Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

The swinging door with the little round porthole window in it reminded her of the house where she’d grown up, and she smiled. She remembered being five and swinging the door endlessly, listening to the music of the hinges, until Dad had come along and shooed her outside. The noise must have driven him crazy, she thought nostalgically, but he just sent me outside to play instead of yelling. It was one of her few memories of him. He’d died of pneumonia not so long after.

She pushed past the door into a square dining room papered in dull blue and white stripes. It had a look of faded grandeur in its modest proportions, and she could imagine dinner parties with people in fancy cocktail dresses. Her antique wooden table with the carved legs would fit in here with one leaf in it and still leave room for her sideboard-cabinet. Sunlight came in through two small windows on either side of a door onto the driveway.

Another door opened onto the central hallway from the dining room with the bathroom across the hall.  She stepped in again to really look at it. The tile was gray-blue and white around the tub/shower and up the walls to waist height. The plain white plastic shower curtain would have to be replaced with something more interesting when she had a chance.  One inch white tiles on the floor were outlined in dark brownish-black grime under the radiator and along the walls and made her think of old New York apartments from the twenties. A wooden medicine cabinet hung over the sink with a beveled mirror, streaky where the silver was peeling. Her toffee brown eyes gazed at her wan reflection, and she made herself smile for encouragement.

The back of the house featured two bedrooms down a squeaky, wooden hallway. Although they were painted in drab colors, cement grey and institutional green, they were spacious, and she picked out the bigger of the two on the left for her own. She walked around listening to the echoes of her footsteps and felt a momentary tightening of her throat. Someone had been sad here in this cement gray room. She walked through the dark green room and felt less sad, but she didn’t like the light from the windows as much. It would serve better as an office. Mrs. Thomas had to let her repaint.

She was suddenly conscious of the empty house around her, and the hair on the back of her neck and arms prickled a little. She felt a little frisson of apprehension. There were almost no noises coming from outside. In New York City she’d always been aware of the activity of people behind every floor, ceiling, and wall. It was like living in an anthill, but comforting. She’d forgotten that in the country there was a lot more empty space. Mostly she liked that, but in this house it felt eerie, shabby, and sad somehow, like the previous people had cried a lot or been unhappy. She wondered who had lived there before her, and why Mrs. Thomas had had trouble renting it out.

She tried to shake the mood. The place was going to need a lot of work, a new coat of paint on everything for starters. The windows all needed cleaning, each one accompanied by the solid iron bulk of a radiator underneath. The floors all needed refinishing. She sighed again and shook herself a little, trying to imagine how it would look in fresh colors with her furniture in different arrangements. It was a good thing she was not one of those people who wilted in the heat. Summer was her favorite time of year.

She made a circuit through the house again, this time opening the windows wherever she could to let the fresh air of the day into the house. The heavy feel faded as the sounds of insects buzzing in the flowers wafted inside with a rich, warm summery smell. The aroma brought back happy memories of visiting Grandma Selene and Grandpa Clare in the summers as a kid. They were only a couple of towns over in Vandenberg and Marianne remembered driving through Maple Hill on the way to other places. Maple Hill was also home to the best ice cream shop in the world as far as she was concerned. Now that she lived here she could go to Jonathan Sweets’ ice cream parlor any time! She grinned and put it on her list for later after the movers were done.

Oscar finished his tour of the downstairs about the time she did, and she watched his crooked tail disappear up the stairs to the second floor. She looked at her cell phone. The movers should be here soon, so she couldn’t leave. She could bring the rest of her stuff in from the car, though. She was just about to go out the front door when she hear a frightened meow, and Oscar came racing down the stairs, an orange and white blur. He bolted for the carrier in the middle of the floor and disappeared inside.

“What happened to you?” Marianne murmured as she knelt down and peered inside. Oscar was bushed up as big as he could be, looking twice his normal size. She reached in and stroked his fur, murmuring soothing noises until he relaxed enough to let her gather him up into her arms. His heart beat a frantic tattoo against her hand. “Goodness! What did you meet upstairs? Is my big, tough guy, city cat afraid of the country? It’s okay. We’ll clean up in here and make it our home. We’ll chase out all the birds and squirrels in the attic, and you won’t have to be scared anymore,” she cooed lovingly.

Oscar had come from the animal shelter after her divorce. Geoffrey wouldn’t have liked him, but she had always wanted a cat. She remembered with a smile how he’d calmly sat and stared at her while she looked at all the other cats in the white cement room. Finally, when she’d looked at him, he’d put his paw between the cage bars and given her a look that said, “ What took you so long? Get me out of here!” And that was that.
 

She cradled him until his fur settled back down, and she put him back into the carrier and shut the door. Carrying it to the bathroom, she put the cage in the bathtub for now, opened the metal door to give him free rein, and closed the bathroom door behind her.
 

Chapter 2

Ruari Allen closed and locked the doors of his workshop reluctantly. It was a little before nine o’clock, and he was due at work on the dot. He wished he had enough orders to keep him working at his bench all day. He got up at five usually to take advantage of the coolness of the day and spent a few blissful hours shaping and caressing wood into furniture and a variety of objects. He’d inherited his grandfather’s talent for woodworking and learned as much as he could at the old man’s knee. He just wished he could make a living at it.

Right now he was in the middle of making one of the sculptures that came into his head occasionally. They happened a couple of times a year and were so compelling that he had to drop what he was doing and focus on them until they had worked themselves out of his system. If he didn’t, his commissioned work suffered or ended up with elements of the sculpture in them that his client hadn’t requested. Better to follow his subconscious muse and let it have its way.
 

Sighing, he climbed into his old white truck and headed to Gloria’s Valley Homes and Properties. Fixing mechanicals and doing odd jobs for the manager paid the bills at least, even if it didn’t make him happy. Fortunately he had only himself to look after. Still single at thirty-four, it was a bone of contention with his parents. He’d managed to convince them he wasn’t gay. He simply hadn’t found the right woman to settle down with. His younger sister Erin got along better with them than he did, though she wasn’t married and “producing” yet either. Better that she was living at home with them than him.

It had been another long and boring summer fixing things, and he wondered if his life was going to go on like this indefinitely. It was not a happy prospect. He’d lived in Maple Hill all his life, and though he loved its familiarity, it was confining. He was in a rut and didn’t know how to get out of it.

He pulled into a space in front of the converted family home on Main Street that now bore the flowery sign for Gloria’s and stepped inside. His boss, SueAnn Talmadge, was already bustling around and looked at him with an irritated glance. Her tailored red linen suit practically glowed with energy. She must drink high test, full caf coffee from the moment she got out of bed, he thought. Or maybe she had an untreated manic condition.

Thrusting a printout at him she said, “You’re late. It must be nice to be able to sleep in without a care in the world. I’ve been here since seven. Here’s the punch list for the day. Keep the billing straight, will you? You’ve been sloppy, and it’s a bitch to straighten out.”

Bitch. Right. He thought it but didn’t voice it. She wasn’t likely to find another handyman as good as he was, so in spite of her complaints, she paid him a living wage. All the same, he didn’t usually rock the boat. Looking at the sheet, he saw it was another day of annoying repairs and paint jobs and sighed quietly.

“The Thomas place on Violet is being rented finally so make sure you stop by and turn the electricity on first thing and bring the key back. The tenant moves in at eleven today, and I need to let her in,” SueAnn said briskly.
 

The Thomas place on Violet? He thought. That’s been empty awhile. He vaguely remembered a brief occupation by a lady from the city a year or so ago. She hadn’t stayed long. He remembered having to go fix something there but couldn’t for the moment remember what it was. That bugged him. Usually he remembered places by the things he’d had to paint or fix.
 

“What are you waiting for? Get going!” SueAnn urged him out the door.
 

“Keep your shirt on, Talmadge,” he murmured resignedly. “I’m on it.”
 

 
Kelly threw her arm over Sarah as they lay under the sheet together and whispered, “ ’Morning, I love you.”

“Mmmm,” Sarah replied sleepily.

“I’m going running before it gets too hot. See you at breakfast.” She kissed her partner’s cheek before slipping out of bed.

“Love you too,” Sarah mumbled and rolled over. She could never understand Kelly’s energy so early in the morning. Seven-thirty was early enough for her. None of this five a.m. stuff.

Two hours later Sarah woke again to the sounds of Kelly clattering in the kitchen below. She’d had a vague, disturbing dream, the details of which were rapidly fading. She was familiar with most of Maple Hill’s inhabitants, either from growing up here or through the law firm where she worked, and sometimes had premonitions about them. Often they weren’t very clear, though, which was frustrating. This time there was an impression of a woman running away from someone through a field of little purple flowers. That could fit pretty much half the population of Maple Hill. She sighed and figured she’d just have to wait and see what developed.

Her thoughts turned reluctantly to the big meeting this afternoon at work. Smith, Walgust and Brown, the biggest law firm in town, often handled the Ballister family’s affairs. The Ballisters were arranging to purchase a historic piece of property. She wasn’t looking forward to it much since the Ballisters treated her at arm’s length rather than as the solid, respectable lawyer she was. In spite of that, she was always professional and bent over backwards to do her homework and prepare each document and case thoroughly.
 

She’d grown up in Maple Hill, gone away to law school, and come back a competent professional. But somehow, it was hard to change people’s minds about her. Being openly gay was becoming less of a problem even in the small Hudson Valley town, but her ability to converse with the dead was just too weird for most people. Even though it had proved useful on more than one occasion. People often focused on the wrong things, she shook her head sadly. Mercifully, the partners who ran the firm trusted her and respected her judgment, or else she’d never be able to keep her job.

The doorbell sounded a Big Ben chime, and Marianne hurried to the front door. Two burly men were standing on the stoop, their maroon moving van with “Burgdorf’s Moving Service” in black and gold fancy lettering was parked at the end of the cul-de-sac.

“Hi! You found the place okay?” She said with a shy smile.
 

“Yes, ma’am,” the taller of the two rumbled in reply. His maroon shirt had the name “Joe” stitched on the left breast.

Geoffrey would never have stooped to fraternize with blue-collar working class types, but she sympathized with their jobs and always talked comfortably with them when he wasn’t looking. It had been a source of annoyance for him. She smiled again more broadly. “It’s pretty close to lunch time. Do you want to eat something before you unload? It’s a little cooler inside, and there’s a bathroom if you need it.”
 

Joe hesitated a moment then said, “That would be very nice.” Without a word the other man, “Bobby,” returned to the truck and brought back a couple of paper bags and thermoses. Marianne invited them in and went out to her own car to grab her own lunch.
 

The movers were sitting on the floor in the living room with their backs to the north wall, consuming large shapeless sandwiches. Marianne smiled at them politely and sat down on the floor as well to eat her lunch. They ate in awkward silence for a little before Marianne said, “Did you have any trouble getting up here?”

Joe answered, “Nope. GPS got us here fine. No traffic on the Thruway to speak of.” He ate a few more bites and surveyed the living room. “Nice looking house,” he said noncommittally.

“Thanks. It seems very nice,” she replied.

“It’s not yours?”

“Well, I’m fixing it up a bit for a friend of the family in exchange for rent.”

He looked around again, chewing thoughtfully. Marianne surreptitiously observed the men. Joe was somewhere between thirty and fifty and had a touch of the Old World about his features, someplace Slavic maybe, she thought. She could imagine him growing up with a stern Polish or Ukrainian grandmamma and smiled at the fleeting image of a big, strong, doughy woman, arms crossed over a faded flower print dress and floury apron. Joe’s arms were bulky and solid, looking like he could bench press three hundred pounds without breaking a sweat.
 

Bobby was younger, maybe in his thirties, and was possibly of Irish descent, given the vivid red stubble over the crown of his head and freckles across his face. His arms looked less bulky than his partner’s, so she guessed he was the wiry type. They both looked like they’d grown up in the moving business and moved a lot of stuff in their lives.