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“Or… she had more power then. It’s been a couple of centuries.”
“She tried to lure me out, that night. I heard the pounding at the front door, saw a blizzard out the window.”
“But when you opened the door,” Cleo pointed out, “no blizzard.”
“I see where you’re coming from,” Trey said. “Still, if Sonya had stepped outside, and hadn’t been able to get the door open—it would’ve been a long, cold night.”
“I think Dobbs would have enjoyed that. But I didn’t have Yoda or Cleo then. Or you. And now I’m going to sound like Cleo, but I think Clover’s looking out for us, too, as best she can.”
Her phone played “I’ll Be There for You.”
“See?”
“Okay if I go take a look at the portrait?”
“Let’s do that. I want to know what you think.”
The three of them walked down together and into the music room.
“That face,” Trey murmured. “That’s Clover. It’s beautiful. She looks happy but… serene.”
“You’ve seen her twice. But she isn’t pregnant.”
“No, not like this.”
“I’ve thought about that.”
Sonya looked over at Cleo. “Theory time again?”
“Clover died, and never got the chance to rock her babies, nurse them, cuddle them, sing to them.” Cleo sighed. “If there’s a choice, I wouldn’t want the constant reminder of what I wanted so much and never really had.”
This time Sonya didn’t roll her eyes, but took Cleo’s hand. “And still she plays music, and comes off as happy. At least content. I think she’d have been a wonderful mother.”
When her phone played “Let It Be,” Sonya laid a hand over it in her pocket.
“They look good there, right there,” Trey commented. “Together. I wonder… I wonder if you’ll find the others, the ones after Astrid and before Clover.”
“I looked this morning.” Cleo shrugged. “I kind of hoped, but since Sonya found both of these, I guess that’s for her. If and when.”
“And I wonder, if I’d kept walking last night, if I’d have ended up… somewhere else for a while. I think next time, don’t wake me up.”
“Oh, Sonya.”
“It’s not Hester Dobbs doing that. I’m as sure of that as any of this. Breaking the curse—and I can hardly believe I’m sayingcurse—means finding the rings. The more I see, hear, feel? It seems it matters.”
“If it happens when I’m not here, call me,” Trey said to Cleo. “And stay with her. I need a key. I need to be able to get into the house.”
“Oh.”
Because her knee-jerk remembered doing just that with Brandon, she shoved it aside.
Trey wasn’t Brandon. He wasn’t anything like Brandon.
“All right. Yeah, that makes sense, too. I’d as soon not go wandering at three a.m. to a… slip in time. But I feel better about it knowing the two of you would be here.”
She shook her head. “And I have to think about something else. Like doing the dishes and taking the dogs out.”
The kitchen, not unexpectedly, sparkled when they went back.
