Page 51 of Cursed
His eyes drilled into hers. She wanted to look away, but she held herself steady. Another question burned behind her lips. A question she was afraid to ask. Yet Andre had finally been honest with her. Now she had to face her own fears—about the dreams she’d had since she’d put on the robe. She’d tried to shove them to the back of her mind. Yet she knew she had to deal with what they meant.
“The woman your grandfather loved and lost—was her name Linette Sonnier?” she whispered.
Morgan watched a host of emotions chasing themselves across Andre’s face. “Where did you get that name?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
“Where could I have gotten it?” she asked carefully.
His jaw firmed. “You couldn’t have researched my family.”
“Well, that’s not how the name came to me,” she answered.
He opened his mouth, but she hurried on, forcing herself to grapple with one of the other questions that had been gnawing at her since the first afternoon when Andre had rescued her from the flood. “Why was that robe you gave me in a bag of clothing in your car?”
“I told you, it was going to a garage sale at the church.”
“You don’t get along with the town, why were you taking anything to a church sale?” she challenged
“It was either that—or burn the clothing. And I was taught from a young age never to throw out anything that someonecould use. Just because some people in St. Germaine don’t like me is no reason to spite the rest of them.”
“Okay.” She would give him that much. But it still didn’t get to the crux of her question. “You didn’t have the robe …” she stopped then began again. “You didn’t have the robe in the car so I could put it on?”
Instead of answering, he made a frustrated gesture with his hand. “I asked you about Linette. What does that have to do with the bag of clothing? I didn’t even know what was in there until you were sitting there shivering like a drowned muskrat. Why are we going on about the robe?”
Lifting her gaze, she looked back toward the cemetery plot. It was no longer visible through the trees, but she knew it was still lurking in the shadows. “I had a couple of weird experiences today.”
“And? This is the damn strangest conversation I ever had,” he added in exasperation. “What—you’re just going to ignore every question I ask you?”
“I’m working up to an answer,” she murmured, scuffing her foot against the ground, watching with great interest as she scraped a line in the dirt. “This is hard. What I wanted to say was that … I … I had another weird experience when I put on the robe.” She swallowed.
“A bad experience?”
“No. I … I had a vision of Linette.”
His reaction seemed to be as strong as her own. “What?” he gasped out. “What are you talking about?”
“Andre, I’m a pretty down-to-earth person. I don’t know how to describe what happened exactly. But it was like I had a dream. About her.”
“While you were sitting in the car—right after I pulled you out of the water? When you looked like you were asleep?”
“Yes,” she answered. Then, because she wanted to be honest, she said, “And later—when I went to bed. That first night I was here.”
He gave her an appraising look. “A dream. If you’re in a dream, you’d be one of the characters. So—who were you?”
It was a very perceptive question. She wanted to duck away from his probing gaze. But she wasn’t going to be a coward, so she kept her eyes focused on him. “I was Linette.”
His indrawn breath raised goose bumps on her skin, but she struggled to stay rational. “What do you know about it?” she demanded.
When he didn’t answer, a terrible notion leaped into her mind. “Tell me what’s going on, damn you! Were you projecting some sort of dream into my head? Is that it?”
“No! How could I do something like that?” he shot back.
“I don’t know! If you didn’t hypnotize me—then what?”
She saw his hands clench, then unclench. Slowly and distinctly, he said, “I don’t know what happened to you. But I’ve dreamed about Linette for years.”
She stared at him. Then the obvious question tumbled from her lips, the question he’d asked her. “And in those dreams—who areyou?”
For a moment, she thought he was going to walk away instead of answering. He dragged shaky fingers through his hair. “I’m Andre. My grandfather. Myself. Hell, I don’t know anymore!”
