Page 18 of The Unseen

Nicole pushed men away. She didn’t trust them or her own feelings.

Rachel thought of Francois and her unexpected feelings for him, and a lump formed in her throat. There had been no sign of his presence since that day in the cemetery. It was insane to wish a ghost would visit her again.

She exchanged hugs with Nicole, and Lucas bent and kissed her cheek.

“Supper in a few minutes,” he said, stirring a skillet full of sauce with a wooden spoon. “How about a glass of Chianti?”

“Yes, that sounds good.” She didn’t drink much, but an occasional glass of wine helped her relax, and she certainly needed to relax tonight. Lucas poured all three of them a glass, and Rachel wandered into the living room.

She went dead still at the fully formed face in Nicole’s dark painting. Somehow, she had known he would be very handsome. With his electric blue eyes and high cheekbones, this man was beyond good-looking. He was beautiful. Like a dark-haired Renaissance angel.

She reached out to touch him, trying not to think of the intimacy that had passed between them. She was older than he was. Perhaps he no longer desired her.

She forced the thought away. She was daydreaming about a ghost, not a live human being. The aroma of spaghetti sauce drew her back to the kitchen.

“The sauce is simmering,” Nicole said. “We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s go sit down. There’s something you need to hear.”

More bad news? Rachel thought. Bracing herself, she returned to the living room and they all sat down.

“The sheriff was here about a week ago,” Nicole began.

“Sheriff Loewen?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“He came to tell me about the skeletal remains of a man that were found off Creek Road, near Bayou Sara.” She told Rachel the age of the bones and other clues.

Combined with what Rachel had said about the writing on the tombstone in the cemetery, and the face in the painting, the discovery seemed to suggest the bones could belong to Francois.

Rachel’s throat closed up. The thought of the beautiful man in the painting, abandoned and left to rot in a wooden box buried in the middle of nowhere, made her whole body ache. Rachel made a keening sound and bent over to block a sudden surge of pain.

Nicole sat down beside her and slid an arm around her waist. “If it’s him, we’re going to fix it.” She turned. “Right, Lucas?”

Lucas crouched on the floor in front of Rachel, reached over, and took hold of her icy hand.

“There’s a good chance that finding the bones set all of this in motion.

If it’s Francois, he’s here for a reason.

We’re going to figure out what that reason is and help him find his way to where he’s supposed to be. ”

Tears burned Rachel’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. “You can do that?”

“No, but it looks as if he’s reaching out to you. If he’s chosen you, once we have the information we need, you may be the one who can help him get on with his journey.”

Rachel made no reply. How could she tell Lucas or anyone else that she didn’t want Francois to leave?

“I’ll do whatever I can,” she said, fighting down the terrible grief she was feeling inside.

“What would you think about digging up the grave in the cemetery with Francois’s headstone on it?” Nicole asked. “You don’t think he’s in there. I think we need to be sure.”

“I … I don’t know. Wouldn’t we need some kind of permission?”

“Technically, we’d have to convince the sheriff’s department to get a warrant to exhume the body,” Lucas said. “That might take a while.”

“If Villard finds out what we’re doing,” Nicole said, “he’ll likely do everything in his power to stop us. He’ll do anything to cause us trouble.”

Rachel straightened on the sofa. “We can’t let him succeed. We need to dig up the grave and see what’s inside.” But Rachel already knew what they would find. Francois had told her he wasn’t there.

Lucas started nodding. “Let’s do some research, see what we can find out. If the grave is empty, we try to find out what happened to Francois.”

“Find out why he ended up in a wooden box in the middle of nowhere,” Nicole added.

Rachel made a sound of despair in her throat. The pain was back. She didn’t want to think about what might have occurred.

“We’ll find out what happened,” Lucas said gently. “And then we can help him go on to where he’s supposed to be.”

“When are we going to do it?” Rachel looked at her niece.

“The sooner, the better,” Nicole said.

Rachel nodded, took a deep breath, and pasted on a smile she didn’t feel. “All right, now that all that’s settled, I’m getting hungry. How’s supper coming?”

Lucas squeezed her hand as he rose to his feet. “Almost ready. I hope you like spaghetti.”

“I love it.” If she could manage to swallow a bite of Lucas’s delicious-smelling meal.

“I’ll go get Sean,” Nicole said. “Maybe you could help Lucas dish up the plates.”

“Of course,” Rachel said, grateful the painful conversation was over, anxious to finish supper and get back to the house.

Praying Francois would come to her again.

If only in her dreams.