The Greatest Gift (A Darcy Sweet Mystery) Read Free Page A

narrow upstairs windows were blue.  Parts of the roof had been replaced with new architectural shingles while other spots were still an older style, like a renovation project had been started and then never finished.
    The front porch was new but the boards were bare and unfini shed.  They thudded hollowly beneath her feet.  Standing there before she knocked, she took a moment to tilt her head back, her eyes closed, her senses extended out.
    She had always been sensitive to the world of the paranormal.  Ghosts.  Visions.  Feelings that turned out to be messages from beyond.  When she'd been a little girl she didn't understand what it all meant, and her abilities hadn't been very strong at any rate.  It wasn't until she'd hit puberty that things really developed and she began to realize just how different she was from other people.
    Now, at the age of thirty, she'd had fifteen years to learn how to use her gift.  Her Aunt Millie had shown her a lot of things.  Other stuff she'd learned on her own.  Reaching out to the other side was as easy as breathing now.
    Standing on Belinda Franco's porch, she didn't feel the presence of a single ghost.
    Sometimes the dead didn't want to be seen.  Other times they jumped up into Darcy's face like those people selling perfume at a mall.   When she needed to have a direct conversation with someone's spirit, Darcy would perform a communication.  It was a little odd that she couldn't sense any ghostly activity here, if Belinda really was being haunted, but it didn't necessarily mean anything.
    The only way to find out for sure would be to go inside.
    Darcy knocked on the door after a few more minutes of listening and feeling nothing.  Belinda answered quickly.  She opened the door just a bit to peer out at Darcy before throwing it wide. 
    "Oh, Darcy, thank you so much for coming over.  I hope I didn't take you away from anything?"
    Darcy thought back to the sight of Jon walking out of the dress shop, all apologies and no explanations.
    "No," she assured Belinda.  "You didn't interrupt anything."
    Inside, in her kitchen, Belinda put a teakettle to boil on the stove.  "Some tea will make the story easier, I think," she said.  She wrapped her blue shawl tighter around the shoulders of her dress and shuffled over to the table to sit with Darcy.  Her gray hair was a frizzy cap around a round, kindly face.  She was short and stooped and Darcy imagined that if she had looked up the definition of grandmother in the dictionary, Belinda's picture would be there.
    "Now," she said, folding her wrinkled hands together on the table.  "I should start at the beginning."
    "You said you were being haunted," Darcy said.  "That word has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people.  I'm assuming you've seen a ghost?"
    To Darcy's surprise, Belinda shook her head.  "Well, not exactly.  I don't have the gift like you and Millie .  I can't see him."
    "See him?" she asked.  "Him…who?"
    Belinda's smile was wistful.  "Dominic.  My Dominic."
    Dominic.  Belinda's dead husband.  Darcy began to feel certain that this was another false alarm.  She hadn't felt anything in the house, even sitting here in the kitchen, and Belinda hadn't seen anything.  She wouldn't be the first woman who wanted more time with their dearly departed family members so desperately that they imagined ghosts.  "I'm sure you miss Dominic, but if you haven't seen him, then what made you come to the conclusion you were being haunted?"
    "Well.  My Dominic is moving things around when I'm not looking.  You know, like in that movie Poltergeist ?"  Belinda actually shuddered.  "That movie always gave me nightmares.  The way that little girl got sucked into the television.  Spooky."
    Maybe she should just do a ritual cleansing to make Belinda feel better , Darcy thought.  At least let Belinda think she had helped Dominic pass over even if he wasn't here.  Not that there was any such thing as a ritual