“Sorry.” Erielle turned back to her task at hand. “I thought you were younger.”
“I am. Just because I remember them, doesn’t mean I was friends with them. They weren’t much friends with anyone in town, anyway.”
“I can see that,” Erielle said. Everything she’d heard about them, as well as her own experience, told her the truth of that.
“So different from your grandparents, who wanted to be friends with everyone.”
“Mom says she and her sister resented being moved to the middle of nowhere.”
“Yet she was happy enough to send you here in the summers.”
Erielle sighed. “She was.”
“That going to take a long time, isn’t it?” Hattie motioned with her spoon to the stock pot.
“A few hours. Low and slow, that’s the best way.”
Hattie rolled her eyes. “I guess that means I’m stuck with you.”
“Yeah, sorry. Too hot to work in the house, and I don’t have to be at work until ten. I’m not great with sitting around. I’m either going to bother you or Allison, but at least here I get to do something.” And the longer she stayed here, the less time she had to worry about Samson coming to spend the night.
“Fine. Once you get that going, I’ll put you to work.”
“Here’s the main question I have,” Sam said, sitting at the bar across from Erielle that night, his forearms resting on the scarred wood. The place was pretty empty tonight, so he had the majority of her attention to himself. “Why that painting? What’s special about it?”
“I don’t know. It’s always given me the creeps, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe it’s not the picture but the location. We could test that theory out, put a different picture there, see if the same thing happens.”
He pressed his lips together, nodding. “That’s a pretty good theory. We can try it.” He wished he had the picture in front of him right now. At first, he’d wondered if maybe Erielle had scratched the images into the frame herself, but she wasn’t that kind of person, not seeking attention for something like that. For her skills, yes. For her circumstances, no.
At least, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t rule out the possibility. He was surprised to find he believed in haunting a little more than he thought he had.
“Did you find any books that match those symbols?”
She shook her head. “I worked at Hattie’s this afternoon, then went home and got the living room ready for company, including stuffing holes in the walls so you don’t have any unexpected visitors overnight. The swamp kind, not the ethereal kind. Cal and I chased a rat out the other day, but I didn’t see any evidence of any other kind of critter, thankfully. I had to relocate a couple of spiders, that’s it.”
“You…relocated them?” Surprise had his brow arching.
“I just put them outside on the porch. They’ll be happier there, anyway.”
He shook his head, unable to picture it. “You…caught them and carried them out to the porch?”
Her lips curved, enjoying his bemusement. “Well, one I had to catch—in a jar. I didn’t carry it out in my bare hands. The other I just opened the window and shooed out.”
“Instead of killing them.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, they have a job to do, right? They’re good for the environment and everything.”
“You’re not scared of them?”
She met his gaze. “Are you?”
“I live in the swamp. But no, they are not my favorite.”
She shrugged. “I’d just rather not have them in the house. But outside, I think they’re kind of fascinating, actually.”
“Hm.” Something in his chest tightened. He didn’t know many women who would go to the trouble of saving a spider. And the way she leaned across the bar when she said it, so earnest, made him feel like he was learning her inch by inch, in ways that unsettled him more than any haunting. “So. Tell me what you’ve been experiencing in the house.”
She looked past him to the three other customers in the bar. “Did my grandfather ever talk to you about seeing anything?”
