Chapter Eight #2
“I never became mistress of my own home, or had a honeymoon in the spring. I had this one day, this one night as a bride, as a wife.”
“I’m so sorry. I wish—”
“I am a practical woman. Wishes?” She fluttered a hand in the air, a hand where her wedding ring glowed.
“Feathers in the wind. What’s done is done.
For this day, this night, for the first time in my life I felt beautiful.
I found the joy my mother hoped for me. William was, as she believed, kind and patient.
And more. For a few hours I knew desire, and what it is to be desired.
“I wonder if we might have made a child this night, if not for the dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream.”
“No, no, not a dream. It began as one, or so it seemed. Dreaming of spring when we would make our crossing as husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. William Cabot.”
Rising, Catherine moved around her mother, gestured to the window.
“We had a winter wedding, both of us impatient to begin our life together. Such a storm, the snow, the wind, but it meant nothing to us in our happiness. Instead I dreamed of spring, and walked out of the manor and into the flowers, the green, the sunlight.”
“A lie.” Standing there, facing the young bride in white, Sonya felt the cruelty of it. “Her lie. Hester Dobbs.”
“A lie, yes, and a wicked one. She waited for me out there, and laughing, I went to her. When she took my ring, the ring William placed on my finger only hours before? When I came to myself, oh, the terror! The horrible cold. I tried to run, I tried to call out for William, for my father, for Mama, but it was too late. And the tears froze on my face as I fell, as I died alone with my fear.”
“She’s evil, Catherine, and obsessed. She stole your life.”
“This I can never recover. This nothing can change.”
She held up her left hand where her gold wedding ring caught the candlelight.
“William put this on my finger, and made his promises to me. I made my promises to him. She took it for her own. It is not hers. None she took belong to her. This can be recovered. This can be changed.”
“I want to get it back for you, to get all of them back for all of you. I don’t know how.”
“You will.”
She walked back to sit under her mother’s waiting hand. “Because you must.”
She turned her face toward Sonya. “You must,” she repeated.
Arabelle’s hand came down; mother and daughter’s eyes met with a smile in the mirror.
And the room changed back with sunlight streaming through the windows.
“Damn it.” Sonya shoved a hand through her hair. “Just damn it.”
She started to turn, then jolted when she saw Cleo in the doorway, phone in hand.
“Sorry. I didn’t want to … interrupt, I guess.”
“Did you see them?”
“No. I didn’t see anything but the room, and you. I know you did. You were talking to someone. One of the brides?”
“Catherine. I need some air.”
“Let me get you some water, and we’ll go outside.”
“I’ve still got some at my desk.” They started out, then Sonya stopped in the hallway.
“Why did you come in?”
“Clover. That scent of hers at first. I’m painting, and her scent just filled everything. Then ‘Help!’ The Beatles, on my phone. So I ran in. I thought either Dobbs pulled something, or you’d gone through the mirror.”
She waited for Sonya to grab her water bottle.
“I called out when I came in, but you didn’t answer.”
“I didn’t hear you. I guess I didn’t hear anything but them.”
“Catherine and?”
“Her mother. Arabelle. Arabelle married Collin’s twin, Connor Poole.”
“I remember,” Cleo said as they walked downstairs.
“It was Catherine’s wedding night. That must have been her room once, or at least the room they used for that night.”
They stepped outside into the summer sunlight, and Sonya let it warm her bones.
“Different wallpaper, different furnishings.” She bent to rub Yoda. “The fireplace still wood-burning and the fire crackling. I could feel the heat from it. Candles, several of them. Oh, and two lamps. Oil lamps? Arabelle was brushing Catherine’s hair. It was all so loving, so sweet.”
She told her, trying to describe the feel of the room, the tone of the conversation.
“It’s like you might talk to Winter, or I might with Mama.”
“Yes, it was that connection, that bond. It was really lovely, Cleo. Then like with Lissy in the music room that night, everything stopped. It all stopped but Catherine. She looked at me.”
“You spoke with her. I heard your part.”
“She told me how much she loved William—William Cabot—and how she felt knowing he loved her.”
As they walked to the seawall, Sonya tried to recount what Catherine had said to her, in detail.
“Like a dream.” Cleo nodded. “That makes sense to me. She was spellbound, in a trance.”
“Right up until Dobbs took her wedding ring. Cleo, she said she could never get her life back—that can’t be changed—but that the ring doesn’t belong to Dobbs and never will.”
“All right, that’s important. It’s a kind of confirmation, Son.”
Cleo tapped the moonstone ring she wore.
“Dobbs has the ring, but it’s still Catherine’s. None of the rings belong to Dobbs, so that part of done isn’t done. We can take them back.”
“She said I would because I must. What good does that do, Cleo? That doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know.”
“Let’s sit here, soak in some sun and this breeze like Pye. She’s got the right idea.”
Cleo sat on the seawall, drew Sonya down beside her.
“It hurts you to see her, speak to her, knowing what happened to her. It hurts me,” Cleo added, “and I’m hearing about it all secondhand. You saw her die, Sonya, and now you saw her on her wedding night, all that anticipation and happiness. So you’re hurting.”
“I am.”
“That discourages you. Why wouldn’t it? Temporarily.”
Sonya blew out a breath. “Temporarily.”
“I know you, and I know once you settle again, you’ll use all of it to add one more layer to your determination. You’re allowed to feel sad. I’m sad, too. But she did tell you—us—something we didn’t know.”
Confused, Sonya frowned at Cleo. “I’m missing that part.”
“Because hurt and sad. We’ve already said we have to accept, even through the mirror, the brides can’t be saved. They died. Catherine told you just that. Her death can’t be changed.”
“Their spirits, their essence—whatever you’d call it—are still in the manor.”
“That’s right. So’s Dobbs, so are the rings. But they’re not hers, and—how’d you say she put it? That can be recovered. It can be changed.”
“A brief how-to would’ve been helpful.”
Cleo smiled because the comment sounded more like Sonya.
“I’m guessing if they knew the answer, they’d tell you.”
“Yeah.” Sonya lifted her face so the sea air blew over it. “And yeah, I’d already figured that. You’re bloody well right about the hurt and sad, too. She was young, happy, in love, and eager to start her married life. She wanted kids, Cleo. It got to me.”
She shifted to look at Cleo. “And now that I’m settling—thanks for that—I understand I’m not being shown these things just to hurt me, to make me sad. They strengthen the connection, and I guess that’s important. If I don’t feel that connection, that bond?”
“It’s just a puzzle for you to solve. An exercise.”
“Exactly. And when I think it through, there have been pushes for me to find the rings, but this is the first real confirmation, just as you said, that I can get them back.
“I will, because I must.”
“You’re bloody well right.”
Sonya looked up at the Gold Room windows. “She’s been pretty quiet all week. When she takes the next swing, it’ll be a hard one.”
“So we’ll enjoy the quiet while we’ve got it.”
“I’d better use it and get back to work.”
Pyewacket leaped off the wall to follow as Yoda scrambled up. On the way, Sonya stopped to look at Cleo’s painting in progress.
And admired the leafy, weeping grace of the tree, and the cladded turret rising above it toward a summer-blue sky.
“The shape of it, all those twists and curves. It looks ancient, in a really good way.”
“I always wonder who planted it and when. Well, likely a groundskeeper, but who of the household decided I want this kind of tree here.”
“And you’ll paint it again in the fall, then in the winter.”
“Mmm-hmm. I’m calling the series Turn, Turn, Turn.”
“To everything there’s a season.” And one of her father’s favorite songs again. “Perfect.”
“I should have another couple hours at it, at most, since Owen’s probably right about afternoon storms.”
“You get back to yours, I’ll get back to mine. Thanks for being there, Cleo.”
“Ever and always.”
Owen wasn’t wrong, but by the time the first bolt of lightning slashed the sky, Sonya knew Cleo worked in her studio. And Yoda had already deserted her to play ball with Jack in the main hall downstairs.
She’d finished her proposal, sent it off, then spent the rest of her workday on other projects.
As she started to shut down, Corrine sent her an email with attachments.
Hello, Sonya, I hope your day was as satisfying as mine. Three shoots, results attached. I had to reschedule the one with Eddie due to the weather. Let me know what you think when you get a chance to look them over. Corrine.
“No time like the present.”
She opened the first file, studied the photos of Cleo she and Corrine had chosen.
Glancing at the time, she saw it was approaching after-business hours, but decided she’d send them anyway. Along with the others if they struck her as the right choices.
When they did, she shook her fists in the air.
“Wow! She did a hell of a good job.”
Sonya sent a return email back saying just that, then composed another for her contacts at Ryder, and attached the day’s work.
High on success, she jogged up to Cleo’s studio.
As she approached, the door to the Gold Room creaked open. Through it, she heard the whisper of her name.
Clover warned her with Electric Six and “Danger! High Voltage.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Not falling for it.”
As she spoke, the door blew open. As it crashed against the wall, it seemed the storm had moved into the room. Even from a distance, Sonya felt the wind blow cold over her, saw the flash of light, smelled the ozone.
The floor trembled under her feet, and Cleo rushed out of her studio.
“Don’t go near it!” Calling out, Sonya rushed to her friend. “She’s trying to bait me, or us.”
When the cat came out of the studio, hissed, Cleo scooped her up.
“You stay with us.”
Fog crawled out of the room, across the hall, and up the wall. Sonya watched the wallpaper curl and peel away, and the plaster beneath crack.
Yoda came on the run, snarling. Sonya headed him off, and like Cleo with Pye, grabbed him up.
“Nobody’s going near that.”
In what sounded like an explosion, they heard glass shatter. Shards flew out of the room to embed themselves in the cracking plaster.
So it bled from the wounds.
As it dripped on the floor, the hardwood shook, then opened like a pit.
“Jesus, that can’t be real.”
“It’s not. It’s not, but—” Cleo grabbed Sonya’s arm and pulled her into the studio.
As they watched, the floor in the hall split and fell. Smoke billowed out; flames speared up, then licked their greedy way along the walls.
The laughter came, high-pitched and mad, as more glass shattered, as fire roared. The ceiling fell with a rain of charred plaster, flaming boards.
Dobbs glided out and down, black hair, black dress whipping in the wind she’d created.
“Your death is here, in fire and blood. And your bones will wash away in a flood. Here you risk a fiery death and will carry my curse to your last breath. This house is mine for all time.”
Leading with fury as much as fear, Sonya grabbed one of Cleo’s rocks, heaved it. Whether by luck or aim, it struck Dobbs in the center of her chest.
Had the house fallen around them, Sonya would’ve still felt satisfaction by the look of shock and—yes, it was pain—on Dobbs’s face.
“Go to hell! This is my house!”
It all stopped.
Outside the studio, the floor, the walls remained pristine. The interior storm halted even as the one outside turned to a quiet rain.
“Holy shit! Holy shit! What did you throw?”
“I don’t know, whatever was handy. I—God—I kept telling myself it wasn’t real.”
“But it felt real,” Cleo finished. “We’re shaking. All four of us.”
Before she risked setting the cat down, Cleo moved to the doorway, peeked out.
“Nothing. No glass, no fire, no smoke or bleeding walls. And her door’s closed again. You hurt her, Sonya.”
“I did. I saw it.”
Setting Pye down, Cleo picked up the stone from the floor of the hallway, gave a shaky laugh. “A hag stone. That’s apt. Also known as a witch stone. It guards against evil, which is why I have a couple in here.”
“I—I thought it was bigger when I grabbed it.”
“Small but mighty, and obviously big enough. We were afraid, and Jesus, who could blame us? So she fed on that, came out to add more, and you let her have it. Wow. Her face.”
Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” played on Sonya’s phone.
“Yeah, she’s got plenty of that.” Then Sonya narrowed her eyes. “Do you think she can bleed? That I made her bleed?”
“Damn solid hit from where I was standing, so I say yes. Jones tore a piece off her dress, so that means yes to me. I think…”
Frowning, Cleo turned the stone over in her hand. “I think there might be a trace of blood on here.”
“It went through her. It hit, and went through her.”
“Yes, it did.”
Cleo put the stone in a small bowl, and from another, took a second hag stone.
“A fresh one,” she said, handing it to Sonya. “In case. And, Son, I have to admit, I want—hell, need—a really, really big glass of wine.”
“Me, too. Let’s go get one.”
“One other thing? She didn’t come in here, neither did any of her nasty illusions.”
“Hag stones?”
“And more. I like knowing she has limits.”
“Again, me, too.” As they started out, Sonya glanced back, and saw a canvas covered on an easel.
“You never cover your paintings.”
“This time. Something I’m working on now and then, and not ready for anybody but me.”
They both stopped at the closet. Sonya opened it and found only art supplies.
“I check it a few times a day,” Cleo said.
“When it’s time, Catherine will be there. Let’s go get that wine.”