Free After Caroline by Kay Hooper

don’t reach out to Regan now and help her get past Caroline’s death, I think you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” She got up from the desk, adding briskly, “And that’s my meddling for the day. I’m going home.”
    “Drive carefully.”
    “Yes. I will.” She went as far as the door, then paused and looked back at him. “Good night, Scott.”
    Still gazing out the window, Scott asked, “Does that arrogant artist of yours know how lucky he is?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He nodded slightly, as if her answer didn’t surprise him. “Good night, Holly.”
    She went out, quietly closing the door behind her, leaving Scott alone.

    Joanna slipped the last sheet of paper into Caroline’s file and leaned back against the pillows banked behind her, frowning. There was still precious little information in the file, not nearly enough to do more than sketch in a life. No color, no … texture. That was it, she decided; so far, she couldn’t really feel the texture in Caroline’s life.
    In three hours, Joanna had managed to scan years’ worth of Cliffside’s weekly newspaper, so she had more information than she’d arrived here with—but as she’d said to the sheriff, none of it told her who Caroline had really been.
    A wealthy woman, yes—in her own right as well as married to a wealthy man. A woman who had supported a long list of charities, most of them in the areas of medical research and treatment, probably because a younger brother had died of an incurable disease when Caroline was a teenager. A woman who had seemingly been at ease speaking in public. A woman who was known for her sense of style and who wore dresses more often than pants, at least publicly.
    Facts … behind which lay only speculation.
    Actually, Joanna had discovered far more about Caroline’scharacter in casual conversation than by reading a recitation of facts in the newspaper. The clerk in the drugstore, for instance, had told her not only that Caroline smoked pretty heavily, but also that it was a nervous habit and that “she bit her nails, too, poor thing.”
    The clerk had boasted long, beautifully manicured nails, so her pity was easily understood. Joanna lifted her own hands and studied them, taking note of the neat, medium-length nails, only one ragged thumbnail evidence of her recent nibbling. Aunt Sarah had been quite definite in her ideas of how a young lady should present herself, and those had included well-kept hands and no nervous mannerisms.
    Another difference between Joanna and Caroline? Caroline had apparently been nervous, at least in some ways, and Joanna had never been that. Except that for the first time in her life, she had caught herself chewing on her nails in Atlanta during the search for Cliffside and Caroline. An odd coincidence? Or something more eerie?
    She shivered unconsciously and let her hands fall. Was it possible, she asked herself, to absorb another person’s mannerisms? A person one had never met? No, surely not. Just as it wasn’t possible to establish some kind of psychic connection with another person just because both of you “died” the same day. It defied logic and common sense.
    Yet here she was.
    She shook her head, forcing herself to stop thinking about elusive things and to concentrate on the facts she had gathered.
    The guy at the gas station, once he’d stopped staring at her, had offered the information that Mrs. McKenna had been a real safe driver, everybody knew that, and it had been a real shock when she’d been killed driving so fast. Some said the car must have had something wrong with it, but he knew for a fact it had been okay, because his boss
and
the sheriff had practically used a magnifying glass to go over what was left of the wreck, and they hadn’t found a thing wrong, not a thing. So she must have just lost control,that was what his boss and the sheriff thought. And wasn’t it a shame, the whole town thought so ….
    And the girl working in The Inn’s gift