Deadly Ever After by Eva Gates (distant reading .txt) 📗

popular and the place was crowded, but we managed to snag a table close to the wide windows, thrown open to the night. Beyond the line of lights cast by the houses and hotels lining the shore, lights twinkled from boats in the harbor. The moon hung high in the sky, and I could hear the low mummer of the sea rushing to shore. We drank beer, ate chicken wings and hush puppies, listed to some great music, and talked about our lives and our friends.

I laughed at something Butch said as I started to get to my feet to go to the ladies’ room. At that moment, the crowd in front of the bar separated, and I caught a quick glimpse of a woman who looked very much like Charlene coming through the door. The same tall, thin frame, the same short brown hair. She was not dressed, however, in Charlene’s usual library uniform of neat skirt suit or well-tailored trousers and blouse but a short, tight, colorful dress above strappy high-heeled sandals. The waiter stopped at our table to ask if we wanted anything more, and when he’d moved on, Charlene, or whoever the woman was, had gone. I scanned the crowd but saw no sign of her.

“You okay, Lucy?” Steph asked.

“What?”

“You look like you’ve seen something.”

Connor’s head popped up, and he glanced around. “Not that blasted Ricky again, I hope.”

“No. Not Ricky. His mother has him sitting in his room at the hotel preparing for tomorrow’s book club. I’m fine. I thought I saw someone I wouldn’t have expected to see here, that’s all. I guess I was wrong.”

It might not have been Charlene, I said to myself, and she might not have left because she spotted my friends and me. Then again, the man standing next to her had looked very much like James Dalrymple.

“I have to take the dog out,” I told Connor as we walked up the path to the lighthouse after our evening with our friends. The night was warm and clear and the big white moon was rising in the sky. High above us, the lighthouse flashed its pattern: steady, reliable, and comfortable in a changing world.

“How’s he working out?” Connor asked.

“You mean having a dog? It’s a she, and it’s working out fine having her here, but that’s only because I live where I work, so I can pop up and take her out a couple of times a day.”

I unlocked the door, and we stepped inside. Charles was beside us immediately, winding himself around Connor’s legs, purring happily.

“I don’t usually get such an effusive greeting,” Connor said. “Charles knows I don’t ever feed him.”

“Charles is attempting to remind you who’s the number-one animal around here. He and Fluffy seem to have come to a tentative truce. I was worried I’d have to take sides. Do you want to come on the walk with us?”

“Sure. I’ll wait for you down here.”

I ran upstairs for Fluffy. When we got back, I found Connor sitting in the wingback chair with Charles on his lap and a book in his hand. He held up the book. The Hound of the Baskervilles.

“Found this on the returns cart, which reminds me, I won’t make book club tomorrow. I had to reschedule the budget meeting so I can see that house with you, and somehow it turned into a dinner meeting.”

He put Charles on the floor and stood up. He bent over and held his hand out to Fluffy to let the little dog sniff at it. Acquaintance made, Fluffy ran for the door, pulling me—at the other end of her leash—after her.

We stepped into the fresh night air. “One good thing about having a dog,” I said, “is it forces you to get outside regularly and go for a walk.”

Overhead, the thousand-watt bulb flashed, illuminating the ground in front of us. Connor took my free hand and we walked slowly toward the boardwalk, letting the moon and the occasional flash of light guide us.

We hadn’t gone far before the light went into its dormancy and a bank of clouds slipped across the face of the moon.

At that moment, up ahead, a light flashed once in the distance before being extinguished.

I stopped walking abruptly. Fluffy tugged at her end of the leash. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah, I did. Someone’s out there.”

“There aren’t any cars in the parking lot.”

“They might have come by boat.”

“Maybe.” I was suddenly very cold. The darkness that moments ago had seemed so peaceful pressed on me. Last year, in the days leading up to Halloween, I’d seen mysterious lights moving in the marsh. Those lights had been faint, colored, drifting. Almost, I’d thought, beckoning me. Corpse candles, the ancients called them, luring the living to their doom. I’d fled and never experienced anything like that again, and I’d pushed the incident aside as a natural phenomenon I’d misinterpreted due to all the talk of the night when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest.

This wasn’t the same. This light was steady, white, powerful. Electric.

“Is something wrong, Lucy?” Connor said.

“I … I don’t know. I don’t like that light. There it is again.” A series of flashes this time. A long, a short, a short, two longs. “Do you know Morse code?”

“I learned it as a Boy Scout but have almost completely forgotten.” He peered into the darkness. “You don’t think someone’s signaling, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s nothing but random flashes, Lucy. If it bothers you, do you want to go over and check out what’s going on?”

“No!”

He dropped my hand. “I’ll go. You can take the dog back inside.”

I grabbed his hand and clung to it. “No!”

“The dog isn’t reacting.”

I glanced down. Fluffy sat at my feet, scratching behind her ear. “They might be too far away for her to smell anything. And the wind’s blowing in the wrong direction for their scent to carry to us.”

“It’s nothing to worry about, Lucy. People are in the marsh. Lots of people visit