“I never saw this before.”
She turned her huge eyes toward him. “That’s because it wasn’t here. At least not in its entirety.” Her voice trembled.
“Bull. Mom must have had the fountain cleaned when they sold me the place, or something.” He traced the faded letters of the second verse. “Look at this. The lettering’s worn. It’s obviously old. We just never noticed.” She could have seen that when she was a kid, before she died.
He bent closer. “What’s this supposed to mean? ‘From the moment when love is sought, until the time when life means naught.’ What kind of nonsense is this?”
“The Goddess is guiding us,” Lila whispered in a reverent tone.
He snorted. “A GPS would have been more helpful.”
There was more fire in her glare than water in the fountain. “That the Goddess has given us direction at all should be appreciated. The onus is on us to figure out the way to follow her direction.”
He sighed. “Fine.” He checked his watch. Seven o’clock. Nothing could be done tonight. Anyplace useful would be closed. “I’ll head over to the library in the morning and see what I can find out about the fountain. Maybe there’s a clue in its history.” Did he really believe a centuries-old fountain contained a message for him, personally?
Then again, here he sat in his driveway, talking to a ghost. Words appearing on a fountain could be considered fairly tame by comparison.
Emma Kaye 