The Visitor

a story in The Gambler’s Heart Series by Setcheti

Disclaimer: Don’t own any of the Seven, not trying to either.

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Juliet was cooking lunch when she felt the little chill drift across her shoulders. Draft, she thought, and immediately put down her spoon to check Maggie; the baby was still warm and asleep, but the careful mother tucked a light blanket around her anyway. The source of the draft was not immediately evident, so Juliet made a mental note to go looking for it after lunch and went back to stirring.

For some reason her grandmother had been on her mind all morning. Her father’s mother, Grandmere was the one who had taught Juliet to cook and to keep a garden, the one who had despaired of them ever finding that ‘true Southern gentleman’ who was fit to be her husband. Juliet’s relationship with her parents and brother had been warm and close, but Grandmere Marie was the one who’d understood her the best. There had been no childish tragedy, no teenaged angst that could not be solved while sitting on one of the benches in her grandmother’s garden or at the kitchen table in front of her big old-fashioned stove. She had even stayed with Grandmere for a while after Father Thomas had been killed, the old widow gently instructing her granddaughter in the fine art of grieving as they both mourned the loss of their kindly priest.

The chill came back, but this time a faint fragrance of honey and lavender teased Juliet’s nose above the smell of her cooking and she froze; she had never been one to give much thought to ghosts, but that was her grandmother’s scent. “Grandmere?” she whispered. “Grandmere, vous etez ici?”

There was no answer, but the chill warmed to a feeling more familiar - which was an answer of sorts, Juliet supposed. She looked around and saw nothing, and then rather reluctantly turned back to the stove. “Ezra will be home for lunch soon,” she told the unseen watcher, and then wondered if her grandmother knew who she was talking about. “He’s my husband, Grandmere, and Maggie is our daughter; she’s just four months old.” The presence receded slightly, and in her mind’s eye Juliet pictured her grandmother leaning over the side of the sturdy wooden playpen to look at her sleeping great-granddaughter. “Buck and Chris built the pen for her so I could keep her in the kitchen while I work. I do the baking for the hotel here…” It suddenly occurred to her that the spirit might not know where here was - or when it was, either. “Here in Four Corners,” she finished. “This is…this is 1874, Grandmere. My husband was a Confederate officer, now he’s a lawman and a lawyer and he’s the truest Southern gentleman you could ever hope to find. He’s from Virginia…” She sniffed. “I wish I could have introduced him to all of you, Grandmere, ah wish…ah wish ah could have let you all know ah was safe.” The presence came back, exuding comfort, and Juliet sniffed again. “Ah was kidnapped from Denver and they brought me here. Ah know you must have all thought ah was dead, there was no way for me to tell you ah wasn’t. Ah’m so sorry…”

A touch of the chill returned, a definite scold that made her smile in spite of herself; Grandmere had always told her not to apologize for things that couldn’t be helped. But this one could have been. “You don’t understand,” she said quietly. “Ah…ah had a chance to come back, the portal was open and Denver was right there, Grandmere. But Ezra had just asked me to marry him and ah…ah love him, ah didn’t want to leave.” Then suddenly another thought occurred to her – one that probably would have been obvious to anyone less practical-minded than Juliet. “Oh no, if you’re here…that means you’re dead…” The sound of the front screen shutting startled her and she almost dropped the spoon, and the presence beside her took on a watchful, protective feeling as booted footsteps approached the kitchen.

The kitchen door swung open soundlessly and Ezra stepped into the room, looking first at the playpen to see if his daughter was sleeping and then to his wife at the stove; he closed the distance between them in three worried steps when he saw the tears overflowing Juliet’s indigo eyes and immediately took her in his arms. A sharp chill shot through him and lingered strangely but he ignored it. “Darlin’, whatevah is the mattah?”

Juliet buried her face in the front of his vest. “Mah grandmother is dead.”

“Grandmere Marie?” At her nod he tightened his grip and kissed the top of her head. “Oh darlin’, ah’m sorry.” He knew how close his wife had been to her paternal grandmother, and how much she’d missed her. Then something occurred to him. “Wait a minute, how did you know? Your grandmother is…”

Juliet looked up at him and sniffed. “She’s here.”

Ezra froze. The chill flared again and then faded, and this time he felt the definite presence of a person he could not see and caught a whiff of a sweet, vaguely familiar scent – a scent much like his wife’s. The unseen person walked around him and he sensed her looking him up and down. “Ma’am,” he acknowledged, and received a definite feeling of approval in return. He’d never really believed in ghosts, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be polite to this one. “Ah’d offer you mah hand, but at the moment they’re both rather full.”

He got the distinct impression that the ghost laughed, even though he didn’t hear anything, and the aura of approval became positively warm. “She likes you,” Juliet whispered. “Ah told you she’d like you, ma cher.”

“That you did, and ah apologize for not believin’ you,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “Are you all right, cherie?”

“Ah’m all right.” She hugged him tightly and then slipped out of his arms so she could move their lunch to a cooler part of the stove. “It just took me by surprise, ah hadn’t expected something like this to happen.”

“Ah shouldn’t think so,” Ezra chuckled. “Havin’ such a visitor isn’t exactly an ordinary occurrence.” Maggie May chose that moment to wake up with a loud burp and started to cry, and Ezra quickly went to the playpen and picked her up. “And what was that all about?” he asked the baby, cuddling her close after checking her diaper. The crying stopped and a hiccup followed by a softly contented coo answered him. “Oh, I see; the whole thing was just a clever ploy to get Papa to pick you up.”

“And he fell for it,” Juliet said, draping a small towel over his shoulder so the baby wouldn’t soil his clothes. She patted their daughter’s chubby cheek. “He always falls for it, doesn’t he ma bebe? This little girl has Papa right where she wants him.”

“Which is right where Papa wants to be,” Ezra countered with a smile. “There is no shame in bein’ managed by two adorin’ women.” He felt the aura of approval again and remembered their visitor. “Ma’am, this is our daughter Magnolia May, if you’ve not already had the chance to make her acquaintance.”

The presence was suddenly very close to them, and the baby’s eyes widened and focused on something neither of her parents could see. She reached out a chubby grasping hand and tried to take hold of it, letting out a frustrated grunt when her tiny fingers closed on nothingness. Juliet’s eyes met Ezra’s and they shared an astonished look. “Maggie can see her.”

“Apparently.” Ezra cautiously stretched out his own hand but stopped when he felt a cold chill touch his fingertips. “Not to be rude, ma’am,” he ventured. “But is there any way we could see you as well?” Something tugged at his sleeve, then tugged again. “Ah believe we’re bein’ asked to leave the kitchen.”

“Ah think so.” Juliet had felt a tug too. Putting a hand on her husband’s arm, the two of them followed the ghost out through the kitchen’s swinging door and down the hall to the parlor. The spirit guided them to the center of the room and then it was gone. “Grandmere?”

For a moment nothing happened, then Ezra sucked in a sharp, surprised breath. “There,” he managed, nodding toward the gilt-framed mirror that hung above the mantel. In the mirror stood an old woman with well-silvered black hair pulled up into a bun and dark blue eyes sharp behind her spectacles; Ezra could easily see the family resemblance between her and his wife, especially when she smiled at him. She stepped back, and it was odd and slightly eerie to see her moving around the three of them when they could only see her reflection - except for Maggie May, who cooed and giggled and tried to touch her again. The old woman laughed and patted the baby’s cheek, then circled around Juliet with an assessing gaze. Standing at her granddaughter’s side, she locked eyes with Ezra and motioned pointedly to the baby, then to his wife. The second time around he got what she was trying to tell him. “Juliet!”

Juliet blushed. “I couldn’t be certain until the end of next week,” she told him. “That was why I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to…promise you a flower until ah could be certain the seed had taken root.”

Ezra colored slightly himself when he saw the old woman raise a knowing eyebrow. “Is this why you’re here, Grandmere Marie?” he asked her.

The ghost shook her head and placed her hand over her heart. “A heart attack?” Juliet asked softly.

Her grandmother nodded, then pointed to her and this time placed both hands over her heart. Then she smiled, gestured to Ezra, and then expanded the gesture to take in the house – or perhaps it was the whole situation – and then she adopted a slightly wistful expression and waved. “She wanted to be certain you were all right,” Ezra translated slowly, slipping his arm around his wife. “You have a home and a family and she’s happy for you…but now she has to go.”

“Even though she doesn’t really want to,” Juliet added. A fresh tear dripped down her cheek, but she nodded to her grandmother in understanding. “Ah love you, Grandmere. Thank you for coming to visit.”

“Feel free to come again if you are able,” Ezra added, not exactly dry-eyed himself. “You are welcome in our home any time you care to return.”

The ghost nodded and wiped at her own eyes, then kissed each of them with a surprisingly warm touch and vanished. They stood staring at the now empty mirror for several long minutes before Juliet’s practical nature reasserted itself and she tugged on her husband’s arm. “We should go have lunch before it’s all boiled away,” she told him. “And you’ll have to be getting back to work sooner and not later.”

Ezra shook himself and nodded, shifting the baby in his arm. “That ah will.” He looked down at his wife and frowned slightly. “Unless you wish me to stay home this afternoon…”

She smiled. “Ah’d love for you to, but ah’m fine and there’s no need – Grandmere is gone now, and Maggie and I have a lot of work to do today so you’d just be underfoot.” He pretended offense and she laughed at him. “Come now, ma cher, let’s get on with the rest of our day. We can talk about this more tonight over dinner.”

“Ah suppose you’re right,” he conceded and followed her out of the parlor. At the door however, he turned back for a quick look at the mirror and frowned slightly even though he saw nothing out of the ordinary; he had a nagging feeling that their visitor wasn’t quite as gone as Juliet thought she was.

Juliet had already gone to bed by the time Ezra got back from his late patrol that night, and he had finished washing up and was just drying himself off when a glimpse of the mirror made him blush all the way down to his feet; the old woman was back, and she was looking right at him with an expression he wasn’t sure he wanted to interpret. “Ma’am?” he almost squeaked, wrapping the towel around himself as much as he could.

She laughed and shook her head, but her amused expression abruptly changed to one of deep concern. She pointed at him…no, not just at him, at his shoulder, and then at his side. It took Ezra a moment to figure out that she was pointing at the scars left from the times he’d been shot. “Ah do try to be careful,” he told her. “But sometimes it happens in spite of that.”

The old woman shook her head and pointed again; that hadn’t been what she’d meant. Was she trying to warn him about something? Ezra had heard stories about warnings from beyond the grave, but until today he hadn’t given them much credence. “Is someone goin’ to shoot me, is that what you’re tryin’ to impart?”

Marie shook her head again and frowned. Then she took a deep breath and stepped out of the mirror.

Ezra took a step back in spite of himself, but this time she didn’t smile. “Y’all have been watched,” she said in a voice that was hollow as befitting a ghost but still richly accented by her Cajun heritage. “He means to do you harm, ma petit-fils.” She reached out and grasped his bare shoulder – the shoulder with the bullet scar on it – and he felt the chill of the grave in her touch. “Be careful, child; mon cher Juliet has lost too much already.”

She looked so sad, so sorry…Ezra ignored the cold and forgot about the towel and put his arms around her, only slightly surprised to find her solid enough in his embrace. “She won’t lose me,” he promised softly, and felt the corpse-cold body warm somewhat in his grasp even as it began to lose some of its solidity. He pulled back slightly but didn’t let go. He and Juliet had talked over dinner and until it had been time for him to take his patrol, and he knew that her grandmother’s visit had his little wife worrying about the rest of her family again. “Ah know you can’t stay, but before you go can ah…can ah ask a favor of you? Juliet’s parents…”

His arms were suddenly full of empty air, but a whisper of her voice remained. “You are a true Southern gentleman, ma petit-fils, and a good husband. And ah’ll be sure they know it…”

More than a century distant in an alternate universe, Edith Moore rolled over in bed, suddenly wide awake although she didn’t know why. Had she heard something? She sat up, and it was then that she saw the strange glow coming from the full-length mirror across the room. She reached over and shook her husband, then shook him again when he didn’t move. “Mark! Mark, wake up!”

“Cherie?” Mark Moore opened one eye to look up at his wife; when he saw the look on her face, he sat bolt upright in alarm. Not another disaster, he pleaded silently. Wasn’t losing our daughter and now my mother enough? “Qui n’a? What is it?”

She pointed at the glowing mirror. Instead of reflecting the moonlit bedroom, the large oval now showed a kitchen lit by early morning light and a dark-haired woman in a long dress working at a stove. A sturdy round table in the center of the room was set for breakfast, and not too far away a curly-headed baby in a playpen was chewing on a wooden rattle. “Mark, who…who is that? It can’t be your mother…”

“I don’t think so.” A man entered the scene then, a handsome man with brown hair and bright green eyes, and he immediately swept up behind the woman and wrapped his arms around her, managing to steal a kiss before she laughingly pushed him away. Then he went over to the playpen to scoop up the baby, checking the neatly pinned diaper with a father’s practiced hand before cuddling the child close. Mark shook his head. “And I’ve seen a picture of my great-grandfather, that isn’t him either. But this was Maman’s mirror…”

The man sat down at the table with the baby, and when the woman turned away from the stove to bring him coffee the two unseen watchers gasped in disbelief; they were looking at their missing daughter. Juliet had disappeared more than a year ago from the Denver suburb where she was attending college, and although the police had uncovered evidence that she’d been kidnapped and had even found the body of one of the suspects months later, neither their youngest child nor her other abductor had ever been seen again. The case was open but the police believed Juliet to be dead. And now…

“Cherie, look.” Mark pointed at the image, at the soft flash of gold on their daughter’s left hand. “She’s married to him, Edith, so that child must be…”

“Our first grandbaby.” Juliet was taking the baby from its father now and tucking it into a high chair beside the table. Edith shook her head. “But where is she? And those clothes…”

“It looks like the Old West,” he agreed, not taking his eyes from the mirror – the mirror his mother had given them as a gift when Juliet was born, he remembered. His hand found his wife’s and squeezed it. “I don’t know how or why…but it would explain why she never came back, cherie. And she looks happy, he must be good to her.”

“He must be head over heels in love,” Edith corrected with a tearful smile, squeezing back. “Look at his jacket, it’s the same color as her eyes.”

~Fin~