Carolina frowned and folded her arms across her chest again. She hadn’t considered that she might have to share her home with even more people. All she wanted was peace and quiet again. This wouldn’t do.
“Carolina Braun doesn’thauntanyone,” she scoffed. “I’m simply doing what anyone else would do. I’m defending my home.”
“That’s not the way it looks to me,” Joseph said, holding his son tighter.
Carolina sighed. She wasn’t getting anywhere with this awful, indignant man. River looked up at her from under his too-long hair and her heart melted all over again. Maybe she was wrong about his need for a haircut. He really was a lovely boy.
“Perhaps you’ll sell the home to a nice, quiet, mature woman with good manners then?” she ventured.
“I guess,” Joseph said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “I can’t make any promises.”
Carolina’s eyes trailed up and down Joseph’s form now. She had discovered from the many builders, plumbers and electricians that had trampled all over her property that men were built differently nowadays. Unlike Richard, her father and the boys at school, some of the men that crossed her threshold onto Jacaranda Manor now were more robust and muscular, like the boxers she had seen once on a postcard. She could get used to appreciating Joseph’s ridiculously sinewy, massive frame. For now.
“If you’re going to do this, then you might as well do it right,” she huffed, turning away. “Follow me.”
With that she turned and moved from the sitting room into the foyer. As she ascended the staircase, Carolina was pleased to hear two sets of footsteps following closely behind.
“Where are you going?” Joseph shouted.
“Why, to the third floor,” she said, throwing a wicked smile over her shoulder. “There’s something in my room that I think might be useful to you.”
Chapter Six
Joseph had been avoidingdealing with the attic space for nearly a month now. He knew that it would be a chore to clean out and refinish the space, and was quite certain that a complete gut job would be in order. There was likely a treasure trove of ruined antiques in there that would need to be hauled away, including furnishings and knicknacks destroyed by animals and moisture and time. The attic was something that he simply didn’t want to bother with until the new roof was installed on the property. But now, the reluctant new owner of Jacaranda Manor had no choice but to find out what hid behind the third floor door, upon the insistence of the entity that lived among them.
His legs moved almost automatically one in front of the other, propelled by instinct and morbid curiosity as he followed River and the glowing specter up the stairs. Boomer whined and barked in disapproval as they followed the ghost up the stairs, though the usually curious dog didn’t bother to venture forth with them. The steps creaked under the weight of him and his son, but made no noise when it came to the person, the—Carolina—that effortlessly ascended in front of them. Joseph was still in a state of mild shock and disbelief as they reached the third floor and the semi-transparent, lovely woman that waited for them.
“Now, it is a bit of a mess and I do apologize,” Carolina said, clasping her hands in front of her. “I am sadly unable to move objects of my own free will, otherwise I would have done a great many things by now, including tidying up the third floor.”
“Oh that’s... understandable,” Joseph said, the words falling from his lips without thought. It wasn’t understandable though, not really. None of this was. Once again, Joseph knew that he was lucid, and that he and his son, though still grieving, were not prone to visions and fantasy. Yet he couldn’t deny what he was seeing with his own eyes.
“Follow me,” Carolina said, and disappeared through the door.
Without hesitation, River clasped his small hand around the latch and pulled the attic door open, as though he had done it before.
“River, have you been coming up here on your own?” Joseph asked, his pulse rising. The tips of his ears grew warm as he realized that his son and Carolina must have been meeting up on the dangerous third floor level now for who knew how long.
