“Are you through now?”
“Oh, absolutely. I am done, concluded, finished in the truest sense of the word—and may I please go take care of my coat?”
“Be my guest.”
Her head high and her shoulders back, Jilly headed for the bathroom, shutting the door good and hard when she got in there, and then catching sight of her self in the cracked full-length mirror on the back of that door. What she saw was not encouraging. Her hair gave new meaning to the words matted and stringy. The knot on the right side of her forehead was turning a very unflattering shade of magenta.
Jilly wished a lot of things right then, as she stared at her pitiful reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She wished she’d just written the piece Frank had asked for in the first place. Certainly wandering the club scene, guzzling Cosmopolitans, listening to tired pick-up lines couldn’t be worse than this. She wished she’d never called Celia about finding a cabin, wished she’d taken a pass on the suggestion that she get a hold of Caitlin—and yes, she had been reluctant, after what she’d heard at Jane’s party. She wished she’d gone with that reluctance and never picked up the phone.
As a matter of fact, she couldn’t wait to get home, to spend Christmas with her own family, after all. Next to what she’d been through up here at Mad Mavis’s ramshackle old house, she was actually looking forward to having her mother and her two very married sisters sending her the usual pitying looks, dropping subtle hints about how much happier she’d be if she found someone special, had a baby and did something worthwhile with her life for a change.
But wait. What was this?
Looked like a serious case of Poor Me, oh yes it did. And though Jillian Diamond had a number of faults, wallowing around in self-pity was not one of them.
Jilly straightened her shoulders again and carefully smoothed a few straggling strands of hair away from her injury. Okay, it was ugly. But it could have been much worse. And her hair would look a hundred percent better once she’d taken a brush to it.
Too bad her brush was upstairs….
But later for that. First things first. Her coat required attention.
The bathroom lacked the usual white porcelain sink. Instead, two deep concrete laundry sinks lined the outside wall, a long window above them. Jilly turned to the sinks and flipped on the cold water.
As she moistened and blotted the soft suede of her stained coat, she decided that she didn’t feel so low, after all. There was something about telling a person the one thing you would have sworn you’d never confess to them that was very freeing. Somehow, it didn’t even matter that he hadn’t apologized. His response wasn’t important.
Jilly bent over her coat, dabbing and blotting. To be fair, she would have to say that he had looked just a little bit embarrassed at what a complete jerk he’d been. She found that appropriate. He should be embarrassed.
“There,” she said under her breath, holding up the coat and examining her handiwork. “Best I can do until I can get it to the cleaners.”
She took the coat back out through the kitchen and hung it at the door, taking scrupulous care not to look in Will’s direction. Next, she padded over to the little table by the sofa bed and collected her empty water glass, the bloodstained cloth and the ice pack. She washed the glass, rinsed out the cloth and hung it over one of the bathroom sinks. She emptied the ice pack, leaving it, with the glass, in the dish drainer to dry.
Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a long, hot soak in that clawfoot bathtub. But it was Will’s house—more or less. Somehow, she felt it would be nothing short of rude just to get out her bath salts and fill up the tub without asking him first. And since the last thing she wanted to do was speak to him again, the bath was out. She carried her boom box and CDs upstairs and came back down with her vanity kit. She cleaned her face, brushed her teeth and did what she could with her hideous hair.
Finally, there was Missy to deal with. Jilly carried the litter box and water bowl upstairs. Then she went to get the cat.
As Jilly had feared, Missy was reluctant to leave the newfound object of her inexplicable devotion, but Jilly tempted her with a few cat treats and that was the end of that. She closed the door to the kitchen before she carried the cat up the stairs.
As soon as Jilly put her down, Missy took off. Jilly shrugged and got out her lovely soft micro-fleece pajamas with the blue and yellow stripes on the bottoms and cheerful daisies on the top. She was pulling them on when Missy started crying from the foot of the stairs.
Too bad. She’d get over it.
Jilly slid her Ray Charles Spirit of Christmas CD into the boom box, turned the volume low enough that it wouldn’t disturb the Grinch downstairs, and got out the three novels she’d brought.
There were two juicy romances and a nail-biting thriller. She chose the thriller. She had no desire at all to read about men and women working out their problems, enjoying great sex and finding lasting love. Not tonight, anyway.
Jilly got under the covers, plumped the pillows against her back and started reading. Eventually, Missy quit meowing pathetically at the stairway door. She appeared at the side of the bed, jumped up next to Jilly, curled in a ball and went to sleep. Outside, the wind wailed and the snow blew against the window, making a sound like someone tapping to get in.
The CD ended. Jilly hardly noticed. The thriller certainly did deliver the goods. It was a tale of a serial killer who murdered young women in various gruesome ways. He broke in on them late at night—they all lived in isolated houses—and no one heard their terrified screams.
The book was probably a bad choice, in hindsight. One of those books that shouldn’t be read at night, in the dim attic bedroom of a house rumored to be haunted, with the wind howling outside and a view of a dingy curtain with pineapples on it—pineapples that, somehow, had begun to resemble ghostly faces, grinning malevolently.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” Jilly whispered aloud as she marked her place in the book and set it aside for the night. She was safe in a warm bed. No deranged serial killer lurked outside—and if one did, he certainly should be frozen to death by now. The pineapples in the curtain were not evil faces. Mad Mavis was long gone. And Jilly did not believe in ghosts.
But just to be on the safe side, she left the lamp on. She turned away from the light and snuggled down with Missy purring at her back.
Her headache, she realized, was completely gone. She allowed herself a smug little smile. Take that, Will Bravo. No brain damage for this girl. She yawned.
It wasn’t long at all before she drifted off to sleep.
Jilly woke some time later. She was lying on her stomach with her face buried in the pillow.
She lifted her head, blinked, and looked out the window above the bed.
The clouds had cleared. The storm was over. A full moon shone in on her, casting a magical, silvery light through the narrow attic room.
And wait a minute. The lamp was off. Odd. Hadn’t she left it on?
Jilly pushed herself to her knees and brushed her sleep-tangled hair from her eyes. She picked up her watch from the nightstand and peered at it.
Midnight, on the nose.
Jilly
