Mandaline nodded. From her bag she pulled out a small, purple velvet sack of items. Walking around the clearing, drawing in hand, she finally settled on a place. “This would be good. No one is here.”
Sami and Matt walked over while Mandaline cleared the pine needles from the space, exposing the dirt underneath. She didn’t miss how Ellis hung back, quietly watching but not speaking.
“Go ahead and sit,” she told them. They did, and she used salt to cast a circle around them. “Please don’t leave the circle until I say.”
They nodded without question.
She produced a piece of rose quartz she’d brought from the store with her. She’d saged it and let it sit overnight in a bowl of sea salt. After digging a small hole in the soft dirt with her bare hands, she put the piece of rose quartz in the bottom. “Goddess above, Goddess below. Goddess within, Goddess without. We come to you today with prayer. We release a soul back to your care.”
She pulled out a bottle of rosemary oil and sprinkled some on the piece of quartz. “In this ground lay peace and love. As below, so above.” She sprinkled some crumbled sage leaves. “Air and fire, water and earth. This soul was loved, this soul had worth.”
She fought the emotions rising within her to continue the ceremony. She’d opted to totally wing it, knowing whatever she’d said from the heart would be more true than anything she could plan. From a plastic baggy she sprinkled an aromatic mix she’d prepared that morning of valerian, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves, angelica, basil, and black pepper. She lined the hole with part of the mixture. “In peace and love may this soul go. As above, so below.”
Mandaline nodded to Sami, indicating she could put his ashes in. With trembling hands, she removed the top from the box. Inside, a twist tie closed the plastic bag holding the cremains. Matt reached over to help her untie the bag as tears rolled down Sami’s face. Together, they lovingly emptied the bag into the hole before sitting back.
Mandaline spread the rest of the herb mix on top of the cremains. “Your soul today we do release. We forgive and remember and wish you peace.” She took a deep breath. “We hold on to our love, but our anger we lose. Forgiveness and healing is the path we choose.” Hot tears rolled down her cheeks and she hoped she could hold it together long enough to finish.
“Today, we all do set you free. As we speak it, so mote it be.” She scooped dirt over the cremains and motioned for Matt to put the paver stone into place. Then she closed her eyes. “Namaste. Aho.”
She opened her eyes when she heard Sami let out a soft sob. Mandaline turned her back on them as Matt held her in his arms while she cried. Mandaline took a deep breath of her own. Picking up a handful of pine needles from inside the circle, she used that to open and sweep away the circle.
Matt whispered to Sami as he held her and together they sat there, slowly rocking as she cried in his arms. Mandaline picked up her things and took them back to her messenger bag. Ellis walked over.
With blue eyes full of concern, he looked down at her and opened his arms. She didn’t hesitate to go to him, her own soft sobs obscuring the sound of Sami crying in the background.
Mandaline’s soul felt about fifty pounds lighter as they all left the clearing in silence. The two horses were still waiting at the gate when they emerged from the woods. More than ever, Mandaline was convinced she’d absolutely made the right decision.
When they got back to the house, Mandaline stared at it. In her mind’s eye, she envisioned the peeling, sun-damaged paint as fresh and new, the house looking loved instead of neglected.
She felt love there and knew it centered around Matt and Sami.
Julie hadn’t revealed everything to Mandaline during the investigation, but she’d been able to put the pieces together herself without any assistance.
She also knew what she would—or rather, wouldn’t—find in the house.
No traces of George Simpson’s negative energy remained.
“Did you want to do the walk-through now?” Matt asked.
“That’d be fine.”
Sami only nodded in reply. They led Mandaline and Ellis into the house through the kitchen door.
The large room looked barren.
“We’ve already started getting rid of all the furniture,” Sami said. “The…” She swallowed hard. “The bed upstairs, but so far that’s all we’ve done upstairs. I wanted to clear this all out first.” A doorway led into another room, which had, presumably, been either the living or dining room. It, too, lay empty.
“We had a lot of stuff to get rid of in the basement,” she continued walking toward another door and opening it. “Took us a few days to clear that out.” Her faint smile faded. “Matt’s still healing from…the incident. I don’t want anyone in the house yet until we get it emptied out.”
“How are you doing?” Mandaline asked.
He shrugged. “I’m healing. Ribs are still a little tender.” During the attack, Steve had drugged everyone with doctored iced tea to disable them, then knocked Matt out with a frying pan before dumping him down the basement stairs and locking him in.
“Why don’t we start with the basement,” Mandaline suggested. “Work from the bottom up.”
She led the way downstairs. A bookcase lay open, revealing a hidden room behind it.
“We found cases of old whiskey in there,” Matt said. “And George Simpson’s papers, and his stash of money. He didn’t tell his wife about the room.”
Mandaline walked in, waving Ellis back when he wanted to go in with her.
She turned, eyes closed and mind open.
Nothing.
She looked at Sami. “I don’t sense anything.”
“That’s good, right?”
She smiled. “In this case, extremely.”
They worked their way through the first floor. At the bottom of the stairs, Sami stopped. “How much do you want to know?” she quietly asked. “Matt was locked in the basement for a lot of it.”
Mandaline took her hand. “As much as you want or need to tell me. I can handle it.”
She took a deep breath and pointed to the bottom of the stairs. “Julie was sitting right about here when the tea started hitting her. He’d dumped nearly a whole bottle of Valium into the pitcher, from what police were able to figure.” She stared at the place for a moment. “We didn’t know he’d disabled the cars. She’d tried to leave when she first felt the drugs hitting her, but her car wouldn’t start. She came in and dug her AAA card out of her purse. George…I mean Steve pretended to call them until he realized how out of it we were.”
She looked up the stairs. “I passed out on the couch after I saw him hit Matt. I thought he’d killed him. At some point, George…” She looked down before meeting Mandaline’s gaze. “I dealt with both of them that afternoon. Steve couldn’t keep fighting against George. George was too strong. Before…before George went into the lake, Steve came out a couple of times. I know it’s crazy, but that’s what happened. I couldn’t tell the police about that part of it. But to my dying day, I will always know in my heart it was George Simpson who committed those acts, not Steve.”
She slowly started up the stairs and walked to the right to a bedroom door. “This,” she quietly said, “was the master bedroom. I didn’t realize until that afternoon, before everything happened, while we were going through the house again with Julie, that the iron bedframe was likely the same one from the Simpsons. I saw a vision of a woman tied to the frame and being raped. I know from the pictures I saw that it was Evelyn Simpson.” She leaned into Matt’s embrace when he draped his arm around her shoulders. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He tied Julie up the same way Evelyn Simpson had been tied up.”