Something Buried, Something Blue Page 25

  Because it makes as much sense as anything else.

  And because it might have something to do with Johneen’s . . . illness. For now, until she hears otherwise, she’ll think of it as an illness or an episode. She’ll think that the medics and the doctors are working on her, that they can help her, that she’ll pull through this.

  Because she can’t bear to consider the alternative.

  “Just open your mind and accept what you’re given,” Pandora quietly instructs her. “All will become clear in time. Are you smelling Hyacinthoides non-scripta?”

  The botanical name for bluebells.

  Back in July, Bella wanted so badly to believe Pandora was channeling messages from Sam that she convinced herself a few off-season blooms might mean something.

  Bluebells.

  Bella Blue.

  Funny, in that case, all did not become clear in time. On the contrary, time blurred her conviction that Sam was here, reaching out to her.

  “I’m not smelling bluebells,” she assures Pandora. “I know what they smell like, and it isn’t them.”

  It isn’t Sam. It never was.

  So much for an open mind.

  “Think back on your past. Are there occasions when you’ve smelled flowers?”

  “Yes. Whenever there are flowers around,” she says logically, ready to end this game.

  “Be more specific.”

  “In a garden . . . in the summer . . .”

  Pandora tries a different approach. “Close your eyes and try to focus. Do certain fragrances remind you of someone? Or something that happened? For example, when I smell carnations, I think of church on Easter Sunday. And you?”

  Lilacs remind her of spring mornings back in Bedford.

  Roses remind her of her wedding day.

  Stargazer lilies remind her of funerals—of Sam’s funeral.

  And yet . . .

  “This isn’t any specific scent, Pandora. It’s just . . . flowers.”

  “Spirit is using the scent to convey a message in language you’ll understand. Does that make sense to you?”

  Not entirely.

  A scientific explanation like sensory phenomenology would make more sense.

  So would a medical one.

  What are the odds that Pandora, and everyone else in the house—everyone except Bella and Jiffy—is experiencing sudden onset anosmia?

  Greater than the odds that dead people can communicate with the living?

  There’s a sharp knock on the French door.

  Bella opens it.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt. I’ve been looking for y’all.” Virginia is standing there, holding her cell phone, tears in her eyes. “Parker called. She’s in critical condition. It doesn’t look good.”

  “Oh, Virginia . . .” Bella reaches out to hug her.

  For a moment, they just stand there, arms wrapped around each other. Then she steps back, remembering Pandora, who holds out a bony hand.

  “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Pandora Feeney.”

  “Virginia Langley.”

  “I know how upset you must be about your cousin.”

  “Thank you, but . . . I’m Parker’s cousin. I don’t really know Johneen well, although I’m sure she’s a lovely person.”

  Trying to process it all in her brain’s breakneck spin cycle, Bella asks Virginia, “Did Parker say what happened to her?”

  “Medical emergency—sudden cardiac arrest.”

  Medical? So someone didn’t try to murder her?

  Bella looks at Pandora. Her face is a mask of concern, but her expression betrays a glimmer of doubt.

  Uncomfortable, Bella shifts her gaze back to Virginia and rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We should update the others.”

  “I already have.”

  “How are they handling it all?”

  “Not well.”

  Leaving Pandora to ponder whatever she’s pondering, Bella follows Virginia out of the room.

  The grim guests have moved from porch to parlor. Odelia is there, but there’s no sign of Millicent. Frankie and Tanya are also missing—upstairs packing, according to Calla.

  “Tanya wants to go home to Dan and the baby,” she reports, “and Frankie is driving her.”

  Blue’s arm is wrapped around her—a protective gesture, or a possessive one? Is he the jealous type? Is he secretly in love with Johneen?

  “Liz and I would love to get the hell out of here too, but it’s not a good idea in this weather,” Ryan says. His fiancée is quietly sobbing into his designer suit coat, but he’s craning his neck to see past her bowed head to the phone in his hand. “The roads are bad and there are trees down all over the place.”

  Bella’s thoughts fly to Max. She pulls her own phone from her pocket and excuses herself, stepping into the kitchen.

  The home screen bears a warning message that her battery is dangerously low. Ignoring it, she hurriedly dials Drew’s number.

  He answers on the first ring with a succinct, “We’re fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We ate dinner in Dunkirk and were on our way back to the Dale, but we just had to turn around. The road is blocked by branches and wires. Do you have power there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You may not have it for long. Listen, I’m going to take the boys to my place. I’ve got a generator. Is that all right with you?”

  “I probably would have asked you to do that anyway.” She explains quickly about Johneen.

  Drew listens, not saying much. Of course not, because he won’t want to upset the boys, who are in the car with him. And because he’s Drew. He doesn’t ever say much.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” he tells Bella. “Is there anything I can do for you from here?”

  “Just keep my boy safe, and make sure Jiffy calls his mom to tell her where he is. She’s probably worried.”

  “One would hope so.”

  They hang up, and Bella finds herself wishing he were here with her. He may be a man of few words, but he radiates a strength that she could really use right about now.

  Hearing footsteps and thumping on the stairs, she returns to the parlor. Through the archway into the front hall, she sees Frankie and Tanya lugging their rolling bags downstairs. Strong-armed Frankie, who’s changed into jeans and sneakers, is carrying hers. Tanya is still in her black taffeta cocktail dress and heels, thumping her bag down the flight step by bumpity-bumpity step.

  Pandora emerges from the study to scold her. “You’re going to destroy the treads!”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s heavy!”

  “Who cares about the stupid treads at a time like this?” Bella hears Andrea murmur to Charlie.

  “I’ll help you.” Swaying and slurring slightly, Hellerman sets his bourbon glass on the coffee table. He takes the bag from Tanya and nearly swings it through the stained-glass window.

  “Bloody hell!” Pandora glares and moves his glass to a coaster as Bella hurries over.

  “You can’t leave. I just spoke to a friend who said the road is blocked by limbs and wires.”

  “No! I have to get home to Dan and Emily!” Tanya is frantic. “I don’t want to stay here!”

  Odelia hugs her. “You can go home in the morning, sweetie. You don’t want to take any chances. It’s dangerous out there.”

  Her troubled gaze meets Bella’s, and Bella can’t help wonder whether it’s dangerous in here, too.

  Odelia propels Tanya into the parlor. The young woman sinks on the sofa to lament her plight to Calla, who sits beside her. Blue perches on the arm. He, like Virginia, is set apart from the rest of the group by virtue of not being a close friend of the bride.

  “I’m going to make some tea,” Bella says, because she has to say something, has to do something.

  Pandora brightens. “Proper tea?”

  “Oh, good grief,” Odelia mutters. “Tea is tea.”

  As Bella follows her from the room, H
ellerman announces, “Bourbon is bourbon, and I’ll be happy to pour you a proper one of those, Ms. Feeney.”

  She takes him up on it, albeit with a sly, “You’ve had so many of those, it’s bordering on improper.”

  Some semblance of order has been restored to the kitchen. Odelia fills the teakettle at the sink. Millicent is seated at the table in a lonely, inelegant posture, shoulders hunched and head bent. Bella realizes that she’s leafing through one of the books she brought over for Max.

  She looks up, and her expression transforms in a flash from bereft to disturbed. “I hope your friend pulls through, Isabella.”

  Bella’s instinct is to deflect, as Virginia had in the study. She, like Parker’s cousin, barely knows Johneen.

  Parker—poor Parker, married a matter of hours—is alone at the hospital. She pictures him there—ashen, in shock, hoping against hope that his bride will survive.

  How well Bella remembers her own awful nights keeping a hospital vigil, and then . . .

  Afterward.

  Afterward you face the unpleasant necessities that arise in the wake of a spouse’s death. People materialize almost immediately. Suitably somber strangers come out of the woodwork with paperwork, offering sympathy yet quietly doing their jobs, going about the business of death.

  Some parts of that horrible time in Bella’s life are a blessed blur. But she remembers the nurses who wept with her and the kindly priest who prayed with her in the chapel. She remembers the less kindly but well-meaning attorney who advised her to cancel Sam’s credit cards immediately.

  “Why?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Because identity thieves are opportunists, and they act very quickly after someone passes away.”

  Numb and grief-stricken, she was grateful for the people who guided her through the terrible aftermath, grateful for the countless questions they asked and the tasks they assigned, like signing her name over and over again on paper dampened with her own tears. It delayed the inevitable task of returning home, where Millicent and Max were waiting, to tell them that Sam was gone forever.

  In those terrible moments, aware as she was that Millicent had lost her son, Bella was consumed by comforting her own. Her mother-in-law later channeled her own grief into efficiency. She made sure that Max was fed and clothed, and she dealt with the people who dropped by with food when Bella was too exhausted for coherent conversation, much less common courtesy.

  Did I ever thank her for all of that?

  Of course she did. She must have.

  As she gazes at the woman holding a dog-eared children’s book in hands that are veined with age, she sees not Maleficent, but a mother who lost her only child.

  She pulls out a chair and sits beside her. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to talk when you wanted to earlier. So much was going on.”

  “I know that.”

  “What did you want to say?”

  “That I’ve booked a return flight home for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I bought three tickets, Isabella.”

  Grasping the news, she shakes her head wearily. “Max and I can’t just walk out of here. Even if we wanted to, we . . . can’t. We just can’t.”

  “I think that you do want to. I saw the look on your face earlier.”

  Startled, Bella thinks back, wondering if there was a moment when her expression might have betrayed her, a moment when she wanted to escape this place for a little while. Maybe even forever.

  It’s been a difficult day spent surrounded by difficult people and situations. But it doesn’t mean she should flee.

  “You and Max don’t belong here any more than I do, Isabella.”

  Over Millicent’s shoulder, Odelia is busily arranging tea bags in a bowl—improper tea, according to Pandora, who prefers the loose-leaf variety. Her back is turned to the table, but Bella knows she’s listening intently to the conversation.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she tells her mother-in-law. “Maybe we don’t belong here.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. I was worried you’d been brainwashed to think you’re like them.”

  “No, we aren’t like them.”

  “Of course not. Max told me about them over lunch.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That these people pretend to talk to ghosts.”

  “He said they pretend?”

  “Not in those words, exactly.”

  No. Those are Millicent’s words.

  “And they claim they can predict the future,” she goes on, “and convince people that they can heal them without medicine. I tried to talk some sense into Max, but I’m not sure I got through to him. I’m glad I’m getting through to you.”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Then we’re going.”

  “No. We’re staying. You’re going. Although I wish you’d at least stay long enough to give those books to Max. Or maybe even read them to him.”

  Millicent stares at her in stunned silence.

  For a moment, the only sound is the rain.

  Pitter-patter . . . pitter-patter . . .

  Bella thinks of last night, in the garden. The music over the speakers . . .

  “When Sunny Gets Blue.”

  Blue.

  Nothing is an accident . . .

  Millicent asks her where Max is, and she drags herself back to the conversation.

  “He’s with Doctor Bailey. They’re at his house because they couldn’t get back here.”

  “You trust a strange man to drive your son away from here, but you didn’t trust me?”

  “Drew is a friend.”

  “I’m Max’s grandmother.”

  “Who seems to think we’ve been kidnaped by a cult.”

  At that, Odelia turns around, wide-eyed. She opens her mouth to speak, but Bella shakes her head at her.

  Nothing Odelia can say will help the situation. In fact, anything she says is guaranteed to make it worse.

  “I know religious fanatics when I see them.”

  “How?”

  “By the way they act and the things they say. I’ve only been here a day, and it’s obvious to me that these people are nuts. That poor Johneen felt the same way about them, and now look. Look what’s happened to her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She told me this morning that she didn’t feel comfortable here.”

  Bella remembers that she’d found Millicent and an insomniac Johneen together in the breakfast room.

  “What did she say, exactly?”

  “That she felt as though she and Parker were being followed and that someone might be rummaging through their belongings, because things weren’t where they’d left them. And don’t go telling me it was the ghosts.”

  “I wouldn’t. Did she say who was following them?”

  “She didn’t have to. It was these people. That’s what they do. They snoop around and they learn everything about a person, private information, so that they can use it to convince them they’re mystical.”

  “That isn’t what goes on here,” Bella says decisively. True, there are times when she isn’t sure exactly what does go on, but she won’t believe for one moment that Odelia and the others are trying to dupe their clients or anyone else.

  Millicent’s lament continues. “That poor girl. She didn’t believe in any of this Spiritualism mumbo jumbo. She thought it was ridiculous. And now look.”

  “But that has nothing to do with it! What happened to her was medical, not—”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “Of course.” Bella forces conviction into her tone.

  “Do you?” Millicent turns to Odelia.

  She doesn’t believe it. Not entirely. Bella can tell by the look on her face. Either she thinks Pandora was right about someone wanting to hurt Johneen, or she’s had a similar hunch of her own.

  Odelia simply asks Millicent, “What do you think happened?”

  “I think someone around h
ere decided to bump her off because she wasn’t a believer, and then they made it look like an accident.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Bella pushes back her chair and stands. “No one here would ever . . . ‘bump her off.’ I think you’ve been watching too many cop shows on TV.”

  Millicent, too, is on her feet. “I’m leaving.”

  “Where are you going? You can’t get out of the Dale.”

  “I heard. The roads are conveniently blocked—or so you say.”

  “Do you think I’m making it up?”

  “No. I think they are.”

  They . . . as in Drew? Or Ryan?

  Somewhere in the back of Bella’s mind, Millicent’s accusations stack into kindling for a lick of white-hot paranoia.

  What if they aren’t telling the truth?

  Drew? Drew wouldn’t lie. She knows him.

  And Ryan . . .

  You don’t know him at all.

  How well does she know any of these people, really, except for Millicent?

  Even her closest ally, Odelia, let her down this morning and may have been going to desperate measures to stop the wedding.

  If she had been behind it all, then her motives, skewed as they were, had probably been pure. But she must have known the anonymous note would make Bella uneasy, and the rest of it . . .

  How could she have let me worry—especially with Max here—and not have said anything?

  It just doesn’t seem in her character.

  Unless I never really knew her at all.

  Bella tries not to allow mistrust to mingle with her lingering disappointment, but it’s there. Odelia said she was meditating at the Stump, and Bella took her at her word. But she could have been anywhere, doing anything.

  And Drew Bailey—right now, he, too, could be anywhere, doing anything . . . with her son.

  She hurries from the room, pulling her phone from her pocket.

  “Where are you going, Isabella?”

  She ignores Millicent’s question, rushing past the parlor where the guests are still talking. At the stairway, she stops short. Virginia is sitting on the steps, deep in conversation with Blue Slayton.

  They look up, then stand so that Bella can by. She thanks them and climbs the stairs, glancing back over her shoulder to see that they’re seated once more.

  Maybe they’re drawn together as the only two outsiders at the wedding.