Beneath a Beating Heart Read online

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Liz swallowed and forced her hold to remain on the mirror, image, angry shout, and all. “I can see you,” she whispered. “And hear you.”

  “I can see and hear you, too,” the voice said.

  She let go of the mirror and waited a full minute, at least it felt that long. Her heart had certainly raced through sixty beats. “Can you hear me now?”

  When nothing but a hum sounded, she grasped the mirror again.

  “You,” was the only word she heard.

  “Could you see me, hear me, when I wasn’t touching the mirror?”

  “I just told you, yes.”

  The reflection in the mirror grew clearer, and despite the frown pulling his brows tight above the bridge of his nose, his eyes weren’t inhospitable.

  A friendly ghost? She could hope.

  She glanced up, trying to figure out where he was standing, where his head might be. There was no way to know how tall he was, and it seemed odd to talk to thin air, so maybe the mirror was better. She looked back at the reflection. “I can only see and hear you when I’m holding the mirror.”

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

  She searched for an answer, but her thoughts stopped as a complete head to toe man gradually appeared directly in front of her.

  “Holy shit.” Her hand slipped from the mirror.

  The man disappeared.

  She grabbed the mirror again and held her breath, hoping, praying. Slowly, he reappeared. Completely. Head to toe. Standing right before her.

  All of him, not just a reflection in the mirror.

  Her heart thudded so hard it affected her breathing. Gasping slightly, she repeated, “Holy shit.”

  He was dressed in turn of the century clothing like she’d seen hanging in the elaborately carved free-standing wardrobe closet, complete with boots and a dusty hat. The little lines at the corners of his dark brown eyes said he was older than she originally thought, and he was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had, for this couldn’t be Rance Livingston. He’d been in his eighties when he died. She was a terrible guesser of age but went with late twenties, early thirties for her ghost.

  Her ghost. She pressed her free hand to the fluttering in her stomach. She was standing next to a ghost. A real live ghost. Or a real dead one—however it worked. And all she could do was guess his age? How crazy was that? How crazy is this?

  Dang, he even had whiskers. Well, the shadow of them. He was handsome for a ghost. That thought caused her heart to skip a beat as a unique vibration shot through her.

  Ignoring it and stopping her appraisal before it went any lower—again—than the unbuttoned top of his shirt, she released the mirror to test her theory one last time.

  He completely disappeared. Instantly. No fading. No lingering mist.

  “Wow,” she whispered. “This is mind-boggling.”

  The hum echoed again, and Liz took a hold of the handle. He was back. And frowning. Questioning one more thing, she said, “Let go of the mirror.”

  “Why? So you can steal it?”

  “No.” The warmth of a blush covered her cheeks. “So I can see something. Let go.”

  “What? See what?”

  “Just let go,” she insisted.

  He disappeared, and the mirror grew slightly heavier as the other end of it tipped downward. She tightened her hold to keep from dropping it. Small, the mirror wasn’t heavy, but the added weight was enough to say he’d been holding it up, along with her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Take a hold of the mirror again.”

  No hum sounded. No image appeared.

  The hair on her arms and neck stood again. “Hello? Are you there? You can take a hold of the mirror again.”

  Nothing.

  No image. No hum.

  Had she imagined it all?

  Surely not.

  Her imagination wasn’t that good.

  She glanced around, searching to see if anything moved, floated. Turning back to the mirror, she looked into the glass, seeing only her own reflection.

  She wobbled the mirror.

  Nothing.

  “Damn.”

  The mirror jiggled at the same time “Boo!” resounded in her ears and the image suddenly appeared.

  Screeching, she dropped the handle.

  Once she caught her breath and was assured her heart was still in her chest, she grabbed the handle floating before her. “That wasn’t funny.”

  “I thought it was,” he said, laughing.

  She completely lost her breath all over again, this time because of his laughter, how young and alive it made him look. As his laughter died, she regained her ability to breathe while watching as a slightly lopsided grin settled on his lips.

  Leave it to her to find a ghost with a sense of humor.

  “You must love Halloween,” she said.

  “Not really.”

  “Don’t get many trick or treaters, do you?” Without waiting for his response, she shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m talking to a ghost.”

  He frowned and shook his head. “A ghost?”

  “Yes, you’re a ghost.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. That’s why I can only see you, hear you, when I’m holding the mirror. That’s odd, even for a ghost, I guess. But it’s true, you’re a ghost.”

  His frown had deepened, and his head tilted slightly as if pondering what she’d said completely.

  After a few stilled moments, he shook his head. “You aren’t seeing a ghost,” he said. “I am.”

  “Nope,” she insisted. “You’re the ghost.”

  “I beg to differ. I’m very much alive.”

  “So am I.”

  “Oh, how I wish you were.” Sadness filled his eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  A tenderness ballooned around her heart, as unique and foreign as talking to a ghost was. “You can’t have missed me,” she said softly. “We’ve never met before.”

  Misery seemed to consume his entire face. “So you don’t remember me?”

  “Remember you?” The urge to take his hand struck her. Not only was that very unusual for her, it was impossible. She settled for shaking her head. “How could I remember you? I don’t even know your name.”

  His eyes practically bore holes into hers for several long moments. He sighed then, a heavy, almost heart-wrenching sigh. “It’s Rance. Rance Livingston.”

  “You can’t be Rance Livingston,” she said. “You’re too young.” Or could ghosts choose what age they wanted to be?

  “Too young?”

  “Yes, you died in nineteen sixty-six.”

  The weight of the mirror increased as he disappeared, and her heart stopped. “Don’t, please! Please don’t let go of the mirror.”

  He reappeared. “Nineteen sixty-six? That’s sixty-five years from now. I’ll be ninety-four. I sure as hell hope I’m dead by then.”

  There was no humor in his voice and none in his eyes either. “What year do you think it is?”

  “It’s nineteen-o-one,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

  She shook her head.

  He frowned. “What year do you think it is?”

  “Twenty-eighteen.”

  “Twenty-eighteen?” He stretched each syllable out.

  “Yes, and I was born in nineteen-ninety.” She had no idea why she chose to add that. Maybe because she’d never argued with a ghost before. Getting past that, she asked, “You’re really Rance Livingston?”

  “Yes, I am, And you certainly have an imagination. I’ll give you that.”

  “No, I don’t. You’ve been ambling around in this old house for so many years you don’t know how long it’s been.”

  He shook his head, but the hint of a smile on his face made her want to smile.

  “Still think I’m a ghost, do you?”

  “I know you’re a ghost,” she insisted.

  He disappe
ared. The mirror was heavy again. She held it tight as the picture was lifted off the dresser and floated across the room, directly toward her. When it stopped before her face, a hum sounded.

  “You have to hold the mirror,” she reminded him.

  The mirror grew light as he reappeared, picture in hand.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  She didn’t tell him she’d already examined the picture thoroughly before putting it in the box earlier. The frame was gorgeous, and pure silver she’d bet, but the picture inside was small and rather grainy, making the identification of the people impossible. “What about it?”

  “That’s you,” he said. “And me. On our wedding day. Six months ago.”

  Liz’s stomach fell to her toes. She let go of the mirror, and leaving it and the picture floating in the air, took a step back. Attempting to collect herself, she shook her head. She hadn’t found a humorous ghost; she’d found a delusional one. Then again, maybe all ghosts were delusional. They sort of had to be.

  Cautiously, she reached out and gripped the picture, waiting for him to appear. He didn’t, and she pulled the picture closer, feeling when he let go of it. Scanning the image, she concluded there might be a resemblance. Maybe. In size. The faces were so tiny it was impossible to tell. Considering it was on the dresser in his bedroom, he very well could be the man in the picture. Rance Livingston, but the woman wasn’t her.

  A wave of grief, or guilt, rose up inside her, as if she didn’t want to have to tell him the truth. Sighing, she took a hold of the mirror again. “This isn’t me,” she explained as soon as he appeared. “This woman has long dark hair.”

  He took the picture and glanced between it and her several times. “You cut it.”

  “No.” She clamped her lips shut and contemplated how to restate that. “I have it cut all the time. I’ve never worn it long.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s easier to take care of. It’s—” Seriously? She was arguing with a ghost about her hair. This is beyond crazy.

  The weight of the mirror increased at the same time he disappeared. She watched the picture float back to the dresser, where it was stationed perfectly amongst the other items. When the mirror didn’t jostle as she expected, she glanced around the room. “Rance?”

  Nothing. Not even a hum.

  A wave of panic had her shouting, “Rance! Rance!”

  The mirror grew light. “I’m here.” He fully reappeared. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t do that,” she scolded as her heart settled down again. “Don’t let go of the mirror.”

  “I don’t understand that. I can see you whether I’m touching the mirror or not.”

  “There you have it,” she said.

  “Have what?”

  “Proof that you’re the ghost. Not me.” Emotions weren’t her thing, but logic always had been. “I can’t hear or see you unless we’re both holding the mirror.”

  A thoughtful expression overtook his face, and he nodded toward the window. “What did you see when you looked out that window?”

  “Nothing.” She changed her answer. “Other than the barn, corral, and my Mustang.” Watching his frown growing again, she added, “And grass and gravel.”

  “You remember your horse, but not me?”

  “My horse? I don’t—” Understanding hit. He raised horses. “My Mustang is my car. Not a horse. Well, it does have horsepower, but not the four-legged kind.”

  He was frowning again and took a step. Her hold on the mirror increased.

  “I won’t let go,” he said. “Come to the window with me.”

  They crossed the room side by side and each pulled back one of the old and sun-faded curtains as they gazed outside.

  “Tell me what you see,” he said.

  “I already did. My car is in front of the house, on the gravel. The barn is straight over there, along with the corral full of tall grass.”

  “There’s no grass in the corral, there are a dozen horses in the one on the left, and one horse, a buckskin still saddled, is in the one on the right.”

  She glanced at his profile, noting the seriousness of his forward gaze, before glancing back out the window. “I only see one corral. On the left.”

  “How can that be?”

  A shiver rippled her spine. “I don’t know. Do you see my car? It’s blue.”

  “A blue mustang?”

  A flicker of hope lit up her insides. “Yes.”

  “A mustang is a horse,” he said.

  “And a car,” she insisted. The idea he thought he was in nineteen-o-one hit her. The word car may not have been used then, other than train car. She wasn’t certain when cars first became popular in Wyoming. “You know, an automobile, a horseless carriage. It’s right there, just below us. It’s blue.”

  “I don’t see it,” he said.

  “You don’t?”

  “Nope.”

  “How can you not? It’s—”

  “I don’t see it, Beth.”

  Everything before her eyes turned blurry, and her heart started to race. She’d had panic attacks. Each time she’d seen the old trunk in her foster parents’ attic. The one they claimed she’d been draped over when rescuers had pulled her from the river as a child. Unlike when she’d seen the trunk, there wasn’t the darkness or the gloom, but she was shaking and couldn’t catch her breath. “I-I need to-to sit down.”

  “All right,” he said gently. “This way.”

  The room started to spin, and her knees wobbled. Fearing the overwhelming panic that was sure to come, she whispered, “Don’t let go of the mirror. Please.”

  “I won’t.”

  They arrived at the bed, sitting down at the same time, and together lowered the mirror onto the quilt between them.

  The strange swirling inside her wasn’t as strong as she remembered. In fact, it had already eased considerably, and no panic squeezed her insides. Her vision cleared gradually. The room no longer spun, and it didn’t hurt to breathe. She’d never recovered this quickly from a panic attack before. There hadn’t been that many of such attacks, mainly because she avoided them at all costs. The few she’d had in the past were far more than enough.

  “This is really strange,” she whispered.

  With his free hand, he removed his hat and ran his fingers through his dark brown hair. “Unbelievable.”

  Completely out of her norm, she wanted to giggle. A minute ago, she was about to pass out, now she wanted to laugh. How crazy was that? About as crazy as the pulse of electricity surging through her. She was sitting here talking to a ghost. A real flipping ghost. Totally unbelievable. She couldn’t look at an old trunk without freaking out, but she could sit on a bed and converse with a ghost without so much as a shimmer of fear. She’d always been the odd duck, but come on. This was mind-boggling.

  “So,” she said, trying to get a grasp on things. “It’s nineteen-o-one in your world right now.”

  “Yes, and it’s twenty-eighteen in yours?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Pretty freaky, isn’t it?”

  He shifted slightly, angling to look at her. “That picture is small, but you look just like her, my wife, other than your hair. Hers was a lot longer, and not—not striped.”

  A brief giggle escaped. “They’re called highlights.” Women didn’t have highlights put in their hair in nineteen-o-one, she was pretty certain of that. “They bleach certain strands.”

  “Bleach?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  His baffled look made her grin. So did the craziness of all this. “To make us look prettier I guess.”

  “You sound like her, too, even your laugh. And your smile…” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Your smile. It’s hers. But your eyes, they aren’t quite the same. I—” He turned away.

  Her heart trembled, going out to him, the hurt she saw in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I’m not her. That would be completely impossible.”


  “And being a ghost isn’t?”

  She shrugged. As much as she wanted to comfort him—something she had little experience in—she couldn’t lie. Not to him. “I’m not a ghost, Rance.”

  As he nodded solemnly, a great bout of sorrow rose up inside her.

  “But I am,” he said quietly.

  She nodded. “I’m afraid so.” She wasn’t afraid, but she was sorry. Sorry for him. For his loss. For the wife he genuinely must have loved beyond all else.

  They sat side by side, quietly, for several minutes. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She could sense his sadness, his loneliness, which made her heart ache like it never had before. Love was something she had absolutely no experience with. She couldn’t even say she believed in love. At least not in the ‘nothing but love matters’ sort of way. There were a few people she’d grown fond of over the years, such as her foster parents and Vivi Anne, but that was about it. She’d truly never been struck with an overpowering emotion that filled her so completely nothing else mattered. That was train-wreck thinking at its core. Being that dedicated, that committed to something was destructive.

  She had seen that. The world is full of people who love money, power, even other people to the point they became obsessed. They lie, cheat, even kill over that one thing they love. To her, that was evil at its finest.

  Good grief. When had she become such a philosopher?

  No, she wasn’t a philosopher. She was a realist. And honest. Deep inside, at the very core of her soul, she’d experienced the pain, the all-consuming torture and fear of never seeing a loved one again. Although she couldn’t remember, it had to have formed when her parents died and was the reason she chose not to care, not to love. Ever.

  A shiver rippled along her skin as she glanced at the image in the mirror. Him. Seeing a ghost probably inspired all sorts of deep thinking for people and brought all sorts of insights to the surface. Seeing a ghost was a strange phenomenon. Unbelievably so.

  Eventually, he turned back her way. “What did you mean about Cliff demolishing the place?”

  “Cliff? I don’t know a Cliff.”

  “Cliff Dixon. You were calling for Mr. Dixon—”