Forever and Always Read online

  Delphia stopped me after breakfast and pointedly asked me when I was leaving. Not Linc but me. I sensed that she was planning to ask Linc to stay on. When I touched her hand I could see that she was imagining a photo of him in their brochure; beautiful Linc was guaranteed to bring in more guests and more money. And if they tired of him would they sell him? I thought.

  I used my True Persuasion on her to make her leave me alone so I could go to my room and study the ball. I spent four hours with it but achieved nothing. I could not connect with the power I felt inside it. I tried everything I could think of. I managed to make it roll across the floor, and, to my amazement, even lifted it a couple of inches. When I couldn’t hold it off the floor, it dropped with a bang. Anxiously, I ran to it and inspected it for damage. One second I was feeling like I’d dropped my baby, then the next second I flung it as hard as I could against the stone fireplace. I chipped the rock but not the surface of the ball.

  I was so absorbed in what I was doing that I forgot to protect myself. There was a knock on the door. I hid the ball inside the storage compartment under the window seat and opened the door. It was Narcissa.

  “Are you all right, dear? We heard a noise and—” She broke off, looked around the room and saw my sunhat hanging on the wreath. “What a very pretty hat,” she said, taking it down and pretending to look at it. “We wouldn’t want it ruined, now would we? That nail that holds the wreath up could damage it. Perhaps you’d better put your hat here on the mantel.”

  She was, uninvited, now standing in the center of my room, and she was looking around, trying to figure out what I was doing in there all alone. “Won’t you please join us? We have a florist coming today to show us how to arrange spring flowers. And later a woman is coming to teach us some yoga. We’d really like for you to join us.”

  Involuntarily, I shuddered. This woman looked and sounded as sweet as something off the Angel channel, but I knew she and her sister were doing something really bad. I wanted to scream at her,“Where is Linc’s son?”

  Instead, I burst into fake tears, covering my dry eyes with my hand. “I’m so sorry, Narcissa,” I said. “I’ve just had some terrible things happen to me lately.”

  As I hoped she would, she sat down beside me on the window seat and patted my hand. Again I felt the faint electric current run from her hand up my arm. Didn’t she feel the ball under us? To me, it was as though we were sitting on a star. I could feel its extreme heat and light.

  “What’s wrong, dear? You can tell me anything.”

  I could feel her trying to will me to tell her everything about myself, tell her my deepest, darkest secret. I knew she couldn’t help me with my secret but maybe I could get her to tell me her deepest secret.

  “I need help,” I said, stalling for time. I was trying to talk and work on her at the same time. That wasn’t easy. I work best when I put myself into a state of meditation and concentrate hard.

  “Help with what?” she asked. “You can tell me. I…know…lots of secrets.”

  “Not like mine,” I said, “and I can’t tell anyone what I want. It’s too—”

  “Too evil?” Narcissa asked, still patting my arm. “I doubt that it is. You should tell me. I’ve heard a lot in my life.”

  “I couldn’t possibly tell.”

  “Then let me guess.”

  I made no answer, just covered my face with my hands and concentrated.

  “You say your husband died and now you want the jewels, but it’s my guess that you don’t want the jewels for yourself. You try to appear sophisticated, but I can tell that you’re not.”

  I looked at her sharply.

  “It doesn’t matter what I’ve seen but I know things. Delphi says I have half the women’s intuition in the world.”

  It looked like jealous Delphia had reduced her sister’s psychic abilities to that derogatory term of “women’s intuition.”

  Narcissa picked up my hand and began to caress it. Instantly, I knew that she wasn’t interested in Linc or any other man. I didn’t snatch my hand away.

  “My guess is that you grew up in deep poverty, then married a despicable older man for his money, but the old goat died and left you nothing. What did he do? Convert all his assets to tangible goods, then hide them?”

  I was looking at her. What made her think I’d grown up in poverty? The clothes I was wearing and the three strands of gold around my neck were quite expensive. Did I—? I had to calm myself as her words were making me lose concentration.

  “Are you in love with someone?”

  “Oh yes!” I said.

  “I see.” She took my hand in both hers and kept caressing. “You want the jewels so you can give the money to someone else because he…she…?”

  “He,” I said, and she lightened her grip on my hand.

  “He is now demanding that you pay him or he’ll go to the police.”

  “Police,” I said, not understanding what she was saying, then it hit me. Good heavens, the woman believed I’d killed my husband and now someone was blackmailing me. I was to pay him or he’d tell the police. I needed to find some jewelry so I could pay the blackmailer. I put my hand over my face again. Murder and blackmail. Were the other women here for similiar reasons?

  “I know,” Narcissa said. “No one comes to us unless they’ve been given information about us. We advertise, but the truth is, we can’t compete with other spas.” She ran her hands over her ample belly. “Light cuisine and exercise are not what we’re known for.”

  “Then you do…do what…what I was told?”

  “We can, yes,” she said softly.

  I looked into her eyes so hard that mine began to ache.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Soon. Others were here before you, and, as you know, we can do only one a day—or even less.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and did what I could to read the images in her mind. Unfortunately, all I could see was a vision of the cherry pies that were being served at dinner.

  “Won’t you come downstairs and join us?”

  “I’m rather tired. I’d like to stay in my room and—” I smiled at her. “I’d really like to read. Do you have any books that could take my mind off my worries?”

  “You’re free to use the library. There are some excellent local histories in there.”

  “Histories of this beautiful house?” I was afraid she’d refuse to let me see them as I was sure she’d not want anyone to know the truth of her ancestors. Instead, she turned pink with pleasure.

  “How kind of you to say that. Most people say the most dreadful things about this house. Did you know that this house was once called A Hundred Elms? There were one hundred huge elms on the property, but after the war and the plantation workers were let go, the lumber had to be sold. One of my ancestors said he wanted thirteen elms left because thirteen was an evil number and that what the Yankees had done to us was evil.”

  I couldn’t reply to that, because I didn’t think the evil had come from a Yankee.

  “Please,” Narcissa said, “read all you want. Neither my sister nor I are readers so perhaps you can tell us about our family’s history.” With that, she left the room.

  I stood there for a moment trying to recover. “Blood will tell,” went through my head. If they didn’t like to read, maybe both Narcissa and Delphia really did think that the locked room in the basement had contained the history of their illustrious family. Maybe their recent ancestors hadn’t bothered to tell them the truth. Whether they knew the truth or not, I knew that whatever they were doing now was as horrible as what Amelia’s husband had done to her.

  After Narcissa left, I put on a show for the cameras. I pulled clothes out of my closet and looked at them as though I was trying to decide what to wear. I had on jeans and a cashmere sweater so I looked at the two suits and three dresses I’d brought with me. I hung one on the bedpost, another on the corner of the mantel and the last one on the flower wreath and covered the camera lens. As for