Twice Her Husband

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Ginny navigated the crutches past a bump in the path. “Maggie Stuart’s drowning.” In the Misty River not twenty feet from the resort cabins. Her body had never been found.

“For days police dragged the river.” Eva fixed Joselyn’s little cap so it shaded the child’s face. “Then three weeks later the hauntings began. Someone saw Maggie kneeling on the riverbank, sobbing. Crazy if you ask me.”

Ginny agreed. As the tale went, spectral sightings sprang up every other month for almost two years, before the novelty wore thin and the story turned legend.

And while the Franklin’s resort dream floundered in a haze of tragedy and ghostly gossip, Boone’s father committed suicide. A year later, Boone moved to Boston to study medicine. He never returned to Misty River.

As a child Ginny heard the stories from her own family—and later, in the privacy of their marriage, from Boone.

While she limped toward the cottage to inspect it as a possible place for her own dream, a sadness hung in the air. Forty-five years ago, Boone had loved Maggie Stuart’s twin sister, Maxine.

Luke’s mother.

The door of the cottage was locked, the windows boarded.

“It needs a ton of work,” Ginny told Eva. “I’m not sure if it’s even hygienically safe. Probably got mice and bugs.”

“Maybe.” Carrying Joselyn, Eva walked along the outside of the house. “Foundation is cement. Must have a basement.”

“That’s what—” Boone said in his will. “I figured.”

Eva returned to the stoop where Ginny stood. “No structural damage to the outside. Been inside yet?”

“Nope.” Ginny set aside her left crutch and removed the flashlight from her fanny pack. “First time for everything.” She took the key from her pocket and turned the lock. The door stuck. Shoving a shoulder to the wood, she pried the door open on a chord of squeaks. A rustling noise sounded in the shadows. Flicking on the flashlight, she stepped across the threshold.

Joselyn pulled her thumb from her mouth. “Ma?”

“Mom’s right here, hon. Stay with Eva, okay?”

Ginny shone the light around what appeared to be a surprisingly spacious living room for such a small house. Faded posy wallpaper dragged in long curly strips from the ceiling’s crown molding. A corner harbored a kitchenette, all inclusive with sink, L-shaped counter and cupboards.

Had it not been boarded, a tall, broad window would have looked south, across the meadow to the river. Behind her, near the door, a staircase descended into the basement. Dust and dirt overlaid all surfaces. Cobwebs stitched corners and angles.

Her crutches thumped the wood as she hobbled across the room to the first of two doors. Smaller than the main area, but still expansive, the second room was a bedroom; the third a bathroom—toilet, sink, claw-foot tub. And a tiger-eyed tabby cat hissing from a nest of moth-eaten cloths.

“Now, where did you come from?”

The cat hissed again, before streaking past Ginny and out the front door. Bargain let out an awrrr, awrrr! and took off on a gangly gallop across the grassy clearing. The cat scurried up a thick-limbed poplar; the befuddled pup plunked her fanny in the dirt, looked back at the trio then set to howling.

“Kee,” Joselyn cried from Eva’s arms. “Ma, kee! Bug! Kee!”