Page 65 of A Heart So Haunted
She scoffed. “Well,thatdoesn’t surprise me.”
I shot her a look, only slightly offended. “I thought you said it wasn’t haunted?”
Meredith’s cheeks tightened. “Haunted? Oh, heavens no. I never said it was haunted. You poor thing—is Emma not keeping you company enough?” I must have given her a look that asked,How do you know that?When she added, “Oh, Ivan told me she was staying with you. Said you might be giving him the listing when the time comes to sell.”
Because of course he had.
“But no, I’m not saying Cadence is haunting you, dear, or that Harthwait is haunted by anyone.” She shuffled over and patted my shoulder. Gave it a squeeze. “I’m saying, it’s normal to hear things after someone passes. I know Cadence talked nonstop about hearing that dog after she had to put him down. Heard his nails on the hardwood all the time. Heck, I had the same thing happen when Annie died. You know that droopy rescue I had when you were little?”
I nodded. A smile threatened my lips. “The basset hound?”
“God bless that thing. Lived to be sixteen, can you believe it? I heard her ears swishing all over the floors, the couch.” Meredith’s mouth turned firm. “What I mean to say is, there isn’t anyone haunting that place, Landry. It’s just grief. And that’s normal.”
Just grief.Those two words clanged down from my nape, all the way to my knees.
My eye twitched. Well, I might not have had a dead chihuahua scratching at my bathroom door, wanting to shred the shower curtain, but I had asomethingthat slithered from the linen closet that wasn’t really a linen closet.
But if I said that, I’d be the next candidate for an inpatient program.
“Who did Aunt Cadence use for researching the place? Was it the town records, or—”
“Please don’t use those people. Go to the Hemlock if you do.” She gave me a hard head shake for emphasis, then started back toward the store entrance. “Those clerks are absolute”—a wide-eyed, raised-brow glare that told me the workers were anything but—“peaches. Don’t even waste your breath.”
Well, it wasn’t much, but it was something.
There wasn’t much reason not to. So before four o’clock, I drove out of town.
Hemlock was the same to Stetson as twins were to each other—the same word, just a slightly different font. The thought occurred to me that I could have done a search through the library, but starting with something solid—like a name on a deed—felt more enticing.
Much like Stetson, Hemlock had one stoplight that blinked every thirty minutes and three antique shops per street corner. Where Stetson nestled against a railroad track, Hemlock teetered on the edge of the Wasleck River, which eventually bottomed out into the marshes before reaching the Atlantic. Roads were crowded with heavy live oaks blanketed with Spanish moss and the promise of acorns. In the near distance, sea oats danced in the river breeze. Side to side, like a woman’s skirt—almost tempting enough to wade through. If you did, you’d get a few feet out. Before you’d know it, you’d be drowning.
I parked across the street where the shops had already gone dark for the day. My reflection followed through the windows as I crossed, then beelined for the clerk’s office. Like everything else, closing time was in six minutes.
Hopefully it took six minutes to get a deed.
There was a burst of cold along with the scent of dingy brown carpet when I opened the courthouse double doors. The only sound was the air conditioning humming overhead.
I headed to a sliding-glass window halfway down the hall. A seating area waited, empty, with one magazine resting on a tapioca-colored coffee table. Likely a year-old copy ofPeople.
A woman glared at me as I approached. Slender glasses perched on the end of her nose; the chain around her neck swayed as if I’d caught her mid-task.
“Hello,” I breathed. As if she couldn’t see me already.
She didn’t speak. She also didn’t open the glass window. Only, pointedly, moved a stapled stack of papers from one side of her desk to the other.
I waited. Pushed a smile.
Seeing I wasn’t going to leave, she sighed and slid the window open. “Can I help you?” The mole under her eye moved with each chew of her gum.
“I need a deed record,” I said. “For my property.”
Her nostrils flared. Penciled in eyebrows, arched like two rainbows, inched to her permed hairline. She turned to her computer and started typing, fingertips first. Her wrists didn’t rest on the desk. “County?”
“Colleton.”
A grunt. A fat butterfly pin glinted against her purple turtleneck.
Minutes, maybe eternities, passed.
