The 'Geisters Read Online Free

silver button on the side of the tank depressed, and the toilet began to flush.
    “
I am satisfied
,” said the Insect, as it settled back into its chair in the shadowy part of the tower room, crossing its hands on its lap, slender fingers twitching and intertwining. “
I approve
.”
    “Thank you,” said Ann when she’d collected her phone from the floor.
    “Did that do the trick dear?” asked Eva, from Wal-Mart.
    “That seemed to do it,” said Ann.
    “You sure now?”
    “Sure,” she said—not sure at all.
    Eva sighed. “I’m glad, dear. Be at peace. Now you call, if—”
    “I will.”
    From one tower to another, Ann LeSage made her way back. She could find no evidence of mayhem en route. The glasses hanging over the bar gleamed in the afternoon sun, which shone through windows clean and clear. The traders gesticulated at their tables, hands unblemished, while their cutlery stayed safe in front of them. The waiter was cheerful and intact behind the bar, tapping lunch orders on a computer screen. And Michael sat back in his chair, ankles crossed, hands palm-down on the table, while the saltshaker sat unmoving between them. His face was strangely, beatifically calm.
    When Ann recalled that July day—months later, outside Ian Rickhardt’s Niagara vineyard, while she cradled an unreleased Gewürztraminer on the south-facing veranda and looked down upon the rows of grapevines, with just a moment to herself before their other guests arrived . . . this moment, not any prior or subsequent, was the moment that defined it. She, folding her skirt beneath her as she resumed her seat; Michael, looking steadily at her, unblinking, as he lifted one hand, and lowered it on top of the saltshaker like a cage of fingers.
    “Gotcha,” Michael said as he lifted the shaker off the table and studied it with real glee.
    Was it terror she felt looking at him then?
    Was it love?
    Love, she guessed.
    Yes. Love.
iii
    To say that Ian Rickhardt played a large role in the planning of their wedding was like saying the sun was a bit of a player in the solar system. The old man
threw
the wedding—planned it and drew up the guest list and staged it, taking things over and riding them all like a bride’s nightmare mother.
    When Michael had told her about him, Ann thought Rickhardt might have been a father figure, standing in for the angry Afrikaner Voors. Michael had met Rickhardt in South Africa, over a rather complicated real estate deal. Rickhardt, who’d made his fortune in deals like this, saw something in Michael—clearly—and over the course of the years took an interest in the young South African. “He encouraged me to be my own man . . . eventually, to come here, and make my own life.”
    Ann nodded to herself.
Like a father, like a father should be
.
    When she eventually met Ian, for dinner one August Sunday at Michael’s condo, she scratched that idea too. He was more of
an uncle.
    He was near to sixty, but in fine shape for it. Had all his hair, which had gone white long ago and hung in neat bangs an inch above his eyebrows. He was lean without being gaunt, with a thin brush-cut of beard over a regular jawline. His eyes were pale blue and his skin a healthy pink.
    Ian came to dinner in a pair of faded old Levis, and a motorcycle jacket over a black T-shirt. A wedding band, of plain gold, bound a thick-knuckled finger. His socks had holes in them, and he displayed them like hunting scars.
    “The house at the winery is ancient,” he said. “Century house and then some. Very romantic, oh yes. Floors are the original oak, and they’re fucking stunning. But they spit up nails like land mines. The socks put up with a lot.”
    Michael laughed at his joke and so did Ann—not because it was funny, but because it cut the tension that ran just beneath the surface of this casual little dinner party.
    Because of course, it was barely a party, and anything but casual. Ann figured it out even as it began.
    She was being