The first thing I notice when the sudden brightness of the screen stops blinding me is that David looks happy and in love in the lock screen image, gently nuzzling a woman with a resting bitch face.
Many people (who aren't me) might find her curly light brown hair, freckles and pale eyes pretty, even beautiful or at least cute, but I don't like her looks at all. I hate Iris on sight.
She hurt David.
I cannot forgive her for that, even if her doing so might mean I now have a chance with him... if we survive this house and he still likes me when all this weirdness is done. Seeing him in a romantic embrace with another woman is jarring, to say the least. I don't like it at all! Looking at his face and seeing how sweetly vulnerable he was makes my heart ache. I hate the idea of David being hurt by anybody.
Why did he not change this painful lock screen? Is he still, deep down, clinging to the threads of his failed marriage? Does he still miss the woman who used and abandoned him? I could understand that even if it galls me. They shared a very intimate history, after all. I wish I could wipe away the last fragments of his pain and make him forget and be happy again.
The second thing I notice while frowning at the picture of David holding his laughing ex-wife in his arms is that she is, without a doubt, not the woman in the sunroom. It is not just her colouring that is different; it is everything. They have no feature similarities, and their demeanour is also very different.
There is a vague, annoying voice in my head, stirring unease in my belly, telling me not to do the Dance of Joy too soon. Just because the woman upstairs is not Iris, it doesn't mean that she's not somebody murdered by David.
I'm ignoring that voice.
I've had enough of doubting the only man who has ever in my entire existence stirred my heart the way David is stirring it. He makes me feel alive and valuable like I matter a great deal. The idea of him being evil is making me seriously angry. I refuse to accept it. Until he comes after me with an axe, I'm going to trust him!
"Belle?!" David calls from the kitchen. "Belle, are you here?"
My heart, leaping with joy and not fear when I hear my name called in David's warm voice, agrees with my stance on the matter. I'm falling in love with this man and I want to be in love with him. He is the best man I've ever met. I am not giving him up without solid proof that he is a psychopath. I don't care if that means that I am a fool.
"Belle?!" He is hurrying through the foyer now, turning on lights as he goes, and I can hear in his voice that he is anxious and worried, not menacing or threatening.
"I'm here!" I call out, crawling from under the couch.
"What are you doing under there?" he chuckles, entering the living area in time to see me appearing from under the piece of furniture and getting to my feet a little sheepishly.
"I found your phone," I tell him, holding the device out to him.
"Oh," he blinks at me in surprise and takes the phone, inspecting it for damage. "Thanks. I wonder how it got there."
"We were sitting here, looking at photographs before the naked beach situation," I remind him with a shrug. "I guess you had it then."
"Right," he grins. "I didn't think to look there. Good job."
"Yeah, you're welcome," I mutter, feeling uncomfortable. It was not my genius insight that caused me to find his phone. I suppose something in my voice gave me away because David narrows his eyes, tilting his head to the side with a slight frown, studying my face intently.
"What's wrong, Belle?" he asks, slipping his phone into his pants pocket. "You've been odd for a few hours now. Please tell me what's going on."
"Believe me, you don't want to know," I sigh, avoiding his eyes. The last thing he needs is more weirdness from me.
"I do want to know," he assures me. "Whatever it is, please tell me. We're in this together. If I know what's happening, I can prepare for whatever comes our way."
Swallowing guiltily, I peek up at him from under my lashes. He is right. He is also living in this house. I'm just so sick of reporting freaky stuff to him. I don't want to drive him away, and telling him that I thought he'd murdered his wife would definitely do that.
"I saw a woman," I finally admit, and his frown deepens.
"Under the couch?" he asks, looking alarmed and, moving past me, he tries to find a good angle from where he can see under the furniture.
"No," I sigh, feeling defeated. "In the solarium when we were up there. She looked battered, and when I went up there again just now, she was chained to that ring in the wall, and she screamed. I ran away, and someone was chasing me... I think... I heard footsteps. It might've just been you coming in from the garden. I got scared, crawled under the sofa, and found your phone."
"Someone was chasing you?" he asks, reaching out to lay a hand on my shoulder, his brow furrowed with concern.
"I heard feet running," I shrug, really not sure anymore about what I experienced.
"I wasn't running when I came in just now," he says, shaking his head, looking thoughtful. "I saw that all the lights were off, and that didn't seem right, given how nervous you are about being here. I was afraid that something happened to you. You answered me very quickly, though. Are you sure you heard someone running?"
"Yes... but it might not have been with my ears."
David blinks at me, his lashes slowly closing and opening over his dark green eyes as if he cannot make sense of my words. I don't blame him. They make no sense.
"When I heard that woman screaming, it wasn't with my ears. I heard it in my head. It hurt a lot. I might've heard the footsteps the same way."
"That makes sense," David nods, squeezing my shoulder and I cannot help but smirk at him. It makes sense? Really? "I didn't hear any screaming."
He steps forward, closing the gap between us, and I can feel the warmth radiating from his body as he gently plucks cobwebs from my hair and brushes dust from my cheeks. He is dirtier than I am, but I still appreciate the kind gesture. "Does your head still hurt?"
"A little... perhaps I got sunstroke from working without a hat," I suggest, hopefully, but I know I'm talking garbage. There was barely any sun out there; the clouds had been hanging threatening above us, too thick for any real sun to get through the entire time we were working. The only heat I'd felt was due to the activity.
"So, this woman you saw," David asks tentatively, "she was just hanging out in the solarium?"
"Yes."
"I take it it wasn't a real flesh and blood woman."
"No... she's not alive now."
"A ghost?" he grimaces, and I'm amazed by how often we're having strange conversations like this one and how normal it is starting to feel.
"I don't know. Maybe. She said 'he killed me' and pointed..." I catch myself, avoiding David's piercing eyes. "She had a terrible head wound. I don't think she's alive. I don't think she was physically there."
"He who?" David frowns. "What was she pointing at?"
"I don't know," I shrug, chewing on my bottom lip, wishing we could end this conversation, which is making an uncomfortable turn now. David sucks in his breath, and, looking up sharply, I catch a horrible expression on his face. It gouges deep wounds in my heart, and I immediately wish I could take it all back.
Earlier, I was thinking about how I would love to wipe away all his remaining pain and make him happy again, and here he is, standing in front of me with such pain and betrayal on his face because of me; it feels like a physical assault.
"You thought she meant me," he states, his voice husky and laced with something that sounds like resignation. "Did you think she was Iris?"
I want to lie. Lying would be really good right now. I open my mouth to tell one doozy of a lie, but I can see it will not work. Besides, I'm terrible at lying.
"I need some coffee," David says, turning away, and for a moment, I watch him walking towards the foyer, leaving me behind, his shoulders uncharacteristically hunched.
I hate myself!
"David! I'm sorry!" I run after him and grab his arm, trying to stop him, but without missing a beat, he transfers my hand from his forearm to his hand and carries on walking, pulling me along with him.
"There's nothing to apologise for," he assures me, steering me to a seat when we reach the kitchen before he lets me go to wash his hands and busy himself with the kettle. "I get it. We've known each other for three days... not even. If a dead person with horrible wounds showed up and told me that you killed them, I would be freaked out too. I wouldn't know what to believe."
Resting his hands on the stone counter on either side of the kettle he'd turned on; he gazes at me with such a miserable expression on his face that I actively shrink from it. I miss his bright smile.
"I don't know what I can say or do to prove to you that I mean you no harm. There really isn't anything. I can't even call any character witnesses or have you stalk me on social media because I saw that the signal is still down." He sighs, closing his eyes for a second before he looks into mine again. "Hell, I wish you still thought I was just a mop."
I swallow slowly and try to get my stupid lips into a smile, but they're now stuck in distressed mode. He is right; there's nothing he can do to take away the last bits of uncertainty still stubbornly clinging to the edges of my brain, no matter how desperately I want to be rid of them. We're virtually strangers to each other... and yet...
"Why does it feel as though I know you better than any of the people I've known virtually all my life?" I ask truthfully, finally able to meet his eyes without restraint. "My brain tells me that I should be wary. I mean, as you said, a dead woman pointed at you and said you killed her... I should heed that warning, but... My heart says there's no way. She must've been pointing at something else... perhaps someone who stood there years ago. I believe my heart. Why is that? Am I an idiot?"
"Probably," David grins, adding coffee powder to two mugs. "I get what you're saying, Belle." He hesitates for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip and then, making up his mind to say what he is wavering to say, he shrugs. "I know things about you that I really shouldn't know, and yet, I know them as if they were my own memories. It makes no sense, and I'm not entirely sure when I first became aware of it."
Seeing me frown, looking confused, he continues. "I know you had braces from when you were 11 until you were 13. They were meant to push the two incisors on either side of your front teeth forward. It was a plate with one wire in the front, and you hated it. At first, you kept taking it out instead of wearing it until you were told you'd be wearing it forever if you didn't let it do its job.
"You were embarrassed because when you spoke, all your esses came out as 'sh'. Your speech eventually adjusted, but when you were finally rid of the plate, you had a lisp. You still have one when you're tired or feeling flustered."
I gape at David, startled to hear those words coming from him so casually. The only people who are intimately aware of those past issues are Craig, my mom and me, and they wouldn't remember it that clearly.
How on Earth can he know that? I never told him!
I open my mouth to ask him that exact question, but then it hits me, surprising the breath from my lungs. "I know that you had a puppy you called Kitty because you wanted a cat, but your mom was allergic, so your parents got you a dog and convinced you that it was a cat. You were five years old at the time! David?! How?"
"I don't know," he says, shaking his head with a shrug. "But I realised a while ago that there are a lot of things about you that I really shouldn't know, but I do know. Like... when you were nine years old, you wanted a sister and made Craig wear three pairs of your mother's pantihose on his head so you could braid the legs and pretend that he had long hair. You got mad at him because he didn't sit or walk or behave like a girl while wearing the dress you got him to wear. You said he looked like a Roman soldier, not a sister and-"
"Okay!" I exclaim, my cheeks burning. "Thank you, Mister 'I used to wear my dad's underpants on my head with the leg holes over my eyes while pretending to be a supervillain'! No need to tell me more about my childhood issues! I was there for them!"
David chuckles, acknowledging the memory I just spat at him as if I'd known it all my life. Two minutes ago, I didn't know that I knew that.
"Oh! Are you sure?" he asks with a teasing smile. "You don't want me to remind you of when you believed the neighbour was a spy because he used to hang out in trees with binoculars? You do know he was probably a pervert spying on the women in your neighbourhood, right?"
"He was not!" I laugh. "Mr. Hawkings was a bird watcher. He had a fat bird book and a notebook and a recorder to get their sound!" I remember the embarrassing moment when that was made clear to me in answer to my fanciful accusations all too vividly.
"Riiiiight!" David smirks, nodding his head with arched eyebrows.
"He was!" I insist. "At least I didn't try to bite the postman because I pretended to be a zombie!"
"Oh, maybe not," David snorts. "But you had a massive crush on Craig's primary school assistant rugby coach and used to wear your mom's lipstick all over your mouth and cheeks like a Raggedy Ann doll whenever-"
Flying from my seat, I rush David, trying to reach up and silence him with my hands. He laughs, grabbing my wrists, finishing his story about my seven-year-old make-up malfunctions and little girl crush while I shriek and giggle and try to wrestle him into submission.
"Belle," he grunts, pulling me flush against him and I can feel his heart beating rapidly with mine while he grins down at my upturned face. I am acutely aware of every one of his chest and abdominal muscles and the smell of earth and sweat is a heady combination with his closeness, making my head spin. "I am so friggin' in love with you!"
The sound of those husky words stirs a myriad of sleeping butterflies into life in the pit of my stomach. I can see that he means it. My heart can feel that he does. The knowledge sends happy ripples down my spine and I am finally able to smile a full, warm smile for him.
I may know random facts and memories about him - not anything big and important, though, like details on his relationship with Iris - but I know that I know that this man is no killer, and he definitely means me no harm.
"I'm in love with you too," I tell him, knowing it to be the complete truth. I didn't know that I knew all these cute little nuggets about him that keep on spilling from my brain as if I'd opened a faucet in my head, and I don't think he knew about our supernaturally shared memories, either (at least not until recently). For a long, breathless moment, we stare at each other in awe, digesting this new discovery and the honest declaration of our feelings, and then the kettle screams, yanking us out of the bubble we'd slipped into.
"I'm going to drink this coffee," David says, sliding his hands from my wrists, turning away to stop the kettle and finish making our coffee. "Then I'm going to wash up and head up to the solarium and inspect it from corner to corner to see if there is anything up there that could explain who and what you saw. We need real answers to all the weird things happening in this house."
That sounds like a brilliant plan. I don't know whether it is going to help much, but it's as good a place as any to start. Perhaps the woman will show up again and shed more light (or confusion) on the situation. Perhaps she won't, but at least the Solarium will be sorted when we're done.
"Has your grandfather ever mentioned anything about a man being hung in the foyer or women murdered in this house?" I ask, taking the mug of warm goodness he offers me and sliding back into my seat.
"No," David assures me, rounding the island to sit in his regular chair near me, his arm lightly brushing against mine on the island top. "I have never heard of anybody dying in this house except my great-great-grandfather. He was here on a routine inspection of the property when he fell down the stairs and broke his neck."
☼☼☼