Page 194 of Somebody's Watching Me
CeCe’s features softened.“Life isn’t fair, Jamison. Not for anyone, but especially not for the Fairweathers. That curse you feel hanging over your head is real.”
A puff of air swept past Jamison’s lips. Icy and cold, it formed a perfect cloud as she spoke. “I don’t believe in curses.”
“You don’t have to believe. It’s there either way. If it weren’t, you and I wouldn’t be standing here. Our lives would be different. We would have grown up knowing what it was like to have mothers.” CeCe’s eyes drifted lower, landing on Jamison’s stomach. “To be mothers.”
Not wanting to hear anything else her imaginary dead cousin had to say, Jamison trudged across the lawn.
Oh, look!” CeCe chased after her. “There’s your mama.”
From around the oak, Laura Jean twirled into view. She danced to the growing music seeping up from the earth, through the forest, and the very air around them. All eyes were on her. All eyes except the ones belonging to the little girl with blonde curls and a sweet smile running over.
“Fancy meeting you here,” the girl joked when she reached them.
“Livy is our comedian.” CeCe spun her sister by the hand. The odd pair giggling as they danced together. “She keeps us entertained.”
“Do you still like to dance, Jamison?” Livy asked. “We used to watch you sing with your hairbrush when you were small.”
Jamison didn’t like the sound of that. “You were in my room?”
“No, silly. We can’t go in the house.” Livy gazed up at the balcony. “But sometimes we can see everyone through the windows.”
“We can also see the things that happen when the balcony doors are open.” CeCe and her sister giggled harder. “I like him.”
While the sisters chatted excitedly about Annabeth’s love life, Jamison remained hypnotized by her mother. Rebecca might forever remain at Haven House, but the magic of Laura Jean would always rule here.
“CanI talk to her?” she asked, but no one answered as the clouds rolled rapidly across the sky to wipe away the sun. CeCe and Livy faded, the others going with them, gone in an instant as night descended on Haven House.
Left alone, Jamison stared at the one who remained. The shadow with her amber heartbeat.
“Do you remember this song, princess?”
The question carried over on a breeze, the wind winding around her as if curious.
“I guess?”
Suddenly at her side, Laura Jean formed on the spot where CeCe had once stood. “It’s a favorite of mine, but it was playing that night.” She frowned, lost in her sadness. “I couldn’t hear. None of us could until it was too late.”
The song ended, the music replaced by a chorus of crickets and other nightly vermin. “I don’t remember anything,” Jamison told her mother. “I don’t remember that night. I don’t remember the nights before it. And I don’t remember you.”
“But you feel me?” Laura Jean laid a hand on her cheek, and Jamison leaned into the touch, breathing in what smelled like vanilla and patchouli. “When you’re scared or happy, you feel me around you?”
Jamison wasn’t sure if it was the gummies or her own sick brain torturing her, but none of her dreams ever had them talking about the past. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “Do you know who I am?”
“Of course, I know who you are.”Her mother looked offended. “My baby, I would know you anywhere. In this life and in the next.”
Laura Jean pulled her in for a hug, and Jamison took the opportunity, resting her cheek on the top of her mother’s head. She was so small. Like she would break if squeezed too tight.
On the cottage porch, the dark figure twitched unnaturally, agitated. The others reappeared, encircling Jamison and her mother.
CeCe stepped forward. “It’s time.”
The announcement had Laura Jean reluctantlyletting her go. “We can’t stop it.”
“We try every time he comes here,” Ty said, his face tight with strain. “But revenge is a poison that rots the soul.”
“Pain can be purged for a time but never erased.” Miranda joined them. “You can understand, can’t you, darling?”
A void of smoky dark grew on the cottage porch, engulfing the figure of Rebecca. Everyone turned to look as it scurried into the trees, issuing a warning wail as it went.
