He stood and glanced over the top of her car. When he again looked down at her, he said, “That seems consistent with your tire tracks. Wait here.”
Vivien waited before he was away, before she said, “Sam, you can’t keep showing up. We sent you on in peace. You should be in the light. Go find the light.”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard the faint sound of a guitar answering her. The music was cut off as a semi-truck rumbled past.
Vivien rubbed the bridge of her nose. Checking on the restaurant properties were going to have to wait. She needed to get home and deal with her dead first husband.
“Here you go, ma’am.” The patrolman handed the license through the window. “I will let you off with a warning but try to be more careful. These trucks can’t make quick stops. You’re lucky you weren’t badly injured or worse.”
“I will, thank you, sir.” She started to smile, but he turned away before she could say more.
“Have a good day, ma’am.” His words flowed behind him like an afterthought.
Chapter Thirteen
Sam kept trying to get her to the beach.
He’d attempted to lure her to the water the first night. Next, he’d waved at her to follow him. He might have tried to get her there again. Now, he just flat out asked.
What if Sam hadn’t been trying to kill her? What if her first instincts about him were right? What was at the beach that he wanted her to see so badly?
The idea wouldn’t leave her, so she determined that there must be a reason she kept coming back to it, like an itch that needed to be scratched. Heather always said that ghosts were often confused and had trouble communicating. Sometimes their messages were hard to hear and decipher. Sam had a substantial amount of morphine in his system when he died. What if that lingered in death? What if that was why Vivien had felt pill drunk, as Lorna has so eloquently put it?
Vivien drove slowly with both hands on the wheel. She kept the music off, refused to answer her phone, and continuously glanced over her shoulder to see if Sam would come back. Once, she even pulled over to let a caravan of semi-trucks pass. Intentional or not, the series of near-death experiences had left her jittery.
When she finally turned off the engine in the driveway of her home, she took a deep breath of relief. She sat for a moment, staring out the windshield toward the path that would take her to the beach. She wasn’t sure what she’d find, if anything, out there.
Fear whispered that she shouldn’t go. She needed to be smart and safe.
Psychic intuition told her Sam would never try to hurt her.
Her growing magical powers warned that she didn’t have enough information on what was happening.
Logic said, if she was going to go to the beach, she needed to take Lorna and Heather with her. They could watch in case she acted strangely.
She couldn’t ask Troy. How in the world did she explain to her new man-friend that she was being haunted by her dead husband from twenty years ago? Oh, and furthermore that she was the one who’d summoned him, so it was her fault that Sam was hanging around? Or that her family legend dictated she had only one soul mate and sorry, it could never be Troy because she’d already had Sam?
“Sam? Are you here?” She glanced at the empty back seat. He didn’t answer.
Vivien looked at Troy’s house. She wanted to see him but knew he was probably filming his teaching segments. Images of him played in her mind—holding the coffee cup out to her in the morning, the questioning smile bathed in the sunlight coming through the car window as they drove to the taco truck, the worry on his face after he’d pulled her from the water, his shadowed features while he’d slept.
Troy had lived. He had experiences and wisdom that shone in his eyes and were etched in his handsome face. She couldn’t say where the relationship was heading, but she wanted to find out.
“There is only us.” Sam’s voice whispered through her thoughts, and she wasn’t sure whether it was real or just the same memory that had haunted her since his last breath. Was it meant to make her feel guilty about the feelings she had for Troy?
“Only our hearts,” she answered the thought.
“I’ll be watching you. Save your heart for me. It’s mine.”
“Okay, Sam, okay. You win. I’ll go to the beach.” She opened the car door. “But I’m not going alone.”
Vivien grabbed her purse and her cell phone. Her fingers moved automatically to call Heather. Her friend answered before she made it to the front door.
“Hey, I was just thinking about calling you,” Heather said. “I’m not sure why. I just felt… I don’t know. Something. What’s up?”
“I need you to come to the beach with me. Sam’s back. I think he wants to show me something.” Vivien stuck her key in the lock, but the door opened before she could touch the knob.
“You’re home,” Lorna said before she saw Vivien carried a phone. She covered her mouth as if to stop herself from interrupting further.
“It’s Heather.” Vivien turned on the speakerphone. “Heather, Lorna’s here too. We’re at the house. Can you come?”
“Good, stay with Lorna. Let me tell these guys I’m leaving and I’ll be there in fifteen.” Heather hung up.
“What’s happening?” Lorna asked. She stepped aside as Vivien came inside the house.
“Sam showed up in my back seat when I was driving. He startled me and I nearly ran into oncoming traffic.” Vivien tossed her purse and cell phone on the couch cushion. “I think we had it wrong. He’s not trying to hurt me. I think in his confused spirit way, he is trying to get me to go to the beach. Maybe that’s where he wants to say goodbye.”
The smell of pastries filled the home, catching her attention.
“Did you bake?” Vivien automatically moved toward the kitchen.
“I had William run me by the grocery store and I stocked up on a few things for us.” Lorna followed her. “I made an apple pie. It just came out of the oven.”
“So you did.” Vivien went to the fresh pie on her stove and leaned over to smell. The warmth drifted up to her face. Lorna had cut little decorations in the crust. “This looks as good as any bakery I’ve been to, actually better.”
Vivien went to the fridge and peeked inside. Lorna had completely stocked it. “You weren’t kidding.”
“I’m not sure it’s safe for you to go to the beach,” Lorna picked up the conversation as if Vivien hadn’t been sidetracked by the smell of food. “We should try summoning Sam here, or at the theater.”
“I think it needs to be at the beach.” Vivien shut the fridge door. “I can’t explain how I know, but I just feel it. He keeps trying to get me to follow him there. If you don’t want to come, I’ll understand. I don’t want you to put yourself in danger.”
“There is no way I’m letting you go without me,” Lorna denied. She went to the cupboard and pulled out three plates and set them on the counter close to the cooling pie. “The three of us are stronger together. I owe you and Heather so much.”
Vivien pulled three forks, a knife, and a pie server out of a drawer. She handed them to Lorna.