Laying a Ghost Read Online Free PDF

the house, seeming happy to accept that as an explanation. And it wasn’t a complete lie. Getting from New York to a remote Hebridean island involved a complex coordination of planes, trains and ferries that had left Nick either racing along corridors to make connections with minutes to spare, or spending hours sitting waiting for the next stage of his journey to begin; he’d been traveling for so long that it was no wonder the earth felt as if it was spinning too fast. “Well, there it is. Rossneath House. If you want to go in, I’ll get the shopping from the car. I started a kettle boiling, so you’ll be able to have a drink, if you’d like.”
    “Thank you.” Nick absently took a look at the house for the first time, as the wind ruffled his hair.
    It was bigger than he’d expected it to be -- not a huge house by any means, but still larger than what he’d been picturing. The exterior paint on the trim, a medium gray, was peeling in some places, no doubt from the wind that came up off the sea. Nick was turned around and unsure where they’d come from, but he’d seen maps of the island and knew that wherever they were, the sea wasn’t far off.
    There were white shutters that looked functional rather than decorative, and he noted that one of the windows on the second floor was cracked. He hoped the glass wouldn’t need to be replaced right away -- actually, he was hoping that there wouldn’t be too much he’d need to do to the place right off the bat. He was so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep and get settled in. Then he’d deal with whatever needed to be dealt with.
    John walked past him with two handfuls of shopping bags, and Nick went back to the car and took out the last few bags with his good hand, leaving the one that contained John’s groceries, and following him into the house. As they walked, he let himself study John from behind, noting the way the man’s clothes fit. It wasn’t, Nick told himself firmly, anything more than curiosity.
    Inside his new home, Nick paused on the threshold, letting the dusty smell of the place wash over him, and waiting.
    There was nothing, and he sighed with relief and walked over to John, glancing around the kitchen, which looked pretty much as if it had been abandoned for a couple of years, a thick layer of dust and grime on top of the stove. “This is so weird.”
    John finished rinsing out a mug and shook it free of water before setting it aside to dry. “Seeing it for real, you mean? Is it not what you were expecting then?” John glanced around the kitchen, at wooden cabinets and a solid, functional table and chairs, and didn’t seem to find it bare, or ill-equipped. Nick tried to picture his mother in this house, in this kitchen, and failed.
    “I guess.” Nick set the bags down on the table and just stood there. He felt like a stranger; the house felt more like John’s than his. There were things in those cabinets that had belonged to his uncle, sometimes talked about but never seen. Some of those things had probably been his grandparents’, things that his mother had used when she was growing up here, anxious to leave school by the time she was fourteen. She’d talked about it a lot; about how she’d hated living here. She’d always encouraged Nick to live a casual existence, teaching him that setting down roots just meant stagnation, leaving him stuck to the earth instead of free to roam, to do whatever interested him.
    They’d been lessons he’d taken to heart, words he’d lived by until ...
    Nick cleared his throat. “No.” John was putting the eggs into the small refrigerator and fiddling with the temperature dial. “It’s not what I was expecting. I think I’d been picturing it empty. Furniture, sure, but not ... his whole life is here.”
    “He left knowing that he wouldn’t be coming back.” John slammed the fridge door. “I’m sure of it. But even so, he insisted nothing be changed and the house be locked up and left