Beloved Lives Read online

  BELOVED LIVES

  MARILYN J. EVANS

  Copyright © 2017 by Marilyn J. Evans. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, titles, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by TCK Publishing

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  Dedication

  For my friend Mike Nichols, who has taught many classes on the paranormal,

  and for my beloved husband, Jonathan Hutchins.

  Chapter 1. House of Dreams

  In the heart of Kansas City, in the humidity-burdened heat of a glaring summer afternoon, a silver Mercedes crept down a one-way street. The driver studied modest houses to the left and right, searching for the little bungalow he knew so well but had only seen in his waking life three days before. He slowed the car even further, recognizing the house both from his previous visit and from recurring dreams over the past year. Before those dreams there had been others, years of them with a different, older home in the countryside miles from this city. His visit to that house had frustrated him but had led to the clues that finally brought him here, closer than he had been in all his years of dreaming and searching. The visit to the country house had brought him, at last, to the source of his deepest yearnings, his most passionate desire.

  The driver pulled into an empty space between two other vehicles parked along the street, then he arranged his rear-view mirror so he could watch the sidewalk leading to the bungalow. On his first visit, he had tried the doorbell, but it had not worked. He had knocked on the door but could not rouse anyone. Now he waited to see who lived here, who would be coming home to that little house. He finally knew her name, where she worked, and where she lived. He had discovered these things recently, but he still did not know what she looked like. He sat with the engine and air-conditioner off in his slowly warming car, hoping he would not have long to wait.

  Finally, the waiting man saw a young woman, juggling shopping bags, ambling down the street, then turning onto the walk leading to the house. Goose bumps prickled the skin on his arms, and the hair on the back of his neck rose. At last, he saw and knew her.

  Some would describe the woman as petite and slender, but the driver of the Mercedes thought of her as short and skinny, sloppy in the way she dressed, her hair ragged and unkempt, wilted in the summer heat. Of course, how she looked did not matter. She was who she was, and he had finally found her. Among the things he already knew about her, had always known, was that tonight she would have a nightmare, and that her voice would be deep and perhaps a little rough from the screams the nightmare had caused through its many iterations.

  Having made his identification, the driver restarted the car’s engine, prepared to leave the quiet street. As he drove away, he observed the young woman's elderly neighbor standing on her porch and watching him.

  Chapter 2. Naked Is What I Do

  The best thing about living alone, April figured, besides spending all day Sunday naked and not having to share the ice cream, was that you were not disturbing anyone when you woke up screaming night after night.

  She reached for the water bottle beside her bed, sipping to soothe her aching throat, wiping sweat from between her breasts. The dream again, bigger and uglier than ever. It had gone away for a while, for three years, to be exact, the length of time she had been married to Sam.

  "Good old Sam," she muttered, flopping her legs over the side of the bed and standing up to look at herself in the dresser mirror. “You wouldn't know me now.”

  When she married rowdy, carefree, financially-insolvent Sam, she had looked, according to him, like a short version of a lingerie model. This tired, spiky-haired mess bore little resemblance to that woman. She might blame the dreams because it was convenient, but honestly, after the divorce, she had ceased to care how she looked. Lack of sleep, disturbed sleep when she did she get it, eating too little too often, and drinking too much—none of that was helping.

  Maybe if she had stayed married, the dreams wouldn’t have come back. Maybe her subconscious was punishing her for giving up. But giving up what? Honestly, she and Sam were never a good match. His friends hated her. Her friends hated him. They didn’t even like each other much. But there must have been something. The sex was always good. And for some reason, the dreams had gone away.

  A soft brush of fur tickled April's leg.

  "Good morning, Winston. Sorry if I was noisy again last night."

  The huge, black beast that resembled a Shetland pony more than a cat rumbled with a thunderous purr and made another pass at her leg.

  What could she do about the dreams? She wasn’t just going to collapse under them like she had when she was young and they first began. She was older and, she hoped, wiser now. So how did you fight nightmares?

  April sat down on the side of her bed to give it a think. Winston jumped up beside her to help. She once heard that if you changed the ending to bad dreams, you could counteract them. But what was the cure for nightmares you couldn’t remember?

  “No help there,” she said to Winston, rubbing her hand over his silky back.

  A magazine article she had read in a waiting room a while back said exercise could be beneficial when dealing with sleep disorders, so maybe getting back to working out would make a difference. April used to run regularly. She had the T-shirts to prove it, a whole drawer full of them—Zoo runs, the Turkey Trot, the Ground Hog Run that always took place underground in the old limestone quarry. But April hadn't signed up for a 5K race in over four years.

  "Okay, dude. New leaf,” she said to Winston, tickling him under the chin. “We're getting back into shape." It might not be the ultimate cure for everything that ailed her, but it was a good place to start.

  April dug through her dresser to find something that would serve for running clothes and rummaged through the mess in the bottom of her closet for her long-neglected running shoes. Then she searched the dining room and living room until she located Winston's harness and leash.

  For reasons known only to him, Winston loved running beside, in front of, and behind April on those occasions when they had gone out together. People always stopped and stared when the two of them trotted by. As a rule, cats did not run on leashes. But, in all fairness, Winston was too big to be called a cat. Black, devil-beast from hell, perhaps, was more apropos.

  Cat and human walked out the front door of their tiny house. April stopped to breathe in the morning air, thick with humidity and the cloying, sweet scent of the murderous tangle of honeysuckle, April’s arch enemy. Next door, Mrs. Milliflor had just stepped onto her own porch to retrieve her Sunday paper. April waved to her, but there was no point in saying hello. April’s mother would have said the old woman was deaf as a post, but April preferred to think of her as unencumbered by auditory distraction, a valuable asset for a neighbor who lived next door to a night-time screamer.

  April began a slow trot down the street while Winston rushed past her in a pounce, waited until she passed him, then repeated his sprint. She and Winston passed other little houses, where the neighbors were not exactly friendly but likely to know you by sight and nod as you went by. It was a neighborhood where someone might call the police if they s
uspected a break-in but not if the party got too loud—at least, not until around one in the morning. After that, you were just being rude, or you might have passed out, and your guests were taking advantage of you. Either way, calling the cops at that point was the neighborly thing to do.

  “Definitely too long since we ran,” April wheezed.

  Winston seemed undisturbed by the pace, the heat, or the humidity. He did have four legs to April’s two, so maybe that gave him an unfair advantage, she reasoned.

  As they trotted along, she checked out the neighbors’ yards. Volunteer grapevines grew at the edges of properties, remnants of pre-Prohibition vineyards. For the most part, the neighborhood lawns appeared to be neatly mowed and the flower beds tended. Having failed to inherit her mother’s green thumb and limited in what she could do with her tiny yard, April felt comparisons did not go favorably in her direction.

  After an embarrassing performance that was as much walk as run, April and Winston cooled down with a stroll that brought them back to their home. She glared at the mountain of honeysuckle sprawling along her south property line. After a long battle, she’d given up trying to bring it to justice for strangling her boxwood hedge.

  “Vegetation in Missouri is lawless,” she said to Winston.

  The cat did not disagree.

  Back in the coolness of her air-conditioned living room, April removed Winston’s harness and her running gear. Dripping with sweat and virtue, she headed for the shower. She let the water run until the water heater surrendered and delivered only a tepid stream, threatening to become cold. When she finished, she tossed her wet towel on the floor as she left the bathroom. Seconds later, imagining her mother scolding her, she went back and hung the towel on the rack. All virtue, no regrets, nothing to have bad dreams about—that would be her new motto.

  Now clean and shiny in body and spirit, April ambled into the kitchen and poured a controlled portion of kitty cookies into Winston’s food bowl.

  "Sorry, kid, but we're going to be eating healthy from now on. You could stand to lose a few pounds," she said.

  Winston stared at her, making no comment, but April was fairly certain he was plotting his revenge.

  She rummaged through the kitchen in search of something for herself that was not primarily fat, salt, sugar, or some delicious combination of all three. Considerable excavation in the fridge disclosed a container of yogurt that probably would not kill her hiding behind a staggering array of condiments. She could not imagine how she had come into possession of four kinds of mustard. Additional exploration revealed half a box of high fiber cereal pouting from neglect in the back of her kitchen cabinet and commiserating with some dried fruit that might still be pressed into service. She considered for a moment if there was any way to incorporate mustard into her breakfast but decided she wasn't that desperate to make “full use of available resources,” as her father would say.

  By the time April finished eating, it was nearly noon, and someone was pounding on her front door, reminding her yet again that she ought to get her doorbell fixed. She had been forgetting to remember to fix the bell for about two years. Even though she was still naked, April swung open the front door because no one but Trish, her long-time best friend for all eternity, knocked in quite that way.

  “You’re not dressed.” Trish blew into the living room, entirely dressed and perfectly so, as usual.

  No one was supposed to be that tall and that polished, thought April. Or that curvy and coiffed. It was unnatural. Especially on a Sunday morning, or rather, early afternoon.

  “It’s Sunday. Naked is what I do,” April answered. “You want tea or something?”

  “You have to get dressed. We’ve got to buy you something to wear.” Apparently unaware of the contradiction contained in those two statements, Trish headed for the kitchen to help herself to tea, stopping on the way to greet Winston.

  “Hello, handsome. How are you?” Trish bent down and scratched the beast’s ears.

  “And I need something to wear because…?” April asked.

  Trish stood up from scratching Winston without looking at April. “You are not telling me you forgot.”

  “I forgot. What did I forget? Give me hint.”

  When Trish turned on her, April scurried to her bedroom to avoid The Stare. She had known The Stare to terrify wild children into obedience, to make grown men weep, and, in extreme cases, to sear flesh from bone.

  A few minutes later when Trish came into the bedroom with microwaved tea, she tried to prod April’s memory. “Last night. You were drunk.”

  “Okay, that sounds familiar.” April had on her undies and was trying to decide which T-shirt to wear. She liked Zoo Run for the Frogs, but it had holes in it. There was the Zoo Run for the Sumatran Tiger, but the color didn’t do much for her.

  “Only because you’re drunk every Saturday night,” Trish said, sipping her tea.

  “Well, yeah, and then what?” April had settled on the Zoo Run for the Black-Footed Cat.

  “We decided you needed a wardrobe makeover, so you’d have something to wear to the class tonight.”

  “Class?” April had her jeans most of the way up her legs, but stopped to look wild-eyed at Trish. “I'm taking a class?”

  With rising panic, April thought, I'm signed up for a class, and I don’t know anything about it?

  She didn’t have any school supplies and didn’t know when and where the class was. It was like the other nightmares she used to have, not the horrible one, but the embarrassing ones, where she finally realized after many humiliations that she was in class naked. At least being naked didn’t bother her anymore, but she didn’t have a notebook. Or a working pen!

  “For Pete’s sake, girl, calm down. It’s a Communiversity class.”

  April continued to stare at her friend without comprehension.

  Finally, Trish added, “Free university? Well, cheap, anyway. It’s not for credit. Continuing Ed sort of thing, no tests, just for fun.”

  Some of this was sounding more familiar, but April still wasn’t quite making the connection.

  Trish went on. “Class on psychic phenomena? We signed up in the early spring? Thought it would be funny?”

  “Oh.” April sat down on the bed, her jeans still mid-thigh. She took a deep breath. “Oh,” she said again and laughed. “I do vaguely remember. I think our idea was we might meet guys or something.”

  “And now she remembers. Okay. Get your britches on. We have to get you some clothes. You’re an embarrassment to be seen with.”

  Trish took her teacup to the kitchen and rinsed it while April finished pulling herself together.

  Once she had her clothes on and her purse in hand, April blew a kiss to Winston, who pointedly ignored her as she locked her front door and followed her friend to the bungalow’s narrow drive.

  Trish unlocked her microscopic, mouse-gray Fiat, asking as she looked past April up the Sunday-quiet street, “Who's your rich, new neighbor?”

  “What?” April turned to look.

  “Mercedes. Silver. Very posh.”

  The car was parked on the street a few houses up the street from them.

  “No idea. I didn’t notice it when I ran by earlier today,” April said.

  “You ran? Good for you. What brought this on?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” April wasn’t ready to talk about her dream yet. She looked at the silver car again and said, “Some single girls share a house up that way. If traffic is any indication, they have pretty active social lives. Maybe someone is visiting them.”

  “Well, if the someone is as sexy as the car, let me know.”

  Trish folded her considerable height into the Fiat, prepared, if necessary, she had insisted, to do battle with petite shops throughout the city on April’s behalf.

  Chapter 3. Tasty Sandals

  The shopping, they agreed, went better than either of them had a right to expect. April wore hospital scrubs at work and jeans and T-shirts most of the rest o
f the time. Her fashion sense was, as Trish so often opined, beyond dreadful.

  Trish convinced April to try on an off-the-shoulder, gauze tunic that looked pretty good with the black tights, although April thought those made her legs look too skinny. They did agree on the sandals, strappy and sexy but without heels of death-defying height. Finally, Trish consented to break for an early supper.

  “Three outfits in three hours. That’s not bad. I’ll call that a success,” Trish said while they worked their way through black bean burgers at Trish’s favorite vegetarian café.

  “I’m exhausted. Is shopping supposed to be such hard work?” April asked, ignoring Trish’s grab for her sweet potato fries. “Besides, I didn’t sleep all that well.”

  Trish looked at her sideways, swallowing a stolen fry. “Are they back?”

  Trish had been April’s best friend since before high school and was one of the few people besides her parents who knew about the nightmares.

  “Yeah. Off and on since the divorce was final.”

  “And you still can’t remember them when you wake up?”

  “Nope. But this time, it seemed like I almost might. Like they’re, I don’t know, getting closer or something.”

  April stared at her food without really seeing it. There had to be a reason for the dreams. Why did they come, and why had they gone away? And why were they back now?

  “I’m sorry, girl.” Trish squeezed April’s hand. “Did you ever see that shrink?”

  “No. Since the dreams went away after Sam and I got together, I didn’t bother.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time to rethink.” Trish glanced at her watch and said, “Yikes! Look at the time. We’ve got to get ready for class.”

  “I thought it didn’t start until six.” April began gathering up her loot.

  “Makeup, hair, what are you even thinking?” She looked at April with pity. “We are not going to have enough time.”