Read Online Once Upon Another Time by Rosary McQuestion - Free Book Online Page A

same day he’d given me a beautiful
bracelet with a heart-shaped pendant.  The inscription on the back read, A.
B., I Love You, M. P. M. , initials for Aubrey Becker I love you, Mathew
Paul McCory.
    He was amazing. 
He’d look at me and make me weak.  Then he’d slip his strong arms around my
waist, pull my body to his, and whisper in my ear while kissing my neck, “M on
petit chaton ,” my little kitten, he’d say in his endearing New Jersey
accent.  I’d wrap my arms around his muscular shoulders, and let them slip down
to his narrow waist.  The trees in the park could have burned down around us, but
as long as Matt’s mouth covered mine, I couldn’t care less. 
    While smiling and
thinking back to that world of shimmering reflections and the sound of laughter,
I watched as the sprinkled sparkles in the garden diminished.  Disappointed
that Matt didn’t appear to me, I picked up the book from my desk to put it back
on the shelf, when I became dizzy.  I reached to grab hold of the arm of my
office chair to steady myself, but missed and collapsed to the floor like a
ragdoll that had lost its stuffing.  Everything went black.

Six
     
    A tall man with an
aloof smile and thick brown hair swept back from his thin face, stood to the
right of me as I rode the crowded elevator up to my office.  He skillfully
punched out a text message on his smart phone with a single thumb, while
carrying a large saddleback briefcase.  The elevator jerked as it stopped on
the eighth floor.  The man exited, but not before his briefcase inadvertently
jabbed the bruise on my outer thigh, making me wince. 
    The night before
when I passed out and thought I had missed grabbing onto the arm of my chair,
well I didn’t.  I had toppled it over onto myself, bruising my leg.  The
possibility of handling paranormal situations seemed as remote as transferring
a Rembrandt onto the head of a dime. 
    However, my
connection with Matt seemed to be getting stronger.  I took into consideration
that perhaps he wasn’t quite up to speed.  According to the research book I
bought on ghosts, apparently it takes a lot of energy to materialize.  It’s
probably the reason why old or ancient dwellings as opposed to new buildings
were haunted.  Those ghosts obviously had decades to perfect their skills.  
    Curious, though, was
the book lying on the floor next to my desk.  I’d never known Buster to scale
the bookshelves or drag a book across the room.  My first thought was that Matt
had something to do with it.  The title, “Love Spirit,” and the dogeared page
about the house with the ghost aspect seemed more than coincidental.  It was
relative to what was happening in my life and books were always Matt’s thing.
    He was a serious collector
of books.  When I say serious, I mean he created an A to Z card catalog notating
everything from the purchase date to the name of the person who sold him the
book.  A row of ancient Roman architecture books on the symmetry and geometry
of hemispherical domes and niches was a Christmas gift from his father.  The
poetry by Conrad Aiken and Sandburg I’d given him on our fourth wedding
anniversary, and Yeats, a gift from his professor at Rutgers.  A first edition
of Agatha Christie’s “Sparkling Cyanide” we’d found the day we stumbled upon a
quaint little bookstore in the Village during our weekend getaway to
Manhattan.  And he practically camped out on our front porch waiting for UPS to
deliver a Raymond Chandler novel he’d found online. 
    All I could think
about last night was that Matt was trying to tell me something by having me
find that book.  I fell asleep thinking about the years we were together, and
about our house.  It was cold that November day when we first viewed it with
the realtor.  The old English Tudor proudly dressed in white stucco and brick with
decorative timbering, hugged the crescent-shaped coastline of Fogland Beach
like lush green moss hugging the side of a