Chapter 62 - The Phantom in the Pines
The snap of the branch hung in the morning air like a gunshot. My fingers hovered over the pastel-yellow ribbon, vibrating with a cold tremor that ran straight to the bone. For two years, that ribbon had been a ghost haunting the corners of my mind—the shredded remnant of my daughter’s ruined silk dress, discarded in the dirt while Melissa smirked and told me to teach my child how to take a joke.
Now here it was, untouched by weather, pristine and vivid against the weathered cedar rail.
"Lily!" I shouted, spinning around toward the farmhouse, my voice cracking against the stillness. "Get inside! Lock the front door, right now!"
On the porch, Lily froze with her hand on the screen door, her eyes wide with sudden alarm. She didn't argue. She had lived through the subpoenas, the midnight prowlers, and the court marshals; she knew the raw cadence of true panic. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind her, followed by the definitive thud of the brass deadbolt sliding into place.
I turned back to the road. Across the narrow strip of county asphalt, the timberline was thick with second-growth pine and tangled briars. The shadows beneath the canopy were deep, swallowing the weak morning sunlight.
"Show yourself!" I yelled, stepping off the gravel verge into the ditch. "Marcus is gone! Melissa is locked in federal custody! There’s nothing left for you here!"
No voice answered. But thirty yards into the treeline, a dark figure shifted behind the trunk of a dying hemlock. It was tall, draped in a heavy wool coat that brushed the pine needles, moving with a stiff, deliberate grace that belonged to another era. For a split second, the sun pierced the boughs, catching the flash of silver hair coiled beneath a dark silk scarf.
Evelyn.
May you like
My mother had been declared dead in absentia seven years ago after her car was found submerged in the icy black waters of the Kennebec River, empty, the driver’s side door swung wide open. We had buried an empty mahogany casket in the family plot beneath a granite headstone Melissa had paid for with embezzled funds.
The figure stepped back into the deeper gloom, completely soundless, melting into the dense underbrush like smoke. By the time I scrambled across the asphalt and reached the edge of the ditch, there was nothing left except the crushed brown needles of the forest floor and the faint, unmistakable scent of French lavender and burning tallow.
