Read Online If Onions Could Spring Leeks by Paige Shelton - Free Book Online Page A

the last ten years of his life at the Broken Rope train station waiting for the woman he had loved to arrive? Yes, I might have heard of him.”
    â€œI met him. And the woman he was waiting for.”
    Jake’s face lit with a huge smile. “They found each other in death?”
    â€œNo, not quite.”
    We left the doctor’s office and Jake deposited me into the passenger seat of his VW Bug. As we headed toward my small neighborhood, I told him about meeting the two ghosts, about their respective stories and the different stations, and about Gram’s nightmares. He listened with the same focused interest that he gave all the ghost stories.
    â€œIt’s so tragic,” Jake said. “The passed-down story doesn’t mention who Robert’s love was. Over time, she lost her identity or it had taken on so many versions that she became a footnote to the story, perhaps even a figment of Robert’s imagination. He lost his mind, of course, or at least that’s the story. Grief, frustration, just not knowing what happened to her must have been awful.”
    â€œI didn’t get the impression that he’d lost his mind, but maybe that’s not the version
of him
I met. I also didn’t know he’d spent so much time waiting for her. Ten years? Wow, that’s a long time.” I squinted and wished for the sunglasses in my bag. Jake noticed and handed me some from the side pocket in his door. They provided immediate relief. “I think we have two places to start. We need to figure out where Grace was, which station. That might tell us a lot, maybe where she was killed. Gram’s convinced she could describe the killers—well somebody’s killers—at this point. It’s worth a shot.”
    â€œYou sound good. You must be feeling okay?”
    â€œThe sunglasses helped.”
    â€œKeep them.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œRight down there?” He nodded toward the field as we pulled onto my street.
    â€œYep, that’s where I saw them.”
    â€œMakes sense,” he said as he parked next to the curb in front of my house. “Come on.”
    â€œI’m fine, Jake.” It suddenly registered that he was wearing his costume. As the fake sheriff in town, he dressed up and performed a new piece of his original cowboy poetry each year. He was one of our bigger draws. “Oh, no, you’re missing a reading, or more than one. Go. I’ll be fine.”
    â€œBetts, please.” He looked at me. “Priorities, my dear.”
    â€œI’m just going to sleep. You don’t need to be there to watch me do that. I don’t have a concussion. Get back to work, and then look for stuff that will help us. Seriously.”
    Jake walked me in, but didn’t stay. It might not have mattered who’d been there, ghostly or alive. I was going to sleep until my body didn’t want me to sleep anymore. Trains could have whistled right in my ears and it wouldn’t have fazed me in the least.
    I didn’t rest without dreams, though they were mild, not violent like Gram’s. They weren’t about any of the ghosts, unless of course Derek could now be considered a ghost. In my dreams, I saw him as I’d seen him over the years—quiet, withdrawn, not friendly. But I also saw something else. In life Derek had been haunted by . . . something. I’d never noticed it when he was alive, and unfortunately, it never became clear in my dreams. I was curious enough, though, to tell myself as I slept that when I woke I should look at Derek’s life a little closer; whoever or whatever haunted him might have also killed him. It wouldn’t hurt to dig a little.

Chapter 6

    It turned out that I lost the entire rest of the day and then the night, too. I slept, apparently, pretty hard. I was surprised not to find Cliff in bed next to me when I woke up, but my bag was on my dresser with a note that said he didn’t