Copper Lake Secrets. Marilyn Pappano

thought so. Martine did, too. The only one with doubts was Reece herself. Hand trembling, she reached inside her shirt to lift a thin silver chain that Martine had given her. Dangling from it was a copper penny. Appropriate, she thought unsteadily, since she was outside Copper Lake and the taste of both blood and fear, according to people who knew, was coppery.

      Evie’s calm, confident voice sounded in her head. If you ever want answers …

      She did. Desperately.

       If you need me, I’ll come.

      And Martine: I’ll have everything you need.

      “Except courage.” Reece’s voice was shaky. “But Grandfather’s dead. I’m not thirteen. I can handle this.”

      She repeated the words in her head as she slowly got the car moving again. Tall pines grew dense on either side of the road, testament to the lucrative logging business that had taken the original Howard’s fortune and increased it a hundredfold. As far as she knew, Grandfather had never worked in logging or any other business. He’d managed his investments from his study on the first floor and done whatever caught his fancy. She vaguely remembered fishing poles and rifles and shovels, and the glare every time he’d looked at her …

      Before she realized it, she’d reached the gate. It stood open in welcome. She drove through, and the hairs on her nape stood on end. Was it quieter inside the gate than out? Did the sun shine a little less brightly, chase away fewer shadows? If she rolled the windows down, would the air be a little thicker?

      “Oh, for God’s sake. Valerie’s right. I am being melodramatic. It’s a house.” As it came into sight, she amended that. “A big, creepy, spooky house, but still just a house. I haven’t entered the first circle of hell.”

      At least, she prayed she hadn’t.

      Live oaks lined the drive, huge branches arching overhead to shade it. The house and its buildings—a guest cottage, the old farm manager’s office and a few storage sheds—sat at the rear edge of an expanse of manicured lawn. The brick of the pillars that marched across the front of the house had mellowed to a dusky rose, but there was no fading to the paint on the boards. The colors were crisp white and dark green, but still looked unwelcoming.

      A fairly new pickup was parked near the cottage—silver, spotless, too high for a woman of Grandmother’s stature to climb into without help. Its tag was from Kentucky, and she wondered as she pulled in beside it if some stranger-to-her relative was visiting. The recent generations of Howards hadn’t been eager to stick around Copper Lake. Her father had left at twenty, his brother and most of their cousins soon after.

      When she got out of the car, Reece was relieved to note that the sun was just as warm here as it’d been outside the gate and the air was no heavier than anywhere else in the humid South. It smelled fresh like pine and muddy like the Gullah River that ran a hundred feet on the other side of the gate.

      She was closing the door when she felt eyes on her. Grandmother? Her housekeeper? The driver of the truck? Or the ghosts her father insisted inhabited Fair Winds?

      Ghosts that might have been joined a few months ago by Grandfather’s malevolent spirit.

      Evie’s voice again: Spirits generally won’t harm you.

      Oh, man, she hoped that was true. But if Arthur Howard’s ghost lived in that house, she’d be sleeping with one eye open.

      The gazes, it turned out, were more corporeal. Seated at a table on the patio fifty feet away, just to the left of the silent fountain, sat a frail, white-haired woman and a much younger, much darker, much … more … man, both of them watching her.

      Reece stared. Grandmother had gotten old, was her first thought, which she immediately scoffed at. Willadene Howard had been frail-looking and white-haired for as long as she could remember, but the frailty part was deceiving. She’d always been strong, stern, unyielding, and in spite of her age—seventy-seven? no, seventy-eight—she certainly still was. She didn’t even show any surprise at Reece’s appearance out of the fifteen-year-old blue as she rose to her feet. When Reece got close enough that Grandmother didn’t have to raise her voice—Howard women never raised their voices—she announced, “You’re late.”

      Maybe she didn’t recognize her, Reece thought. Maybe she was expecting someone else. She thought of the responses she could make: Hello, Grandmother. It’s me, Reece, the granddaughter you let Grandfather terrorize. Or Nice to see you, Grandmother. You ‘re looking well. Or Sorry I missed your birthday party, Grandmother, but I thought of you that day.

      What came out was much simpler. “For what?”

      “Your grandfather’s funeral was four and a half months ago.”

      There was nothing Reece could say that wouldn’t sound callous, so she said nothing. She walked closer to the table, knowing Grandmother wouldn’t expect a hug, and sat on the marble rim of the fountain.

      Grandmother turned her attention back to the man, who hadn’t shown any reaction so far. “This is my granddaughter, Clarice Howard, who pretends that she sprang full-grown into this world without the bother of parents or family.” With a dismissive sniff, she went on.

      “Mr. Jones and I are discussing a restoration project we intend to undertake.”

      Reece’s face warmed at the criticism, but she brushed it off as the man leaned forward, his hand extended. “Mr. Jones,” she greeted him.

      “Just Jones.” His voice was deep, his accent Southern with a hint of something else. Black hair a bit too long for her taste framed olive skin and the darkest eyes she’d ever looked into. Mysterious was the first descriptor that leaped into her head, followed quickly by more: handsome. Sexy. Maybe dangerous.

      She shook his hand, noting callused skin, long fingers, heat, a kind of lazy strength.

      He released her hand and sat back again. She resisted the urge to tuck both hands under her arms and laid them flat on the marble instead. Rather than deal with Grandmother head-on, she directed a question to the general area between them. “The house appears to be in good shape. What are you restoring?” Left to her, she would be tearing the place down, not fixing it up.

      “You can’t judge a house by its facade. Everything gets creaky after fifteen years.” Grandmother’s tone remained snippy when she went on. “Mr. Jones is an expert in garden restoration. He’s going to bring back Fair Winds’ gardens to their former glory. Not that you ever bothered to learn family history, Clarice, but a few generations ago, the gardens here were considered the best in all of the South and the rest of the country, as well. They were designed by one of the greatest landscape architects of the time. They covered fourteen acres and took ten years to complete.”

      She waited, obviously, for a response from Reece. The only one she gave was inconsequential. “I go by Reece now.”

      Grandmother’s lips pursed and her blue gaze sharpened. Across the table from her, Jones was making a point of gazing off into the distance, looking at neither of them.

      “Gardens. Really.” Too little too late, judging by Grandmother’s expression. The only flowers Reece had ever seen at Fair Winds were the wild jasmine that grew in the woods. Her mother had told her their name and urged her to breathe deeply of their fragrance. Not long after, Valerie had left, the emptiness in Reece’s memory had begun and the smell of jasmine always left her melancholy.

      A shiver passed over her, like a cloud over the sun, but she ignored it, focusing on the stranger again. Did just Jones look like a landscape architect, or whatever his title would be? She’d never met a landscape architect, but she doubted it. He seemed more the outdoors type, the one who’d do the actual work to bring the architect’s plans to life. His skin was bronzed, his T-shirt stretched across a broad chest, and his arms were hard-muscled. He was a man far better acquainted with hard work than desk-sitting.

      “Sit,” Grandmother commanded, pointing