Red Lily

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Book: Read Red Lily for Free Online
Authors: Nora Roberts
tell us?” Harper demanded.
    “I told David this morning,” she shot back. “And I’m telling everybody now. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kids.”
    “Let’s get this on record.” Mitch rose to go to the table for his tape recorder.
    “It wasn’t that much of a big.”
    “We agreed last spring after the last two violent apparitions, that everything goes on the record.” He came back to sit again, and set the recorder on the table. “Tell us.”
    Talking on tape made her feel self-conscious, but she related everything.
    “I hear her singing sometimes, but usually when I go in to check, she’s gone. You know she’s been there.Sometimes I hear her in the boys’ room—Gavin’s and Luke’s old room. Sometimes she’s crying. And once I thought . . .”
    “Thought what?” Mitch prompted.
    “I thought I might’ve seen her walking outside. The night y’all left on your honeymoon, after we had the wedding party here? I woke up—had a little more wine than I should, I guess—and I had a little headache. So I took some aspirin, checked on Lily. I thought I saw someone, out the window. There was enough moonlight that I could make out the blond hair, the white dress. It appeared like she was going toward the carriage house. But when I opened the doors, to go out on the terrace and get a better look, she was gone.”
    “Didn’t we have an agreement, starting after Mama finally decided to clue us in about nearly being drowned in the bathtub, that we put everything on record?” Anger simmered in Harper’s voice. “We don’t wait a damn week to make an announcement.”
    “Harper,” Roz said dryly. “That horse is dead. Don’t start beating it again.”
    “We had an agreement.”
    “I didn’t know for sure.” Hayley’s back went up, and it reflected in her tone as she glared down at Harper. “I still don’t. Just because I thought I saw a woman walking toward your place didn’t mean she was a ghost. Could just as likely—more likely—have been flesh and blood. What was I supposed to do, Harper, call you over at the carriage house and ask if you were getting a bootie call?”
    “Jesus Christ.”
    “Well, there you are.” Pleased, she nodded decisively. “It’s not like you never have female company over there.”
    “Fine, fine. Just FYI, I didn’t have female company—flesh and blood variety—that night. Next time, follow through.”
    “Class,” Mitch said mildly, and gave a professorial tap of pencil on notebook. “Can you tell us any more about what you saw, Hayley?”
    “Honestly, it was only a few seconds. I was just standing there, hoping the aspirin would kick in before morning, and I caught a movement. I saw a woman—a lot of blond or light hair, and she was wearing white. My first thought was Harper got lucky.”
    “Oh, man,” was Harper’s muttered comment.
    “Then I thought about Amelia, but when I went out to see better, she was gone. I only mention it because if it was her, and I guess it was, that’s twice I’ve seen her in about a week. And that’s a lot for me.”
    “You were the only woman in the house during that week,” Logan pointed out. “She’s been more likely to show herself to women.”
    “That makes sense.” And made her feel better.
    “Added to that, it was the night after Mitch and I were married,” Roz said. “She’d have been miffed.”
    “And it’s the second time we’ve got a firsthand report of her walking toward the carriage house. There’s something there,” Mitch said to Harper.
    “She’s not letting me know about it. So far.”
    “Meanwhile we keep looking. We believe she lived in this area, so our best bet is Reginald kept her in one of his properties.” Mitch lifted his hands. “I’m still pursuing that avenue.”
    “If we find out her name, her whole name,” Hayley asked him, “would you be able to research her the way you did the Harper family?”
    “It’d give me a start.”
    “Maybe

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