Suddenly Psychic (Glimmer Lake #1)(62)

For a moment Robin put herself in her grandmother’s shoes and thought about how devastating it must have been. None of these plans had come to pass. Billy and Helen hadn’t bought a little farm near a river. They hadn’t had children together. Her grandmother had never taught drawing or art. She’d lived her life in the rigid social construction demanded by Gordon Russell, who had found her crying and alone, abandoned and pregnant with Billy Grimmer’s child.

What happened, Billy?

The last letter in the box was nearly torn from being open and folded so often. It was smudged with what Robin guessed were tears.

“Best girl, I know you’ll meet me at our place on Friday, but this time I want you to be ready. I’m done with this valley, this dam, and this town. We need to leave. Too many of the men here are the wrong sort. Be careful, Helen. Stay home or only go out with your brother this week. Can you do that for me? Some of them have been hanging around town. I don’t want to scare my best girl, but be careful. For all of us. Come this Friday, we’ll be together. I have a plan.”





It was signed BG and dated September 1944, the same month the dam was finished and the town of Grimmer was officially abandoned.

“I was going with them. I’m sure of it. But there was some place I needed to be first. And then…”

Billy had needed to meet Helen. He’d needed to meet the woman pregnant with his child so they could leave town, meet his family, and buy their little farm on a river. But he’d never shown up because he’d been kept from her. Chained in an abandoned mine and lost at the bottom of Glimmer Lake.

But by whom? And why? Who were the “wrong sort” Billy had written about? Had one of them been his murderer? And why had it been seventy-five years until the truth of Billy’s death had emerged?





Robin strode into the night, holding her sketchbook and the cigar box of letters in her arms.

“Billy!” She walked into the trees and sat on a bench near the path, frantically sketching the man who had abandoned her grandmother. “Billy Grimmer, you better show your face,” she muttered.

She pictured him in her mind, the ghostly image she’d seen along with the pictures in the library, the sketch her grandmother had made. Every portrait and picture had captured a piece of Billy Grimmer, but she needed to capture the whole.

She opened up her mind and her heart. She sank her feet into the earth and took a deep breath. She felt like the mountain air was expanding her from the inside out. The night filled her, and she could see Billy’s image clear as crystal in her mind. Her pencil flew over the page, lines and curves taking shape as she drew Billy’s spirit to her.

As the portrait came to life beneath her pencil, she felt him. At first it was just the sense of him. The flicker of his eyes and the line of his jaw. Then she felt him, his confusion and longing. Robin closed her eyes and concentrated. When she looked up again, she caught the outline of his ghost standing at the edge of the forest. Billy was there, staring at the house and looking lost.

“I just want her to know I tried,” he said softly. “I tried so hard.”

Robin put down the sketchbook and held up the letters. “I found your letters. I know you were trying to leave with her. What stopped you? Who killed you, Billy?”

He looked pained. “I didn’t have enemies. Not a single one.”

“You talked about the wrong sort in your letters. ‘Some of the wrong sort have been hanging around town.’ You said that. Who were you talking about?”

Billy shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What were they doing?” Robin asked. “Was it illegal? Were they hurting someone? Did you find out something dangerous? What made them the wrong sort?”

“I don’t know, dammit!” Billy’s eyes burned her. She could feel his anger, and his outline rippled.

“She is in there.” Robin pointed at the house. “She’s almost gone. She’s ready to go, but she’s holding on to something. There’s something that won’t give her peace. What is it? Is it you?”

“I just want to go to her.” His outline rippled and wavered. “All I ever wanted was for her to know I tried, but I can’t get to her. I can’t be near her when she’s in there. I know she’s in danger, but he won’t let me.”

Robin’s heart beat fast. “Who won’t let you?”

“I can only get near her when she’s outside. When she’s outside, I can watch over her. But in the house…” His voice started to fade.

“Who is it, Billy?” Robin felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. She knew. It could only be one person. “Billy, who keeps you from the house?”

He was gone. The place where he’d been held no more evidence of Billy Grimmer’s ghost than a cool shaft of air. Robin closed her eyes and took deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out.

“Robin?”

She opened her eyes, and Mark was standing on the edge of the grass, staring at her with wide eyes.

“Robin, who the hell are you talking to?”





Chapter 23





Mark was sipping an herbal tea, and Robin was drinking a large glass of water with two extra-strength pain relievers for her raging headache. They’d taken the tea from the kitchen and into the first-floor library, keeping their distance from the nurses who were tending to Helen in the north wing of the house.