The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

Through my moment of contemplation, she did not survey the house.

Instead, she kept her attention solely on me.

This was unnerving due to the fact the reason for this was not because I was famous. However, it wasn’t unexpected, and this was also not because I was used to it because I was famous.

The person who had lived and died in the house had been there decades before Celeste was even born. She’d probably known him since her first memories.

His space would not be a mystery.

But I was.

I came to stand in front of the bookshelves.

“Those,” I indicated the smallish, square book boxes stacked six high, four across and three deep, “are my books. These,” I indicated the four larger boxes on the floor behind me, “are the bits and bobs I’d like placed in among the books. The books were packed in order and the movers placed them so the first ones to be unpacked will be the ones on the end. That one there,” I pointed to a box at the top of a pile, “is labeled one. If you can start there and load them on the shelf up here,” I indicated the space atop the first shelf, “I’ll unpack these.”

“Okay,” she replied, turning instantly to the box.

As she did, I wondered if I should give her a knife.

Being in my home, she’d lost the Girl in the Mist aura, and some of her vulnerability seemed to eke away.

That said, make no mistake, she did not seem normal.

She was extraordinarily stunning with the perfectly symmetrical features of a classic beauty, also tall and slender, with fine bones and thick, glossy hair.

But somewhere along the way, this sixteen-year-old had lost something of great value and great importance.

Something as integral to her as breathing.

I knew this because, whatever it was, was unhidden. It was sitting under every expression on her face, infused in every movement she made.

“There’s a letter opener on the bar,” I shared.

She was gazing at the boxes, but at my words, she turned only her head to me and nodded.

And with the grace carried only by one of youth holding such beauty, she floated to the bar.

I watched her, and when she was back at the box slicing it open, I moved to where I’d left the box cutter to start my own chore.

We worked in awkward silence for ten minutes, me attempting to get through the wall of gloom that clung to her so I could further my bead on her. She was more than likely intimidated and definitely introverted.

Therefore, I thought it strange it was Celeste who broke our silence.

“Mr. Nance took good care of this place.”

“It seems he did,” I agreed, uncovering my Emmy from bubble wrap. For the first time when handling it I wondered why I didn’t donate it, and the other two, to the small museum devoted to me that had sprung up about fifteen years ago in my hometown. “The inspector was impressed.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, placing books on a shelf with the care one would use to place a bust by Houdon. “Dad figured you’d be sure to look into that. But, you know, just so you know…”

She was finished with her first box, not to mention she’d apparently exhausted her only conversational gambit. She looked directly at me again, lifting the empty box.

“Do you want these broken down?”

I nodded. “Please.”

“Where do you want me to put them?”

I was stacking them in the mudroom.

There wasn’t much to see in the house that was unpacked, but I didn’t want her wandering when I was occupied somewhere else.

It was, it’s important to repeat, not about Celeste or any feeling I was getting from her that she was a problem or that I was in any danger from her.

Privacy, I’d also repeat, was important to me.

It was something else, though.

I was feeling odd because I didn’t know what I was getting from her.

I just knew it was not good, even if I didn’t know how it wasn’t.

“I’m stacking them in the mud room. But just set them on the floor against the end of the bar. We’ll take them to the mudroom when we have a bunch to go.”

She did as told.

And as she’d pulled out of the gate, she found it in herself to share even more.

“The senior project last year was headed by this do-gooder, Malorie. She’s in college now. She was kind of a pain. And everyone thought she was also kind of crazy. But the project was so good, people still use it. And at the end of last summer, before she went off to school, the town council gave her a big award.”

She came back my way, and again I got those eyes.

They were, incidentally, wide, lushly lashed and a deep blue.

They were also innocence mixed with injury, a vision no person was comfortable with and no mother on the planet could endure.