Summer Breeze by Catherine Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

to introduce himself and tell her about Darby's injury, again to inform her that he'd done the chores, filled her wood box, and left two buckets of milk on the porch, and finally to tell her that he was going to enter the house by a front window. Even though she hadn't responded, he'd also explained his reason for being there, namely that Darby had asked him to come over and look after her. If all of that hadn't settled her nerves, nothing would.
    He stopped briefly when he came upon what appeared to be a sewing room. The sewing machine was missing, but a half-made dress lay over a table, and an open closet revealed a nude dress form surrounded by lengths of lace and decorative trim looped over wooden pegs.
    A little farther up the hall, he found a library. Tall rectangles of lightness in the pine-planked walls told him that several bookcases had been removed. Those that remained were only partially filled with what looked like tomes on animal husbandry and agriculture. Normally Joseph's interest would have been piqued, but tonight he hurried away, still unable to shake the feeling that the essence of the people who had lived here still lingered.
    Deep in his heart of hearts, Joseph believed in ghosts. It wasn't something he'd ever talked about with anyone, but the belief was there within him. To his way of thinking, he couldn't very well believe in God and life everlasting without believing in spirits. So far, he'd never come nose to nose with a ghost,
    thank God, but there had been times in his life, like right now, when the hair on his arms had stood up.
    He hurried to the end of the hall, his nerves leaping when Buddy suddenly growled. He tried to remind himself that Buddy always growled, but this was different, not a conversational sound but more a snarl of warning. What looked like a large sitting room opened to his right. Swinging the lamp high, he saw that some of the furniture was missing. It looked as if someone had absconded with the sofa, at least one chair, and a couple tables.
    As Joseph moved on, his shoulder brushed against the wall, and a picture tipped sideways. The scraping sound startled him, and his skin felt as if it turned inside out. When he reached to straighten the frame, light washed over the photograph. A beautiful young girl stared back at him.
    Covered from chin to toe in dark muslin, her hair a cloud of light-colored ringlets around her thin shoulders, she looked to be about ten years old. She sat primly on a hassock, her folded hands resting on her lap. She had delicate features and large, expressive eyes, which he guessed to be blue given the lightness of her hair. Rachel Hollister, possibly? The younger daughter had never lived to see her sixth birthday.
    Lamp still held high, Joseph stepped through an archway to his left and finally found himself in the dining room, which Darby had told him adjoined the kitchen where Rachel Hollister lived. A large window, which once looked out over the side yard, had been boarded up from the inside, the lace curtains over the planks gone dingy with age. A Louis XV sideboard graced one wall, the elaborate grape motifs on the doors reminding Joseph of the furnishings he'd seen as a boy in San Francisco. Surrounded by ten high-backed chairs, a long, marble-topped table, dulled by a layer of grime, sat at the center of the room. The ornate silver candelabra that had served as a centerpiece was draped with cobwebs, the once white tapers leaning this way and that.
    Buddy scampered ahead of Joseph, his paws leaving prints in the film of dust on the fern-patterned burgundy carpet that stretched almost wall to wall. Clearly, the Hollister family hadn't lived a hand-to-mouth existence. This peeling, weather-beaten house had been a pretty grand place.
    Joseph lifted the light higher. In the middle of the north wall was a boarded-over archway. He guessed that Rachel Hollister's hideaway was on the other side. After setting the lantern on the table, he tossed his gear on