got over the initial awkwardness. And they were still best friends. Yet, there were times when she felt like something was missing. Or, that something else was there, overshadowing them.
Perhaps it was the ghosts.
There was no doubt that things had changed for Taryn in the past year. Seeing dead people would do that to a woman. Her beloved camera, Miss Dixie, had always been her partner in crime on her job sites. She used her photography as a way to get to know the buildings she painted, to get bring out their fine details and explore them. And while she’d always had a good imagination when it came to envisioning the past, Miss Dixie had helped bring the structures to life for her–something she could use in her work for her clients. But now Miss Dixie was revealing the past in other ways.
She was showing it to her.
When Taryn saw the first pictures she’d taken back at Windwood Farm in Kentucky, the vacant rooms suddenly filled with furniture from the past and the figure that shouldn’t have been there, she’d been terrified yet intrigued.
At first she’d thought it was a fluke, just a one-time thing. After all, she’d had other jobs after Windwood and nothing had happened. When it occurred again at Griffith Tavern in Indiana, however, and intensified when Matt accompanied her to a job site in northern Georgia, she knew it was here to stay.
And as much as she wanted to believe it, Taryn also knew that it wasn’t Miss Dixie making it happen. Her camera was just the conduit. Now Taryn felt a presence almost everywhere she went. Echoes, fleeting images passing from the corner of her eyes, faint whispers…the dreams.
Taryn was surrounded by the dead who wanted to make themselves known to her. And, for whatever reason, not only was she seeing them , she was seeing their teacups and ottomans as well.
“That pizza good honey?” her server asked her with a wink.
Taryn nodded, her mouth full. She was already on her third piece. There might not be any leftovers to take back to the house.
While she attacked her pizza margherita with passion, Taryn flipped through a couple of books about the island she’d ordered online. The Jekyll Island Club Hotel represented a period she was fascinated with–the turn of the century. After the Civil War and before the stock market crash, the classes were still divided and the rich were frivolous and carefree. The men who made the money were inventive and sometimes scrupulous, the women savvy and headstrong. Even by today’s standards they’d spent a ton of money on houses, clothes, and accessories. The Jekyll Island Club was a place to let loose, have fun, and flaunt their wealth to each other. It had been a tremendously gay time, and something that couldn’t possibly last.
It hadn’t.
“ Darlin , you sure you don’t need a box?”
Taryn was still smiling at the look of shock on her server’s face when she’d realized that Taryn didn’t have anything left to put into a box.
Now, back in her car and with her belly full, she decided to get to know her surroundings. She liked to jump into things headfirst and didn’t believe in settling in when she first arrived. She wanted to hit the ground running.
Besides, she was still a little revved up after the agonizingly long drive.
“Georgia,” she muttered as she turned onto the road, “why you gotta be so dang long and flat?”
Still, the ride down hadn’t been as difficult on her as she, or her doctors, had worried. Taryn hadn’t had the official diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome for even a year yet, but since it was a genetic condition she’d been born with it and suffered the symptoms all her life without knowing what they meant. The connective tissue disorder that caused her unstable joints to dislocate and sublux on a regular basis also caused her an immense about of pain. Her specialist had been afraid that sitting in the car for so long and doing the driving on her own would set her back. Any little