“Where are you going?” MJ asked.
“Home to get that music box for you. I mean, maybe I only think it’s on my nightstand. Maybe Benny moved it to your apartment for some reason we don’t know. Maybe he hid it.”
“Why would he do that?”
She threw a look. “It’s Benny. He probably made a bet with Red. They get crazy, those two.”
Clinging to that hope, MJ nodded. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “Because if that music box is here, then something otherworldly is playing the song every single night. Someone, not something.”
Gracie parked, turned off the van and reached for her seatbelt, looking hard at MJ.
“It’s probably your imagination, Mom. A guilty conscience that you shouldn’t have. If Matt is spectacular, if he makes you happy and whole and fills your life and your heart forever and ever, I guarantee you Dad wouldn’t mind that at all.”
MJ wasn’t so sure, but she just nodded and followed Gracie into the house. Red and Benny were both out, so they walked through the quiet rooms, up to the second floor.
Long ago, Gracie had moved into the main bedroom, the very room where Irene and Owen Starling had lived, then MJ and George. Now it was Gracie’s, charmingly redecorated withshiplap and flowered wallpaper, looking nothing like it had when MJ had slept there every night next to George.
Still, the room hit her hard. The light streaming through the sheers was…familiar. Yes, the colors were brighter and younger, and the furniture was arranged differently, but this was the room where MJ had lived with and loved her husband. Where she’d nursed a baby and heartaches, laughed into the wee hours with her partner, and cried into her pillow when he died.
And there, on top of the nightstand on the side where Gracie didn’t sleep, was a picture of George and…the music box.
“Goodness.” MJ walked around the bed and slowly dropped down, realizing that she was shaking a little as she reached for the box. “Itishere.”
She lifted it, turning it over to read the inscription.
For MJ ~ You make my world wonderful. Love, George
She closed her eyes and remembered how pleased he’d been when he gave it to her, so thrilled to have found a music box that played their song at that cute little snow globe store in town.
She twisted the tiny key at the bottom, then grazed the blue flowers on a white enamel top with one fingertip. A little scared for reasons she didn’t quite understand, she slowly lifted the lid and heard the familiar strain that Louis Armstrong made famous.
“This isn’t what’s waking me every night,” she whispered, closing it again.
Gracie sat next to her on the bed, a gentle hand on MJ’s back. “Obviously, since it’s been here for six years.”
“The notes are the same, but the one I’m hearing is, like, a computer sound. I didn’t realize it until now, when I heard this.”
Gracie leaned back on her hands, thinking. “Could you have an alarm set on your phone or something in the kitchen? One of the appliances? Do you ever take your laptop up there?”
She shook her head. “No, and the sound is kind of muffled. It’s got to be…George.”
Gracie sighed. “How does that make you feel, Mom?”
“Guilty. Scared. Foolish.” She ground out the words. “Like your father is watching me and it’s very important that he wake me up and tell me thatwehad love, and this is…wrong.”
“Mom, Matt is a good man who clearly has strong feelings for you. He won millions and millions of dollars and gave it away to charities and causes—and Snowberry Lodge!”
MJ closed her eyes. He was a good man, but…
“Did you feel guilty before this started?”
“I was too busy wondering whether or not he’d come back,” she admitted.
“And when did this start?” Gracie asked. “The music, not the feelings.”
“The night Matt got here. The night of Cindy’s wedding. I’ve been sleeping in that apartment for months and never heard it. Then, it started and will not stop.”
“It started that night? The night he arrived?” The tone in Gracie’s voice was unmistakable.
