Gen came awake with a start, shaking. Sweating. Sobbing as she never had for Michael. The storm had broken, the thunder ferocious in the deep night, the lightning looking so much like the shudder of field artillery on a ridge. The house shook and the trees shrieked. A shutter banged somewhere, and the lights had gone off.
Gen scrambled to her feet. She couldn’t stay there. She couldn’t stay still, not when she was certain that she still felt the weight of that man’s head on her chest, felt the life drain from him.
She knew it was guilt, she knew it, over not having grieved more for Michael. It was the terror of abandonment that had followed her from childhood, showing up again in a horrible way. The song of her losses, from her father to her husband to her best friend, Eddie, who’d died trying to pull her from the pond when she was seven.
It didn’t matter. Whatever fomented these dreams left her sick with loss and wandering in a house that seemed to groan with almost human agony. Shadows writhed and climbed the walls. Beyond the dunes, the ocean roared, and the storm battered the windows. Gen was terrified of it, because it sounded just like a battle, and Gen had never heard a battle before. She was alone, yet she could have sworn that footsteps followed her from that terrible hallway where the dead still beckoned to her.
“That’s quite enough,” she said aloud with faint determination. “It’s time to do something.”
Maybe it was this house that was infecting her. Maybe it was all the detritus of the past that had been collecting untouched in the attic all these years. Well, maybe it was time to face the problem head-on.
She was going to go up to the attic and look for ghosts.
Another bolt of lightning split the night. Gen jumped, her heart slamming against her ribs.
“In a minute,” she amended sheepishly. “After I have another glass of wine and go watch the storm.”
Cowardice won out. Gen ended up downstairs on the porch, letting the rain pummel the rest of the fear out of her.
Lightning snaked along the oceanfront a hundred yards away with a terrifying crack and sizzle. The huge live oaks that had given the house its name clattered against each other, straining to be free of the wind. The Spanish moss that festooned them danced like mad spirits in the dark.
Shadows fled with the blue-white flash of lightning, and Gen lost her breath.
There, on the beach.
Something.
Something moving.
She waited, hand to mouth, thick red hair plastered to her forehead until she had to wipe at it, just as she had in her nightmare. Her heart outpaced the thunder of the ocean, and her chest burned with fear.
Another flash of lightning, and she saw it again. A body. A man’s body, halfway between her house and the furious waves.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, looking around, as if she’d find some help. But she knew she was alone. No one inhabited Little Cyril Island but her and, during the day, the state wildlife commission. She’d inherited it and kept it that way to preserve the rich ecosystem on the little coastal island. She’d preferred it that way, too, until now.
He was moving, just a little. Gen didn’t take any longer to consider the matter. Whipping her afghan off the rocker, she ran.
The sand was wet, and the wind tore at her nightshirt and hair. The lightning sent out searching fingers, but it didn’t find her. She stumbled and ran through the sea oats until she reached the prone man.
The naked prone man.
It cost her a second, wondering. She looked up and down the beach, but there was no boat. No wreckage of any kind. No other way he could have arrived on her island. It didn’t matter. He was hurt. Gen bent down and flipped him over.
And leapt back to her feet with a cry.
The man lying unconscious on her beach was the same man she’d held in her dream.
