Kiss Me Hello by L. K. Rigel Read Free Book Online Page A

looked out over rolling vineyards and a blue sky.
    She checked the dresser and bedside tables for Aunt Amelia’s glasses. Something was off about that. At the rehab center, Bonnie had asked where is it— not where are they, as in reading glasses. Sara distinctly remembered those words filtering out into the hall. What was it that Bonnie wanted? And why had she lied?
    The next door down the hall opened to a bedroom used for storage, jammed with crates and boxes. So did the next. A twinge of sadness hit Sara. Her aunt must be lonely in this big house.
    She felt like Goldilocks looking through someone else’s home, especially when the next room was just right: cozy with sweet pink and white rosebud wallpaper, a handmade quilted coverlet on a double brass bed, and a glimpse of the ocean out the window.
    The ocean! How could she have forgotten the widow’s walk?
    She stepped back into the hall. There. At the end of the corridor, across from Aunt Amelia’s bedroom, a narrow stairway built against the wall. It led to a landing, a small platform looking down on the second floor hallway. The treads were unstable and creaked with age, worse than the main stairs. She held onto the railing all the way up to the landing.
    The door on the landing was locked. Crud. The brass handle was ice cold, as was the door’s wood panel against her cheek. Maybe a window inside was open. Or broken. More likely, the attic room wasn’t insulated.
    She’d have to find out later. The house key was down in the kitchen sitting on the counter next to her purse, and the cozy little room with the rosebud quilt called to her. Nap first, widow’s walk later.
    She dreamt of Aunt Amelia. More accurately, she dreamt of Turtledove Hill.
    Sara was standing in the middle of Aunt Amelia’s bedroom when she noticed there was no glass in the windows. She stepped over the casings out onto the deck and warm, sun-drenched air. A seagull shrieked somewhere nearby, and white clouds hung unnaturally low over the vineyards.
    In the clouds sat men dressed in suits and women in floral print dresses, like Dustbowl farmers in their Sunday best. They dangled their legs over the sides and drank lattes in paper cups while laborers on the ground below filled baskets with hand-harvested red grapes.
    Sara floated off the deck, over the courtyard, over a palomino pony in the corral. She intended to join the people in the clouds, but the pony spoke a warning in Mom’s voice. Don’t go to the vineyards. It’s where the ghosts are .
    Instead, she floated over to the eucalyptus grove to see if the pond was still there and if any flowers were in bloom. Her feet touched ground at the edge of the water amid a riot of yellow and white daffodils, pink ladies, and purple bearded irises. A school of fat koi, white, gold, orange, and black, flitted about in the clear pool.
    A man sat on the slate rock that jutted over the water. He looked up, and a shiver of excitement rippled through Sara. It was him, Aunt Amelia’s lover.
    He looked to be in his early thirties. He was dressed as she remembered in the same loose pants, a romantic white poet’s shirt, and suspenders. He had shaggy brown hair and smoldering dark eyes. In her memory he wasn’t this young—but of course it was because she was older now.
    She touched ground amid the snowdrops, and in an instant he was at her side. He took her hand and looked at her with such intensity she trembled. But her hand fit in his perfectly, and she wasn’t afraid. He touched her back and turned her toward the house. His hand felt cold on her neck between her shoulders.
    Then she was in the courtyard, alone, facing the back porch.
    Aunt Amelia threw the door open. It banged against the wall as she raced out of the house and down the stairs. Red-orange cartoon roosters and pigs and geese surrounded her like minions, crowing and snorting and honking at Sara. Aunt Amelia waved an avocado green telephone handset and screamed, “Call the cops! Send her