Ellie looked at her fellow maid blankly for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. They found some old bones in one of the gardens."
Alison was clearly disappointed that she couldn't be the bearer of dramatic news, but nevertheless managed to make her whisper theatrical.
"It was a kid. A little boy, I heard. They found his watch buried with him."
Wrapped up in her own worries and problems, Ellie said, "Bad luck for him."
"But, Ellie, they're saying he was murdered."
"They're also saying it was years ago," Ellie pointed out.
"But aren't you afraid?"
"Why should I be?"
Alison appeared at a loss, but only for a moment. "There could be a murderer here at The Lodge."
"Yeah, and he could be long gone. Probably is. Why stick around and let himself get caught?"
With a visible shiver, Alison said, "Well, I'm scared."
"Be careful, then. Stay inside The Lodge. If you have to go out alone, don't wander off the paths."
"You're really not afraid, are you?"
"I'm really not." Not about that, at any rate. Some faceless killer that was maybe still hanging around years after his crime couldn't hold a candle to the very real worries gnawing at Ellie.
A baby.
I can't raise a baby. Not all by myself. I can't have an abortion. What else is there?
"You're so brave," Alison said admiringly.
"If you say so." Ellie drained her cup, hoping it would settle her jumpy stomach, and pushed back her chair. "Fifteen minutes before we're supposed to start work. I'm going out to get some air first. I'll meet you in the supply room."
Alison nodded, but absently, her gaze already directed across the room to another maid who might not have heard about last night's discovery.
Ellie got up, making a show of looking at her watch for the benefit of Mrs. Kincaid. A show of pausing, considering, deciding she had time. Then she left the dining room, moving briskly, someone with a specific place to go.
The staff dining room was in the lower levels of the South Wing, along with the kitchens and other maintenance areas. Also in that wing were the very few small suites reserved for those comparatively few employees on the housekeeping staff who lived as well as worked in The Lodge.
Ellie occupied one of those, at least for now. But not once everybody knew about the baby. When that happened, she'd be out on her ass. Mrs. Kincaid was hard-nosed about that sort of thing. An unmarried maid turning up pregnant? No, she wouldn't have it. Not at The Lodge. So Ellie would be lucky to get a week's pay and half an hour to pack her stuff and get out. No job, no home. And no one who gave a shit what happened to her.
She didn't go to her suite. Instead, she stepped out one of the service entrances to stand on the small concrete porch. A metal pail half filled with cigarette-littered sand stood more or less behind the door, mute testimony to the usual reason employees lingered in the area.
But there was no one here now, and when Ellie glanced around warily, she didn't see a sign of anyone in the area. She reached into the skirt pocket of her uniform and pulled out her cell phone. And a slip of paper with a phone number printed in shaky handwriting.
It hadn't been easy to get, this number. Contact information on the guests — the special guests — was kept in a locked file drawer in the manager's desk. Everybody knew that. Well, everybody as curious as Ellie and who had reason to wonder about those secretive VIPs. Good reason.
Ever since that first pregnancy test had been positive, Ellie had spent way too much free time lurking outside the manager's office. It was one reason Mrs. Kincaid was watching her so closely now, because there was no good reason for her to have been in the administrative section of the hotel except in passing.
She had passed through a lot. Luckily, she'd gotten her chance before Mrs. Kincaid became too suspicious. And her luck had held when Ms. Boyd had left her office door closed but not locked.
The file drawer had been locked, but desperation and panic had apparently lent Ellie magic fingers, because the metal nail file she tried had actually unlocked the thing.
And without telltale damage. She hoped.
Ellie wasted another precious minute wondering if that miracle heralded a change in her luck, then drew a deep breath and carefully placed the call.
She got his voice mail, which she'd been counting on, and left the careful message she had rehearsed half the night.
"Hey, it's Ellie. From The Lodge? I'm sorry to call you like this — I know I promised not to get in touch. But something's happened and I really need to talk to you. I don't want to make trouble, honest. But this is something you should know. So if you could call me back? Please?"
She didn't bother to recite her cell number, since she knew his would record it automatically along with her message. Instead, she merely added, "It's important. Thanks." And ended the call.
There. The ball was in his court.
All she could do now was wait.
"I don't blame them for not believing me," Diana said as she and Quentin stood watching Nate McDaniel, Cullen Ruppe, and Stephanie Boyd form a clearly tense huddle in front of the tack room. Ruppe was arguing angrily against the invasion of his domain, Nate was arguing for a search he couldn't legally justify or present any rational reasoning behind, and the manager of The Lodge was clearly annoyed and frustrated by the entire situation.
With a sigh, Diana added, "In the sane light of day, I don't really believe it myself."
Quentin was hardly surprised by that. As dramatic as her ghostly encounters had been thus far, he knew very well that she was struggling to overcome a lifetime of conditioning. Such radical shifts in thinking were seldom quick or easy turns.
"There's a difference, though," he said to her. "This time, you remember what happened. Right?"
"If it happened. It all seems like a dream now. And maybe it was. Maybe I was just walking in my sleep."
Instead of arguing with her, Quentin asked, "Did it feel like that? Like a dream? Or did it feel like you were someplace you'd visited before?"
She was silent.
"Diana?"
"Dreams feel that way sometimes, we both know that. Familiar even when they seem... different from most dreams."
"Were there shadows?"
That surprised Diana, and she looked up at him. "What?"
"Were there shadows?" His tone was steady, his gaze holding hers. "If there's any light at all in this world, there are also shadows. Even in the darkness, there are shadows, areas of deeper black. There's depth, dimension. It's one of the qualities we associate with our world. With its substance, its reality. Did you feel and see that last night? Were there shadows?"
Diana dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her light wind-breaker, wondering if she would ever feel warm again. The sun was up now, the air warming. That should have made a difference, she thought. She wondered why it didn't.
And she wondered how he could possibly know about the lack of shadows in the gray time. Had she told him? She didn't remember that.
He was waiting patiently, and finally she heard herself answer him. "No. No shadows. No dimension. No darkness, no light. Just gray."
"Where you were alone with Rebecca."
"It could have been a dream."
"It was real, Diana. A real place, apart from this one. Even if you don't want to admit it, somewhere deep inside yourself you have to know that." Without waiting for her to respond, he added thoughtfully, "You've obviously been there many times before. I wonder why you've remembered this time?"
"Because the drugs aren't in my system anymore." She grimaced slightly, wishing she hadn't answered that.