There and Now. Linda Miller Lael

a sigh, she thrust herself away from the door and went back to her cleaning. The road to emotional maturity had been a painful, rocky one for her, but she’d learned who she was and what she wanted. To her way of thinking, that put her way out in front of the crowd.

      Carefully, she removed Dresden figurines and Haviland plates from the big china closet in the dining room. As she worked, Elisabeth cataloged the qualities she would look for in a second husband. She wanted a gentle man, but he had to be strong, too. Tall, maybe, with dark hair and broad shoulders—

      Elisabeth realized she was describing Jonathan Fortner and put down the stack of dessert plates she’d been about to carry to the kitchen for washing. Her hands were trembling.

      He’s not real, she reminded herself firmly. But another part of her mind argued that he was. She had his suitcoat to prove it.

      Didn’t she?

      What with all the things that had been happening to her since her return to Pine River, Elisabeth was beginning to wonder if she really knew what was real and what wasn’t. She hurried up the back stairs and along the hallway to her bedroom, ignoring the sealed doorway in the outside wall, and marched straight to the armoire.

      After opening one heavy door, she reached inside and pulled out the coat, pressing it to her face with both hands. It still smelled of Jonathan, and the mingled scents filled Elisabeth with a bittersweet yearning to be near him.

      Which was downright silly, she decided, since the man obviously lived in some other time—or some other universe. She would probably never see him again.

      Sadly, she put the jacket back on its hanger and returned it to the wardrobe.

      By Friday morning, Elisabeth had almost convinced herself that she had dreamed up Dr. Fortner and his daughter. Probably, she reasoned, she’d felt some deep, subconscious sympathy for them, learning that they’d both died right there in Aunt Verity’s house. Her ideal man had no doubt been woven from the dreams, hopes and desperate needs secreted deep inside her, where a man as shallow as Ian could never venture.

      As for the suitcoat, well, that had probably belonged to Verity’s long-dead husband. No doubt, she had walked in her sleep that night and found the jacket in one of the trunks in the attic. But if that was true, why was the garment clean and unfrayed? Why didn’t it smell of mothballs or mildew?

      Elisabeth shook off the disturbing questions as she parked her car in front of Carlton Jewelry, but another quandary immediately took its place. Why was she almost desperately anxious to have Aunt Verity’s necklace back in her possession again? Granted, it was very old and probably valuable, but she had never been much for bangles and beads, and money hardly mattered to her at all.

      She was inordinately relieved when the pendant was poured from its brown envelope into the palm of her hand, fully restored to its former glory. She closed her fingers around it and shut her eyes for a second, and immediately, Jonathan’s face filled her mind.

      “Ms. McCartney?” the clerk asked, sounding concerned.

      Elisabeth remembered herself, opened her eyes and got out her wallet to pay the bill.

      When she arrived home an hour later with the makings for spaghetti, garlic bread and green salad, the moving company was there with her belongings. The two men carried in her books, tape collection, stereo, microwave oven, TV sets and VCR and boxes of seasonal clothes and shoes.

      Elisabeth paid the movers extra to connect her VCR and set up the stereo, and made them tuna sandwiches and vegetable soup for lunch. When they were gone, she put on a Mozart tape and let the music swirl around her while she did up the lunch dishes and put away some of her things.

      Knowing it would probably take hours or even days to find places for everything, Elisabeth stored her seasonal clothes in the small parlor and set about making her special spaghetti sauce.

      Seeing her practical friend Janet again would surely put to rest these crazy fancies she was having, once and for all.

      As promised, Janet arrived just when the sauce was ready to be poured over the pasta and served. She had straight reddish-brown hair that just brushed her shoulders and large hazel eyes, and she was dressed in a fashionable gray-and-white, pin-striped suit.

      Elisabeth met her friend on the porch with a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”

      Janet’s expression was troubled as she studied Elisabeth. “You’re pale, and I swear you’ve lost weight,” she fretted.

      Elisabeth grinned. “I’m fine,” she said pointedly, bending to grasp the handle of the small suitcase Janet had set down moments before. “I hope you’re hungry, because the sauce is at its peak.”

      After putting Janet’s things in an upstairs bedroom, the two women returned to the kitchen. There they consumed spaghetti and salad at the small table in the breakfast nook, while an April sunset settled over the landscape.

      From the first, Elisabeth wanted to confide in her friend, to show her the suitcoat and tell her all about her strange experience a few nights before, but somehow, she couldn’t find the courage. They talked about Janet’s new boyfriend and Rue’s possible whereabouts instead.

      After the dishes were done, Janet brought a video tape from her room and popped it into the VCR, while Elisabeth built a fire on the parlor hearth, using seasoned apple wood she’d found in the shed out back. An avid collector of black-and-white classics, Janet didn’t rent movies, she bought them.

      “What’s tonight’s feature?” Elisabeth asked, curling up at one end of the settee, while Janet sat opposite her, a bowl of the salty chips they both loved between them.

      Janet gave a little shudder and smiled. “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” she replied. “Fitting, huh? I mean, since this house is probably haunted.”

      Elisabeth practically choked on the chip she’d just swallowed. “Haunted? Janet, that is really silly.” The FBI warning was flickering on the television screen, silently ominous.

      Her friend shrugged. “Maybe so, but a funny feeling came over me when I walked in here. It happened before, too, when I came to your wedding.”

      “That was a sense of impending doom, not anything supernatural,” Elisabeth said.

      Janet laughed. “You’re probably right.”

      As they watched the absorbing movie, Elisabeth fiddled with the necklace and wondered if she wouldn’t just turn around one day, like Mrs. Muir with her ghostly captain, and see Jonathan Fortner standing behind her.

      The idea gave her a delicious, shivery sensation, totally unrelated to fear.

      After the show was over and the chips were gone, Elisabeth and Janet had herbal tea in the kitchen and gossiped. When Elisabeth mentioned Ian’s visit and his plans to remarry, Janet’s happy grin faded.

      “The sleaseball. How do you feel about this, Beth? Are you sad?”

      Elisabeth reached across the table to touch her friend’s hand. “If I am, it’s only because the marriage I thought I was going to have never materialized. Like so many women, I created a fantasy world out of my own needs and desires, and when it collapsed, I was hurt. But I’m okay now, Janet, and I want you to stop worrying about me.”

      Janet looked at Elisabeth for a long moment and then nodded. “All right, I’ll try. But I’d feel better if you’d come back to Seattle.”

      Elisabeth pushed back her chair and carried her empty cup and Janet’s to the sink. “I played a part for so many years,” she said with a sigh. “Now I need solitude to sort things out.” She turned to face her friend. “Do you understand?”

      “Yes,” Janet answered, albeit reluctantly, getting out of her chair.

      Elisabeth turned off the downstairs lights and started up the rear stairway, which was illuminated by the glow of the moon flooding in from a fanlight on the second floor. The urge to tell Janet about Jonathan was nearly overwhelming, but