Not Quite Alive

by Lyla Payne

  His reaction only makes me want to kick him out more. Apparently this whole taking the high road thing requires some practice.

  “I don’t know. He’s always been super cagey about it, telling me that it’s important and sounding vaguely threatening. I tried poking around the Fournier family tree on my own, but genealogy isn’t my specialty and I kept running into walls.” I gesture toward the duffel bag on the floor next to the fridge. “He left that. Said it will get me started.”

  “You want to take a look?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Let’s clean up and then sit in the living room. My run this morning hurt.”

  Travis nods and the three of us gather up paper plates and boxes in silence. Amelia keeps giving me looks that I interpret as her wanting to either talk to me alone or spontaneously develop ESP, but there’s no real way to do either, so we all head into the living room together ten minutes later.

  Nerves run through me in a way they haven’t since the day my father dropped this bag on my front porch and disappeared for the fourth or fifth time in our short acquaintance. It’s like as long as the information was tucked away, out of sight, I could forget about this part of my life. The ghosts have left me alone lately, aside from Henry. Daria’s been taking care of her own exorcisms, or whatever she calls them. The month of December was quiet and cold, full of family and cookies and nights in front of the fire. As every December should be.

  Now January has arrived, bringing with it a new loneliness—and a sense of foreboding that’s impossible to pin down. Here, staring at the navy bag on the coffee table, it’s not hard to imagine that the strange feeling has been coming from it the entire time.

  “Well, Grace, are you going to open it?” my cousin asks, sounding more than a little impatient. With the situation or me, it’s hard to tell. Probably both.

  Her face helps me find my courage, which is typically not so hard to locate, and I reach out to tug down the zipper. I know what’s inside—papers and journals—but not what’s inside them.

  The first thing I pull out is a family tree, which feels like it’s made of pure gold after all of the hours I’ve wasted online. I spread it out on the glass tabletop and once it’s unfolded, it stretches from one end to the other. The dates and names end with Travis and me on one side and stretch all the way back to the seventeen hundreds on the other.

  Which isn’t that long ago, all things considered. There are plenty of families who can trace their lineage all the way to the middle ages or before, but ours just…starts in the early eighteenth century. Sort of odd.

  “So, I guess Frank knows I’m his son,” Travis comments dryly.

  I cast a sidelong glance his direction, but it’s hard to say what he’s feeling. Frank claims he never knew about me until my mother died and he saw her ghost, but my name’s on there, too. And it doesn’t necessarily appear to have been penciled in recently.

  “Looks that way,” I reply, unsure of how else to respond.

  My eyes scan backward, looking for the name Carlotta—the woman my father said is where I should start looking. The problem is that there’s at least one in every generation.

  One thing at a time. The beginning is the very best place to start. Julie Andrews said so, and she is a literal goddess.

  There are two names at the start of the Fournier family tree: John Fournier and Caliana Azoulay. The first Carlotta is their daughter, the eldest of eight children and the only girl. She has to be the Carlotta, but there better be something more about her inside the bag, because she’s invisible as far as the Internet goes. A real feat these days.

  “Okay, so here’s what I know. It’s not much.” I take a deep breath and pull the few conversations I’ve had with Frank from my memory. “He told me that this girl, the first Carlotta Fournier, is where we need to start. That her father was a French missionary to Africa in the eighteen hundreds and by the looks of it, must have married a local woman and had a family.”

  “Why do you think she was a local woman?” Amelia asks, trying to read the family tree from the side.

  “I don’t know. Her name? The fact that Frank also told me at one point that one of his ancestors was sold into slavery in Louisiana before she escaped back to France?” I shrug, then start pulling more stuff out of the bag. I do look closely enough to realize that everything inside is a recent copy, so we don’t have to be overly careful. The thought that someone in my father’s family, somewhere, has the original historical documents is enough to make me drool. “I could be wrong, but it makes sense.”

  There are more detailed family trees in the bag, complete with little histories on what appears to be important members of the family, but nothing about ghosts. The books, though, pull my interest. They’re diaries, kept by women named Carlotta—but not the same woman. They begin in the eighteen hundreds, and the last one is just a decade old. All of them appear to be written in French, which is going to be a pain in the ass.

  Unless…

  “You speak French?” I ask Travis, perhaps a little too hopefully.

  I took German in high school in an attempt to be different, but since my focus in history was American, I didn’t have a language requirement in college. At the time, I gloated about that fact among my classmates—especially the ancient history dopes taking hours and hours of Latin or Greek—but now, I kind of wish I’d decided to focus on the French Revolution.

  “Nope. Not since high school, and even then, I paid my girlfriend to do my homework.”

  “Wow. I never would have guessed that about you,” I muse, dropping the books onto the table. “Well, it’s certainly strange, all of these books written by Carlottas. But we’ll have to get them translated, I guess.”

  “That should be easy, right?” Millie says, leaning back in her chair and propping up her swollen feet. It’s eight p.m., but she looks about ready to collapse.

  I shake my head. “Some of them are old enough that the French won’t be simple. I can ask a friend from grad school, but I don’t know how long it will take her.”

  “Damn. Well, at least we know some things.” Travis takes a pull from his second beer, still tense around the shoulders. Amelia might have relaxed, but he’s not about to, and for good reason. “Like Frank Fournier knows who my mother is, and to be honest, I care a lot more about that than I do about all of this ghost legacy crap.”

  I turn on him, my chest tight with anxiety. “Travis, look. It’s clear that you think this whole thing is…I don’t know, embarrassing? Stupid? Life-ruining?”

  He nods, which I can only take to mean I hit the nail on the head three times in a row. “For good reason.”

  “You mean you think it’s ruined your life?”

  “Sure. I can’t keep a job.”

  “Why don’t you ignore them?” I ask, my curiosity climbing on top of my irritation.

  “Why don’t you?” he snaps.

  He’s trying to say that we’re the same. That the ghosts make us feel obligated, that we can’t say no to them because they’re human beings who need help. And maybe that should be easy to believe—he’s a cop, after all, which implies that he cares about people and wants to protect them—but something about it puts me off.

  Because if that’s true, why am I the first person he’s ever told?

  “Well, if all you’re concerned about is your mother, I don’t think this is going to help you all that much. Frank’s name is the only one connected with ours on the family tree, so there’s no reason for you to keep looking into this stuff. You’ll have to ask Frank.”

  I don’t really mean to sound so dismissive of his needs. It’s normal, of course, to want to know who your mother is, what she was like. Where the other half of your family is, since apparently this half isn’t working out like Travis probably imagined.

  Even if I didn’t intend it, Travis hears the dismissal in my voice. He drains the rest of his beer and stands up, pausing for a second like he wants to say something, but in
the end he doesn’t.

  He strides into the kitchen, tosses the bottle into the glass recycling bin, then goes back through the living room. No goodbye passes between us before the front door slams behind him, and I let out a breath I’ve been holding.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Grace.” Amelia’s eyes are closed, and by the looks of it, she might be talking in her sleep. For once, she doesn’t sound as if she’s chastising me, though.

  “Do you think I’m wrong?”

  “I don’t know. There are definitely things that aren’t adding up, but it’s not that strange that he’s not into telling people he sees ghosts. Especially since he’s a cop.”

  “Maybe. It depends on how long it’s been happening.”

  I bite my lower lip as Amelia starts snoring, trying to put myself in Travis’s shoes. I only started seeing ghosts six months ago, at least that I’m aware of, and it sounds like he’s been dealing with the issue a lot longer than that. How much longer might make a big difference in how sympathetic I am to his plight.

  For a girl like me who grew up on ghost stories and the casual acceptance of spirits found in the South, it wasn’t such a stretch to find out that I could see them. Many of the people around me believe in ghosts. I have friends who don’t think I’m nuts.

  It’s possible that Travis didn’t have any of that, and the thought of seeing ghosts without being able to hash it through with anyone makes me feel badly for him. It might not make me trust him all the way, but it’s easier to understand why he’s so guarded. Even with the person he came all this way to find.

  I head upstairs to grab my laptop with the intention of sending an email to my French-fluent grad school friend. I haven’t thought about her in a long time—we had a falling-out after I started dating David, actually, because she hated him and couldn’t stomach hanging out with us. Now, looking back, Clara Larsen always was the smart one.

  It could be too late to fix our friendship, but I hope not. I always liked her, and besides, everyone needs a friend with such good instincts. Ideally, next time I’ll listen to them.

  Her email is easy to find on the University of Iowa’s website. She’s not tenured yet, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that she’ll be one of the first people to earn her spot.

  I’m biting my lower lip, wondering what the protocol is for emailing a friend you haven’t spoken to in a couple of years, when a flicker by the window catches my attention. Normally, I’d blame it on the breeze through the open window, but it’s January.

  My brain computes all of this in a split second, and I stand up so fast my laptop nearly dies a spectacular death on the hardwood floor. I’m not surprised to see a ghost standing there watching me, the last streaks of daylight streaming over her shoulder.

  I am surprised to recognize, in the space of a breath, Lucy Winters.

  Chapter Four

  I’ve only seen pictures on the Internet, but it’s undeniably her. She’s more beautiful than I expected, somehow, with hair the color of sunshine and eyes an arresting shade of cobalt blue. She’s shorter than me; a petite girl, really. Her skin isn’t the peachy color of the photographs, at least not now. Her cheeks are ruddy and tan, and so are her arms and legs under her ratty T-shirt and olive cargo shorts.

  A million thoughts run through my head. So many that even though my mouth falls open, no words spill out. She watches me impatiently, but—like every other spirit who has appeared in this room—she doesn’t speak.

  “Lucy?” I manage after about five minutes of dumb staring. The single question is shaky and soft, but her eyes snap to my face.

  There’s something desperate in her expression. Feral. The salty tang of fear and unwashed body fills the room, coating my tongue and making it hard to swallow. She gives me the barest of nods in response to my questioning tone, shifting her nonexistent weight on her boots.

  “Oh my god.” My heart pounds against my ribs. Lucy is here, silent in my room.

  That means she’s dead.

  How am I going to tell Beau?

  What does she want?

  The first question worries me more. In fact, it lodges in my throat and makes it impossible to think about anything else. My feet move in her direction without my express permission, until we’re a couple of feet apart. Her fear, the tension in her face and muscles, is clearer from here. It infects me with more force, winding the base of my neck into a series of knots.

  “What do you want?” The question falls out of my mouth, and even as I hear it, I know she can’t answer me. Can’t tell me.

  Her cracked lips part and she licks them, eyes darting around the room as if she’s afraid of someone seeing us. Lucy’s ghost is skittish, for someone already dead.

  Our eyes meet again, the desperation about her pulling tight around my shoulders. She mouths a word, just one.

  Help.

  And then she disappears.

  Help.

  Lucy seems different from my other ghosts. Like…she needs help now. As if she’s somehow not aware that she’s dead and there’s no rush for anything anymore. As if she’s still waiting to be rescued.

  I leave Amelia asleep in the chair and in the dark about the newest ghost. She’ll only say all of the things I’m thinking, like how awful it is that I’m the one who’s going to have to break the news to Beau, to Brick and Birdie, that the woman they’re all trying so hard to find—the woman they want so badly to believe could still be alive—is dead.

  We all expected her to be dead, I think. She’s been missing in the Middle East for years, kidnapped by a company that has killed before to keep their secrets buried.

  But that doesn’t mean I want to be the one to tell them we’re right. The Draytons love that girl, and by all accounts, with good reason.

  My cousin barely stirred when I covered her with the blanket, which means getting her into bed later may be impossible. I hate to leave her alone with her due date so close, but I’ve got my phone and it’s charged—if her water breaks and ruins the chair, she can call me and I’ll be home in five minutes.

  That’s all the time it takes to get to Leo’s house, where it looks as if every single light is blazing against the now-dark evening. Both his and Lindsay’s cars are in the driveway, and I brace myself for his sister’s inquisition about the necessity of yet another nighttime visit. The thought that my old friend might not be alone, now that he’s had a girlfriend for a while, stays my fisted hand in front of the wooden door, but only for a moment. He can tell me to scram if he’s busy; if he’s not, I need to talk.

  Leo’s the one who answers my knock, though, and he doesn’t seem surprised to see me. Or annoyed, which means I probably didn’t interrupt anything fun. He puts a finger against his lips in the universal gesture for “keep your voice down,” then tips his head the direction of Marcella’s bedroom. Lindsay must be putting her to sleep.

  I follow Leo through the kitchen, where he grabs a couple of beers before leading me out onto the back porch. We’ll be able to talk out here without the girls hearing us—not that I necessarily care whether or not Lindsay knows I’ve seen Lucy’s ghost, but at least we won’t keep Marcella up past her bedtime.

  “So what’s up? New mystery?” Leo asks, his eyebrows raised and his feet kicked up on the glass-topped coffee table.

  It’s annoying how well he knows me. Or maybe it’s just irritating that we both know the only reason I’d show up here unannounced is to get Leo’s advice about a new ghost.

  In that moment, it makes me sad that I don’t pop over to have a beer on other nights. Normal, boring nights. But then again, I have Beau for that, and Leo has his new girlfriend, Victoria, even if I really don’t like her much. The hope that things would get better after our horrible dinner have been mostly shot to hell, since whenever I see her around town she acts as if I’m the ghost.

  “Yeah, maybe. But that’s not the big problem.”

  “Well, we might as well start with the big pro
blem.” Leo tips a smile my direction and some of the tension between my shoulders eases.

  I’m able to take a deep breath for the first time in an hour, and wrap my hands around the cold beer to steady them. “You guessed that I saw a new ghost. That’s not the issue, for once. It’s that it’s Lucy Winters.”

  The stunned silence on the porch mirrors my own reaction, and the fact that Leo seems stumped for words makes me feel a little better about my inability to form a plan of action.

  Eventually, after Leo’s beer is gone and mine is well on its way, his blue eyes land on my face. “Shit. What are you going to tell the senator?”

  Trust Leo to remember to call Beau by his new title without having to be reminded. It leaves a funny feeling in the back of my throat, like a hair’s stuck there and I can’t quite reach it.

  “I don’t know. Do I have to?” I laugh, but it’s weak and unconvincing. “Only you and I know she’s dead. So far.”

  “Oh, Bugs, I think everyone knows she’s dead. The difference is that the Draytons love her, so they don’t want to believe it. But now you’ve seen her. You know. And if you care about them as much as I think you do, you won’t let them keep looking.”

  I ruminate on that for a minute while I finish my beer and wave off his offer of another. What am I going to do? As nice as it would be to think that I can just keep Lucy’s appearance a secret, there’s no way that’s a real option. For one thing, it would destroy my relationship with Beau from the inside out even if I were the only one who knew about it.

  For another, it’s like Travis said earlier tonight—Lucy needs help, and something about the way I’m put together makes it impossible for me to turn her away.

  “She asked me for help,” I admit to Leo. “I don’t know for what, not yet, but I can’t ignore her any more than I can ignore any of the others.”

  “Then you have to tell him,” Leo agrees. “If you go about solving this one the way you’ve solved the others, you’re going to need help from the Draytons. They knew her well; they’ll have the best idea of what she might want now that she’s gone.”