Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)

Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)
Lisa Kleypas



One

The ghost had tried many times to leave the house, but it was impossible. Whenever he approached the front threshold or leaned through a window, he disappeared, the sum of him dispersing like mist in the air. He worried that one day he might not be able to take shape again. He wondered if being trapped here was a punishment for the past he couldn’t remember … and if so, how long would it last?

The Victorian house stood at the end of Rainshadow Road, overlooking the circular shoreline of False Bay like a wallflower waiting alone at a dance. Its painted clapboard siding had been corroded from sea air, its interior ruined by a succession of careless tenants. Original hardwood floors had been covered with shag carpeting, rooms divided by thin chipboard walls, wood trim coated with a dozen layers of cheap paint.

From the windows, the ghost had watched shorebirds: sandpipers, yellowlegs, plovers, whimbrels, plucking at the abundant food in tidepools on straw-colored mornings. At night he stared at stars and comets and the cloud-hazed moon, and sometimes he saw northern lights dance across the horizon.

The ghost wasn’t certain how long he had been at the house. Without a heartbeat to measure the passing seconds, time was timeless. He had found himself there one day with no name, no physical appearance, and no certainty of who he was. He didn’t know how he’d died, or where, or why. But a few memories danced at the edge of his awareness. He felt sure that he had lived on San Juan Island for part of his life. He thought he might have been a boatman or a fisherman. When he looked out at False Bay, he remembered things about the water beyond it … the channels between the San Juan Islands, the narrow straits around Vancouver. He knew the splintered shape of Puget Sound, the way its dragon-teeth inlets cut across Olympia.

The ghost also knew many songs, all the verses and lyrics, even the preludes. When the silence was too much to stand, he sang to himself as he moved through the empty rooms.

He craved interaction with any kind of creature. He went unnoticed even by the insects that scuttled across the floor. He hungered to know anything about anyone, to remember people he had once known. But those memories had been locked away until the mysterious day when his fate would finally be revealed.

One morning, visitors came to the house.

Electrified, the ghost watched a car approach, its wheels ironing flat channels in the heavy growth of weeds along the unpaved drive. The car stopped and two people emerged, a young man with dark hair, and an older woman dressed in jeans and flat shoes and a pink jacket.

“… couldn’t believe it was left to me,” she was saying. “My cousin bought it back in the seventies with the idea of fixing it up and selling it, but he never got around to it. The value of this property is in the land—you’d have to tear the house down, no question.”

“Have you gotten an estimate?” the man asked.

“On the lot?”

“No, on restoring the house.”

“Heavens, no. There’s structural damage—everything would have to be redone.”

He stared at the house with open fascination. “I’d like to have a look inside.”

A frown pulled the woman’s forehead into crinkles, like a lettuce leaf. “Oh, Sam, I’m sure it’s not safe.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you getting hurt. You could fall right through the floor, or a beam could drop on you. And there’s no telling what kind of vermin—”

“Nothing’s going to happen.” His tone was coaxing. “Give me five minutes. I just want a quick look.”

“I really shouldn’t let you do this.”

Sam flashed her a grin of renegade charm. “But you will. Because you just can’t resist me.”

She tried to look stern, but a reluctant smile emerged.

I used to be like that, the ghost thought with surprise. Elusive memories flickered, of past flirtations and long-ago evenings spent on front porches. He had known how to charm women young and old, how to make them laugh. He had kissed girls with sweet tea on their breaths, their necks and shoulders dusted with scented powder.

The big-framed young man bounded to the front porch and shouldered the door open when it stuck. As he stepped into the entrance hall, he turned wary, as if he expected something to jump out at him. Each footstep broke through a scurf of dust, raising ashy plumes from the floor and making him sneeze.

Such a human sound. The ghost had forgotten about sneezing.

Sam’s gaze moved across the dilapidated walls. His eyes were blue even in the shadows, whisks of laugh lines at the outer corners. He wasn’t handsome, but he was good-looking, his features strong and blunt-edged. He’d been out in the sun a lot, the tan going several layers deep. Looking at him, the ghost could almost remember the feel of sunlight, the hot slight weight of it on his skin.

The woman had crept to the front doorway, her hair surrounding her head in a silver nimbus as she peered inside the entranceway. She gripped one side of the door frame as if it were a support pole on a lurching subway train. “It’s so dark in there. I really don’t think—”

“I’m going to need more than five minutes,” Sam said, pulling a small flashlight from his key chain and clicking it on. “You might want to go out for coffee and come back in, say … half an hour?”