Charon's Crossing

"I agree. I don't quite understand it, but... Perhaps she's become ill. Perhaps she has a history of illness."

"Don't you know?" Hiram said sternly. "Goodness sakes, man, you're her lawyer!"

"I was her father's lawyer. There's a difference. He didn't tell me anything about the girl, except that he thought she, of all the people he knew, would benefit the most from inheriting that bloody pile of stone."

Hiram snorted. "Man must have been crazy. Elvira's great-grandma was alive when we got married. Old lady spooked the life out of everybody on this island, talkin' of things she'd seen out at Charon's Crossin'."

"Oh, don't let's get back to that," Amos said impatiently. "Whatever that girl's difficulty is, it has nothing to do with ghosts."

"What, then? Why would she buy all that stuff, make out as if she was laughin' and talkin' with somebody, if she hadn't seen somethin' nobody else could see?"

"How would I know?" Amos said with sharp impatience and started the car again. "I'm an attorney, not a psychiatrist."

"You think that's what she needs? A head doctor?"

"I think she needs to get off the island and back into her own life. And she will do exactly that next week, when she flies to Florida to meet her young man and they return to New York together."

"I agree," Hiram said with an emphatic nod of his head.

Amos nodded, too, and let out the clutch. "Just another week," he said, "and then Miss Kathryn Russell will be gone."

He stepped hard on the gas, and the car shot out the open gates that marked the boundaries of Charon's Crossing.

* * *

Long after the dust of the car's passing had cleared, Matthew was still standing inside the gates, his hands wrapped tightly around the bars, his eyes fixed sightlessly on the distant horizon.

Chapter 19

"Those interfering old men!" Kathryn, standing at the kitchen sink, up to her elbows in hot, soapy water, glared at Matthew while a kettle boiled on the stove. "Get down the rest of those glasses, will you please?"

Matthew eyed the shiny array of glassware, dishes, pots and pans and assorted odds and ends that lined virtually every surface in the kitchen. Kathryn had been scrubbing and polishing since dawn and from what he could tell, she showed no signs of stopping.

"Kathryn," he said gently, "this is foolish. There isn't any reason to be so angry."

"Angry? Do I look angry?" She plucked a wine goblet from his hand, glowered at it as if it were the enemy, then plunged it into the water, "I am not angry. I don't know where you got that idea."

"They meant well. Surely, you know that."

"Ha!"

"It is true. The both of them are worried about you."

Kathryn jerked another glass from his hand and submerged it in the water.

"Amos was so worried that he took off wit

hout so much as a by-your-leave within days of my arriving on this island." The water roiled as she swished the glass through it. "And Hiram was so worried that he put me dead last on his list of people who had jobs that needed doing."

"Kathryn, sweetheart—"

"Jason's another one," she said furiously. "You should have heard him this afternoon!"

"This afternoon? You spoke with him today?"

"I called him while you were reading." Kathryn plucked a goblet from the soapy water, rinsed it off, and set it into the dish drainer. " 'Jason,' I said, 'I'm really sorry to tell you this over the telephone but there's no other way.' " She looked at Matthew, her eyes snapping. "I'd expected him to be upset, I guess, even angry, although he must have suspected I was going to break things off after the way things went when he was here, but—"

"You ended your engagement?"