nessamarie03@hotmail.com
Love Me Tender
CHAPTER ONE
Her father thought it was a bad idea.
His exact words were, "What in the hell are you expecting to find in Harmony, Sheridan? It's only a nightmare. A nightmare."
She was on her private jet, on her private phone, filing her niles while she spoke to him. But she put the file down and shot back, "I want to know why this has been haunting me. It's not your concern, why do you care?"
"It is my concern. You put your career on hold to go on some wild goose chase. How long is this going to continue, Sheridan? When are you going to get some sense in your head?"
"Don't pretend that you care what I do with my life, Father," Sheridan muttered, picking up the file again.
His voice became tight. "That was out of line, Sheridan."
Sheridan sighed. "Good-bye, Father." She hung up just as the jet landed, and when she stepped off, Prada bag in one hand and Chanel sunglasses in the other, looking every bit the movie star, she curled her lip and gazed around in disgust.
Her personal maid stepped off behind her carrying two Fendi suitcases.
"I can't believe I used to live here," Sheridan remarked. "Look at this town. It's the size of a store in Paris. Milly, can you please take this?" She shoved her sunglasses into her bag and piled it on top of the suitcases that the very offended Milly was carrying. "Oh, don't give me that look," she said dismissively. Then, "Where's our limo?"
They didn't have to wait very long. A sleek black limousine pulled up two seconds later, and Sheridan sighed with relief and climbed inside while the driver got out and took Sheridan's bags from Milly. Then they were on their way, but Sheridan had the driver stop before they reached the mansion.
"I want a coffee," she explained, hopping out before anyone could reply. But she knocked on Milly's window a second later, smiled brightly and asked, "Milly, where's my purse?"
The disgruntled maid handed it over and rolled up her window without saying a word.
The Book Café was a cozy little shop unlike anything Sheridan had ever seen before. It wasn't cozy in the really classy way, nothing she would have chosen to go to personally, but it was inviting and warm. It reminded her of the more common people she knew, and she imagined it as sort of a grandmother's living-room. A middle-class grandmother's living-room.
The woman behind the counter was about her age, petite with brown hair, pouty lips, and big eyes. She had an open, friendly face, and was smiling at a man who was talking to her at the counter. A very big, broad-shouldered man.
Sheridan approached the counter. "Could I get a latté?" she asked absentmindedly, uncaring of the fact that she had just interrupted their conversation, and began digging in her purse for some cash but pulled out a credit card instead. "Do you take credit?" she asked before the woman could answer her first question.
She looked up when she didn't get an immediate reply and found the woman staring at her like she was some sort of alien. "Hello? Can you talk?" Sheridan demanded impatiently.
"Y-Yes, I can talk." Her voice started off weak, but got stronger with anger that was very noticeable. "No, we don't have lattés, and yes, we take credit. But as you can probably see, I was in the middle of taking care of a customer, so could you please wait your turn?"
Sheridan looked between the man and the woman -- whose nametag read Beth -- completely shocked at what had just happened. "Excuse me," she interrupted them for the second time. "I don't think you know who I am!"
Beth sighed and looked at her. "I don't think it matters who you are. When you're in my store, you're going to treat my customers with respect, or you're going to leave."
Sheridan's cheeks felt hot, and she was sure that she had turned completely red. "I'm in a hurry. Could I just get a muffin and go?" She grated this last bit out, and held out her credit card, staring at Beth pointedly.
"I don't think you understood me the first time. I'm in the middle of taking care of this customer. You can either wait, or leave." She turned back to the man, who had a sort of shocked smile on his face, and said, "Will there be anything else today, Luis?"
Luis glanced at Sheridan, who was staring at him open-mouthed. "Yes, I think I'll have that last muffin please, Beth."
Fuming, Sheridan stormed off and slammed her way into the limo. "Let's just go," she snapped at the driver, who raised his eyebrows, but started the engine and pulled away, no questions asked.
*****
It was like she last remembered it: Big, fancy, and clean. Not a thing was out of place, and you would never know that this mansion hadn't been used for nearly eleven years -- not unless you looked in the closets and bureaus upstairs, which were empty of clothes or any personal effects. She told Milly to bring her stuff into the master bedroom while she explored, and the first place she went was that hallway. The one that stopped at the spiraling staircase that led up to the attic. When she reached the staircase, with its shiny oak banister, she gazed upward toward the attic and felt a chill come over her. But she brushed that aside, stiffened her spine, and started up.
The attic was the only place in the house that was dusty, and she resolved to tell her father that whoever was cleaning this place wasn't doing a very thorough job. They could have important things in this attic that were covered in years of dust!
But as of right now, all that mattered was the fact that she was finally going to face her demons.
So she stopped and gazed around, and was drawn towards a large stained glass window, which she stared at with some interest. It was a picture of a little girl holding a rose, smiling. For some reason, the window seemed out of place in the attic, like it hadn't always been there -- or it hadn't always been that particular window. She shook her head and turned away from the window, flashes of her dream rushing back to her, pictures of the girl whose face she could never really make out looming in her mind.
Her eyes came to rest on a box full of photo albums, and she made her way over to it -- which had nothing to do with her dream and everything to do with the fact that she had only one faded photograph of her mother. Her mother had died when she was very young, and Sheridan could hardly remember a thing about her. She knew that her mother was beautiful, and that she had inherited her mother's sparkling blue eyes, but that was about it.
So she sat cross-legged digging through the photo albums for what seemed like forever, setting aside every picture of her beautiful mother that she could find. At last she reached the final album, and this one was the most interesting of them all. It held only one picture, of someone that she knew wasn't part of her family. A preteen girl with long brown hair, big eyes, and a delicate nose. Very pretty and sweet-looking, staring out from the photograph with those innocent eyes. Sheridan wondered for a moment about this girl, but then put the album back in the box carefully and scooped up the pictures of her mother.
By the time she had reached the bottom of that spiraling staircase, the girl was forgotten.
*****
She hardly knew a soul in town, having been gone from Harmony most of her life. She decided after a few hours of sitting around, doing nothing, that this had to be the most boring place in the world. And at last she started to wonder why she had come back at all.
Sure, the dreams that she had were disturbing. They had ruined her childhood, and if she let them, they could ruin her adult life. But her father had been right -- what did she expect, coming back to Harmony? What would she find here that she couldn't find in Paris?
The dreams did take place in the mansion, but they were only dreams.... Sometimes they seemed much more real than that, though. Like someone was trying to speak to her, to tell her something.
She shook her head. Ridiculous thoughts. She was losing it.
She wandered the grounds late that afternoon and stopped in front of the cottage, remembering the cat that was buried behind it, and she smiled a little bit. Little girls had so much faith in the world. It was crime that they all had to grow up and realize that dreams don't always come true, and you can't trust everybody.
She approached the cottage door, but stopped when she realized it was slightly ajar. The frame had been broken. Someone had broken into the cottage!
Without even glancing inside, Sheridan ran back to the mansion and breathlessly told Milly to get the police on the phone. After her heart stopped pounding, she spoke briefly with the dispatcher, who assured her that an officer would be there as soon as possible. Every minute seemed to last a lifetime, and after an agonizing amount of time, she finally saw a cruiser pull into the driveway.
She ran out to greet the officer, who was turned away from her at the moment. "Oh, thank God, I didn't even look inside! Someone could still be in there! You see this mansion has been empty for about eleven years now, we have people come in to...to...to..." She trailed off when he finally turned and she recognized his face.
It was Luis, from the Book Café.
Sheridan took a deep breath and shook her head.
It figured.
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