The Ghost and Miss Hallam: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 1) Read online

  Chapter Two

  Moss saw his own body lying bloody and still on a stretcher carried between two men and then he floated on, no longer concerned with the mangled form he was leaving behind, picking up speed as he swept down long, lighted corridors and then out into the open air.

  He didn’t remember anything since seeing the enormous black cab of a truck rushing toward him—or maybe he was rushing toward it—and explosion of sound, and then nothing.

  He supposed he was dead since he was leaving his body behind. He didn’t seem to mind much. All his emotions were on hold, numb, except for the anger that raced through his veins at the thought of how he’d been once again cheated of life.

  It’s not fair, he raged. That stupid trucker pulling out in front of him just when he’d been gliding his Corvette down open country roads. Of course if he hadn’t been going so fast, maybe he could have stopped, but surely a death sentence was a little extreme for stepping hard on the pedal after sixteen years of being unjustly locked up.

  Grudgingly he hoped the other guy was okay and supposed he might be considering the heft and size of his vehicle. That made him think of his sports car and he found himself mourning it almost more than his own lost life.

  Again his rage burned white hot. Not fair. Not fair. It looked as though the cosmos or whoever was in charge could have given him grace. His whole life had been taken from him and only hours after his release, he’d banged into a truck.

  Not justice, he argued internally. Not justice, but grace. I deserve a grace period from life.

  He didn’t know who he was arguing with about this whole thing. He sounded like the whiny kid he’d been when he first went to prison. It had been a whole long time now since he’d thought about things like fairness, justice and grace.

  Life was cruel and bitter and liked to play the kind of trick he’d just been served. No doubt some distant god laughed now at this final irony that he should be killed just on the day when he thought he was finally free.

  Run little mouse, run away from the trap. You can’t guess what’s waiting you next.

  He supposed he should be glad his life was over. It never had amounted to much, not since he’d so abruptly left childhood behind.

  Everything around him was shadowy and vague. He was up in the air in the blackest of nights, though he saw occasional lights below and guessed he was passing over a farm house or, when the lights clustered, perhaps a small town.

  Surprisingly he felt little anxiety and no fear. Whatever was happening was supposed to happen and what could happen to him that was worse than being killed? Dead was dead. It was over.

  Except that it kept going on. With little transition, he found himself moving through an unlighted house. He wasn’t floating anymore, but actually walking, though his footsteps made no sound. He did make noise when he brushed against something solid, seeming as though he pushed the air around him ever so slightly against objects could even knock them over. A lamp crashed to the floor, shattering into pieces. He groped along the wall, trying to turn on a light. Finally he connected with the switch and though he couldn’t feel it beneath his fingers, the room was lighted.

  Strangely enough he could see his own hands and feet quite clearly, though everything else seemed a little fuzzy. He looked around and saw that he was in an outdated kitchen with a wooden table and chairs and cupboards that looked like they’d been hand made. The floor was constructed from long planks of carefully polished wood. Only the appliances, the cooking stove, the microwave and the refrigerator looked up to date and shiningly efficient. The room was at odds with itself as though it had been outfitted with the latest in practical equipment with every attempt made to otherwise keep its vintage identity.

  He didn’t hurt anywhere, which he expected after that terrible accident, but his body seemed whole and unharmed. In fact, the shoulder that had troubled him since he’d been beaten up by another prisoner a few months ago no longer troubled him, but felt as good as new.

  It seemed there were some advantages to being dead.

  Curious as to where he was and what the whole point of this was, he walked slowly from the kitchen, leaving the light on behind him so he could see where he was going. It was an old house but immaculately kept up, he saw as he peeked in a living room with sofa and chairs and a wide screen television, once again the old and new mixed together. He didn’t see the lamp he’d knocked over anywhere and was puzzled, but kept looking and now his footsteps made a soft padding sound as though he were settling more firmly into his environment so that he made some slight impact when his feet settled against the wooden floor.

  The scent of a flowery perfume was in the air as he approached a bedroom, a scent that drew him toward it as though he were still alive and human, a man attracted by femininity.

  And then he saw her. She looked to be only an inch or two over five feet tall, tiny next to his six feet plus, and not skinny like so many of the women he saw on television or in the magazines, but softly rounded, cuddly even, he thought, with a sudden longing to take her into his arms.

  She wore no clothes and her hair was tousled as if she’d just gotten up from her bed. Venus rising from the sea, he thought irrelevantly, the most delicious thing he’d ever seen, though only dimly outlined in the glow cast from the distant kitchen light.

  She stared at him as though she were looking at a ghost. Then he remembered that she most probably was, though he’d no idea that a ghost could feel like this. He felt wonderfully alive.

  Maybe she couldn’t even see him. He’d heard that was the way it worked with ghosts. Supposedly most people couldn’t see them and, of course, they didn’t go around bumping into things. So much for that theory.

  He was proud of her when she didn’t scream. She just stared at him, obviously seeing him, her brown eyes growing large and surprised. He could hear her breathing.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I really must put on some clothes.”

  Politely he waited outside her door in the hall until she returned, wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe. She peered around the door first, as though she suspected the whole thing was an illusion, than gave a little gasp when she saw him standing there.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” was the first thing she said.

  “Me either,” he agreed, thinking how sweet and cuddly she looked in that pink robe. “Do I look like a ghost?”

  “How would I know?” she asked irritably. “I’ve never seen one before. But you look a little vague, kind of fuzzy around the edges.” She moved toward him, then through him. “I’m sorry. Did that hurt? I thought you would, you know, kind of move out of the way.”

  She sounded really nervous and he couldn’t much blame her. He, on the other hand, was enjoying himself. That could be pardoned perhaps because it had been many years since he’d had an opportunity to spend time with an attractive woman who was not a lawyer or employed by the prison system.

  “Maybe you should have some coffee,” he suggested, “to steady your nerves.”

  “A drink’s more like it,” she snapped, leading the way to the kitchen, where she got a small bottle of something out of the cupboard, screwed open the cap and took a big gulp. She made a face at the taste and explained, “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “I figured,” he said, seating himself at the kitchen table. She took another drink and then also sat down.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” she said. “Do you plan on making a habit of waking me up?” She sounded really, really irritable, as he supposed he would if confronted with a similar situation. Probably what he would have done was go back to bed, close his eyes and pretend the whole thing had never happened.

  “Don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I’ve never been dead before so I don’t really know the procedure.”

  She gulped down the rest of the bottle, which was not a whole lot of whatever it was, but she seemed to relax a bit. She even smiled, though a little nervously. “You’ve come to tell me you don’t wan
t me here researching Maud and her life. Mom said she was reclusive at the last and probably wouldn’t like having someone poking into her privacy. The thing is I don’t have any choice. My parents sent me here as punishment. In a way I’m in prison.”

  Charmed by both her appearance and her ongoing prattle, he sat in a kind of daze. If she thought this cozy old ranch house was prison, she had a lot to learn. Cute as a button she was with her sweet heart-shaped face. And when she’d smiled, dimples flashed into her cheeks. He wanted to keep her talking. “Did you do something awful?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” she returned politely.

  He nodded. He could understand that. There was no need. They were here at this moment for some blessed reason he couldn’t understand and he wasn’t about to argue with fate. Instead he asked, “Who is Maud?

  “You didn’t know her? I thought that was probably why you were here, haunting this place,” her voice trembled ever so slightly at the last words and he couldn’t help thinking that if he were confronted by a ghost, he would be a whole lot less composed.

  “She was a writer, wrote stories about the people who settled this country. She was really quite well-known, though not famous. You know the kind of person they study in regional literature courses.”

  He didn’t know, but nodded anyway.

  “My mom is a college professor and she sent me here to do research for a book. Not that Maud is to be the whole book, just in one section about southwestern writers.”

  “And this Maud person is dead?”

  She nodded. “Oh yes, she died years ago and she was really old then, past ninety, but she’d lived here from the time she was a little girl so I thought maybe she didn’t like me coming here and sent you to tell me so.”

  “Never met the lady. As far as I can tell there’s nobody around here but me and you.”

  “I don’t know much about ghost things,” she said, looking around at the brightly lit room doubtfully.

  “Me either. I’m real new at this ghost business.”

  “You’re not from 1901 or sometime like that?”

  “Hell, no! I just died today. My car was hit by a truck. Well, to be truthful, I guess I hit the truck, but the guy did pull out in front of me. Maybe I was driving a little fast.”

  She straightened, her tanned skin turning pale. “I believe I drove past your accident. I didn’t stop,” she confessed, “but there looked to be plenty of help.”

  They sat in silence, each contemplating what it was like to cross so suddenly from life into death. She was the first to speak, “But why are you here? I’d think if you were going to haunt someplace it would be your old home or someplace like that.”

  He didn’t want to tell her about the prison that had been his home since he was barely past his eighteenth birthday. And he wasn’t likely to be drawn back to the house where he’d lived with his family. Even if his parents had been still alive, he’d hardly be able to face them considering the suffering they’d gone through on his behalf. He was fairly sure they were off in some wonderful heavenly place just the way they deserved to be.

  “Didn’t plan this,” he said. “Don’t even know how I got here. I was just floating along in a place that looked like a hospital, next across open country and then I was here.”

  She frowned, looking like a worried child. He wondered how old she was. Older than she looked, no doubt, or her parents wouldn’t have sent her out here to spend the summer alone, but younger than he was, he was certain. Though in some ways he was only eighteen . . .and at the same time, over a hundred.

  His growing up had been interrupted at eighteen and from then on he had lived the nightmare that was life in prison. He was suspended in some strange way between the two. “I’m here for a reason,” he said, “I’ve lost so much. This time here is to make up a little for all those spoiled years. Time with you, time in this place, is my free gift of grace.”

  She looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Nobody would want this, an old ranch house in the middle of nowhere”. It was miles to the nearest town and it wasn’t that big. Even the closest house was some distant away.” Why would you consider being dumped out in the middle of wide open country with only wild animals and a cow now and then as a reward?”

  The sense of gladness within him was growing, the sense of peace and of belonging. He didn’t try to explain. She would never understand what his life had been that he was full of joy just to be in her company, to be in this free and open land.

  He might long to be fully human and alive, to be able to coax this lovely woman into his arms, but right now it was enough just to be in her company, to hear her talk and to tell her about his own feelings. He hadn’t had as much as a friend since he was a kid, just being in her presence was a gift beyond imagining.

  As he thought this, as life had always treated him, he began to lose everything. She and the room around her began to fade and with little transition he was elsewhere. He lay frozen in a bed, unable to move, zombie-like from medication, hearing voices around him, but unable to respond. Worst of all he was in the most terrible pain he’d ever felt.

  “What are his chances, doctor?” he heard a voice ask.

  “Slim to none,” a deep male voice answered. “Any luck at locating his family?”

  “Not so far, but we’re still looking. Poor guy, somewhere his relatives are probably worried sick wondering what has become of him.”

  Not likely, Moss thought grimly. There’s nobody to care about me, nobody to wonder where I am.

  Nobody but a pretty young woman who didn’t even know his name. Desperately he struggled to get back to her, but the combination of pain and drugs rolled over him and he was submerged beyond thinking.

  Maud Bailey Sandford refused to give in to age, even though she was past seventy. Her face had refined to the kind of beauty possessed by the hills themselves, her figure still long and lean. And though her bones ached on a cold winter night or when a storm was approaching, she could ride a horse as well as ever and put in a long working day on the ranch.

  Her only concession to age was having the Walsh boys come over to help clean out the stalls and trim the trees. The pastures were overgrown these days with only a few cows left to graze, but she was able to see that they had feed in winter and the pond kept them supplied with water.

  She no longer got up at four and wrote for three hours before breakfast, a pattern of long habit, but she was no more lonely than she’d ever been, though after all these years she still missed Jeanie, who had gone away so long ago.

  Some people said there must be ghosts on the ranch, but Maud didn’t abide such nonsense. She’d be grateful enough to be haunted by her mother or the brother and friends she’d lost when she was young. Even Jeanie, who had died young though so far away from here that for a long time Maud had pretended her daughter still lived and walked the earth and someday they would mend their differences and get together again. But over time, she’d come to accept that Jeanie was gone too and she hadn’t a close relative left other than grandchildren who lived so far away they didn’t even know who she was.

  She was alone, but that was the way she’d spent most of her life and she reckoned it didn’t matter much anymore. And as for the dear departed, she liked to think they had better things to do in eternity than wander around this ranch, keeping an eye on her.

  As she chopped weeds from the spring garden, she snorted aloud at the thought. Yes siree, when Maud Bailey started seeing ghosts they’d know senility had set in for sure. It would be time to send her to the funny farm.

  Lynne finished her third cup of hot, strong coffee and told herself she was feeling better. Her stomach still felt a little too queasy for breakfast and her head ached, but she wouldn’t let that interfere with her morning.

  Since she didn’t have a current newspaper and refused to let herself get caught up in television as an excuse to while away the day on old movies, she picked up Maud’s journal and began to continue her r
eading.

  It was hard to settle her mind and she told herself that more than an occasional drink was not a good idea while she was alone out here in this wild place, not if it sent her into delusions of strange, shadowy men sitting across the table and engaging her in conversation.

  Maybe it wasn’t even the gin. Maybe it was just that she was intolerably lonely.

  She flipped through pages, beginning to read:

  Papa is home. Even Mama, who always said he would be coming back, seemed surprised to see him and glad in her restrained way. She does not hug or kiss in welcome, but the gladness is there in her shining eyes and softened face. But they are already arguing again, though, of course, Mama tells me they never raise a word to each other. That’s true enough, but I’d almost rather hear shouted words than the long silences, the strained looks. They don’t argue in words, but in every move and expression on their faces. The feeling inside the house is so intense that I am driven outside. We rode most of the day, Salome and me, racing with the wind some times and others just ambling along the river and watching the deer coming up to drink. A norther is moving in, you can feel it in the air, and I wait with dread, knowing that cold weather will put us all more together. I love them both, but I don’t love them together.

  A loud knocking at the door penetrated Lynne’s absorption and for an instant she didn’t quite remember where she was. She had been so closely connected to Maud Bailey’s world that she had to deliberately yank herself back to today.

  “Lynne,” a woman’s voice called. “Miss Hallam? Are you there?”

  She recognized the voice as that of Wilda Walsh, the neighbor who acted as overseer to Maud’s ranch. She hurried to open the door.

  Wilda was about a dozen years older than Lynne, in her late thirties, and although always dressed in jeans and shirt, along with elegantly tooled cowboy boots, her dark hair was carefully cut in a short style and she’d already confided to Lynne that she never left her bed and bath in the morning until her makeup was in place. She was a striking woman and intimidatingly competent. She didn’t approve of having a guest at the ranch, but the board that managed the trust had liked the idea that an academician of her mother’s reputation wanted to include information about Maud in a book.