Black Rose gt-2 Read online

“I’m certainly not wearing white cashmere, skintight pants—which I’d never have bought if you hadn’t hypnotized me or something—or a pair of five-inch heels when I’m babysitting for a seven-month-old. It’s not even a date.”

  “Don’t you just love those horn-rims? What is it about a man in horn-rim glasses?”

  She took an olive out of the bowl he’d filled. “You’re certainly wound up tonight.”

  He covered the bowls and the tray he’d prepared with plastic. “There now. You’re going to have yourself a nice New Year’s Eve picnic with the horn-rimmed hunk.”

  “David, why in the world do you think I need a man?”

  “My darling Roz, weall need a man.”

  SHE DID CHANGE, but brutally rejected David’s choices in favor of a simple cotton shirt and jeans, and her favored wool socks in lieu of shoes. Still, she had enough vanity to do her makeup.

  In the nursery, she listened patiently to all of Hayley’s nervous-mother instructions, assured, and reassured, swore an oath she would call if there was any sort of a problem. And finally nudged the girl out and on her way.

  She waited, watching from the window until she saw the car drive away. Then, grinning, she turned to where Lily gurgled in her bouncy chair.

  “I’ve got you all to myself now. Come on up here to Aunt Roz, ’cause I’ve just got to eat you right up like a bowl of sugar.”

  In the library, Mitch pretended to read, took sketchy notes, and listened to the baby monitor that stood on a table on the lower level.

  Every room had one, at least every room he’d been in, he thought. Since the experiences last spring, he thought that was a wise and basic precaution.

  But he wasn’t thinking of safety or precautions now. He was simply charmed and amused, listening first to Hayley’s anxiety-filled departure, and now Roz’s verbal love affair with the baby.

  He’d never heard that tone in her voice before, hadn’t known it could soften like that, like fragrant wax under low heat. Nor had he expected her to dote, as she so obviously doted, on a child.

  She talked nonsense, cooed, laughed, made the silly noises adults habitually made around babies and, from the sounds of Lily’s response, made the baby as happy as the sitter.

  It was another angle to a woman he’d seen as formidable, confident, a little aloof, and oddly direct. All those facets had already combined into a woman he found smoothly sexy. Now this . . . softness, he supposed, was a surprising icing on an already desirable cake.

  He heard her laugh, a long, lovely roll, and gave up even the pretense of working.

  He heard the music and banging of toys, the child’s burbling and giggles, and the undiluted pleasure in the woman’s voice. Later, he heard her singing as she rocked the baby to sleep.

  Soon after, he heard her murmured words, her quiet sigh, then the monitor was silent.

  He sighed himself, sorry the interlude was over. Then reaching for his coffeepot, found it empty. Again.

  He carried it into the kitchen to brew another pot, and was just measuring out the coffee when Roz came in.

  “Hi,” he said. “Be out of your way in a minute. David said I should just make myself coffee whenever.”

  “Of course. I was about to make use of the cold cuts he put together earlier, if you’d like something to eat.”

  “I would, thanks. He mentioned there’d be makings when he showed me where I could find what I needed for coffee. And . . .” He widened his eyes as Roz took out the tray, the bowls. “I see he meant it.”

  “He’s constantly afraid I’ll starve to death if he doesn’t leave me enough food for six people.” She glanced over. “And?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You started to say something else? Regarding David?”

  “Oh well, just that I think he was hitting on me.”

  She got long, fresh rolls from the bread drawer. “Not very hard, I’m sure.”

  “No, not hard. Just . . . charmingly actually.”

  “I hope you weren’t offended.”

  “No, I was, well, sort of flattered, really. Considering the age difference.”

  “He likes the way you look in your glasses.”

  “In my . . . what?”

  “Horn-rims. They just turn him to mush, apparently. You want me to just pile everything on here, or would you rather pick and choose?”

  “Just pile, thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “It’s no trouble as I’m making some for myself as it is.” She looked up sharply, as a voice, Amelia’s voice, began to sing through the monitor.

  “It’s a jolt, isn’t it?” Mitch said. “Every time.”

  “She doesn’t go into Lily’s room every night, not like she did with the boys. She favors boys. I suppose she knows Hayley’s out, and wants to . . .”

  She trailed off, her fingers fumbling, as they rarely did, with the sandwiches as she recalled the monitor in the library. And her own session with Lily.

  “I hadn’t thought about the monitor where you were working, disturbing you.”

  “It didn’t—you didn’t—in the least.”

  “In any case, feel free to switch it off in there when you’re working. God knows we have them everywhere. Hayley went out and bought one that has video, too, for her room. Amazing the sorts of things they have now, to make life a bit easier for new mothers.”

  “You must’ve been a good one. It came through,” he added, “when you were up there with her.”

  “I was. Am. It’s my most important job.” But her interlude with Lily had been private—or so she’d thought. Just how many times had she sang the hokeypokey along with Elmo?

  Best not to think about it.

  “Would you like to take this back in, eat while you work, or take a break, and eat in here?”

  “In here, if it’s all right with you.”

  “That’ll be fine.” She hesitated, then opened the refrigerator again, took out the champagne. “Seeing as it’s New Year’s Eve, I’m going to open this. We can have something a little more festive than coffee with our poor boys.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t drink. Can’t.”

  “Oh.” She felt abominably slow and stupid. Hadn’t she noticed herself that he never took alcohol? Couldn’t she have used her brain to put two and two together before embarrassing a guest? “Coffee it is, then.”

  “Please.” He stepped over to lay a hand on her arm before she replaced the bottle. “Open it, enjoy it. It doesn’t bother me when other people have a drink. In fact, it’s important to me that they’re comfortable. That you’re comfortable. Here, let me do it.”

  He took the bottle. “Don’t worry, opening a bottle of champagne isn’t backsliding.”

  “I certainly didn’t mean to makeyou uncomfortable. I should’ve realized.”

  “Why? I’m not still wearing that sign that says Recovering Alcoholic around my neck, am I?”

  She smiled a little, walked to the display cabinet for a flute. “No.”

  He released the cork, a quick, celebrational pop. “I started drinking when I was about fifteen. Sneaking a beer now and then, the way boys often do. Nothing major. I did love an ice-cold beer.”

  He set both their plates on the table, then poured his coffee while she arranged the rest of the simple meal. “Went through the drinking insanity in college, but again, plenty do the same. Never missed a class because of it, never caused me any trouble, really. My grades stayed up—enough I graduated with honors, top five percent of my class. I loved college nearly as much as I did an ice-cold beer. Am I going to bore you with this?”

  “No,” she said, her eyes on his. “You’re not.”

  “All right.” He took his first bite of the sandwich, nodded. “Miz Harper, you make a hell of a po’boy.”

  “I do.”

  “So I went to grad school, got my master’s. Taught, got married, worked on my doctorate. Had myself a gorgeous baby boy. And I drank. I was . . . an amiable drunk, if you know what I mean. I was never confron
tational, never abusive—physically, I mean, never picked fights. But I can’t say I was ever completely sober from the time Josh was born—a bit before that to be honest, until I set the bottle down the last time.”

  He sampled David’s potato salad. “I worked—taught, wrote, provided my family with a good living. Drinking never cost me a day’s work, any more than it had cost me class time. But it cost me my wife and my son.”

  “I’m sorry, Mitch.”

  “No need to be. Sara, my ex, did everything she could do. She loved me, and she wanted the life I’d promised her. She stuck with me longer than many would have. She begged me to quit, and I’d promise or reassure, or fluff her off. Bills were paid, weren’t they? We had a nice house, and we never missed a mortgage payment. I wasn’t some stumbling-down, sprawled-in-the-gutter drunk, was I, for God’s sake? I just had a few drinks to take the edge off. Of course, I started taking the edge off at ten in the morning, but I was entitled.”

  He paused, shook his head. “It’s easy to delude yourself that you’re entitled, that you’re just fine when you’re in a haze most of the time. Easy to ignore the fact that you’re letting your wife and child down in a dozen ways, every single day. Forgetting dinner parties or birthdays, slipping out of bed—where you are useless to her in any case—to have just one more drink, dozing off when you’re supposed to be watching your own baby. Just not being there, not completely there. Ever.”

  “It’s a hard thing to go through, I imagine. For everyone involved.”

  “Harder for the ones you shipwreck with you, believe me. I wouldn’t go to counseling with her, refused to attend meetings, to talk to anyone about what she saw as my problem. Even when she told me she was leaving me, when she packed her things, and Josh’s things, and walked out. I barely noticed they were gone.”

  “That was tremendously brave of her.”

  “Yes, it was.” His gaze sharpened on Roz’s face. “Yes, it was, and I suppose a woman like you would understand just how brave it was. It took me another full year to hit the bottom, to look around at my life and see nothing. To realize I’d lost what was most precious, and that it was too late to ever get it back. I went to meetings.”

  “That takes courage, too.”

  “My first meeting?” He took another bite of his sandwich. “Scared to death. I sat in the back of the room, in the basement of this tiny church, and shook like a child.”

  “A lot of courage.”

  “I was sober for three months, ten days, and five hours when I reached for a bottle again. Fought my way out of that, and sobriety lasted eleven months, two days, and fifteen hours. She wouldn’t come back to me, you see. She’d met someone else and she couldn’t trust me. I used that as an excuse to drink, and I drank the next few months away, until I crawled back out of the hole.”

  He lifted his coffee. “That was fourteen years ago next March. March fifth. Sara forgave me. In addition to being brave, she’s a generous woman, one who deserved better than what she got from me. Josh forgave me, and in the past fourteen years, I’ve been a good father. The best I know how to be.”

  “I think it takes a brave man, and a strong one to face his demons, and beat them back, and keep facing them every single day. And a generous one, a smart one who shoulders the blame rather than passing it on, even partially, to others.”

  “Not drinking doesn’t make me a hero, Roz. It just makes me sober. Now if I could just kick the coffee habit.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Now that I’ve talked your ear off, I’m going to ask you to return the favor, and give that first interview when we’ve finished eating.”

  “All right. Am I going to be talking for the recorder?”

  “Primarily, yeah, though I’ll take some notes.”

  “Then maybe we could do that in the parlor, where it’s a little more comfortable.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She checked on Lily first, and took the first phone call from Hayley. While Mitch gathered whatever he needed from the library, she pulled the tray of fresh fruit—David never missed a trick—and the brie and cheddar, the crackers, he’d stocked.

  Even as she wheeled it toward the parlor, Mitch came up behind her. “Let me get that.”

  “No, I’ve got it. But you could light the fire. A fire’d be nice. It’s cold tonight, but thank God, clear. I’d hate to worry about my chicks navigating slick roads on their way home to roost later.”

  “I thought the same thing about my own earlier. Never ends, does it?”

  “No.” She set out the food, the coffee, then sat on the couch, instinctively propped her feet on the table. She stared at her own feet, surprised. It was a habit, she knew, but one she didn’t indulge in when she had guests. She glanced at Mitch’s back as he crouched to light kindling.

  She supposed it meant she was comfortable with him, and that was fine. Better than labeling him a guest as she’d be trusting him with her family.

  “You’re right, it’s nice to have a fire.”

  He came back, set up his recorder, his notebook, then settled on the other end of the couch, shifting his body toward hers. “I’d like to start off with you telling me about the first time you remember seeing Amelia.”

  Straight to business, she thought. “I don’t know that I remember a first time, not specifically. I’d have been young. Very. I remember her voice, the singing, and a kind of comforting presence. I thought—to the best of my memory, that is—that it was my mother. But my mother wasn’t one to look in at night, and I never remember her singing to me. It wasn’t her way. I remember her—Amelia—being there a few times when I was sick. A cold, a fever. It’s more that she was there, and expected to be in a way, than a jolting first time.”

  “Who told you about her?”

  “My father, my grandmother. My grandmother more, I suppose. The family would talk about her casually, in vague terms. She was both a point of pride—we have a ghost—and a slight embarrassment—we have a ghost. Depending on who was talking. My father believed she was one of the Harper Brides, while my grandmother maintained she was a servant or guest, someone who’d been misused somehow. Someone who had died here, but wasn’t blood kin.”

  “Did your father, your grandmother, your mother, ever tell you about their specific experiences with her?”

  “My mother would get palpitations if the subject was brought up. My mother was very fond of her palpitations.”

  Mitch grinned at the dry tone, watched her spread some brie. “I had a great-aunt like that. She had spells. Her day wasn’t complete without at least one spell.”

  “Why some people delight in having conditions is more than I can understand. My mother did speak to me of her once or twice, in a sort of gloom-and-doom manner—something else she was fond of. Warning me that one day I’d inherit this burden, and hoping for my sake it didn’t shatter my health, as it had hers.”

  “She was afraid of Amelia, then.”

  “No, no.” Roz waved that away, nibbled on a cracker. “She enjoyed being long-suffering, and a kind of trembling martyr. Which sounds very unkind coming from her only child.”

  “Let’s call it honest instead.”

  “Comes to the same. In any case, other times, it was bearing and birthing me that had ruined her health. And others, she’d been delicate since a bout of pneumonia as a child. Hardly matters.”

  “Actually, it’s helpful. Bits and pieces, personal observations and memories are helpful, a start toward the big picture. What about your father?”

  “My father was generally amused by the idea of a ghost and had fond memories of her from his own childhood. But then he’d be annoyed or embarrassed if she made an appearance and frightened a guest. My father was fiercely hospitable, and mortified on a deep, personal level if a guest in his home was inconvenienced.”

  “What sort of memories did he have?”

  “The same you’ve heard before. It hardly varies. Her singing to him, visiting him in his
room, a maternal presence until he was about twelve.”

  “No disturbances?”

  “Not that he told me, but my grandmother said he sometimes had nightmares as a boy. Just one or two a year, where he claimed to see a woman in white, with her eyes bulging, and he could hear her screaming in his head. Sometimes she was in his room, sometimes she was outside, and so was he—in the dream.”

  “Dreams would be another common thread, then. Have you had any?”

  “No, not . . .”

  “What?”

  “I always thought it was nerves. In the weeks before John and I were married, I had dreams. Of storms. Black skies and thunder, cold winds. A hole in the garden, like a grave, with dead flowers inside it.” She shivered once. “Horrible. But they stopped after I was married. I dismissed them.”

  “And since?”

  “No. Never. My grandmother saw her more than anyone, at least more than anyone would admit to. In the house, in the garden, in my father’s room when he was a boy. She never told me anything frightening. But maybe she wouldn’t have. Of all my family, that I recall, she was the most sympathetic toward Amelia. But to be honest, it wasn’t the primary topic of conversation in the house. It was simply accepted, or ignored.”

  “Let’s talk about that blood kin, then.” He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket to read his notes. “The furthest back you know, personally, of sightings starts with your grandmother Elizabeth McKinnon Harper.”

  “That’s not completely accurate. She told me my grandfather, her husband, had seen the Bride when he was a child.”

  “That’s her telling you what she’d been told, not what she claimed to have seen and experienced herself. But speaking to that, can you recall being told of any experiences that happened in the generation previous to your grandparents?”

  “Ah . . . she said her mother-in-law, that would be my great-grandmother Harper, refused to go into certain rooms.”

  “Which rooms?”

  “Ah . . . lord, let me think. The nursery, which was on the third floor in those days. The master bedroom. She moved herself out of it at some point, I’m assuming. The kitchen. And she wouldn’t set foot in the carriage house. From my grandmother’s description of her, she wasn’t a fanciful woman. It was always thought she’d seen the Bride. If there was another prior to that, I don’t know about it. But there shouldn’t be. We’ve dated her to the 1890s.”