Read Online Until We Meet Again by Renee Collins - Free Book Online Page A

planned obedience, I’ll have at least one moment of amazement to hold on
to. I tighten my grip on the pages. There’s more. More I need
to say. I’ll write all night if I have to.
    There’s fresh paper in Ned’s study. I move quietly down the
hall and main stairs, hoping not to wake anyone. As I pass the
foyer, however, a flash of lights catches my eye.
    Headlights.
At this hour?
Frowning, I step up to one of the thin, glass windows alongside the door. There’s an automobile outside, but it’s not in
the driveway. It’s parked on the lawn, off to the side, partially
hidden by bushes. If there had been a party tonight, I wouldn’t
think anything of it. But there was no party. And no guests.
    So what is that jalopy doing out there in the middle of
the night?
A door slams. The engine roars to a start. I strain to get a
look at the driver, but he turns a hard left and peels out of
the driveway.
I watch until the lights vanish behind a row of trees in the
distance. It’s not that I don’t trust our watchman, Porter, but I
can’t help feeling uneasy. True, a house like this has a constant
flow of people coming and going. Caterers, maintenance workers, and servants. But still…I make a note to talk to Porter
about the car in the morning.
Thinking of notes, excitement resurges in my chest. I head
for the fresh ream of paper in the study and forget about the
strange automobile.

h
    The sultry murmur of a woman’s voice pulls me from heavy
layers of sleep. A softness of flesh brushes against my cheek.
Exhaustion fights back hard, but I pull myself into the dewy
sunshine of consciousness.
    She speaks my name. “Lawrence.”
A glimmer of long, golden hair comes to me. Her face. Her
probing blue eyes. Cassandra. In the overbrightness of light
streaming in through those linen curtains, I can see her standing over me. She’s come back.
I sit up, inhaling sharply.
Fay is perched on my bed beside me. Her slender eyebrow
rises.
“Morning, Lonnie.”
I strain my eyes, and Cassandra’s face vanishes as she did last
night on the beach. For a sharp, fleeting moment, the terrifying
thought that it was all a dream cuts into my lungs. But I catch
a glimpse of the frantic writings stacked on my desk and my
stomach relaxes. It was real. It happened.
Fay smiles a little and pulls at my loosened shirt. I’m still
fully dressed, lying on top of the blankets where I collapsed
sometime last night.
“Up late studying, I assume?” she asks. “Getting ready for
college?”
My eyes dart to the papers on my desk once more, but
this time with a surge of panic. I can’t remember much of
what I wrote, but the words on the page seem to shine like
a beacon, exposing my secret to Fay. I slide off the bed and
grab for them as casually as I can, stuffing the pages into the
drawer.
“Something like that.”
Fay takes my spot, reclining on my bed and curving her hips
to expose just a touch of her lace stockings at the thigh.
“You’ll make one heck of a lawyer, Lonnie, though I pity the
woman who marries you. Lying all alone in bed at night as you
study up for your next case.”
”I suppose it will take a patient gal,” I say, distractedly, still
feeling nervous that she read the pages while I was sleeping. She has that knowing smile, but it’s her trademark. She
makes sport of pretending she knows something you’d rather
she didn’t.
Fay stretches out her arms in a lazy yawn that makes her
dress strap slide down her shoulder. She runs her fingertips
along her décolletage.
“I’d never put up with such a man,” she says. “I demand to be
adored above everything else. I must be worshiped.”
I met Fay here at the house at a party celebrating my arrival.
She’s been appearing at social events all summer. She’s like a
phantom. She never comes with anyone else, never speaks of
a life outside the noise and frivolity of Ned’s parties. She exists
only to haunt me with her sly laugh. And I still can’t quite