by Lyla Payne
She’s not. She’s trying to breathe but she can’t. She can’t, and then she’s gone.
The scene doesn’t fade, no matter that I’m still on my knees and have retched my dinner into the grass three times over. No matter that I’m squeezing my eyes shut, then opening them, every few seconds trying to erase the past and get back to the present.
It stays just long enough for me to watch Brick’s eyes open. To see the horror on his face when he realizes his only friend is swinging dead above him while he is very much still alive.
I crash through the front door of Beau’s house an hour later, barely noticing that he’s wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a threadbare T-shirt. This entrance is such a change from yesterday morning’s that it tempts me to cry. But I’m cried out. My tear ducts are dry.
“Gracie. What on earth? Why are you all filthy? Are you okay?”
I push past him into the foyer, streaking for the kitchen and a glass of water without answering. He follows, his bare feet issuing padded footsteps against the hardwood floors. The water is cold going down my throat. It eases the burning.
“Gracie. Please tell me what’s going on.” Concern draws his eyebrows together. Tries to reach out and comfort me like always.
“Brick killed her. Nanette Robbins.”
My boyfriend, the one who tells me with such passion that we shouldn’t keep secrets from one another, sits down at one of his barstools. His gaze holds mine, steady but unsure, and the truth slams into my chest.
“You knew?”
“I think killed her is a bit of a strong interpretation of what happened, but yes. I knew.” He blinks a couple of times, as though still waking up. It is only five in the morning. “How do you know? He told you?”
“No. She did.” I fill the water glass again. “Or showed me, I guess.”
“You went out there alone? Again?”
“I couldn’t sleep. My father came over in the middle of the night and my mind was going a mile a minute.”
“I wish you would have just come over here.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I guess the question is, what are you thinking of doing with this new information?”
The nonchalance of the question takes me aback. As though there’s more than one choice—he killed her, even if they’d had some kind of pact and he thought he was helping her go through with it. “I saw the whole thing. Felt what she felt. Nan changed her mind. She was about to tell Brick she wasn’t going through with it when he pushed her and she died. What do you think I’m going to do?”
I’ve never hyperventilated before, but if there were a brown paper bag nearby, I’d grab it. The way it is, I put my hands on my knees and take a couple of deep breaths.
“I think that if you really consider what you saw and the ramifications of telling the authorities, you’ll decide to let your ghost rest in peace.”
Stunned disbelief numbs my reaction. “You think I should keep my mouth shut? How very Drayton of you.”
“That is not fair. If you saw what happened that night, then you know that Nan and my brother had a suicide pact. There are a million notes between the two of them that discuss it—my brother kept them all. She might have changed her mind but he had no way of knowing that. More than that, he had no way of knowing he’d survive.” Beau swallows hard, avoiding my accusing gaze. “He shot himself and missed. There’s proof of that, too. A recovered bullet.”
“It’s not in the police reports.”
“The police weren’t the first people on the scene. My sister found Brick and called my mother.”
“You covered it up. All of you.” My knees are giving out but I’m not going to sit next to this man who’s like a stranger right now. I sit on the floor, pressing my legs into the cool tile and my back against the humming, stainless fridge. It feels nice. Sturdy. “And you want me to be a part of it now.”
“I don’t want you to be a part of it. If you’ll recall, I’m the one who never wanted you out at Drayton Hall at all!” He runs both hands through his sandy hair, leaving it mussed in a way that sucker punches my feelings. “I wasn’t involved in the decision to cover up Brick’s presence that night, obviously. I was in England, at school, and didn’t even hear about his suicide attempt until I came home the following Christmas. Almost a year later. It sounds wrong, but my brother…he was troubled, Gracie. That was the second time he tried to kill himself, and it wasn’t the last. He didn’t get right until after high school.”
“What about Nan? You don’t care about her?”
“She’s dead, Gracie. She was dead when I first learned she existed, and the evidence that she wanted to be that way is pretty convincing.”
I want to argue that she didn’t want to die, that his brother and mother could have made it all up, but while the former is true, the latter is not. She had gone there to meet Brick that night intending to kill herself. It’s hard to fit that piece into the puzzle of what to do next.
“It doesn’t mean that people like her sister don’t deserve to know the truth.”
“Her sister took a half million dollars a year to shut up. That’s how much she cared about Nan.”
“What?” The room tilts to the side, starts to slip under my legs. “Y’all bribed Reynolds to stop saying she didn’t believe Nan would kill herself?” Things make sense now. Her guilt when she heard what Nan told me… “Why would she do that?”
“She was pregnant. Poor. No way to support herself and the father had run off.” Beau grimaces, at least having the goodness to display distaste. “My mother is ruthless, Gracie. That’s no secret. You’ve seen for yourself what she’s capable of if she thinks someone is threatening her family.”
We sit in silence for a long time. My heart beats. My hands press against the floor. My mind tries to reconcile the pain on Nan’s ghostly face, her sadness at Reynolds’s house, and her desperate, last-minute will to live with the fact that I am sure that Brick never intended to murder anyone. He went there to die with his friend.
It just didn’t work out.
But Nan is still dead.
I get slowly to my feet. Beau slips off the barstool and comes toward me but stops at my outstretched hand. “I need some time.”
“There’s nothing to be gained from pulling this story into the light, Gracie. You might not believe it, but Brick already hates himself enough. He’s the only person who would have grieved Nan, and he’s still doing that.”
Tears fill my eyes. “Not the only person.”
The thing is, it’s not hard to believe Brick hates himself. The way he acts, how he’s a dick all the time, is a great trick for pushing people away. A guy who thinks he’s not worthy of much—maybe not even of being alive—would be keen on that.
Beau’s arms drop to his sides. His eyes never leave my face but there’s something beaten about his posture. About the air in the room. As though we know that, no matter who wins this battle, we’re both going to lose.
“This is your call, Gracie. I love you and nothing is going to change that. Not even if you decide to start a war with my mother.” His shoulders droop. “Just think about it first.”
I bite my lip, trying not to cry. Nod. Get the hell out of here before I totally lose my shit.
Instead of going back to work—either of them—I head home to hide under my quilt and think about it. But it’s not Cordelia Drayton and her threats, or making life harder for my wonderful, sweet, thoughtful boyfriend that’s weighing me down like gold bars tied to my wrists and ankles.
It’s Nan Robbins. If she wants justice, if that’s what’s holding her here years after she should have been resting in peace, I’m the last person who will be in a position to give it to her. If I turn my back, I’m taking that away.
Living with that for the rest of my life is what I think about.
Chapter Twenty
It’s the middle of the night again and my eyes are stuck wide-open. Then again, I did spend most of the day dozing on and off, or pretending to when Amelia
came home from work and started asking questions. The accusations of backsliding, of returning to the kind of girl who wasted whole days literally hiding from her problems, didn’t budge me from my bed. It’s only one day, and besides, old Gracie sure had a lot fewer problems.
Like deciding whether to side with my marginally honest boyfriend or the dead girl who walks around trailing a noose. Jesus H. Christ. How did this become my life?
I’m still wallowing at three a.m., Millie snoring beside me. Brat refused to go to her own room and has been making a racket and changing positions every two minutes since ten, so sleep would have been a precarious proposition if my brain weren’t running on a constant loop of doom.
I kick off the covers and sit up, taking care not to jostle her side of the bed too hard. She should pay for bugging me all day, but waking her up would just mean more questions. What I need is someone to talk to who can be at least a somewhat neutral influence, so Millie’s out. I love her, but her sense of self-preservation has always been a ruling force in her life.
Not only that, but Millie grew up in Beau’s world. Not at the apex, but close enough to understand it. Once she hears the whole story, there’s no doubt that she’ll agree with the Draytons. Not with what they did on the plantation grounds all those years ago but with the reality of now. That there’s nothing to be gained by reporting what happened, that Brick was a troubled child, too, and most of all, that one dead girl’s peace isn’t worth sacrificing my own happiness. Or hers.
And the thing is, I don’t think she’s wrong. I don’t think Beau’s wrong, but it feels wrong. That’s what is keeping me up.
I shove my feet into flip-flops, grab my keys, and leave the house without thinking too hard about where I’m going. My car more or less pilots itself through the Heron Creek streets, crossing the tracks and pulling into Leo’s gravel driveway. The night is silent. Spooky, even. The feeling of a million eyes tracking my steps follows me up to the door, and I stand on the porch trying to figure out how to get inside without waking up the entire house.
My pondering is cut short when the door swings open, a tired-looking Lindsay with a frizzy bun on top of her head glaring at me from behind the screen. “What in tarnation are you doing here at this hour? Booty calls are so high school.”
“They were more college, for me, but that’s beside the point. I have a boyfriend, which you know.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the way this story goes.” She crosses her arms. “I’m assuming you didn’t come here to see me or my daughter.”
“No. I need to talk to Leo.”
“And you didn’t stop to wonder whether he’d like to talk to you in the dead of night?” Lindsay shakes her head, strands of hair slipping free and sticking to one corner of her mouth. She doesn’t look as though she was sleeping, and despite her attitude—which I cannot figure out—a kinship stirs in my gut as she pushes open the door as if in invitation.
“Can’t sleep?” I ask.
“What, can you read living minds now, too?” she snaps. “I’ll get Leo. You can wait on the porch. Goddamn careless women, I swear to God.” Lindsay mutters the last sentence, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, as she stalks off down the hall.
The dismissal is clear and ends my weak attempt at establishing a friendly relationship with her. Lindsay Boone just doesn’t like me, and I guess part of growing up is realizing that not everyone is going to like you and that’s got to be okay.
The screened-in porch greets me like a pleasant old friend. Leo and I hunkered down here more than a few nights as children, sorting out the intricacies of the ongoing treaties and wars between our two groups of friends and, when we’re done with that, drinking cokes and munching on pizza rolls. Now, I know his freezer was full of things like that because their family had no money and a slew of kids, but to ten-year-old me, they were like magical treats. Unicorns in the freezer.
“Hey.”
My breath catches at the sight of Leo in a loose pair of pajama pants and nothing else. Boyfriend or not, there’s no way to be a woman with blood in her veins and not appreciate the hard lines of Leo Boone—all tan pecs and abs, rippling muscles in his arms as he lowers himself into the nearest chair and rubs the sleep out of his eyes. He’s a curious mix of sexy man and drowsy child, inspiring a strange reaction of both attraction and mothering instinct.
I shake my head. This is Leo. Recognizing he’s attractive isn’t the same thing as being attracted to him, and anyway, that’s not why I’m here.
“Hey. I’m sorry to wake you.”
“S’okay. What’s going on?”
“I found out what happened to Nan today. I’m going to tell you because I need advice, but you can’t do anything about it.”
“Gracie, if it’s something you saw that no one else can see and there’s no other proof, there’s nothing anyone could do about it even if they want to. Spill.”
His quick observation takes me aback. He’s right. Even if I wanted to tell the cops what really happened, how Brick was involved in Nan’s death, who would believe me? Especially if the Draytons claimed it wasn’t true.
“I think you might have just answered the question I’ve been stewing about literally all day without even hearing it.”
“Damn, I’m good.”
I came all the way over, though, and it’s so peaceful out here surrounded by the past and the present all smushed together. So I keep talking. “Brick Drayton and Nan Robbins were a couple of depressed kids who found each other and made a suicide pact. They met at the tree that night to kill themselves together—her with rope and him with a gun. He tied the noose for her, which is why the coroner thought she didn’t do it herself, but she asked him to.”
“So, she did kill herself and the little ghost lied?”
“No. She changed her mind at the last minute, but when she tried to tell Brick, he thought she was just chickening out and needed help. So he pushed her.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Leo flinches, wide eyes saying he’s fully awake now.
“He tried to shoot himself a second later but jerked, missed, and fell off the tree. He didn’t wake up until after she was dead, and instead of finishing the job, he called his sister.”
“And the all-powerful Draytons took it from there,” Leo muses. For the first time, he doesn’t sound all that judgmental, just resigned. “It’s hard to blame them.”
“What?” I sit forward in my chair. I did not expect to hear this from Leo. “How can you say that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t actually have a kid, but the past several years, Marcella has been like my daughter. I’d do anything for her, Gracie, and if she were going through the kind of time it sounds like Brick was going through, and this happened but he magically survived, I would do anything to make sure he could get his life back on track. You know?”
I don’t know. I don’t have children and changing that has kind of always been a moving target. A far-off assumption that it would happen someday but no real driving force to make it happen sooner rather than later.
“I guess I can’t understand that except in concept. Not really.”
“It’s crazy, the lengths you’ll go to in order to protect little ones you love.”
“But isn’t part of raising them teaching them to be accountable for their mistakes?” I grimace over the word. Killing a girl isn’t a mistake, yet in this context…even I struggle with calling it murder.
“When there’s a lesson to be learned, I suppose. But I’m guessing that if Brick and this girl were supposed to die together and he made sure she went through with it, then pussied out himself, living was punishment enough for him. Based on the kind of person he turned out to be, he learned many lessons. The first of which is that he’s an asshole.” There’s an edge to Leo’s voice that says he doesn’t feel bad at all for being so harsh.
I’m not Brick’s biggest fan, but after seeing fifteen-year-old him, how broken he was, how much he cared about Nan, it’s getting harder to hate
him. To not wish that he’d had better parents, ones who would have forced him to face the whole incident head-on instead of bury it so deep he’s still struggling to keep it down.
“He was a kid, too. He should have been held accountable, if for no other reason than it’s the only possible way he could have attempted to move on.”
Leo has the good grace to look ashamed. “You’re right, Gracie, as usual. If he was as troubled and unhappy a kid as you say, he deserved better. But the real question is, what good will it do anyone to drag all this out of the closet now?”
“Nan will be able to rest.”
“Right. A girl who’s already dead—at least partially by her own hand—will feel better. Brick’s life will be ruined all over again. Your relationship with Beau, which you seem fond of, won’t survive.”
“And Mrs. Drayton will set my life on fire, along with Millie’s, Will’s, Mel’s, and probably yours for good measure. I’m not even sure Clete’s safe from her, although I’d like to see the two of them go at it.”
Mentioning Clete reminds me of the shitshow my father started the night before last, but I push that mystery aside. There will be plenty of time to angst over my own origins later.
“I’d like to see that bitch try.” Leo clamps his jaw tight, fire glittering in his icy blue eyes. “She threatened you?”
“In a sugary, upper class way, yes.” I swallow. “I find that despite all my attempts to wreck my own life, I’m sort of enjoying how things are coming together here.”
Leo hesitates, then gets up and moves to my side. His hand goes over mine in a sweet gesture that’s unlike him—Leo and I are not touchers. Not huggers, not kissers on the cheek. The comfort he gives me is the gruff kind, the suck-it-up-buckaroo variety, and this…confuses me.
“You deserve a life like that, Gracie Harper. I know these ghosts have become a part of your everyday and that you feel responsible for helping them, but don’t let getting involved in their problems ruin what you’ve started to rebuild. It’s not worth it.”
