Seeing is Believing (Cuttersville #3)(68)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I think I always knew Rachel was innocent,” Piper said.

“So you believe the doctor’s report Brady found?” Bree asked.

Piper nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I think so, too.” Given all that bogus reporting, Brady was way more inclined to trust the doctor than the Keystone cops who had investigated Brady’s murder. “So what exactly are we trying to do here?”

“Bring them both into the room at the same time, so they can see each other. It might bring them peace. At the very least, we can tell Rachel we know she didn’t do it.”

Figuring he might be needed to protect Piper from flying objects, Brady stayed, but he really wanted to make off with the baby like Shelby was doing.

“I’ll be in the kitchen with Iona if you need me.”

Piper saw Brady studying Shelby’s retreat with a fair amount of longing, and she was grateful that he was willing to stick it out. Not every man would tolerate a woman who was a ghost magnet.

Bree had prepped her on the spells they would be speaking. She didn’t consider herself Wiccan or a witch, but she trusted Bree, who had become a mentor of sorts to her, reassuring her that she was in fact completely normal, just more aware than others.

The candles were lit and Piper closed her eyes and murmured, visualizing both Rachel and Brady in the same place, standing next to each other. The Blond Man and Red-Eyed Rachel, facing each other for the first time in one hundred and twenty years. Expressing their love for each other. How would she feel if Brady were taken away from her?

It would be a physical pain. It would be agony, like losing an arm or a leg. She would survive, but she would be damaged. Just the thought made her melancholy. Since Shelby’s party, she and Brady had been happier than she could have dared to hope for. He’d won her parents over by proving himself a hard worker and very loyal to her and to his family. If that was suddenly taken away from her? When she’d just started to be able to enjoy it?

That was Rachel’s pain, and Piper felt immeasurable sympathy for her.

She sensed it was time to open her eyes.

There they were. Both of them. Standing in front of the fireplace, their spirits more opaque than usual, as if they were afraid to fully appear, afraid it wasn’t real. Brady’s hand stretched out for Rachel.

A shiver rolled up Piper’s back. “He says he loves her,” she whispered, not hearing the words, but reading them off his lips as he spoke.

Her heart broke even more for them as she felt like she was watching an incredibly private exchange.

Rachel’s sigh was so pronounced, Piper felt her own skirt swirl around her boots from the sudden breeze. Then Rachel mouthed the words back to her fiancé, her hand lifting to touch his, palm to palm.

Then they were gone. There was no sign that they had ever been there, and Piper turned to Bree. “They’re gone. Is that permanent?” Part of her was relieved for them, and yet part of her suddenly felt like she was going to miss them.

“I don’t know, honestly,” Bree said. “I don’t feel them anymore. What’s this?” She bent over the fireplace. “This just fell down from the chimney.” She brushed some ash off the object and unfolded it and frowned. “Do you know what this is?”

She held it out and Piper took the paper. It was yellowed, a page torn from a decade-old sketchbook. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, her hand starting to shake. “Brady, look at this.”

“What?” He leaned over her shoulder to see. “Holy crap.”

It was Rachel and the Blond Man, standing right in front of this very fireplace, smiling, standing close to each other, Brady’s arm crooked to allow Rachel to rest her hand there. Piper knew without a doubt that it was a sketch the current Brady had done. But she turned it over just to confirm what she already knew.

“By B. Stritmeyer,” Brady read, tracing his fingers over his own signature. “As described to him by Piper Danielle Schwartz Tucker.”

“I remember this now,” Piper said, a lump in her throat. “It was the first time I used the last name Tucker. I was kind of trying it on for size, wanting it to be mine.”

“Now you’re really going to have a hell of a name when we get married,” Brady said, teasing her. “Double hyphen and everything.” But he also took her hand in his, like he understood how hard that had been for her. “I don’t remember sketching this specifically. I remember doing a half dozen ghost images for you.”

“I have the others,” she admitted. “I kept them. But I haven’t seen this one in years. I’d forgotten about it.”

“That’s a crazy coincidence,” Brady said, feeling under the fireplace mantel. “Why was it in here? Who put it there?”

“There are no coincidences. Only a design whose pattern we don’t recognize. I don’t think we can dismiss that you were assaulted right here by a duplicitous woman, just like the first Brady. Fortunately, your story has a better ending.” Bree blew out her candles. “I’m going to check on Iona and Shelby.”

“Sometimes she scares me just a little,” Brady said, watching Bree retreat.

Piper laughed. “I think she has a point.”

“What, that ours has a happy ending? I’ll absolutely agree with that.” Brady folded the sketch back up and put it in his pocket. He took her left hand and ran his fingers over her engagement ring. “Want to go home and add another page to your diary?”

The diary was still fictional, but the desire never was.

Piper nodded. “I thought you’d never ask.”