The Haunting of Autumn Lake (3 page)

Ransom smiled as he watched her go. It didn’t seem so long ago that she was in braids and short skirts. He pushed the wave of melancholy to the back of his mind and slapped the lines at the backs of the team—smiling at the understanding of how truly blessed he was.

“I’m home, Mama!” Autumn called as she entered the house. “Daddy’s unhitchin’ the team, and he’ll be right in.”

Autumn paused, closed her eyes, and inhaled the soothing perfume of home. She smiled as the aroma of apples, nutmeg, cinnamon, and even cloves filled her nostrils, lungs, and being. It was warm inside the house, and even the light seemed sunset-orange already. Turning to glance out the window, she saw that indeed the sun had begun its descent, adding comfort and a restfulness to the closing of the day.

“Oh, honey!” Vaden Lake said as she hurried to the front of the house and gathered her daughter in her arms. “I was getting worried! You know I don’t like you walking home by yourself this late.”

Autumn hugged her mother—inhaled the scent of vanilla and spices, freshly washed hair, flour, and sugar. “I’m fine, Mama. Daddy was comin’ over the bridge just as I was.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re both home,” Vaden said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Mama,” Autumn said.

Vaden Lake smiled at her beautiful daughter—gazed at her sweetness of character and the adorable smudge of soil on her left cheek. How like her father she looked, and Vaden was resplendent in the knowledge. She didn’t know what she would do when, like Cole and Sawyer, Autumn found a lover, married, and left home. The thought caused emotion to rise in her throat, and tears threatened to well in her eyes. Yet she thought of Ava and Cole’s baby, due to arrive before Halloween. The baby would help her accept the fact that her own children were leaving home. At least, she hoped it would.

“I’ve made an apple dessert for your father,” Vaden said, taking Autumn’s hand and leading her toward the kitchen. “Aunt Myra ordered the cinnamon candies I needed, and I tell you, this dessert will taste divine, Autumn. Simply divine!”

Oh, Vaden was certain the dessert she’d made for Ransom
would
be divine, but it was to distract herself from Autumn’s maturing—that was the true reason she was determined to have Autumn inspect the dessert. Though she wanted nothing more than to hold her daughter in her mother’s embrace forever, she knew it was not God’s plan. Vaden did not doubt that her own mother had been heartbroken to let Vaden and her sister Yvonne leave to spend a year helping their Uncle Dan and Aunt Myra in the general store in town. Yet how grateful Vaden was that her mother had let them go—else she might not have met the man of her every sleeping and waking dream, Ransom Lake.

At the very thought of Ransom, Vaden’s arms and legs rippled with goose bumps—the wild goose bumps of delightful anticipation. Her mouth began to water with desire as well—and not from the delicious scent of the apple dessert she’d made.

Vaden glanced up to the kitchen door, hoping Ransom would walk in at any moment. But she knew it took time to care for the team. She would have to be patient.

“Oooo! They’re pink!” Autumn exclaimed upon seeing the dessert her mother had made. And it was true. There, lying in a large baking dish, were twelve wonderful-looking and ambrosial-smelling cinnamon roll–type desserts. Autumn’s mouth watered as she bent and inhaled deeply of the cinnamon-nutmeg scent of the rolls.

“Apple fruit rolls, they’re called,” Vaden explained. “It’s the recipe Yvonne wrote to me about. Don’t they look simply delectable? And it’s the cinnamon candy that makes them pink. It’s part of the recipe…a sweet syrup made from the cinnamon candy, sugar, water—”

“Oh, Mama!” Autumn sighed as she inhaled once more. “They smell scrumptious! Daddy will love them!”

Autumn watched her mother’s eyes twinkle with overpowering admiration and love for her husband. “I hope so.”

Autumn grinned. She could not resist the temptation to tease her mother—for Vaden Lake owned a young heart, even for the few gray hairs on her head and the soft wrinkles at the corners of her mouth.

“Oooo! Maybe Daddy will sweep you away on the wings of temptation’s seductive bliss over these apple fruit rolls,” Autumn giggled.

She smiled as her mother blushed and placed one hand on a hip. “Autumn Lake! Where ever did you hear such talk?”

Autumn shrugged. “I read it somewhere…in that poetry book Daddy gave you last Christmas, I think.” And as her mother opened her mouth to lovingly scold her, Autumn added, “And don’t pretend you’re astonished, Mama. I’ve seen the way you and Daddy carry on.”

Vaden smiled. Autumn knew her mother wasn’t insipid. Vaden Lake was too smart to pretend she didn’t know what her daughter was talking about.

“I’m a lucky woman, Autumn,” Vaden said. “It’s not every woman who enjoys a passionate love affair through the course of her entire life. Your father and I…we—”

“Kiss the way no one else in this town ever does. Of that I’m certain,” Autumn interrupted as she tentatively dipped a finger in the sticky fuchsia syrup surrounding the fruit rolls.

Autumn glanced to the kitchen door then as her father entered through it. Instantly her mother’s face lit up as brightly as any electricity bulb Mr. Edison had invented.

“It smells so good in here, Mrs. Lake,” Ransom said, kissing Autumn on the cheek and then moving to Vaden. “Good enough to eat somethin’ up.”

Vaden giggled as Ransom took her in his arms, kissing her squarely on the mouth. “Well, I hope so, Mr. Lake,” Vaden said. “I’ve worked all day just to—”

But her words were lost as her husband’s open mouth captured hers.

Autumn bit her lip to stifle a delighted giggle as she watched her father kiss her mother. There was no timidity about the way Ransom Lake kissed his wife—no concern with propriety. Autumn stood in awe as she watched her parents kissing, open-mouthed and wildly passionate, in the kitchen.

“For cryin’ in the bucket, Daddy!” Autumn squeaked. “Wash your hands for supper! Let’s eat before you two disappear into the parlor for your sparkin’ session. I’m starvin’ near to death.”

Autumn felt warm and safe inside as she watched her father release her mother, slapping her square on the bum as she smiled up at him.

“Your daddy still turns my knees to pumpkin guts,” Vaden giggled as she kissed her index finger and pressed it to the manly cleft in Ransom Lake’s strong chin. Looking to Autumn, she added, “You wash up too, sweetie. Supper’s ready.”

As they washed their hands for supper and her mother set the table, Ransom said, “Someone saw the Specter out in Nate Wimber’s cornfield last night.”

“Really?” Autumn gasped. “Daddy…really?”

Ransom chuckled. “Yes, darlin’, really. Or at least that’s what Tawny Johnson claims.”

Autumn wrinkled her nose as her mother said, “Tawny Johnson? Ransom, you know you can’t trust a thing that girl says. She’s just like her mother. Belva Tibbits always was a…a….”

“A liar,” Ransom finished.

But Vaden softened her expression. “That seems a little harsh…but yes. Belva always embellishes…so I’m sure Tawny does too. The apple never falls far from the tree.”

Autumn wrinkled her brow. “How do you think Mrs. Johnson managed to land Mr. Johnson as her husband?” she asked. “You and Daddy always say she was such a troublemaker as a girl. How did she manage to—”

“She coaxed him into takin’ her out to the meadow and—” Ransom began. But Vaden’s hand over his mouth hushed him.

“It’s not nice to spread gossip, Ransom,” Vaden said. “No one knows for sure that anything happened out there in the—”

“Everyone knows what happened, baby!” Ransom exclaimed, pushing Vaden’s hand from his mouth. “Rolland Johnson wasn’t born too early. Hell, he weighed nine pounds.”

Autumn’s eyes widened, and Vaden waved a hand of dismissal. “Everyone makes mistakes, I suppose. And stop cussing, honey.” Nodding to Autumn, Vaden added, “Not that Rolland was a mistake. He’s a lovely boy. He’s a gift to the world.”

“That’s because he takes after his father,” Ransom mumbled.

Autumn bit her lip to stifle a giggle. She loved the way her parents interacted—the way they bantered and were always so affectionate. Oh, how she longed for such a marriage as theirs.

“So Tawny is the one who saw the Specter then?” Autumn asked, for her delightfully chilling curiosity concerning the legend of the Specter knew no bounds.

“That’s what she says,” Ransom confirmed as he pulled Vaden’s chair out from the supper table and seated her before doing the same for Autumn. “She says she saw the Specter off in the distance…all white and ghostly…with flowing white shreds of cloth binding him. And he sat on a black horse.”

Autumn shivered with delicious dread. “Do you think he’s real, Daddy?” she asked.

“No, honey…I don’t. I think someone just came up with the story to make Halloween more fun every couple of years.”

“Well, real or not…you two are giving me chills talking about ghosts and Belva Tibbits Johnson,” Vaden interjected. “Let’s just enjoy supper…because I can’t wait to taste those apple fruit rolls.”

Autumn watched with pure serenity and delicious delight as a mischievous grin spread across her father’s face. He winked at Autumn and then turned to Vaden, saying, “I can’t wait to taste you, sugar mouth.”

“Ransom Lake!” Vaden exclaimed, blushing and playfully slapping her husband on one broad shoulder. “Do you or do you not see our daughter sitting right here at the table with us? What’s she going to think with you saying such things to me?”

But Autumn only smiled. She loved her parents—she loved their love. And all of a sudden she was reminded of what she would never have, for there really was no one else on the earth like her father.

❦

“Are you sure she’s in bed, Ransom?” Autumn heard her mother ask in a whisper. She smiled as she saw her father turn down every lamp in the room so that just the fire in the fireplace lit the parlor.

Ransom Lake chuckled as he gathered his wife into his arms. “Well, if she ain’t, then she’s about to be educated,” he teased Vaden.

Autumn felt her eyes widen as her father released her mother long enough to strip his shirt off over his head. In the next moment, he gathered her mother in his powerful arms once more and began trailing kisses over her throat.

Clamping her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp and a giggle, Autumn turned and quietly tiptoed back to her room. It was time to leave her parents to whatever it was her parents did whenever her father looked at her mother the way he was looking at her in the parlor.

Silently she slipped into her bed—her soft, warm, comfortable bed. And as she lay in her bed, gazing out the window into the night sky—watching the lace curtains softly billow into her room as the autumn breeze breathed its crisp, ripe-apple sigh into the room, Autumn prayed for such a love as her parents knew.

“I know it’s almost like asking for a miracle, God,” she whispered. “But I don’t think I could live and be happy with just a common love. I need what Daddy and Mama have. Do you think you might be able to find a man that fits me as well as Daddy fits Mama? Oh, please try. Please.”

With the soft tinkle of the delicate wind chimes hanging from the roof of the back porch lulling her to respite, Autumn Lake drifted to sleep with a prayer on her lips and an impossible dream in her heart.

“I love you, Ransom,” Vaden sighed as her husband trailed moist kisses along her shoulder.

“I love you more, baby,” Ransom mumbled as his mouth found hers at last.

Vaden’s heart leapt in her bosom at the feel and taste of Ransom’s kiss. It never grew dull to her—never seemed common or less effective. His demanding kiss sent her senses reeling—sent her heart hammering and her body burning with desire—the same way it had since the very first time he’d ever kissed her. Oh, how she loved him! How desperately and perfectly she loved him!

As his mouth continued to rain irresistible passion and desire over her, she felt him unfastening the back of her blouse. But instead of insisting he stop for the sake that their daughter might still be awake, Vaden simply pressed her body against the strength of his, returning his provocative kiss with full as much wonting as Ransom revealed in seducing her.

Breaking the seal of their mouths, Ransom places his lips to Vaden’s ear and mumbled, “I’m gonna have tonight, woman.” Vaden giggled as he continued, “I’m gonna carry you to my bed, strip you down, and—”

“Ransom Lake!” Vaden scolded in a whisper as she pressed her hand to his lips.

He smiled at her, pushed her hand away, and gazed into her eyes. Vaden felt tears welling in her own eyes, for she could see how much he still loved her after so many years. She could see he loved her even more deeply than he had at first. And her love was ever as powerful as his.

“I don’t know what you put in them apple rolls, pumpkin,” Ransom said, grinning at her. “But they sure did put me in mind of draggin’ you out to the orchard and havin’ my way with you.”