“No,” she said as he sat beside her. “And I don’t think whoever—whatever—is making up my bed, washing my teacups is the same as what’s playing music on my iPad, and the piano player’s probably something else.”
“She’s outnumbered. Hester Dobbs.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that she did, some of the knots in her shoulders loosened.
“I suppose that should inspire calm crisis mode.”
“Last night,” Trey prompted, and took her hand.
“Last night. I fell asleep reading in bed. Then I woke up—or didn’t. If it was a dream, it was incredibly detailed. I was in front of a mirror. My father dreamed of the same mirror—one with the glass full-length. Predators carved into the frame. Owls, foxes, hawks, bears—all on the hunt. But I didn’t see me, I saw a room through the glass. So clearly, and I walked through the mirror like it was a door.”
“Really?” Obviously fascinated, he kept her hand in his, and those deep blue eyes never left her face. “Where did you go?”
“It was Marianne Poole. She’d be bride number three. I think it was my bedroom, but the walls were papered, and she was in a different bed. She was birthing her twins.”
She told him, the details still fresh and clear in her mind.
“When she was dying … I’ve never seen anyone die, but I knew, I’d have known even if I hadn’t read it in the Poole book, she looked at me. She saw me, Trey. No one had seen me, but as she was dying, she did. She said she had a son and a daughter, and I came from them.”
Sonya swiped a tear away. “She’d fought so hard to bring her children into the world, and she was leaving it. I saw Hugh Poole rush in, and I watched him grieve when she died. He loved her—that was real. God, I could feel his grief. Then I saw her—Hester Dobbs. She just walked in. He didn’t see her, but I did. She took Marianne’s wedding ring.”
After a calming breath, she continued, “I said no, you can’t. You can’t do that. And she looked at me. She saw me. She said—and this is verbatim because I’ll never forget:
“‘I can. I have. I will. Do you think you can stop me? Stop what I forged in fire and blood? You’re the ghost here.’
“She put the ring on, and she already wore two others. Wedding rings, I’m sure of that. And I woke up, or came out of it, whatever the hell it was, standing in my bedroom with poor Yoda whining and shaking.”
She laughed a little. “I guess I whined and shook some, too.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“At three-something in the morning?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him, those oh-so-appealing blue eyes filled with concern.
“You actually mean that. Most people who say call anytime don’t actually mean at three-something in the morning.” She gave the hand still holding hers a quick squeeze. “Who are you?”
“I can’t claim I always say what I mean. I’m a goddamn lawyer. But if I tell you to call anytime, I mean it. You were afraid, and had a right to be. You don’t have to be alone.”
“It helps having the dog. I know that’s silly, but—”
“No, it’s not.”
“No,” she agreed, “it’s not. And it helped telling you all of it, and you believing me. Hold on.”
She rose to get her sketch pad.
“I drew them—the midwife, Marianne, everyone I saw.”
He took the sketchbook. “These are great. I didn’t know you could draw like this.”
“I’m much better at graphic art than fine art, but—”
“Don’t diminish your talent,” he murmured, and paged through the sketches. “You’d have a portrait of Hugh Poole in the inventory.”
“There’s a picture of his portrait in the book, and another of Marianne Poole—younger, I think, than she was when she died. But none of Hester Dobbs.”
“And this is her.”
She’d drawn the face from two angles, and another full-length with Dobbs holding up her hand with three rings.
“As close as I could manage.”
“I didn’t imagine she was beautiful.”
“She is—was. Really striking, the black hair, the milk-white face, the dark eyes. Her voice is … throaty. Sultry. She has crazy eyes. I don’t think I quite captured that.”
“Close enough. And this is the mirror?”
“Yes. My father drew it, too. He dreamed about it, my mother told me. He dreamed he saw—it must have been Collin—reflected in it. From boyhood and on.”