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“Somebody put on a little show. Not all that impressive, but I think you may be right about Hester Dobbs, so let her have the room, for now. And we’ll figure it out.”
“What show? Be specific.”
Rising, he brought her up with him. Then shifted to put his arm around her shoulders to lead her away. “The room got meat-locker cold. The bed bounced some, drawers opened and slammed. The best trick was making the walls bleed.”
She stopped dead. “The wallsbled?”
“She couldn’t keep it up,” he said, and nudged Sonya forward. “As soon as I touched the doorknob, it all stopped. Situation normal.”
“Your situation normal and mine don’t exist on the same planet.”
“You’re cold. Let’s go back in the library, and you can tell me about last night.”
“How are you so calm? I mean it. How?”
“Mostly calm’s my crisis mode.”
Giving in, giving up, she leaned against him as she worked to get her breath back.
“Well, Jesus. I guess that’s a good thing, even though it’s completely baffling.”
In the library, she dropped down on the couch, Trey stirred up the fire, added another log.
“They’re still bringing them in, by the way. I haven’t filled the wood rack since I’ve been here.”
“That wouldn’t be Dobbs.”
“No,” she said as he sat beside her. “And I don’t think whoever—whatever—is making up my bed, washing my teacups is the same as what’s playing music on my iPad, and the piano player’s probably something else.”
“She’s outnumbered. Hester Dobbs.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that she did, some of the knots in her shoulders loosened.
“I suppose that should inspire calm crisis mode.”
“Last night,” Trey prompted, and took her hand.
“Last night. I fell asleep reading in bed. Then I woke up—or didn’t. If it was a dream, it was incredibly detailed. I was in front of a mirror. My father dreamed of the same mirror—one with the glass full-length. Predators carved into the frame. Owls, foxes, hawks, bears—all on the hunt. But I didn’t see me, I saw a room through the glass. So clearly, and I walked through the mirror like it was a door.”
“Really?” Obviously fascinated, he kept her hand in his, and those deep blue eyes never left her face. “Where did you go?”
“It was Marianne Poole. She’d be bride number three. I think it was my bedroom, but the walls were papered, and she was in a different bed. She was birthing her twins.”
She told him, the details still fresh and clear in her mind.
“When she was dying… I’ve never seen anyone die, but I knew, I’d have known even if I hadn’t read it in the Poole book, she looked at me. She saw me, Trey. No one had seen me, but as she was dying, she did. She said she had a son and a daughter, and I came from them.”
Sonya swiped a tear away. “She’d fought so hard to bring her children into the world, and she was leaving it. I saw Hugh Poole rush in, and I watched him grieve when she died. He loved her—that was real. God, I could feel his grief. Then I saw her—Hester Dobbs. She just walked in. He didn’t see her, but I did. She took Marianne’s wedding ring.”
After a calming breath, she continued, “I said no, you can’t. You can’t do that. And she looked at me. She saw me. She said—and this is verbatim because I’ll never forget:
“‘I can. I have. I will. Do you think you can stop me? Stop what I forged in fire and blood? You’re the ghost here.’
“She put the ring on, and she already wore two others. Wedding rings, I’m sure of that. And I woke up, or came out of it, whatever the hell it was, standing in my bedroom with poor Yoda whining and shaking.”
She laughed a little. “I guess I whined and shook some, too.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
