Haunting

Caroline Street--formerly Main Street Fredericksburg, Virginia Present Day "GODDAMNED, FUCKING PIECE of crap." Like a cyclone riding the wave of an ill wind, the shouted cursing spiraled from the main floor upward to the attic rafters. Startled, American history professor Maggie Holliday knocked her head against the low-hanging eave, sending dust, cobwebs and dried lavender raining down like confetti on the just-discovered diary in her hands. Blowing on the tooled leather, she got a whiff of the soothing scent of lavender. For whatever reason, the fragrance held the power to sweep her away to a kinder, gentler frame of mind. All her life, she'd been crazy about anything with lavender in it, from shampoos and perfumes to soaps and sachets. When her Realtor had first brought her up into the attic of the 1850s Victorian, the aroma had wrapped itself about her like welcoming arms. She'd taken it as a sign that the house and she were meant to be. Finding the diary struck her as similarly symbolic. When she'd come up to nail a loose window shutter in place in preparation for the storm headed their way, she'd never expected to unearth a one-hundred-forty-five-year-old treasure from behind a plank of rotted wallboard. Whether the book had fallen through the proverbial cracks or been placed there purposely was as much a mystery as who had pinned lavender to the eave and why. However it had come to be there, it had survived the past century-plus in amazing shape, the cover barely cracked, the pages yellowed ever so slightly about the curled edges. So far she'd only had the chance to peek at the main page on which Diary of Isabel Marie Earnshaw, Fredericksburg, Virginia was penned in neat, elegant script. Presumably the diarist was an early, perhaps even original occupant of the house she'd just bought, a lovely circa 1850 Victorian in the heart of the Fredericksburg Historic District. Tingling with anticipation, she could hardly wait to take the diary downstairs, find a quiet place and start reading. Footfalls stomping up the attic stairs confirmed that such guilty pleasures would have to keep until later. Knowing how bad her boyfriend was with books--her treasured first edition ofUncle Tom's Cabinhad never been the same since he'd touched it--she laid the diary on the built-in shelving, making a mental note to retrieve it later. The attic door opened, and Richard poked his ash-blond head inside. "There you are." He crossed the threshold, letting the old door slam behind him. Dressed in a pristine white polo shirt and khaki pants, he looked more ready for a day of golfing than moving, but then he'd done a lot more directing from the sidelines than hands-on helping. "What are you doing up here, anyway? didn't you hear me calling you?" What am I, a doggie dropout from obedience school?Rather than confront him and ruin her first day in her new home with fighting, she summoned her calm, sane voice and answered, " We're supposed to have a storm later, and I wanted to make sure that window was shut properly." Damn, I did it again. This was her house, not to mention her life. She shouldn't have to explain herself like a guilty teenager caught smoking a reefer in her room. And yet whenever she was with Richard, she found herself doing just that, justifying her every action as if to showcase how normal she was. Fix one thing at a time, Maggie. With a life as messed up as yours, there are plenty of broken parts to work on before you tackle getting out of your current romantic relationship. Not that she'd experienced much romancing lately. Richard tended to pout whenever he didn't feel as though he was getting adequate TLC. And over the past two whirlwind weeks he hadn't received much from her. Defending her doctoral dissertation, snagging an assistant professorship in the history department at the University of Mary Washington aTarr, Hope is the author of 'Haunting ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373793211 and ISBN 0373793219.