to avoid attention? And, she couldn’t just ask Mr. Amos what Simeon did, or about his coming and going from the portrait studio. The old man had made it quite clear the first day that his association with Simeon Coyle was to remain unquestioned and unspoken of.
But remembering Mary Coyle’s face as she’d stared at it through the lens of her camera, and seeing the peculiar photographs Simeon had in his album, Thea had to know more. If there was one thing she did share with Mr. Mendelsohn, it was the deep sensing that someone was trying to speak, to surface.
Perhaps, in an odd way, Misty Wayfair had tried to gain Thea’s attention last night. Before vanishing and making Thea half believe she was losing her mind.
Something did not match up.
Not Simeon Coyle. Most definitely not the death of his sister. Not for the last time did Thea frown at the idea that one simply did not die from being melancholy.
She froze in mid-step as she reached the bridge.
Melancholy. A strange memory assaulted her. One that hadn’t risen before. She’d been little, and her mother had seemed so large. Crawling onto her lap, her dress tangling around her feet, Thea recalled reaching for her mother’s face. Staring into empty eyes. Eyes that had lost their life. As a child, she didn’t know why. Melancholic eyes.
“Mama?”
No response.
“Mama, I’m hungry.”
Still nothing.
Thea reached for her mother’s face. Small hands cupping both cheeks, turning it, until her mother seemed to awaken for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” her mother had breathed. A fingertip touched Thea’s nose. “Your mama is sad. So very sad.”
“Why?” Thea asked.
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know why. I never know why.”
Thea gripped the rail of the bridge. Simeon’s form moved farther ahead of her.
She should turn back. Back to the portrait studio and Mr. Amos. She’d told him she would assist a sitting later that morning. A family with three small children—and a dog, no less. But what did a soul do when its very core churned with the unsettled motion of the river that flowed beneath this very bridge?
Simeon’s long strides took him down the narrow dirt lane and into the woods. Bluish hues painted a thickly wooded picture ahead of her. A place that in fairy tales would hearken images of the gingerbread house and the witch that ate little children for dinner. She glanced over her shoulder, toward Pleasant Valley. The steeple of the Methodist church and the cross at its tip seemed to cry for her to go back, to retreat.
But she couldn’t.
It was as if the Pied Piper had begun to play his tune, and Thea could only follow.