by Callie Hart
The morning slipped by. We drove around the entire island at least twice before I really saw any of it—rolling hills, so green and lush that they almost looked fake; steep, rocky cliff faces that plunged wildly down into white water and the raging sea; tiny little whitewashed houses with peeling green window frames and scruffy dogs tethered to posts out front; so many decrepit looking fishing boats rocking to and fro along the coastline, fraying lines caked in salt crystals threatening to snap under the tension of the boats trying to drift away. It felt like another time, in another world completely.
At around lunch, the storm finally hit. The thunderheads that were lurking out over the ocean finally rolled in, and thunder and lightning crackled overhead. The children weren’t scared at all. I parked the car at the side of the winding, narrow road that headed back to the house, and the three of us sat and watched the battle in the heavens commence. We counted the seconds between the lightning flashes and the thunder…
One…two…three...
We didn’t make it past three; the fury was right on top of us. It felt safe in the car, even though we probably weren’t. For a second, such a brief, unbearably small snatch of time, I didn’t think about Ronan swinging from the ceiling fan. I didn’t think about CPS coming in the morning to take the children away. I just sat with them in the car and we shrieked and howled every time the ground shook beneath us, and the sky rippled with light, and everything else was just noise.
******
Negotiating bedtime with Connor was like negotiating peace in the Middle East. It was well after nine by the time he finally agreed to climb into bed, and that was only because his head was nodding and he could barely keep his eyes open any longer. Jurassic Park had gone on at seven, and Amie had been so excited within the first twenty minutes that she’d exhausted herself and fallen asleep straight away. I’d carried her up and put her in her tiny single bed in the room next to mine, and she hadn’t even stirred. Connor had made it to the last fifteen minutes of the film before he got up off the couch and staggered sleepily off in the direction of his room, silently, unwilling to admit defeat.
Fifteen minutes later, I was on the phone with Mom, balling my eyes out. It took three solid attempts to explain what had happened before she understood what I was saying.
“You aren’t serious?” she hissed down the phone. “George? George? Where are you? Ophelia’s boss committed suicide!”
Dad picked up the other line in the den. “What did you say?”
I let Mom tell him; I didn’t have the energy to get it out all over again. Now that the children were asleep, I finally didn’t have to hold myself together anymore. It was a relief, but it was also frightening. I felt out of control, like I was barely retaining my grasp on reality.
“You have got to come home, honey. I knew there was something off about this whole thing. Honest to god, what a terrible thing to do. What a thoughtless bastard. Those poor little mites.” Mom was outraged for everyone involved, including me, but the children bore the brunt of her sympathy. Having my mother feel sorry for you was not necessarily a good thing in a situation like this. It tended to make her hysterical. “I mean, really! Really!” Her voice was getting higher and higher. “I just can’t believe it. How could someone be so self-serving? If you want to kill yourself you wait, until after your children have finished college. It’s just not done! I can’t believe it. What an asshole. What a complete asshole.”
“Calm down, Jen. Calm down. We don’t know the whole story,” Dad said, ever the peacekeeper. “Your mother’s right, though, darling. Come home as soon as you’ve handed the children over tomorrow. That’s not a healthy environment for you to be in right now.”
I didn’t tell them about Mr. Linneman and his paperwork. If they knew Ronan had essentially left his kids to me in his will, they would go ballistic, and I couldn’t deal with Mom’s voice raising another decibel right now. “I know. I will. I’m going to book a flight as soon as I get off the phone.”
The restaurant was going to be shut down. I wasn’t going to make the money Ronan promised me if I didn’t stay and see out the six months, there was no two ways about that. But maybe, if I was really lucky another job would come up as soon as I landed back in California. There might be enough time to build up a little bit of capital and save the business from going under if I started waiting tables at a second job as well.
“Look, guys, I’m so sorry. I’m beat. I’m going to have to go and sleep. I’ll call you as soon as I know what time I’ll be getting back, okay?”
My parents both wished me goodnight, and Mom told me to take care of myself about fifteen times. I was headed up to bed, trying not to look in the direction of Ronan’s study, when I felt a familiar niggle of doubt shoot through me. Why did he do it? Why? I was never going to know if I didn’t read that damned letter. I wanted to go home, yes, but how frustrating would it be to never truly understand what had happened and why? If I didn’t go into Ronan’s office and get that letter, I was going to be in the dark forever. And he owed me, damn it. He owed me an explanation. What he did wasn’t fair to me, and it really wasn’t fair to his kids.
I halted on the stairs, fear already prickling at my skin. I was going to do it. Being afraid was stupid. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum had taken Ronan’s body away hours ago. There was nothing in there now, but the unreasonably superstitious part of me was convinced Ronan’s spirit was still lurking in there, poking around in among the books and all of his papers, waiting for someone to come visit him.
Stupid. Really stupid.
I marched down the stairs, across the hallway and straight into the office, holding my breath. Nothing happened. The room was empty. The chair Ronan must have used to climb up onto his desk had been tucked neatly away. All of the sheets of paper on his desk were straight, apart from one small white envelope—the one I had come in here to find. It sat on top of a thick, leather-bound book that looked like it had been carried around by someone for years, all covered in scratch marks, a deep brown oil mark down the spine, probably from extended periods of handling. On top of the envelope and the book, something glinted and shone in the dark—gold and purple. A medal. A purple heart.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself.
The room, despite the fact that it was full of brand new furniture and still had that universal Ikea smell of flat pack bookcases and fresh woven fabric, was already filled with a sense of emptiness that chilled me inside.
Ronan had claimed the room forever now. No matter what, the space would always carry the history of his actions within its four walls. I picked up the medal first, turning it over in my hand. It looked pristine, brand new, like it had never been handled before. George Washington eyed me balefully from the cast of the metal, stern and cold. I dropped it back on the desk, snatched up the letter, then retreated out of the room at a run, my heart beating out of my chest.
It felt a lot safer sitting at the kitchen counter to read the note. My name was slashed across the envelope like Ronan had been in a terrible hurry when he’d written it.
Inside, the letter:
Ophelia,
We met for the first time today. You weren’t impressed with me in your interview, I could tell, but I was impressed by you. You weren’t flustered. You were respectful and polite, even when I was rude. You were steady. You were calm. You were exactly what I need you to be now, in this moment, when you’re reading this letter.
You probably think I’m a monster, and I suppose I am in a lot of ways. I haven’t made this decision lightly. Know I have wrestled endlessly over my decision to take my own life. Not because I wanted to live, but because of the effect it will have on the children. I haven’t second-guessed myself. Ever since Magda died, I’ve wanted to follow after her. My family was fairly religious when I was growing up—Roman Catholic—but I haven’t believed in that stuff for a very long time now. I don’t think Magda’s cancer was a test handed down to her by a higher power. I think more than likely it was a shitt
y hand dealt to her in a game of poker she didn’t even realize she was playing. But if there’s a chance there is an afterlife, something more that we go to when we leave this plane of existence, then I have to hope that I’ll be joining her soon.
I don’t expect you to understand how I can risk my children’s happiness on the slim possibility that I might be able to see my wife again. But you see, if I lived my children wouldn’t be happy. They would resent me. They would hate me. As the days, the weeks, and the months have passed me by, I have caught a glimmer of the man I am to become if I continue to live and breathe in this skin of mine, and he isn’t a good man. Before Magda, I was lost. I was weak. I was broken. I am even worse without her now.
So you see it’s better this way. I’ve amassed a fortune in the past few years. Enough money to make sure Connor and Amie receive the best education money can buy. They’ll never have to worry about making their mortgage payments. They’ll never have to stress about making ends meet. Their futures lie before them, all the better and brighter for the fact that I won’t be in them.
And you…this is where you come in. I’m sorry I lied to you. You’re a strong, smart, fiery woman, and in another life I’m sure we would have been great allies. You’re like Magda in so many ways that sitting across from you in that interview made me very uncomfortable.
I ask you to please carry out the job I hired you for. I’ve opened a bank account on the island and left enough money in there for you to be more than fine from now until the summer. Take care of my children. Teach them. Nourish them. Comfort them. If you’re too angry to do this for me, then please do it for my wife. Connor and Amie were her sun and moon. She was a sweet, kind, wonderful woman, and no matter how badly I am letting her down right now, I have been determined to make sure someone equally as wonderful as her safeguards the children until their uncle agrees to take them himself.
In case you are still unaware, I have a brother, Sully. Sully and I haven’t spoken in seven years, but the truth of the matter is that he is still my closest friend. He will take the children eventually, Ophelia. He might just need nudging in the right direction. I have every confidence in your ability to make him see sense.
On my desk, you will find a leather diary along with this letter. Read it. It will explain a lot.
Ronan.
P.s. When he’s ready, give Sully the medal.
Great. So not only did Ronan want me to take on the role of mother, father and sometimes teacher to his children, he wanted me to convince his estranged brother to accept the role after me? Ronan and I barely spent any time together whatsoever. How he had figured out I was capable of accomplishing this monumental task in such a short period of time was a mystery. Damn it. Talk about an uphill battle. He must have known it would be too much to ask of one person. He must have known.
It was late. I should have been exhausted from getting up so early and the events that occurred shortly afterward, but instead my brain was wired. Too much adrenalin pumping around my body, lighting up my synapses, causing my muscles to jump and twitch of their own accord. I was going to read that damned diary. I was going to read it cover to cover, and if there wasn’t something monumentally terrible inside then I was going to curse the name of Ronan Fletcher for what he’d done.
Getting up, I hurried back into his study, moving as quickly as I could—I didn’t want to spend a second longer than necessary in that terrible room—but my eyes never landed on the diary. The second I walked through the door, I looked up and saw him. Saw him standing there, on the other side of the window. Our eyes met, and I saw the shock on his face. Only a matter of hours ago I’d been outside, feet covered in mud, heart hammering in my chest, watching him swinging back and forth. Now our roles were reversed, him pale, white as a sheet, hair tumbling into his eyes, staring at me through the glass, and me, swaying in the study, barely managing to keep my legs from quitting out from underneath me.
It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be possible. Ronan was dead. I’d seen him with my own two eyes. The cops had made sure. How the hell could he be watching me from outside if they had taken his lifeless body away to somewhere else on the island? The answer was obvious and yet impossible at the same time: I was looking at a ghost. Ronan’s spirit really had lingered behind, and he was observing right now me with hard, steely eyes and a firm set to his jaw that told me he wasn’t happy with how I was dealing with this situation.
My head spun. I couldn’t breathe. A heavy weight pressed down on my chest, constricting my ribcage, preventing me from expanding my lungs properly. My mother had always said ghosts were real. She’d been saying that since I was a kid. I’d never believed her. Never once considered she might not be completely loopy. Until now. The room seemed to be pitching to one side, listing drunkenly. I was about to pass out.
“Ronan?”
The face on the other side of the window—Ronan’s face—frowned. My breath shortened even further, coming out in sharp, ineffective pants that felt unwelcome in my body, as if my lungs had hardened, refusing to accommodate the oxygen I was trying to force into my body. I took a step back, my body reacting too slowly. The message my brain was sending to my legs was, “Run! Run like the fucking wind!” but they wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, I shuffled backward away from the window, hands stiff at my sides, heart beating like a signal drum in my ears, in my temples, everywhere in my body.
The figure on the other side of the window acted as if he were my reflection in a mirror, moving away from the window, vanishing into the blackness beyond. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. If I did, he was likely to materialize out of thin air right behind me and kill me somehow.
That’s what ghosts did, wasn’t it? They wanted to cause harm? They sure as hell didn’t show up for a cup of tea and a chat as far as I was aware. My obsession with the TV show Supernatural kicked in, then, and I began frantically trying to remember where the nearest iron poker or piece of rebar might be. It wasn’t that kind of house, though. Once upon a time it might have been, but now everything was renovated and brand new. The huge fireplace in the living room was gas powered, and with two small children around it was unlikely anyone had left building materials laying around.
While my brain was thinking these ridiculous thoughts, Ronan was vanishing, disappearing little by little, the shadows eating him, swallowing him, until finally he was gone.
The spell was broken.
I bolted from the study like a shot.
My feet hammered up the stairs; it seemed as though I made enough racket to wake up the children and half of the island, but when I raced along the hallway and dashed into my room, slamming the door closed behind me, I didn’t hear another soul stirring in the house. All I could hear was my own labored breathing, and the sound of thunder rumbling off in the distance.
“Jesus.” I leaned my back against the door, swallowing hard. Get yourself together, Lang. Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? It couldn’t have been him. It wasn’t.
It took a long time to convince myself of this. I paced my room for fifteen minutes, shaking my head, mind racing. It had been a long day. An awful, heartbreaking day. There was no way Ronan had killed himself, only to come back as a ghost, though. No way in hell. The mind was a powerful thing, and after the day I’d had it was understandable that I would be overly sensitive. Imagining things, seeing things that weren’t there.
I was still too freaked to shower. I got changed and climbed into bed with my laptop instead, jumping every time the house creaked or the branches of the trees outside the window shook, casting long shadows on the walls inside my room. Flights. I needed to book my flight home. The sooner I got back to California and away from this god-forsaken place, the better.
I opened up my web browser and had to stop myself from booking the earliest flight available. It would be really crappy of me to leave before the CPS worker came and collected Amie and Connor. I didn’t even have anywhere to leave them. Waiting until everything was squared away with them
was the right thing to do, even if the prospect of postponing my flight from the island for a few extra hours was enough to make me break out in hives.
Seven thirty in the evening. The flight I booked from Knox County was late enough that I’d have enough time to see the children settled, get my ass across to the mainland, and travel back into the city. I might even have enough time to grab a glass of wine or two in the airport bar—I’d never needed a drink more in my life than I did now. Not even when I found Will in bed with my best friend.
I’d like to say that I fell asleep right away, reassured that I was going to be back on a plane in less than twenty-four hours, winging my way home to my relatively normal life in California, far from the windswept coastline of Causeway Island and the crazy, terrible thing that had happened here. I didn’t, though. I lay in bed with the covers pulled up tight underneath my chin, and I stared at the ceiling, chewing on my lip, scared and feeling like a pretty shitty human being.
CHAPTER NINE
Unacceptable Circumstances
“Feelya. Feelya, wake up. There’s a man outside.” A tiny hand poked and prodded at my face, patting over my cheeks and forehead. I woke slowly, sluggishly, trying to comprehend my surroundings. It took a second for everything to rush at me—the memory of yesterday and everything that occurred. Amie was standing by my bed, hair snarled into a dark, tangled bird’s nest. She had lines on her cheek from her pillow, but other than that she looked like she might have been awake for hours. Her pale blue eyes were bright and alert, crinkled at the corners, and her mouth was drawn into an impish smile. “You were snoring. Really loud,” she informed me in a whisper.
