Not Quite Free

by Lyla Payne

  My heart stops at the headline, which has nothing to do with Henry Woodward. It’s not even cut from one of the Charleston or London newspapers, which is where I’d found all the brief mentions of Henry’s colorful life.

  It’s from the Creek Sun, thirty-ish years ago. And it’s about my mother.

  Chapter Three

  “So your mom and Clete knew each other?” Leo huffs at my side, his breath pluming in white clouds.

  The morning is cold—frosty, even—and it’s been so long since the two of us went for a run that we’re both panting hard enough to make conversation a struggle. One of the most annoying things in life is how long it takes to get in shape versus how quickly we fall out of it. Our last run was less than three weeks ago, but according to the burning in my lungs and calves, it might as well have been three months. Or never.

  Still, it feels good to have someone to talk to about what I read in those newspaper clippings last night. I’m determined to keep Amelia as far away from my drama as possible—not all the way out, of course, because she’s the type who doesn’t shy from questions and she’s also not-dating my lawyer—and Beau is obviously gone. Dealing with his own crap, one would presume.

  It also just feels good to be with Leo. I hate that he and I have grown apart since he started dating Victoria. I hate it even more that he seems uncomfortable around me lately, for whatever reason. Maybe he thinks that after Beau, it’s going to make me break down and cry to be in close proximity to a person in a happy relationship or something.

  It has to be something like that; I can’t imagine what else would encourage him to keep his distance.

  “Gracie?” he pants, one eyebrow cocked as he glances at me for a second before re-focusing on the path ahead of him.

  It takes me a moment to remember his question. My mother. Clete.

  “Oh, yeah. So there was a story in the Creek Sun from when my mother was fifteen or so. It said that she was lost in the woods for a couple of days and that her friend Cletus Raynard was the one who found her and brought her home.”

  “Her friend?” He’s as out of breath as I am, but his voice is still incredulous. “Like…I guess that makes sense. He just seems like he’d always been middle-aged and crotchety.”

  “I know, but shit. My mom would have been almost forty-five if she were still alive. I’d guess Clete’s around the same age.”

  We make it to our usual stopping place, thank goodness. Neither of us sits right away. I walk up the sidewalk and down, bouncing on the balls of my feet to stretch my legs and resting my hands on top of my head to assist my poor, laboring diaphragm.

  Leo collapses before I do. I look dubiously at the metal bench, wondering if my butt is sweaty enough to get stuck to it like a tongue to a metal pole. Given that this is South Carolina, and even though January is cold, it’s not cold, it’s probably safe. I take the risk. My thighs breathe a thank you even as my calves tighten into balls that I struggle to work free. Leo grabs my feet and puts them in his lap—first leaning on my toes to flatten them, then holding them in a flex until the knots loosen.

  “Thanks,” I tell him gratefully.

  “So, your mom was friends with Clete. Somehow, the more I think about it, the less it surprises me.” Leo shakes his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “I mean, you’re friends with him. You were bound to have something in common with your mother.”

  “It had to be an affinity for outlaws…” I grumble, even though it is sort of funny. “I thought it was more interesting that she got lost in the woods by herself. What was she doing out there?”

  It must have happened a year and a half or so before she got pregnant with me. Had she known Frank? Had he been with her? I’d never stopped to think about or ask how old my father was, but it occurs to me now that he must have been quite a bit older than my mother.

  Which makes him knocking her up more than a little icky. Not that seventeen is so far from eighteen, but still. Ew.

  “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask Clete when he turns up.” Leo drags his arm over his forehead, blotting the sweat, before settling it on the bench behind my back.

  My stomach hurts at the reminder that Clete isn’t hanging out in the mountains an hour away like he should be—he’s somewhere else, and no one knows where. I’m not sure why it bothers me so much except for the fact that, with everything else that’s going on, I need the people I depend on to stay in their places. To stay the same, really.

  It’s the reason it bugs me that Leo has barely said a word about Beau, or anything personal whatsoever, since he came to check on me after the arrest.

  “I hope I’ll get the chance to ask Clete about it sometime. It’s interesting, for sure, but it’s definitely not a priority in the grand scheme of all my drama.” I frown, staring out at the still, gray water. “I’m more curious as to how the clipping got mixed in with my things.”

  Where it came from at all, to be honest, since I’m obviously not the one who clipped it. I wouldn’t cut an article from a newspaper that old, so it couldn’t have even been an accident. Someone must have left it on my desk, and I’d swept it into my bag with the rest of my files before running away from the crazy-lady ghost. Another problem.

  “Who do you think left it there? Another ghost?”

  The mere thought of the nasty spirit grabs my spine with a cold hand. It squeezes tight while I try to breathe. Concern flickers in Leo’s blue eyes as he watches me.

  “There was another ghost, at the library. She was near my desk, but I’m not sure who she was or whether she could have left that story for me to find.” The ghost seemed less than helpful, even if she did intimate that the two of us would be collaborating on…something.

  Willingly or unwillingly. For my part, I’m feeling the latter.

  “And?” His gaze remains on me, unchanged. Leo is many, many things but unobservant isn’t one of them. He knows that whatever—or whoever—visited me wasn’t a positive.

  It’s still a little bit weird to me, the way that my friends accept my ability to see ghosts. But their open minds are yet another thing I love about them.

  “And it was different,” I tell him, that bit of honesty riding a decent wave of relief. “She’s intimidating.”

  “Intimidating.” He repeats my word, his expression turning skeptical. “You dealt with Mama Lottie without crying and rocking in the corner. How much more intimidating do ghosts get?”

  He makes a fair point.

  “Well, I’m not crying and rocking in the corner now, either,” I point out. No need to tell him the woman in the old wedding gown sent me tripping over my own feet. “And Mama Lottie wasn’t technically one of my ghosts. I mean, I helped her in the end, but she didn’t show up pointing and being all creepy and demanding.”

  “Hmm.” Leo leans back and spends a minute or so studying the water. “Any idea who she is or what she wants?”

  I shake my head. My heart feels torn between my innate need to help the spirits who come to me, my fear of this particular ghost, and the fact that I don’t have time for any of it.

  Tears prick my eyes and I shut them tight, trying to hide my weakness. That instinct is another trait my lovely mother passed along. Lately, my focus has been on the genes I inherited from my father, who gave me this strange, unpredictable ability, but my mother’s still in there. I’ve always known it.

  And it’s always scared the shit out of me.

  Leo’s big, warm hand brushes the back of my knuckles before settling over mine with a heavy reassurance that pushes the tears down my cheeks.

  “Hey. Hey, Bugs. Talk to me.”

  The kindness in his voice almost makes me sob, but I bite my lower lip to hold it in. Breaking down, while cathartic, isn’t going to help. I’ve got a willing ear; it would be a shame to waste it bawling.

  Good Lord but I sound like my grandma.

  “It’s not one thing,” I manage after I get my breathing under control. “It’s everything all at once, and even
though I love having Jack at home, he kind of changed everything.”

  “Babies do that.” His smile is at once wry and sympathetic. It reminds me that Leo gave up much of his own life to care for Marcella during Lindsay’s time in prison. “But Amelia is still there for you. She believes in you. We all do.”

  His fingers tighten on mine, and they keep squeezing until I look him in the eye. Some of the reassurance I see there transfers through the air between us, warming me.

  “Thank you,” I tell him softly after gulping air for a few minutes. The day looks clearer now, if a little hazy around the edges, and the rising sun is warm on my face. “I’m just feeling more than a little overwhelmed.”

  “Rightly so.” His blue eyes hang onto my face, insisting I don’t look away. “Gracie, you’ve got to take things one at a time, in order of importance. Staying out of jail tops that list.”

  I nod a couple of times. He’s right. “I’m having a drink with Travis tonight to talk about how we can try to figure out more about Frank, maybe who killed him.”

  Leo raises his eyebrows but says nothing. I know that everyone probably thinks I’m crazy to focus on Frank’s past instead of my own upcoming defense, but what the hell. Trusting the police to do their jobs hasn’t gotten me very far over the past several months, so I’m not sure why I’d start now.

  Besides, Amelia as good as told me that I should take charge of the situation. That I should fight for myself like I’ve fought for my friends.

  “You think it’s dumb for me to try to solve this on my own,” I assess after suffering through a full minute of silence.

  Leo frowns, shaking his head. “You know me better than that, Gracie. You’ve proven yourself to have a good nose for this type of thing. I’m just…this is big. This is your life, and it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to find anything. Your father was a criminal most of his life, but even the FBI struggled to compile much on him. That’s all.”

  His words remind me of Brick’s—there’s that phrase again, this is your life—but he’s not trying to talk me out of anything, just presenting all of the roadblocks in a logical order. None of them are overblown or enlarged.

  It is an uphill battle, and I know how unlikely it is Travis and I will make some big break about our father that everyone’s collectively managed to miss. Still…

  “It’s like you say,” I tell him when my brain is done whirring in my ears. “If the police haven’t been able to dig into Frank’s life after all of these years, what makes you think they’ll start now? Especially when they think they’ve already got their woman?”

  “It’s a fair point, but be careful, Bugs. Everyone you’ve talked to so far seems harmless. They all say Frank worked alone—except for the ghosts—but someone killed him.”

  “I know.” I chew on my lower lip. “I think the first thing I need to do is find out whether he was really mentally ill.”

  We chat for a while longer. I fill him in on the contents of the journals, and the possibility that a long thread of mental illness might run in the side of my family that sees ghosts. Or says they do. Since my father, it turns out, was hospitalized several times, some of them voluntary.

  Leo listens, like always, and when I’m done he squeezes my hand. It hasn’t escaped my attention that he’s still holding it, and even though it may be a little weird, I’m grateful. The connection to the real, solid world feels not only good, but necessary.

  “You’re not losing it, Gracie. Other people saw Mama Lottie. Amelia and your aunt saw Anne Bonny.” He pauses, waiting for me to agree, which I do with a tight nod. “But that doesn’t mean Frank wasn’t, and it sure as heck doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful when you’re looking into his family. Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “And you’re coming over Friday night for eighties’ movies and drinks. No talking about ghosts or your case or your family. Doctor’s orders.”

  “You’re not a doctor,” I inform him with a smile.

  “No, but I’m your friend and I know what you need.”

  “Well, in that case…” A smile spreads across my face. More than a few of the kinks in my stomach come loose at the thought of an evening, even one, with no demands other than tuning out with a friend. “You’re on.”

  We part ways back at my house, agreeing on both movie selections and beer instead of wine. I take a deep breath before walking inside, deliberately not thinking about how Victoria will feel about the two of us spending an evening together. She gets him way more than I do.

  Which is fair, I suppose. But now, for the first time, I decide that no matter what I’ve been telling myself about the two of them and their relationship for the past month, I really don’t like it. Or her.

  Not one bit.

  It’s not even eight in the morning, but Brick’s car is in the driveway when I get back from my run. The house is quiet as I slip out of my shoes in the foyer, listening for the typical morning sounds of Amelia talking softly to Jack or the drone of the news anchor’s voice on the television.

  Nothing.

  The familiar smell of coffee hangs in the air, and I follow my nose into the living room, where I pause at the sight on the couch.

  Amelia is holding Jack, and Brick is sitting so close that a piece of paper wouldn’t fit between them. He’s leaning over and talking to Jack in a quiet voice, one big finger running down the baby’s fat, soft cheek. There’s a glow around all three of them that makes me stop breathing for a full second before a tangle of fear and exclusion and happiness crash in.

  “Hey,” I say as quietly as possible, not wanting to break up the moment but feeling like a total creeper. If they looked up and found me gawking, it would have been beyond awkward.

  Even for me.

  “Hey, Grace.” Amelia looks sleepy. Almost like Jack looks when he’s gorged himself on milk and can no longer keep his eyes open. “How was your run?”

  “Invigorating,” I reply, still trying to figure out how I feel about this entire scene.

  It would have been normal for Brick to move away—to leap away, really—when caught sitting so close to my cousin, but this morning he doesn’t move. I think about our conversation in the library, just a couple of days ago, and how he insisted that he doesn’t exactly know what he wants.

  Something about him this morning makes me think he’s figured it out.

  “Coffee?”

  “There’s a full pot,” Amelia says, passing Jack off to Brick like she’s been doing it for years and scooting to the edge of the couch. “I’ll come with you.”

  “I’ll go put baby J down, if you want,” Brick offers. “He’s ready.”

  The baby’s eyes are drooping shut, his little nose and mouth puckered the way they do when he’s thinking about fussing and sleeping in equal parts.

  “Thanks.” My cousin gives him a dazzling smile, the kind that has convinced other people to do her bidding her entire life. This one is different, though. It’s just for Brick.

  Amelia fixes us both cups of coffee without me asking, and I find myself sitting down at the kitchen table across from her even though I need to be in the shower. I’m the only library employee for another month, after all, and we open at nine.

  But there’s an air of anticipation around us. One that leaves no doubt that she wants to talk to me, and honestly, after months of speculating about what’s going to come of this whole Brick and Amelia friendship, the excitement over possibly finding out makes me willing to go to work smelly and sweaty if need be.

  It’s not as if the kids will care, and the adults who know me will just assume I’ve had some kind of relapse into shower aversion.

  “He wants us to date.” Her cheeks are bright red, her eyes big and excited but also wary. “Brick.”

  “Yes, I figured.” My tone is wry and sarcastic, but I can’t help it. She’s obviously crazy about the guy, and vice versa. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “I just had a baby, Grace. My husband died
less than a year ago. No, let’s not sugarcoat it, it might have been self-defense, but I killed him. And I have to wait until I’m done breastfeeding to get back on the antidepressants that changed my life. I need a therapist to survive.” She pauses to suck in a deep breath. “He’s a recovering alcoholic with major family issues and mental health problems of his own. I mean. What are we doing?”

  There are tears in her eyes now, but the roller coaster of her emotions doesn’t startle me. We’ve been through daily ups and downs since she brought Jack home, a state of affairs the doctors and her therapist agree seem like normal postpartum hormones rather than a spike in her previous depression.

  “You’re overthinking this. As far as the baby goes, I don’t know why that’s a factor here. Brick is obviously crazy about Jack, and he’s been there for you both before and after you had him.” I make a face at her. “And if you’re implying something ridiculous about how you look, I don’t want to hear it. You gave birth two weeks ago, and you already look amazing. Plus, your boobs are huge.”

  “Grace!”

  “Come on, Millie. What’s your real problem with admitting that you have feelings for Brick that go beyond friendship and gratitude?”

  She sips her coffee. I do the same while I study her. This is what the two of us do—what we have always done—for each other. Sit. Wait. Put the question out there and wait for the other person to gather enough courage to answer it with honesty.

  “I’m scared,” she admits after some more caffeine fortification. “There’s so much that could go wrong, and the truth is, I’ve come to depend on his presence in my life. In our lives.”

  She’s talking about her and Jack, not her and me. Obviously.

  “I know.” My heart hurts for her, for the pain and fear in her voice. I’ve been there. Hell, I’m right there at the moment, wondering how I’m going to get through the next weeks and months without Beau’s unwavering support. “I know you’re scared, Millie, but that’s what happens when you let other people in. You give them the power to hurt you, but sometimes it’s worth it.”