Georgia
I LEFT MY ARMS AROUND MOSES as we walked and he didn’t press me to speak, keeping his left arm tight around my shoulders, his lips pressing into my hair every few steps. Something had happened. Not just to me, but to Moses too, and I could not stop the tremors that kept rolling down my spine. We made it to the front porch and I suddenly couldn’t face the inside of the house. I knew Moses had painted; I was sure he’d fixed the peeling section. He’d been working on the house since he’d arrived weeks ago. But I was afraid of the face on the wall.
“It’s cold, babe,” Moses said softly when I held back, urging me to go inside, and the endearment nibbled at my control.
“Let’s just sit for a minute, okay?” I whispered, sinking down on the stoop. The wind was inconsistent, gusting up for a moment before it laid its head back down and decided to rest. It reminded me of trying to get Eli to go to sleep as a toddler. He never wanted to give up, and he would try desperately to keep moving, up until the last second, and then he’d take a little cat nap, only to revive himself enough to sit up and try to play once more. Tomorrow it would be two years since I’d lost him and the memory should hurt, but I found I loved the soft comfort of random reminders.
“I haven’t cried today,” I realized suddenly, and Moses gave in and sat down beside me, his size and heat making me curl against him and lean my head on his shoulder. He ran a big hand over my hair and left it cradled against my face. I turned my cheek and kissed his palm and felt him shudder. Then he wrapped both of his arms around me so I could bury my face in his chest and he could rest his head on my hair.
“If you keep being sweet I will break my new record,” I whispered. “And I’ll cry again.”
“Crying from sweetness doesn’t count,” he whispered back, and I felt the moisture prick my eyes, just as I’d predicted. “Gi used to say happy tears watered our gratitude. She even had a cross-stitch that said as much. I thought it was stupid.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Ah . . . so Gi was a believer in the five greats.” I pressed my lips against his throat, wanting to get as close to him as I could.
“Gi was a believer in all good things,” he rubbed his cheek softly against my hair, nuzzling me.
“Especially you.”
“Even me,” Moses said, lifting his hand to my chin. “What happened, Georgia? Why were you afraid?”
“I did something stupid. Got spooked. Ran home like a scared little girl.”
“Tell me.”
“Nah. It’s nothing. But you were scared too. Why?”
Moses shook his head, as if he didn’t quite know how to start.
“I feel like I’m missing something. Or losing something. Or maybe it’s just the fear of never having it at all. I lost Eli before I even knew he was mine. And part of me is sure that history is going to repeat itself. There are patterns, Georgia, and . . .” he stopped as if he couldn’t explain, and I could hear the note of desperation in his voice.
“This is happening, Moses,” I whispered, reminding him of what he’d said. “You and me? It’s happening.”
He smiled a little and leaned his forehead against mine. “It’s cold. Come in. Be with me for a while,” he whispered, a note of urgency in his tone that made me shiver. And it wasn’t from the chill in the air.
I wanted to. I needed to. But I couldn’t get her face out of my head.
“The girl . . . the girl you painted on the wall in there?” I said, my voice as hushed as his was. I turned my head to stare at the front door, thinking about the walls beyond. “I recognized her.”
“Molly?” he asked. I could tell I’d surprised him, baffled him even.
“No. Not Molly. The girl behind Molly.”
Moses was quiet for a minute and then he stood, pulling me up with him. Holding my hand firmly in his, he pulled me behind him into the house. I let him, my legs shaking and my heart quivering. He pulled me through the house until we stood in the center of the room, looking at the walls that were in various stages of sanding and repainting. Her face was still slightly visible. Moses looked at it soberly and then tipped his chin so he was staring down at me. His green eyes were hooded. Worried. And I drank him in, unwilling to stare too long at the girl who looked out from the wall.
“Lisa Kendrick, the girl who cleaned my house, told me her name is Sylvie. Her cousin,” Moses said. “She apparently disappeared the summer before I came to live with Gigi. She wasn’t from around here, though. Lisa said she lived in Gunnison, I think.”
I nodded, my heart sinking. “I didn’t know her name, but . . . I remember her. She was in a therapy class my parents taught and then she stopped coming. I heard my parents talking about it, but I didn’t realize it was because something happened to her. There’s a 90 day program in Richfield for kids with substance abuse problems. She was one of those kids. I thought she looked familiar when I saw her face on the wall the day I came to get my photo album. And it bothered me.”
Moses stiffened as if he knew I was gearing up for something else.
“I remembered your paintings at the old mill. I run by there all the time. You painted her there too, Moses. The paintings are all still there,” I finished in a rush, and watched as his eyes widened. He looked past me, as if he was trying to pull old details from the recesses of his brain.
“I didn’t even know the owner of the mill. Gi set the job up for me, arranged it all. And I just showed up and got paid, although I didn’t actually get paid, come to think of it.” He shrugged. “I meant to paint over the mural. I told myself I would. But . . . time ran out on me, I guess.” The thought seemed to make him anxious, and he frowned at me. “I can’t believe they’re still there. And I can’t believe you went inside, all alone, in the dark.”
“I didn’t think it through. And it just kept nagging at me, you know? I thought the girl looked familiar. But I didn’t know if it was because she was just a cute blonde like all the other girls have been.”
“They’ve all been blonde?” Moses asked, but it sounded like he was seeking confirmation more than information.
“As far as I know. Yes.”
“How many have there been?” Moses breathed, stunned. “I only drew three.”
He’d drawn more than that . . . but the other girls didn’t have faces.
“Mom and Dad were talking with Sheriff Dawson last July when the girl from Payson went missing. All told, there’s been quite a few. Eight or nine. And that’s over the last ten or twelve years. I don’t know before that, and Sheriff Dawson seemed to think there could be more outside of Utah.”
“And they think they are all connected?” Moses sounded resigned, like he knew what I was going to say.
“All blonde. All around the same age. All missing from small Utah towns. All disappeared during a two week span in July.”
“You’re blonde,” Moses said grimly. Quietly.
I waited for him to continue. His lips were drawn into a hard line, and his eyes were glued to mine.
“Someone tried to take you, Georgia. That summer. July. Someone tried to take you. I think that person ran right past me. He bumped into me, Georgia. Your grandfather was the reason I came back to find you. I saw him standing on the side of the road. And he showed you falling. So I went back. And I saw him at the fairgrounds, just like I’d seen him in the barn and in the corner of your room while I painted.”
“He was in the corner of my room?” I squealed in alarm.
“He showed me what to paint. The images on your bedroom walls are the way he saw the story. Haven’t you ever noticed the man who becomes a horse resembles your grandpa? He saw himself in the story, the way we all see ourselves in the characters we love. It was his way of watching over you. And I liked the idea. He had watched over you before.”
I stared at him, oddly touched and more than a little freaked out. I couldn’t decide what emotion to go with when I suddenly remembered what Moses had said about Tag being Molly Taggert’s brother. It was so bizarre, that connection, that I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about it.
“Molly Taggert?” I prompted.
“Molly, the girl named Sylvie, and you! You fit the profile, Georgia,” Moses stood abruptly and began to pace. “I got scared tonight. It all started coming together! I’m seeing her—Sylvie—I’ve seen her twice now. She won’t let me cover her damn face! I’ve sanded that wall three times and it will be good for two or three days and then the paint puckers right there over her face! And I’m guessing it’s because of Lisa. The thing is . . . Lisa didn’t live here when I did. I didn’t know Lisa. So I had no reason to paint Sylvie. I had no reason to paint Molly either, for that matter. I didn’t meet Tag until after I left Levan! And I have no idea who the other girl is. Or was!” Moses was ranting and pacing, and my head was spinning.
“So what do you think it means?” I asked. He stopped pacing and scrubbed his hands over the stubble on his skull. I imagined it was soothing and wished I could hold him close and do the same, but he wouldn’t hold still.
“The only thing I can think of is that I came in contact with the person who killed them. The connection is to the killer. Not to their family members. Their family members just bring them back . . . so to speak,” Moses mused, and he looked at me desperately. “And that person wanted you.”
“Maybe . . .”
Moses shook his head adamantly. “No. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
“Or maybe it was just Terrence Anderson,” I finished flatly. Time for the rest of the story.
Moses stopped pacing and eyed me warily.
“I was at the mill tonight, back in the corner, looking at your paintings, feeling more than a little freaked out when I realized I knew that girl, when I heard the door open. The door I’d just come through. I squatted down, turned off my flashlights, and crawled along the wall toward the entrance, thinking I could kind of circle around.” I looked down at my hands and realized how filthy they were. My knees too. In the soft lamplight, my legs looked like Eli’s used to look every single night when I’d put him in the tub.
“Who was it?” Moses wasn’t pacing anymore.
“Terrence.” I shivered. And it had freaked me out until I had a chance to think it through. “His family owns that mill. They have for 100 years, actually. Terrence’s dad inherited it from his father when Mr. Anderson Sr. died a few years back. From what I could tell, they are just using it for storage. They have a generator in there though, and when Terrence flipped a light on, one of those tall free-standing things they use at construction sites, I was completely exposed. But he was facing another direction and stacking stuff in the opposite corner and I crawled out while his back was turned. He left the door propped open and his pick-up running outside. His truck is one of those big diesel trucks, and it’s loud. That, combined with the propped open door made it easy to walk right out without him hearing me. Otherwise the door would have given me away. It squeaked like the gates of hell.”
Moses swore under his breath and squatted down in front of my dirty knees as if to inspect me for injuries. I was probably looking pretty scary now that we were inside and there was no moonlight to soften my edges.
“Do you think Terrence would have hurt you if he’d seen you?”
“No. I don’t. I just didn’t want him to catch me trespassing. And he still gives me the willies. Always has.”
Suddenly Moses stood and scooped me up in his arms, making me squeal and wrap my arms around his neck as he strode through the kitchen and climbed the stairs exactly the way John Wayne scooped up Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man, my favorite movie of all time, and I protested just as loudly as she had.
“Moses!” I yelped, “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to run you a bath.” He said simply, and plopped me down on the toilet seat as if I wasn’t a 5’9”, 140 pound woman, entirely capable of running my own bath. In my own house. He leaned over and started the water in what appeared to be a brand new tub. It was deep and free-standing with curving sides and big brass legs. The whole bathroom was new and decidedly feminine. It didn’t look like what Moses would choose at all.
“That is a great tub,” I blurted out, my eyes on the steam and the bubbles building beneath the heavy flow as Moses dribbled something in the water.
“I thought you’d like it,” he answered simply. “It’s yours, you know.”
“What?”
“The whole house. It’s yours. If you want it. If you don’t, I’ll sell it, and you can use the money to build something you like better.”
I stared at him numbly. He stared back and then straightened from the tub, shaking the water from his hands and wiping them on his jeans. He gently began unwinding the elastic that held my hair off my face, though pieces were already falling free. My hair was heavy and the elastic was tight, so when he pulled it loose and ran his fingers through the strands, releasing the tangles and soothing my scalp, I sighed gratefully and closed my eyes.
“I want to take care of you, Georgia. I can’t take care of Eli. But I can take care of you.”
“I don’t need that, Moses. I don’t need someone to run my baths or carry me up the stairs, although I’m not complaining.” I wasn’t complaining at all. His hands in my hair and the steam rising up around us made me want to pull him into the brand new tub, fully clothed—or not—and fall fast asleep, warm and safe and more contented than I’d ever been.
“I don’t want your house, Moses,” I said softly.
His hands stilled in my hair.
“I thought you did.”
I shook my head, and his hands tightened against my scalp. He was quiet for several seconds, but he didn’t move away, and his fingers continued to sift through my hair, smoothing it down my back.
“There’s nothing wrong with the house, Georgia,” he said at last. “Is that it? It’s not haunted. Places aren’t haunted. People are. I am.” His tone was resigned, and I looked up at him with the same acceptance.
“Nah. That’s not it, Moses. I don’t want your house. I just want you.”