Free The Life and Death of Lauren Conway: A Companion to Without Mercy by Lisa Jackson Page B

the faucet last probably hadn’t twisted the handle hard enough to completely stop the flow. Rip would have to fix the damned thing, or call a plumber.
    Without bothering with her robe, Jules headed out of room and along the narrow hallway to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Beneath the door, an eerie strip of light glowed, wavering as a shadow passed on the other side.
    Her sister.
    Of course!
    “Shay,” she whispered against the old oak panels. “Hey, turn off the water!”
    No one answered.
    She tapped softly with one knuckle. “Anyone in there?”
    No response.
    Maybe her sister had left the light on. Kind of like a night light. Though she would never admit it, twelve-year-old Shay was sometimes scared of the dark.
    And sometimes she was more than scared, she was terrified.
    Jules didn’t blame her.
    Terror was all too familiar to them both.
    Twisting the glass knob, Jules pushed hard on the door. It opened a crack, then caught, stopped by the loose chain latch and allowing Jules a glimpse inside, to the vanity, a strip of the cracked mirror and her own pale, slightly skewed reflection. Big, haunted eyes, untamed hair, sallow complexion and dark circles beneath her eyes that indicated just how little sleep she’d been able to find in the past months reflected back at her.
    “Shay?” she whispered through the opening.
    The toilet area wasn’t visible from Jules’s vantage point, but there was another entrance to the bathroom from the guest room. “Shay, are you in there?” Jules asked again, pressing her eye to the crack. She saw no one, but noticed that her mother’s hair brush was resting near the sink and that the vanity faucet, just under the mirror wasn’t leaking.
    The tap was dry as a bone.
    But something was wrong. The usually spotless tile surrounding Edie’s pride and joy, an antique claw foot bathtub with an arched shower neck and head, showed beads of water, as if the pink tiles were sweating.
    Or someone had recently showered.
    On edge, she closed the door and tiptoed through the “spare” room to the door to the bathroom. She always felt like a trespasser when she crept along the fringed edge of a faded, patterned rug and past the big brass bed, one that had supposedly belonged to Edie’s great grandmother. Now, no one slept in it. Ever. Jules’s mother changed the sheets religiously, every Saturday morning, but the percale bed linens with their floral print were fading from too much laundry soap and over agitation in the washer, not from bodies either sleeping or making love.
    Jules opened the bathroom door… and heard the noise again. The dripping sound.
    So steady.
    So quietly nerve-twisting.
    But not from the tub.
    Nor the shower head.
    The floor was dry. The towels folded perfectly, not damp.
    It’s nothing. What do you care?
    And the shadow you saw, the one passing under the doorway to this room, well, it was probably just your over-active imagination, the same imagination that conjured up Cooper Trent outside your window. Come on Jules, why would he be here? Only because you wanted him to. What is it that Dad always says? If horses were wishes, then beggars would ride. Face it, Jules, you are losing it. Seriously losing it. Why else all those pills you need to swallow just to function?
    Angry with herself, she unlocked the door to the hallway and stepped out.
    The corridor seemed colder still. Freezing. The air being blown through the pipes had lost all heat, as if the fire in the furnace had blown out. Meanwhile, the dripping noise was stronger now and there was another noise as well, that of soft pitiful sobbing.
    She walked to the end of the hall and the stairs, then hesitated on the first step, knowing that something was wrong… Oh, God, what? Whose muted crying was she hearing? Her mother’s? Shay’s?
    Lord knew she’d heard them both before.
    She descended on noiseless footsteps.
    “Goosey, Goosey Gander,
    Wither should I wander?”
    She whispered the words under her