Red Lily

  “It’s the kind of doll she’ll name in a year or so, then keep in her room till college. Thank you, Roz.”

  “We’re not done. There was this little shop, and they had the most adorable dresses.” She began to pull them out of the bag while Hayley goggled. Soft smocked cotton, ruched lace, embroidered denim. “And look at these rompers. Who could resist?”

  “They’re wonderful. They’re beautiful. You’ll spoil her.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “I don’t know what to . . . She doesn’t have any grand—anybody to spoil her like this.”

  Roz arched a brow, folded a romper. “You can say the G word, Hayley. I won’t faint in horror. I like to think of myself as her honorary grandmother.”

  “I’m so lucky. We’re so lucky.”

  “Then why are you tearing up?”

  “I don’t know. All this stuff’s been going on in my head lately.” She sniffled, heeled a hand under her eyes to rub away the dampness. “Where I am, how I got here, how it might’ve been for us if I’d been on my own with Lily the way I thought I’d be.”

  “Might’ve beens don’t get you very far.”

  “I know. I’m just so glad I came to you. I was thinking last night that I should start looking for a place.”

  “A place to what?”

  “Live.”

  “Something wrong with this place?”

  “It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.” And here she was, Hayley Phillips from Little Rock, living in it, living in a house that had a parlor furnished with beautiful antiques and deep rich cushions, with generous windows that opened up to acres of more beauty.

  “I was thinking I should look for a place, but I don’t want to. At least, well, not right now.” She looked down, watched Lily struggle to carry the doll around the room. “But I want you to tell me, and I know we’re good enough friends that you will, when you want me to start looking.”

  “All right. That settled then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t you want to see what we brought you?”

  “I got something, too?” Hayley’s lake blue eyes went bright with anticipation. “I love presents. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

  “I hope you like this one.” She took a box out of the bag, offered it.

  Wasting no time, Hayley took off the top. “Oh, oh! They’re gorgeous.”

  “I thought the red coral would suit you best.”

  “I love them!” She took the earrings out of the box and holding them to her ears rushed to one of the antique mirrors on the wall to study how they looked. The trios of delicate and exotic red balls swayed from a glittery triangle of silver. “They’re wonderful. God, I have something from Aruba. I can’t believe it.”

  She dashed back to give a chuckling Roz a hug. “They’re just beautiful. Thank you, thank you. I can hardly wait to wear them.”

  “You can give them a test drive tonight if you want. Stella, Logan, and the boys will be over. David tells me we’re having a welcome-home dinner.”

  “Oh, but you’ll be tired.”

  “Tired? What am I, eighty? I just got back from vacation.”

  “Honeymoon,” Hayley corrected with a smirk. “Bet you didn’t get a lot of rest either.”

  “We slept in every morning, you smart-ass.”

  “In that case, we’ll party. Lily and I’ll go upstairs and get ourselves all clean and pretty.”

  “I’ll give you a hand up with all these things.”

  “Thanks. Roz?” Everything inside her had settled down to a glow. “I’m really glad you’re home.”

  IT WAS SO much fun to put on her new earrings, to dress Lily in one of her pretty new outfits, to fuss a little over both herself and her daughter. She shook her head just for the pleasure of feeling the way her hair fell and her earrings swung.

  There now, she thought, not feeling dull and blah anymore. Since she was feeling celebratory, she capped it off with new shoes. The thin-heeled strappy black sandals were impractical and unnecessary. Which made them perfect.

  “And they were on sale,” she told Lily. “Gotta say, they’ve got to be more fun than Prozac or whatever.”

  It felt great to wear a dress—a short dress—and sexy shoes. A new haircut. Red lipstick.

  She gave a turn for the mirror and struck a pose. Maybe she had a skinny build, but there was nothing much she could do about that. Still, she wore clothes pretty well, if she did say so. Kind of like a clothes hanger. Add new hair, new earrings, new shoes, and you had something.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe I’m back.”

  DOWNSTAIRS, HARPER WAS sprawled in a chair, sipping a beer and watching the way Mitch touched his mother—her hair, her arm—while they related some of the highlights of their trip for Logan and Stella and the boys.

  He’d heard some of it already when he’d buzzed home for an hour that afternoon. He wasn’t really listening. He was just watching, and thinking it was good, it was time his mother had someone so obviously besotted with her.

  He was happy for her—and relieved. No matter how well his mother could take care of herself, and God knew she could do just that, it was a comfort to know she had a smart, able man at her side.

  After what had happened last spring, if Mitch hadn’t moved in, he’d have done so himself. And that might’ve been a little sticky with Hayley living there.

  It was more . . . comfortable, he decided, for everybody, if he continued to live in the carriage house. It might not have been much distance geographically, but psychologically it did the job.

  “I told him he was crazy,” Roz continued, gesturing with her wine in one hand, patting the other on Mitch’s thigh. “Windsurfing? Why in God’s name would we want to teeter around on a little hunk of wood with a sail attached? But he just had to try it.”

  “I tried it once.” Stella sat, her curling mass of red hair spilling over her shoulders. “Spring break in college. It was fun once I got the hang of it.”

  “So I hear.” Mitch’s mutter had Roz grinning.

  “He’d get up on the thing, and in two seconds, splash. Get up, and wait, I think he’s got it. Splash.”

  “I had a defective board,” Mitch claimed, and poked Roz in the ribs.

  “Of course you did.” Roz rolled her eyes. “One thing you can say about our Mitchell is he’s game. I don’t know how many times he hauled himself out of the drink and back on that board.”

  “Six hundred and fifty-two.”

  “How about you?” Logan, big and built and rugged beside Stella, gestured toward Roz with his beer.

  “Oh, well, I don’t like to brag,” Roz said and examined her fingernails.

  “Yes, she does.” Mitch gulped down club soda, stretched out his long, long legs. “Oh, yes, she does.”

  “But I enjoyed the experience quite a lot.”

  “She just . . .” Mitch sailed his hand through the air to illustrate. “Sailed off as if she’d been born on one of the damn things.”

  “We Harpers do tend to have excellent athletic abilities and superior balance.”

  “But she doesn’t like to brag,” Mitch pointed out, then glanced over at the click of heels on hardwood.

  Harper did the same, and felt his reputed superior balance falter.

  She looked frigging amazing. The skinny little red dress, the mile-high shoes combined to make her legs look endless. The sort of legs a man could imagine cruising over for miles and miles. Her hair was so damn sexy that way, and her mouth was all hot and red.

  She had a baby on her hip, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t be thinking about what he’d like to do to that mouth, that body when she was carrying Lily. It had to be wrong.

  Across the room, Logan let out a long, low whistle that had Hayley’s face lighting up.

  “Hello, beautiful. You look good enough to eat. You look good, too, Hayley.”

  At that, she gave one of those husky rolls of laughter, and hip-swayed over to drop Lily in Log
an’s lap. “Just for that.”

  “How about some wine?” Roz offered.

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve been wanting a cold beer.”

  “I’ll get it.” Harper all but sprang out of his chair, and was heading out of the parlor before she could respond. He hoped the trip to the kitchen and back would bring his blood pressure back to normal.

  She was a cousin, sort of, he reminded himself. And an employee. His mother’s houseguest. A mother. Any one of those reasons meant hands-off. Tally them up, and it put Hayley way off-limits. Added to that, she didn’t think of him that way, not even close.

  A guy made a move on a woman under those circumstances, he was just asking to screw up a nice, pleasant friendship.

  He got out a beer, got out a pilsner. As he was pouring, he heard the squeal, and the rapid clip of heels on wood. He glanced over and spotted Lily running, with Hayley scrambling behind her.

  “She want a beer, too?”

  With a laugh, Hayley started to scoop Lily up, only to have her baby girl go red in the face and arch away. “You. Like always.”

  “That’s my girl.” He hoisted her up, gave her a toss. The mutinous little face went sugar sweet and bright with smiles. Pretending to pout, Hayley finished pouring her beer.

  “Shows where I am in her pecking order.”

  “You got the beer, I got the kid.”

  Lily wrapped an arm around Harper’s neck, dipped her head to rest it on his cheek. Hayley nodded, lifted her glass. “Looks like.”

  IT WAS WONDERFUL to have everyone around the table again, the whole Harper House family, as Hayley thought of them, sitting together, diving into David’s honey-glazed ham.

  She’d missed having a big family. Growing up, it had been just Hayley and her father. Not that she’d felt deprived, she thought, not in any way. She and her father had been a team, a unit, and he was—had been—the kindest, funniest, warmest man she’d ever known.

  But she’d missed having meals like this, a full table, lots of voices—even the arguments and drama that went hand-in-hand in her mind with big families.

  Lily would grow up with that, because Roz had welcomed them. So Lily would have a lifetime of meals like this one, full of aunts and uncles and cousins. Grandparents, she thought, stealing a glance toward Roz and Mitch. And when Roz’s other sons, or Mitch’s son, came to visit, it would just add to the rich family stew.

  One day, Roz’s sons, and Mitch’s Josh, would get married. Probably have a herd of kids between them.

  She shifted her gaze toward Harper and ordered herself to ignore the little ache that came from thinking of him married, making babies with some woman whose face she couldn’t see.

  Of course, she’d be beautiful, that was a given. Probably blonde and built and blue-blooded. The bitch.

  Whoever she turned out to be, whatever she looked like or was like, Hayley determined she’d make friends. Even if it killed her.

  “Something wrong with the potatoes?” David murmured beside her.

  “Hmm. No. They’re awesome.”

  “Just wondered why you looked like you were forcing down some bad-tasting medicine, sugar.”

  “Oh, just thought about something I’m going to have to do, and won’t like. Life’s full of them. But that doesn’t include eating these potatoes. In fact, I was wondering if you could show me how to cook some things. I can cook pretty good. Daddy and I split that chore, and we were both okay with the basics—I could even get a little fancy now and then. But Lily’s growing up on your cooking, so I ought to be able to fix it for her myself when need be.”

  “Hmm, a kitchen apprentice. One I can mold into my own likeness. Love to.”

  When Lily began to drop the bits of food still on her tray delicately to the floor, Hayley popped up. “Guess who’s done.”

  “Gavin, why don’t you and Luke take Lily outside and play awhile?”

  “Oh.” Hayley shook her head at Stella’s suggestion. “I don’t want them to have to mind her.”

  “We can do it,” Gavin piped up. “She likes to chase the ball and the Frisbee.”

  “Well . . .” At nearly ten, Gavin was tall for his age. And at just-turned-eight, Luke was right behind him. They could—and had—handled Lily at play on the backyard grass. “I don’t mind if you don’t, and she’d love it. But when you’re tired of her, you just bring her back.”

  “And as a reward, ice cream sundaes later.”

  David’s announcement got a couple of cheers.

  When playtime was over, the sundaes devoured, Hayley carried Lily up to get her ready for bed, and Stella brought the boys up to the sitting room they’d once shared to watch television.

  “Roz and Mitch want an Amelia talk,” Stella told her. “I didn’t know if you’d gotten the word.”

  “No, but that’s fine. I’ll be down as soon as she is.”

  “Need any help?”

  “Not this time, but thanks. Her eyes are already drooping.”

  It was nice, she thought, to hear the muted crash and boom of some sort of space war on the sitting room television and the bright chatter of the boys’ commentary on the action. She’d missed those noises since Stella had gotten married.

  She settled Lily in for the night—hopefully—checked the monitor and the night-light. Then left the door ajar as she returned downstairs.

  She found the adults in the library, the most usual meeting spot for ghost talk. The sun had yet to set, so the room was washed with light that was just hinting of pink. Through the glass, the summer gardens were ripe, sumptuous, spears of lavender foxglove dancing over pools of white impatiens, brightened with elegant drips of hot-pink fuschia.

  She spotted the soft, fuzzy green of betony, the waxy charm of begonias, the inverted cups of purple coneflowers with their prickly brown heads.

  She’d missed her evening walk with Lily, she remembered, and promised herself she’d take her daughter out for a stroll through the gardens the next day.

  Out of habit, she crossed to the table where a baby monitor stood beside a vase of poppy-red lilies.

  Once she was assured it was on, she tuned in to the rest of the room.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Mitch began, “I thought I should bring you up-to-date.”

  “You’re not going to break my heart and tell us you researched during your honeymoon,” David put in.

  “Your heart’s safe, but we did manage to find some time to discuss various theories here and there. The thing is, I had a couple of e-mails from our contact in Boston. The descendant of the Harper housekeeper during Reginald and Beatrice’s reign here.”

  “She find something?” Harper had chosen the floor rather than one of the seats, and now folded himself from prone to sitting.

  “I’ve been feeding her what we know, and told her what we found in Beatrice Harper’s journal, regarding your great-grandfather, Harper. The fact that he wasn’t her son, but in fact Reginald’s son with his mistress—whom we have to assume was Amelia. She hasn’t had any luck, yet, digging up any letters or diaries from Mary Havers—the housekeeper. She has found photographs, and is getting us copies.”

  Hayley looked toward the second level of the library, to the table loaded with books, Mitch’s laptop. And the board beside it that was full of photos and copies of letters and journal entries. “What will that do for us?”

  “The more visuals, the better,” he said. “She’s also been talking to her grandmother, who’s not doing very well, although she does have some lucid moments. The grandmother claims to recall her mother and a cousin who also worked here at the time talk about their days at Harper House. Lots of talk about the parties and the work. She also recalls her cousin talking about the young master, that’s how she referred to Reginald Jr. And saying the stork got rich delivering that one. That her mother told her to hush, that blood money and curses aside, the child was innocent. When she asked what she meant, her mother wouldn’t speak of it, except to say she’d done her duty by t
he Harper family, and would have to live with it. But the happiest day of her life had been when she’d walked out the door of this house for the last time.”

  “She knew my grandfather had been taken from his mother.” Roz reached down, touched a hand to Harper’s shoulder. “And if this woman is remembering correctly, it sounds as though Amelia wasn’t willing to give him up.”

  “Blood money and curses,” Stella repeated. “Who was paid, and what was cursed?”

  “There would have been a doctor or a midwife, perhaps both, attending Amelia during the birth.” Mitch spread his hands. “Almost certainly they’d have been paid off. Some of the servants here might have been bribed.”

  “I know that’s awful,” Hayley said. “But you wouldn’t call that blood money, would you? Hush money more like.”

  “Bull’s-eye,” Mitch told her. “If there was blood money, where was the blood?”

  “Amelia’s death.” Logan shifted, leaned forward. “She haunts here, so she died here. You haven’t been able to find any record of that, so we have to assume it was covered up. Easiest way to cover something up is money.”

  “I agree.” Stella nodded. “But how did she get here? There’s no mention of Amelia in any of Beatrice’s journals. No mention of Reginald’s mistress by name, or of her coming to Harper House. She wrote about the baby, and how she felt about Reginald bringing him here, expecting her to pretend she’d given birth to him. Wouldn’t she have been just as outraged, and written of that, if he’d established Amelia in the house?”

  “He wouldn’t have.” Hayley spoke quietly. “From everything we’ve learned about him, he wouldn’t have brought a woman of her class, one he considered a convenience, a means to an end, into the house he was so proud of. He wouldn’t have wanted her around his son—the one he was passing as legitimate. It’d be a constant reminder.”

  “That’s a good point.” Harper stretched out his legs, crossed them at the ankles. “But if we believe she died here, then we have to believe she was here.”

  “Maybe she passed as a servant,” Stella suggested. She gestured, and her wedding ring glinted gold in the softening light. “If Beatrice didn’t know her, what she looked like, Amelia might have managed to get a position in the house, so she’d be close to her son. She sings to the children of the house, she’s obsessed with the children here, in her way. Wouldn’t she have been even more so with her own child?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Mitch commented. “We haven’t found her through the household records, but it’s a possibility.”

  “Or she came here to try to get him.” Roz looked at Stella, at Hayley. “A mother, frantic, desperate, and not completely balanced. She sure as hell didn’t go crazy after she died. I’m not willing to stretch credulity that far. Doesn’t it play that she would have come here, and something went terribly wrong? We have to consider that if she came here, she might have been murdered. Blood money to cover up the crime.”

  “So the house is cursed.” Harper lifted a shoulder. “And she haunts it until, what, she’s avenged? How?”

  “Maybe just recognized,” Hayley corrected. “Given her due, I guess. You’re her blood,” she said to Harper. “Maybe it’s going to take Harper blood to put her to rest.”

  “I have to say that sounds logical.” David gave a little shudder. “And creepy.”

  “We’re a bunch of rational adults sitting around talking about a ghost,” Stella reminded him. “It doesn’t get much more creepy.”

  “I saw her last night.”

  At Hayley’s statement all eyes turned to her. “And you didn’t tell us?” Harper demanded.

  “I told David this morning,” she shot back. “And I’m telling everybody now. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kids.”

  “Let’s get this on record.” Mitch rose to go to the table for his tape recorder.

  “It wasn’t that much of a big.”

  “We agreed last spring after the last two violent apparitions, that everything goes on the record.” He came back to sit again, and set the recorder on the table. “Tell us.”