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She’d fallen asleep reading, she remembered. But the light was off now, the book closed and on the nightstand. The mug of tea she’d brought up was nowhere to be seen.
She knew she’d find it washed and put away in the kitchen.
So someone looked after her, doing little kindnesses and household chores.
And someone wanted to scare her.
Just how many were there in the house with her? And who were they—or had they been?
She glanced at the clock. Three-twenty-two.
No piano music, no banging on the door.
Apparently it was over for the night.
But when she got back in bed, she took the dog with her.
“I saw it all so clearly. The mirror, then the room on the other side. The people in it. I think I could draw them. Not my strongest skill, but I think I could draw them.
“I watched two babies being born—the first so beautiful, thesecond so tragic—but I saw, and heard, and felt. I saw a woman die, a woman who fought so hard to bring her babies into the world. I saw her just… fade away.”
She stroked the dog, grateful for that sweet, warm body against hers.
“I saw Hester Dobbs. I saw that bitch take Marianne’s ring while her husband grieved. And she saw me. She saw me, spoke to me. Marianne saw me, spoke to me as she died. But no one else did.
“I was the ghost there. Hester Dobbs had that right. On the other side of the mirror—or whatever the hell it is—I was the ghost.”
Chapter Fifteen
Considering the night she’d had, she might have slept through the morning. But she dragged herself out of bed for the dog. A walk in the brisk wind did a lot to blow the cobwebs away.
Determined to stick with routine, she sat down at her desk—a little late, and in her pajamas—but she sat down at her desk.
The first order of business: adding the mirror dream/incident to her log.
Once done, she got out a sketch pad and did her best to draw the figures in that dream/incident.
She didn’t have Cleo’s skill with illustration, but she thought she managed decent likenesses.
Then she set them aside.
“A girl and her dog still have to eat,” she said, and got to work.
Nothing and no one disturbed her. She no longer counted the musical iPad greetings, as she’d grown used to them. She shut down at three-thirty.
“I’m not meeting Trey Doyle—man and/or potential client—in my pj’s and with a naked face.” She tapped Yoda’s nose and made him wag. “Gotta be professional. Plus, he always looks so damn good. You haven’t met him yet,” she added as they walked over to her bedroom, “but take my word on it.”
She stopped short at the sight of the short, sort of sassy red dress laid out neatly on her bed.
“Okay, that’s new—not the dress, but the gesture. And, ah, thanks?But this is more for date night than client meeting. It’s a great dress though.”
And now, Sonya thought, she talked to ghosts as well as to herself.
Holding it up, she turned this way, that way in the mirror. “And who knows when I’ll have a reason to wear it again. But not today.”
She hung it back in the closet.
She hadn’t thought of wearing a dress, but she could. Client meeting and all that. But not anything suit-y. Something casual.
