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Without warning, I ached to feel his mouth on mine.
He leaned closer.
His warm breath tickling, I met him in a rush of hormones and adrenalin. Then lifting my lips, I closed my eyes, reveling in the give and take of his kiss.
Only Teddy’s insistent bark woke me from the daze.
Then, like a fly buzzing at the window, a high-pitched sound droned—squeak…squeak…squeak—as the chair rocked back and forth on the patio.
In the fading twilight, a nearly transparent silhouette emerged.
I pulled away with a scream, and the image vanished.
“What?” He followed my stare.
“I saw a woman…cradling a baby…” I spoke without turning toward him, watching as the chair gradually slowed its rocking, then came to a standstill. “What’s going on?”
****
“I don’t know, but I’ll bet somehow the rocker, the TV, and our attraction are all tied to the locket.” After punching in the code, he opened the cabin door. “Let’s take a look.”
Maeve removed the cameo from the velveteen pouch and handed it over. “At the library, I read mourning jewelry was popular before photography became affordable. People kept the hair of deceased loved ones as touchstones to remember them.”
“Makes sense.” He opened the tiny hinge. “In some ways, this remembrance is better than a picture. It’s part of the person.”
“A bridge between the quick and the dead…” She nodded. “In fact, the word locket comes from the practice of keeping a lock of hair in a pendant.”
“Didn’t know that.” As he fingered the woven, baby-fine hair, he recalled the silky texture of her hair. He glimpsed her lips, still red and swollen from his kiss. Get a grip. He tore his gaze from her and glanced at the double bed that filled the small cabin’s main room.
As his loins responded, he struggled to take his mind off her receptive lips and sinuous body. She moves like wine swirled in a glass. And the legs…Initially thinking of the streaks on a glass after swirling wine, he glanced at her legs and stiffened.
He abruptly sat on the cedar chest, crossed his legs, and began calculating mathematical equations to distract his thoughts. Two squared is four, squared is sixteen, squared is two hundred-fifty-six, squared is sixty-five thousand and…can’t think straight. He shook his head and concentrated. Two doubled is four, doubled is eight, doubled is sixteen, doubled is thirty-two, doubled is sixty-four, doubled is a hundred-twenty-eight…no, a hundred-thirty-six—
“Are you all right?” Wearing a bewildered expression, she stared.
“I…uhm…just remembered something…” Turning at an oblique angle, he set the locket on the chest and edged sideways toward the door. “Why don’t you stop by in an hour? Pizza okay?”
****
As I got into bed that night, I fondled the locket’s downy strands. Threads weaving the past into the present. Did this hair belong to Marianna and Mateo’s baby?
I turned off the light and began dozing when a baby’s faint cry woke me.
Teddy? I flipped on the light, but the puppy was asleep.
Barely audible, the muffled cry seemed to originate outside.
Is a cat in heat? I cracked the door.
Leaves rustled and the wind howled as wisps of mist began swirling before me.
With a yelp, I slammed the door and peeked through the window. Full moon.
The eddying fog gathered slender tendrils of moonlight, as if twisting optical fibers until the vapor became a luminous, rotating spiral over a long, flat rock.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, the whirling light was gone. All was dark outside except for the stars and moon. Was I sleepwalking? I fixed a cup of chamomile tea, then read in bed until I fell into a troubled sleep.
The next morning, I dismissed the memory as a weird dream.
