Read Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing for Free Online

intuition, like a lot of people.” She held my gaze, then closed her boney fingers on mine, waiting. “I really didn’t hear the singing, but…” I paused. Did I want to tell Mrs. Allen?
    “But…but what?”
    “Sometimes, bits and pieces of other peoples lives find their way into my dreams. It’s like a movie of theirsorrows, or unfinished business. It’s nothing I can control. The dreams just happen.”
    “That’s the way of having the sight. It ain’t like having a telephone number you can call up. Can’t nobody control it. Least ways nobody I know. No ma’am, the sight just comes and goes, as it will. And you been having dreams lately?”
    “Well, yes. I’ve had bad dreams about January McNeal. In the last dream he was watching a fire from a barred window, a jail window. I think my great grandmother, and a baby, were trapped in the path of the fire.”
    She nodded slowly. “So, that’s it. Well, I reckon I understand now why you’re hunting stories about McNeals.” She closed her eyes. Her hand, warm and wrinkled from a life of canning and gardening, stayed on mine. Was she listening for the song again? Finally she came back to the kitchen and spoke. “What did you say was her name?”
    “Reba. My great grandmother’s name was Reba. I found the marriage record saying her maiden name was Reba Connell, born in 1882. I also found a death record for her. She died in 1905 when she was twenty-three. The record says she died of “fever” and was buried in the Methodist cemetery. My grandfather, William McNeal, was only four when she died. I haven’t found birth or death records for January McNeal. Not yet.”
    “Reba, that’s what I thought you said. Seems to me that name does mean something to me. Mercy-me, it’s purely sad she left a little one behind. Must have broken her man’s heart clean in two.”
    Suddenly she bolted for the kitchen door, threw it open, and called out,
    “Missy, you come on in here. It’s getting too cold to play outside. Come on. Right now. Miz Promise ain’t gonna mind you none.”
    I joined Mrs. Allen at the open door. The yard looked empty, unless you counted the towels hanging from the clothesline, snapping in the wind.
    “Do I need to leave so she’ll come out from her hiding place?”
    “No. It’s all right. She’ll come in directly. I done remembered where I heard the name Reba Connell. Come on in here and help me dig for it.”

5
     
    I followed Mrs. Allen into the tiny, sun filled room adjacent to the kitchen. Together we dragged a large, faded blue, plastic, suitcase. It must have weighed fifty pounds. How did anyone in the 1950’s schlep these Samsonite monsters around? We sat on a narrow quilt covered bed under the windows and she began to rifle through the contents.
    “This here was left by one of my Sorley cousins. Stuffed mostly with papers, old photographs, and I don’t know what all. Just get yourself comfortable, Miz. Promise. Little Missy don’t mind iffen we sit on her bed.”
    Instinctively, I looked to the kitchen door, half expecting a curious little girl to come through and ask us what we were doing. If a little girl really existed, outside Mrs. Allen’s imagination. The phantom breeze that had stirred the moon and stars mobile breathed across my cheeks and brought with it the scent of rosemary.
    “I ain’t thought much about the suitcase for years. Excepting of course when the twins come around a year or two ago asking if they could read through the papers.”
    That got my attention. “Do you mean the Goddard twins?”
    “Why yes, it was a good while after they sold out to you. I was busy putting up peaches that day, so I just let them carry it out to the porch and plunder through. They was both big into all that Civil War playacting, you know. Had them Confederate uniforms and all. Course you know, my home part of East Tennessee was pretty much divided between the Union and the Confederacy—just like Western North Carolina. I