"Hey," he said, pulling it open before she could knock.
"Hi." She smiled, looking surprised. "Thanks for inviting me."
"My pleasure. I figured we needed a night off.”
"There’s another girl," Lori blurted as he stepped out his house.
"Another girl? Who disappeared?"
Lori nodded. "Yeah, Meredith Abram. She went missing from Free Soil in 1990."
"Three years before Summer."
"Yeah."
"Huh, that kind of kills the five-year thing."
"Unless it's unrelated. Or maybe there’s no five-year cycle at all."
"How did you find about her? Nothing ever came up in my searches."
Lori tugged at the hem of her dress. "I was just searching around online and came across an old article."
"Dang, okay. Did you find any contact information for the family?"
"Yes. I sent her mom an email. She's willing to talk to us tomorrow."
"Okay." Ben held up his car keys. "Let's say we go kick some ass at karaoke and then we can figure out our next steps."
Ben sipped his ginger ale and half listened to the screechy rendition of Addicted to Love coming from Holly, an ICU nurse, on the karaoke stage.
“Anyway,” Zander continued, leaning across the table towards Lori, “I was standing around there one night chatting with a few of the vampires after a drop-off when suddenly I heard this door slam from a room at the end of the hall and then footsteps pounding toward us. I kind of jumped to, like ready to face the emergency, but nobody appeared. The vamps started laughing at me like I missed an inside joke. Finally, Kenya here”—he winked at Kenya, who was sitting back with her feet propped on the back of another nurse’s chair—“told me that it was just the three a.m. ghost.”
Lori looked at Ben, who rolled his eyes at her. “Really?” she asked Zander.
Zander took an ice cube from his glass and flung it at Ben. It struck him in the neck and slipped down his shirt, freezing a trail toward his pants. Zander directed his attention back to Lori. “Yes, really. Come on, Kenya, back me up.”
“It’s true,” Kenya said, adjusting the straps on her tank top. “Ben’s the emergency room cynic. He’s heard it too, but he’s always giving us some song-and-dance about footsteps echoing from other floors.”
Ben dug the ice cube out of his shirt and shot it back at Zander. “A healthy dose of skepticism comes in handy in our line of work. Remember Ginny, that rotating nurse last year who wouldn’t go in room eleven because the toilet flushed on its own?”
“To her credit,” Keya cut in, “she was on duty the week before when the patient in room eleven died.” She leaned toward Lori. “While on the toilet.”
“No?” Lori looked horrified.
Ben reached over and tucked Lori’s tag into the back of her dress, his fingers brushing against her warm skin. “Yes.” He smirked. “But I can tell you definitively that toilet had been flushing on its own for months.”
"Oh, come off it, Ben. You’ve seen some spooky shit in there,” Ryan said, pausing to take a long swig of his beer. “In fact, I have it on good authority you were the first one who saw Mrs. Hardy.”
“Of course I saw her. I was her nurse.”
“You were the one who saw her after she died,” Ryan said, casting Lori a significant look.
“You did?” Lori stared at him.
Ben smiled at her and shook his head. “I must have confused the nights. I thought I saw her, but then it turned out she’d died on the day shift… so I guess I confused which night I saw her.”
“I call bullshit,” Kenya said.
“I second it,” Ryan added.
“Thirds,” Zander agreed. “Holly’s done. Lori, you’re up, girl. Get up there and show off that sultry Carly Simon sound.”
“If Carly Simon has a twin sister who can’t hold a tune, I might be on par with her,” Lori said.
“She looks a bit like her, don’t you think?” Zander asked Ben. “Carly Simon circa 1975.”
“Carly Simon suffers in comparison,” Ben murmured, winking at Lori as she stood.
Ben watched Lori take the stage. She looked nervous, brushing at her stomach and tucking her hair behind her ears. She also looked beautiful, her sundress swaying above her shapely legs.
"Sing I'm Too Sexy," Kenya shouted.
Lori grinned and held up her gin and tonic, glancing at Ben, who gave her a thumbs up.
The song started and Ben's smile faltered and disappeared. Her voice was husky, sexy, but the music and the words were all wrong.
"Every breath you take…” she sang.
Ben stood abruptly, and the chair he'd been sitting on careened over, crashing into a woman standing beside the pool table. She shrieked and the man she was playing against, a bearded goliath who stood a foot higher than Ben, strode around the table angrily.
"You just hit my girl," the man shouted, jabbing a thick finger against Ben's chest.
"Back off, gorilla. I was getting ready to apologize," Ben snapped, trying to lean over and right the chair. He looked at the woman, who stared at her boyfriend with a mixture of fear and awe. "Sorry about that," he told her.
"You don't talk to her, you talk to me," the man growled, moving so close to Ben's face he felt the bristles of his facial hair.
"You trying to kiss me, man? Because I don't normally swing that way. For you, I might make an exception."
The man cocked his fist back and Ben ducked as he swung. The guy's fist caught air, sending him stumbling sideways.
"Whoa, whoa, dude." Zander shouted. He, Ryan and two of Zander’s paramedic friends stood up, creating a wall between the gorilla and Ben. "Chill out, man," Zander told the guy, who'd righted himself and seemed ready to fling every person in his path aside to get to Ben.
"Hey," Jerry, the owner of the bar, shouted. "Take another step and I'm calling the cops. Take two and I'm pulling out the gun I keep behind my bar." His eyes drilled into the gorilla, who still glared at Ben.
The gorilla's girlfriend grabbed his hand and tugged him away. She picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. "Let's get out of this dump," she snarled, shooting a final menacing stare at Ben, who was tempted to yell a farewell that would have gotten him pounded for sure.
In the scuffle, he'd forgotten about Lori, and more importantly the song she was singing, but it reasserted itself in his head. He looked at the stage, where she'd stopped singing, likely because she'd caught sight of what was unfolding on his side of the room. She was telling something to the DJ and trying to fumble the microphone back onto its base.
"I'm done," Lori said, turning to the DJ who operated the karaoke.
"What?" he yelled, pointing at his thick headphones.
"I'd like to stop now," Lori shouted, trying to return the microphone to the stand. She missed and it dropped to the floor, releasing an ear-splitting screech of feedback. Lori scrambled to pick the microphone back up and put it in place.
"Thanks for stopping that guy from mopping the floor with my face," Ben told Zander, who was still watching the door the gorilla had disappeared through. "We're going to split."
Zander put a hand on his arm. "I wouldn't just yet. That guy is liable to be lurking outside waiting to finish what he started.”
“We’ll be fine,” Ben said as Lori arrived at his side. "Let's go.”
She said a quick goodbye to his friends and followed him toward the door. When he pushed out of the bar into the warm night, he paused, looking up and down the street.
"What happened in there?" she asked.
"That halfwit wanted to kick my ass because I knocked over my chair and it hit his girlfriend. It's fine." He was walking fast, faster than necessary, and he could feel her struggling to keep up.
"What's wrong?" Lori asked, though he barely heard her. His footfalls were deafening on the pavement. She grabbed the back of his shirt. "What's wrong?" she shouted.
He slowed and turned, his pulse jumping, and he didn't
know if it was the encounter with the gorilla or the damn song. "Why did you pick that song?"
Lori stared at him. "In the bar? The karaoke song? I don't know. It was on the screen and I clicked it."
Ben studied her, searching for some other explanation, and then he clapped his hands together hard, startling her. "What in the actual fuck is happening?" he said, face tilted to the sky.
"You're freaking me out right now," Lori said. "What's happening? What was wrong with the song?"
He shook his head because he didn't want to tell her and then laughed and threw up his hands. "Why not, right? Why not tell you? Okay, well…" He paced away, staring at the cracked sidewalk. "That was mine and Summer's song and I've heard it now four times in a week. Before that I couldn't tell you the last time I heard it—years, most likely. And that's not all, folks, I've seen her. She's always walking away, disappearing around a corner, but it's unmistakably her and let me not forget the necklace I gave her with the unicorn. The necklace you found in my car appeared again in the hand of a girl who slit her own throat at the hospital. The necklace Summer was wearing the night she vanished. I'm either losing my ever-loving mind or something seriously fucked is happening."
"It's her," Lori said. "It's the witch."
"Jesus, Lori!" Ben shouted and started away from her again.
She didn't follow him. He heard her turn and start in the other direction.
"Damn it," he muttered, spinning around and chasing after her. He'd almost caught her when ahead of them on the sidewalk stepped the gorilla. He stood wide-legged, hands fisted at his side. He reminded Ben instantly of Bebop and Rocksteady, the bumbling idiot supervillains from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ben might have even cracked a joke if Lori wasn't walking directly into his path.
"Lori, stop!" Ben commanded, and she must have heard the warning in his voice because she looked up and froze.
"No buddies and no bartender. Who's going to protect you now, pretty boy?" the man growled.
He stepped toward Lori and Ben ran forward, ready to throw himself between Lori and the gorilla. Lori's hand lifted and she shoved something in the man's face. The gorilla shrieked and lunged away, swiping at his face.
"Run," Lori screamed, whirling back towards Ben and taking off down the sidewalk. Ben raced after her.
They didn't slow until they'd reached his car. They both jumped inside. Ben started the engine and threw it into reverse, squealed out of the parking lot and down the street.
"What did you do? Mace him?" Ben asked, looking at her, incredulous.
"Flea and tick spray," she admitted, an uneasy smile on her face. "I had some in my purse because I picked it up for Matilda. I'd forgotten to take it out."
"Brilliant," he whispered. "Bloody brilliant."
She laughed and pulled her dress lower toward her knees. "Or really stupid. If it hadn't done the trick, we might be getting our heads bashed together right now."
Ben looked at her. "I would have taken the head-bashing so you could get away."
She smiled. "My hero."
"I'm sorry I reacted that way about the witch thing," he said. "I don't want to believe it. Is that so terrible? I want to think it's all a screwed-up coincidence."
Lori faced him. "I understand being skeptical, but at what point do you take the lid off your closed mind and open up? Huh? I heard the stories of your friends. You yourself have had those experiences. Denying it doesn't make you smarter, Ben. It makes you vulnerable. If we're going to face this thing, we have to believe it's real."
"Like Santa Claus?" He smirked and then immediately held up a hand in apology. "I'm sorry, that was out of line. I'm a skeptic by nature."
"There's a fine line between being skeptical and stupid," she murmured, unable to hide her smile.
He glanced at her. "That's such a Mulder thing to say."
He had invited Lori in, wanted her to come in, and she’d wanted to say yes. She almost had, but a voice in her head urged her not to. She wanted to believe it was a protective voice, a voice that wanted to keep her safe, but she wondered if it was the voice always reminding her she wasn’t good enough.
As she drove to her mother’s house, Lori thought of Ben and the words he'd spoken and the way he'd looked at her. It could be real, his feelings, and it could also be a spell cast over them by the forced closeness, the misconception that having experienced a similar tragedy made them in some way compatible. They weren't compatible. Ben was a risk-taker, a thrill-seeker, an outdoor enthusiast, a skeptic. Lori was a homebody who liked to read books and daydream. Even if they managed to start a relationship it would fizzle out when their differing personalities started to clash. When Ben wanted to spend their Saturdays mountain-biking, Lori would want to lie in bed and read.
It was destined to fail.
She parked in the driveway and pushed into the house. Her mother and grandmother hadn’t heard her come in. They were in the kitchen talking in hushed voices.
“Henry said he had an affair,” her mother continued.
“Poor Lori,” Grandma Mavis said. “Why does this world keep throwing obstacles in her path?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” sighed Rebecca.
Lori leaned against the wall, listening to the women who loved her most in the world quietly grieving for her.
“Her thirtieth birthday is the day after tomorrow. Maybe that will cheer her up.”
“Did you order her gift?” Grandma Mavis asked.
“I did. I just hope we can get her to go.”
Lori frowned, feeling guilty for eavesdropping. She opened the front door and closed it loudly. The women went silent.
Lori walked into the kitchen, where her mother and grandmother sat at the table.
“Hi, dear,” Rebecca told her, smiling. “Staying the night again?”
“Yeah. I took some time off of work.”
Grandma Mavis stood and hugged her. “Good. You deserve a little break. Can I make you a plate? I cooked spaghetti.”
Lori yawned and shook her head. “I’m beat, but I’ll see you right here for coffee in the morning.”
“Good night, Lorraine,” her mother said as Lori started out of the kitchen. “Oh, honey, could you keep your door open tonight?”
Lori turned back. “Sure, why?”
“Just in case you have a bad dream. I’ll hear you sooner.”
“Thanks, Mom. Good night.”
33
Lori drove to Ben’s the following afternoon for their planned trip to meet Meredith Abram’s mother.
She parked and climbed from her car.
“Road snacks,” she told him when he walked from the garage. She held up a plastic container of muffins. “Coconut cranberry, a Grandma Mavis specialty.”
“Ooh, thank you, Grandma Mavis,” he said, as she handed him the container. He peeled off the lid and grabbed one out, eating half a muffin in a single bite. “Mmm… wow. That’s a good muffin.”
Ben drove to Free Soil to the home of Meredith Abram's mother Margot.
Margot lived in a two-story cedar-shingle house located on a deep, wooded lot. Ben parked near the garage.
Lori climbed from the car, admiring the well-manicured lawn and the elaborate landscaping. To the side of the house a massive wildflower garden bloomed in vivid shades of red, pink and yellow. Along the stone walkway that led to the front door stood little fairy houses and ceramic garden gnomes and frogs.
A woman opened the front door and stepped out. She looked like she belonged in the house. She wore a pink and yellow floral bandana covering her pale hair. Her floor-length yellow dress matched her bandana. She waved at them. "Come in, please. I've put on tea."
Lori walked up the path with Ben following. The interior of the home was as whimsical as the outside. The walls were painted a pale orange with bright flower wallpaper borders butting against the ceiling. The floors were honey wood, covered in vibrantly colored rugs.
"I'm Margot Abram. You must be Lori," the woman said, taking Lor
i's hands.
"Yes, thank you for having us. And this is Ben."
"Welcome." Margot turned and led them through the bright hallway into a sun-filled kitchen. The kitchen cabinets were painted white and an old-fashioned yellow oven matched a vintage ice chest. In the center of the round kitchen table stood a vase overflowing with fat pink and yellow flowers.
"I picked those from my garden this morning," Margot said, gesturing at the flowers. "Please, sit. Get comfortable."
A large square window overlooked the garden, and Lori spotted bird houses and hummingbird feeders hanging from wrought-iron poles throughout the plants.
"You have a lovely home," Lori said, leaning forward to smell one of the flowers. It was sweet and pungent.
"Thank you." Margot filled delicate teacups from a silver tea-kettle. "I have some wonderful herbal teas—blueberry hibiscus, ginger peach, honey ginseng or perhaps a more standard black or green tea."
"I'd love to try to the blueberry hibiscus," Lori told her.
"Make that two, please," Ben added.
Margot poured their teas and carried them to the table. "This house used to have dark carpets and gray walls," she said, sliding the cups to them. “Two years after Meredith disappeared, I did a complete overhaul. It's my homage to her, my way of honoring her life. She loved flowers and bright, sunny things."
"It's a wonderful tribute," Lori said.
"It is," Ben agreed. "So many people turn away from life after such tragedies. It seems as if you've turned toward it."
"I've done my best," Margot said. "We lost Meredith's dad seven years ago to a heart attack. That was hard, but not as hard as losing Meredith. I find peace knowing they're together now. And I still have my other children, Mickey and Bernadette, they're both grown and living their lives, but I see them often."
Margot turned back to the counter, picked up three framed photographs and brought them back to the table before she took a seat.
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