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July leaned against the shut door and listened as Leo’s footsteps receded. She was exhausted and discouraged, but she hadn’t
lost hope. It was the night of the fire, after all, and something would be revealed. He’s been waiting three lifetimes. One hundred and forty years would equal three lifetimes, give or take a decade, considering the life expectancy of that era.
She sank to the floor as if gravity was pulling her to the center of the earth. Jules had only felt this drained, this sapped
of energy, once before: the evening of the garden party. The mistake she’d made then was to go through it alone. Knowing better,
she reached for her phone.
Vicky answered on the first ring. “I’ve been waiting all day. Are you any closer to figuring out who wrote the message?”
“No.” They weren’t even close. Every avenue led them deeper into a maze. “We’ve learned some interesting details.”
“Tell me everything.”
Jules shut her eyes to focus. Speaking quietly, she told her about the ever-shifting love triangle that placed Aurora at odds
with a rival. “Aurora wasn’t the only heartbroken woman in this house. There was someone else, and they both loved the same
man, Luis De Leon.”
“How do you know?” Vicky asked before withdrawing the question. “You know what? Forget it. Go on.”
“She lived here as a housemaid. No one knows her name, but she was roughly Aurora’s age, a year or two older, maybe, and very pretty. Before you ask how I know, there’s a photo at the library.”
“A photo?” Vicky cried. “We spent our free time drinking on Duval when we could have been at the library doing research?”
“Well, yes.”
“Great.”
Jules described the photograph of the Jacobsen house before its modern-day inn glow-up, and the young woman on the sidewalk.
“It could be anyone, but I know it was her. She and De Leon were involved. That’s how Aurora came to notice him in the first
place. He was prowling around the house, just not for her. Aurora had no idea. When he fled Key West after the fire, he abandoned
both women.”
“Let’s see if I got this straight.” Vicky went on to summarize the facts. “Aurora had a crush on the housemaid’s man. Is that
right?”
“Yes.”
“A fire rips through the town, he’s out of a job, and skips out on his girl.”
“Correct, but both girls are devastated,” Jules said. “One commits suicide and the other is forgotten, never mentioned again.”
“This is messy.”
“De Leon must have left the message in Leo’s notebook,” Jules said. “Spanish was his native language. He’s been waiting three
lifetimes to be reunited with a lost love. But who? Aurora or the other girl? Vicky, you’re the sharpest person I know. What
do you make of all this?”
“Give me a minute.” Vicky took a moment to retrieve her dinner delivery.
She returned with an answer. “That’s Aurora’s house, and she knew exactly what was going on.
She might’ve been in the dark for a bit, but once she sorted it out, she made a choice.
Think of it this way. She and the other girl were about the same age.
They shared a home. They loved the same man, but they had a common enemy in Jacobsen.
If they were smart, and I know they were, they would’ve forged an alliance.
Sounds like Aurora barely knew this guy, anyway.
Would she have traded a trusted friend for a pretty face? I wouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t, either.”
What was true for Aurora and her ally applied to them as well. Jules would never trade anyone for Vicky and thankfully she
didn’t have to. Their alliance would hold until the end, when they would rejoin on the other side.
“Remember when Ayesha said that your room was likely the former servants’ quarters?” Vicky asked.
Jules sat upright and looked around. Those soothing blue walls . . . ocean blue . . . Key West blue . . . that all too common
blue of today . . . haint blue . . . “This is her room.”
“I think so,” Vicky mumbled. She was struggling to open a container, cursing under her breath. “This . . . fucking . . . thing . . .”
“The first night I spent here, I felt a presence. Like I was being watched in my sleep.”
Vicky abruptly quit her struggle. “Did you? You never said.”
“There’s so much I haven’t told you.”
She barked a laugh. “You better start talking!”
Jules was at the end of the road. No more ground to kick the can. “I saw a spirit in the garden.”
“You saw Aurora?” Vicky asked hotly. “All that time we were summoning her, why didn’t you say? The garden is the one place
we didn’t try.”
“Not Aurora,” Jules whispered. “Ruby.”
It took forever for Vicky to figure it out. “Your mother, Ruby?”
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong!”
“Yes, you are. I don’t know what you think you saw, but it wasn’t Ruby.”
“I know what I saw,” Jules protested. But she honestly had no idea what she’d seen.
“The same Ruby who warns you of danger in your sleep?” Vicky prodded.
“Yes, but that hasn’t happened in a while.”
“There’s no way Ruby is lurking around a garden in Old Town Key West!” Vicky exclaimed. “She was a sensible person!”
This was likely why she hadn’t told anyone. The theory didn’t hold up to scrutiny. “I don’t know what to tell you. I saw Ruby.
That’s why I returned, to find out for sure. I had no idea Leo would still be here. We didn’t get together until last night.
I saw my mother in the garden, and that’s what all this is about.”
“Jelly Bean, do you need me to come down there and knock sense into you?” Vicky asked sweetly. “Your mother would not freak
you out like that. And for what? Giggles? Trust me, she has nothing to do with this mess. Aurora and her friend are playing
games. They’ve likely been at it for over a century. That’s my take, anyway. Let’s leave Ruby out of it. Next time you see
that spirit in the garden, you tell her what’s what. Let her know you’re a New York chick. No one messes with your mom.”
Knees drawn to her chest, Jules was rocking, nodding, and wiping her tears away.
“Did you hear me?” Vicky insisted. “Promise you will.”
“I will.”
“Leo isn’t put off by all of this?” Vicky asked.
“Not in the slightest.”
With each passing day, Jules realized that Leo was not the lovely and earnest man she’d thought he was.
He hadn’t flinched when she told him about Ruby, hadn’t even blinked.
It wasn’t a casual thing, a ghostly encounter, a mother back from the grave and waiting in the night.
It was damn sinister when you thought about it.
Yet it hadn’t disturbed him. The opposite—it lit a fire in him.
Leo, the horror writer with a focus on immortals, zombies, and creatures that crawled out of the depths of hell, was maybe a little too comfortable with the dark side. Good thing it lit a fire in her, too.
Suddenly her heart tipped over and spilled its contents. “I love him.”
She wasn’t falling in love, she was already simmering in it. That love had always been there, waiting for her to come around. She needed his steady
presence, his thoughtfulness, his calm in the face of the inexplicable. Jules didn’t know what he might need her for. She
brought chaos wherever she went. Perhaps he needed someone who could see the darkness in him and not flinch or run from it.
That was something she was uniquely capable of doing.
“I figured,” Vicky said. “I might be falling for Matty. He’s talking about marriage. He thinks we’re endgame.”
“Seriously?” Jules started. “What is up with these men? Leo proposed tonight.”
Vicky laughed. “Ayesha is getting her wish!”
“Do you want to get married?” Jules asked.
“Not now, and definitely not without a prenup,” Vicky replied. “Good thing he feels the same. I wish I could tell him money
doesn’t matter, but it does.”
“Your grandmother would approve.”
“It’s likely the only way she’d approve,” Vicky said. “How about you? Did you accept the proposal?”
“No!” Jules shot back. “I love him, but it’s too soon for a commitment.”
“Look at us! Collecting wedding proposals left and right!” Vicky chimed. “What makes them think we’re the marrying kind?”
“No idea!”
“Anyway, let’s get back to business,” Vicky said. “I feel strongly that Aurora wrote that message hoping you’d get it to the
right person. And it seems you know who that person might be.”
“Thank you, Vicky, for everything,” Jules said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Jelly Bean,” Vicky said. “Good luck and be safe.”