The Edge of Recall by Kristen Heitzmann

reason she had stayed. Her energy went into preparing to re-create the labyrinth— and the rest of the landscape design that Smith had reminded her was equally important to the overall project.
    For the most part, the engineer consultants were working remotely and connecting electronically, each discipline adding to Smith’s base sheets their part of the design as the drawings neared completion. Smith would bring all the designs together under one set of plans and specifications that would eventually get the engineers’, hers, and his own seal of approval. She felt the rising energy.
    The design phase always excited her, and she would have to guard the emotions stirred by observing people in a creative mode— especially Smith. Theoretically, she could create a landscape design remotely, as were the other consultants, working from the plot plan and the civil engineer’s drawings. But she didn’t work that way. She needed to watch the land perform before deciding how and where to develop it. And this time, of course, there was the labyrinth.
    As she prepared to leave for the day, Bair leaned on the doorframe of her car. “You’re welcome to join us, you know, for dinner.”
    She looked into his ruddy face with its flattened nose and blunt jaw, his hazel eyes, warm and guileless. He had no idea how hard she worked to keep her space. “Thanks, Bair, but no.”
    “Smith would ask . . . if he thought you’d like to come.”
    She pulled the car key from her purse. “He has no reason to.”
    “Right. I know.” Bair shuffled. “It’s just I hate to think of you eating alone.”
    She raised her face. “Gives me time to think.” Brooding, Smith had called it. She called it contemplation. “Really.”
    “All right, then. Drive carefully.”
    She raised her brows. “Would you?”
    “If I were you.” He straightened up, grinning.
    “See you tomorrow, Bair.”
    “Right.” He stepped back but repeated his caution. “Be careful.”
    That second warning caused an uncomfortable sensation. “Has something else happened?”
    Bair looked uneasy. “Like what?”
    “Something I should know about.”
    He folded his muscular arms. “No, just . . . I’m sure it’s nothing. That level is all. Weird.”
    “Maybe someone passing through thought you’d forgotten it.”
    “Passing through from where?”
    She searched the woods, the hint of river through the trees. “No neighbors tucked in somewhere?”
    “Not for quite a ways.”
    She hadn’t realized that was still bothering them, and it made her uneasy.
    “Well.” He backed off and waved. “See you tomorrow.”
    Tomorrow and the next day and the next, for the number of months it took to work up the drainage, planting, and reclamation. Theoretically, she could have her design drawn in a matter of weeks, if she learned what she needed. Smith had said Gaston wanted the grounds close to the original, but while the building was accurately represented, the etchings gave only vague renderings of the landscape.
    She pulled away from the trailer, thankful to escape talk of hauntings and weird happenings. In the two and a half weeks she’d been there, she had felt scrutinized more than once and repelled by something that was almost certainly not there. Now as she drove toward the gate in the deepening twilight, she thought she saw movement in the trees, something pale, ghostly. She shot a look over her shoulder. Nothing, of course, but she shivered.
    She would tell the guys to keep their ghost stories to themselves. No, that would make her seem vulnerable. Dr. Brenner said everything had an explanation, but too often in her experience it was not forthcoming.
    She stopped at the market, purchased a small French loaf and microwaved a pint of vegetable soup, and then drove two miles to the inn. She carried her food into her room and set it on the little desk, but before settling down to enjoy it, she checked the window latches and the door’s lock and deadbolt. She turned the