Laying a Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

alone. My mother went to visit him now and then, and she says the first thing he asked was always if the house was safe, and she’d tell him it was. It was all he had left, you see. While it was waiting for him, just as it’d always been, he could picture it and know what he saw in his head was true.” John rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, flushing slightly. “Och, listen to me run on. Sit down and I’ll make you a drink and then leave you in peace.”
    To his mild surprise, Nick found himself obeying, sitting down at the table. He knew from previous experience that peaceful wasn’t a state that he was likely to achieve when John left. Matthew had understood and hadn’t left him on his own for the most part, which was something Nick had always been grateful for, although maybe not quite as grateful as Matthew would have liked; Nick knew that his friend had wanted more from him.
    “That’s nice -- that your mother went to visit him, I mean. Were they friends?” Nick was struck with a sudden desire to know more about the man who had lived in this house.
    “Friends?” John frowned. “Not as such, no.” He walked over to the kettle and with a minimum of fuss produced a cup of instant coffee, bringing it over to the table and setting it down in front of Nick before dragging out a chair for himself. “He was just -- he was from here, d’ye see? And she knew fine that he’d be missing the place. She’d take him the local paper, tell him what’d been going on, smuggle in a drop of whiskey too, if I know her.” He smiled. “She’s not one for following rules when they don’t suit her.”
    Nick smiled at the thought, and then realized that he was looking into John’s eyes a little too warmly and dropped his gaze. If he was going to stay here, the last thing he needed to be doing was making anyone uncomfortable with unwanted attraction, even if it wasn’t Nick’s fault that John was warm and charming and much, much sexier than he seemed to realize. A small community like this, one made up of families that had been here for generations ... it would be asking for trouble to open up. “Did he have any friends? Anyone I could talk to?”
    “Start with my mother,” John told him. “She’ll know. But I think you’ll not find many he was close to. He wasn’t unhappy, not exactly, but he was a lonely man.” John pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ll bring in your cases, shall I? And it’s a little chilly in here; when it’s aired out a little, you’d best light a fire or two. There’s peat stacked behind the house ...” John paused and chuckled at himself. “Imph. You’ll not be knowing how to build a peat fire, now will you?” He pursed his lips in thought. “Look; if you’re wishing me long gone, say the word, but I’ve nothing I was planning to do this afternoon and I can help you get settled in if you’d like.”
    Almost pathetically thankful, Nick nodded. “If you don’t mind, that’d be great. I don’t even know where to start.” He drank a good third of his coffee in one swig and stood up. “But I can help with the bags. And if you could show me where the peat is?”
    They went outside into the fresh air. Some clouds were threatening, but not enough that rain seemed imminent. Nick realized that he really needed to go through the house and find out where everything was. If they lost power, he’d need candles, or a flashlight at least. He’d need to know how to work the chimney -- he knew vaguely that there was something called a flue, but he wasn’t sure what it did -- and if there was a washing machine. He hadn’t planned this properly. All he’d thought about was getting as far away as possible, and Traighshee had seemed to fit the bill.
    “If you plan on staying, and you’ve got the money, you might want to think about installing radiators,” John told him as they walked back to the car and got out Nick’s luggage. “The smell of a peat fire doesn’t