But getting too close to her was dangerous for him.
“You didn’t answer me earlier, Caleb,” Madelyn said. “What were you doing at Cissy’s grave?” Suspicion flared in her eyes. “Do you have some kind of psychic ability that you didn’t mention? Is that why you believed Sara? Could you see inside the grave?”
Irritated that she’d caught him when he’d had no intention of revealing his personal visions, he hesitated. Telling her meant opening himself up to scrutiny.
His grandfather’s image flashed in his mind. White Feather, a shaman, a man with strong faith and belief in the Cherokee customs, in the healing power of herbs and the earth. And in the healing power of love.
He’d also believed in Caleb, in his visions, because his grandfather simply believed that he was special.
But if he had been so damn special, why hadn’t he foreseen the shooter that horrible day?
“Caleb, I’m not going to judge. I saw you with Sara, the look on your face. She trusted you and her trust doesn’t come easily.” Madelyn laid her palm against his cheek, stirring primal instincts and needs that had lain dormant too long. “Just tell me the truth,” she said softly.
His gaze met hers, and something sweet and frightening and sensual rippled between them, a connection he’d never felt, not even with Mara.
Because he had never shared the truth about himself with her. He had tried to be a man she’d approve of. A hard worker, a provider. They’d married because they both wanted to raise a family without the stigma of a mixed race.
But this sensual connection, this drive to be near Madelyn, was foreign and disturbing and heated his blood.
Arousing him.
Arousal and lust had no place in an investigation.
Self-loathing filled him. They were at a graveyard, for God’s sake. And Madelyn was inquiring about his gift and how it might impact this case. Not because she was remotely interested in him personally.
“Sometimes I sense things,” he said quietly, watching her for a reaction. “It’s not an ability I can control or call upon at will. It just…happens.”
Her expression softened. “That’s the reason you believed Sara? You sensed something when you shook her hand?”
“Yes, I believe that Sara is special,” he said by way of an answer. He jammed his hands in his pockets, ignoring the whistle of the wind bringing cries of the dead from the graves. He had to focus on one case here and that was the Andrews child. The other lost spirits would have to find another medium to hear their pleas.
Madelyn shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Leaves fluttered down from the trees, scattering amongst the markers, adding bold reds, yellows, and oranges to the brittle, brown grass.
Madelyn cleared her throat as if summoning courage. “What did you see when you touched the grave?”
His former vision flashed back. But he wasn’t certain it was a vision at all. A world of darkness spun around him, that long empty pit clawing at him.
Madelyn clutched his arm. “Caleb, tell me the truth. Please.”
“I didn’t see anything,” he said gruffly. “It was just dark and…I felt an emptiness. I…can’t explain it. Sometimes my senses, my visions aren’t correct. Sometimes they don’t even make sense.”
The heartbeat of silence while Madelyn stared at him felt like an eternity. “Just don’t lie to me,” she said. “I may seem like a fragile woman to you, but I can handle whatever happens.”
Caleb’s hearing suddenly seemed more acute. He could hear the scene behind him, the voices of the sheriff and funeral workers. Twigs snapped in the wind, leaves rustled, the shovel crunched dry dirt….
“How long has Sara had these nightmares about Cissy?” he asked.
Madelyn sighed, the weary sound of a worried mother. “I told you, the past two months, ever since we moved back to Sanctuary.”
“But you said she talked about her twin before?”
Madelyn nodded. “At eighteen months, she started acting as if she was playing with her. Even now, when she has tea parties, she sets a place for Cissy. When she colors, she draws Cissy and those sunflowers. When she plays on the seesaw, Cissy is always on the other end.”
Her voice broke, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to regain control, then forged ahead as if she needed to share her story. “When she was a baby, she’d lay on her side and giggle and reach out as if someone was there.”
Caleb’s mind raced to paranormal research he’d done. “Parapsychologists believe that children can see ghosts when they’re babies. They have a connection then, but once their innocence is lost and society trains them, they no longer believe, so the spirits don’t appear to them anymore.”
Madelyn chewed her bottom lip. “I read that, too. But Sara never lost that ability. In fact, her connection only seemed to grow stronger. Last year she started insisting that Cissy was alive, telling me stories about things she did, places she went. That’s when I got really worried.”
Caleb heard the pain in her voice. “When you consulted the shrinks?”
“Yes.” The wind swept Madelyn’s hair into her face, and she tucked it back with her fingers. “Sara seems so certain that her dreams are real, that her sister is alive, that I started to believe her.” Her shoulders fell. “Maybe because I really wanted to so badly.”
“That’s understandable.” Caleb ached to touch her, to soothe the torment in her voice, but the only way to help Madelyn was to uncover the truth.
If Sara was right, then her sister had been kidnapped and adopted by another family, she might be in danger…. And if she was wrong, Sara’s visions might be ESP—or she might have some form of mental illness.
Or she might be communing with a dead girl….
A noise down the hill jarred him, and he jerked his head toward the gravesite. Sheriff Gray had stepped outside the tent and was motioning for him.
“Walker, we’re ready,” Gray shouted.
Madelyn’s legs buckled, and he caught her around the waist. “Sit down on that bench by the fountain. Let me see what they found.”
Too weak to argue, she nodded and allowed him to guide her to the bench. His heart climbed into his throat as he left her small form hunched inside her coat, shivering on that cold, stone slab.
But he squared his shoulders, determined to end the questions in her mind. It was the only way she and her daughter could find closure and move on.
Clenching his jaw, he raced down the hill and stepped inside the tent beside Amanda. The mood was somber, reverent, racked with tension and dread.
Slowly the E.H. Officer opened the casket.
Caleb braced himself but shock still ripped through him.
The casket was empty.
MADELYN TWISTED HER HANDS together, willing herself to remain calm as she waited. But every second that ticked by felt like someone was pulling out her fingernails one by one. The sound of a car motor drew her gaze back to the parking lot, and she saw an elderly man exit a sedan and hobble toward a grave near the church. Probably his wife’s.
Poor man. How long had they been married before he’d lost her?
She’d thought she and Tim would grow old together, not that he would abandon her and Sara when they needed him most.
Bitterness threatened but she tamped it down. She’d long ago vowed not to indulge herself in that emotion for fear Sara would pick up on it.
She never wanted her daughter to know the truth about her father.
Voices