Not Quite Alive

by Lyla Payne

  I pause and then swallow, trying to trap the words that are going to come out next, but like everything inside determined to come out, they find a way out. “That’s why we’re going to break up.”

  He starts, eyes widening with what looks like panic. “No, I…Gracie, I don’t know that that’s what I want.”

  The lump in my throat grows, pulsing hard and making it impossible to talk for several seconds. I think about holding back the tears gathering in my eyes but find it impossible—and silly, besides. My heart is being ripped out, all of the plans I’ve almost let myself believe in are disappearing like smoke, and I’m sad.

  It’s okay.

  “But you don’t know it’s not what you want, and that’s just as important. Beau, I’m not going to be the girl you stay with out of loyalty. I know you. That’s something you would do,” I finish when he starts to protest. “And that’s not fair to anyone. You need to figure out what all of this means, and the only way you can do that is if you focus on yourself.”

  For a long time, the only sounds in the waiting room are Beau’s breathing and my sniffling. Maybe there’s nothing left to say, but I also don’t want to get up and leave. It feels so…final. Even though I know this is the right thing—the only thing—it still kills me to think of not seeing him. Not talking to him, or texting him, or knowing he’s there if I trip and fall.

  “I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me,” he says softly.

  “Me, either.”

  “I mean…I always knew that if we broke up it would be you doing it, but things have been so good.”

  I stop to wonder whether that’s really true. Then I shake it off. The sorrow of this moment is coloring everything else right now, that’s all.

  “You need some time to yourself. You can’t figure things out if you’re worried about me.”

  He reaches for my hand again. “I’m always going to worry about you, Gracie Anne.”

  Tears slip down my cheeks. It feels so right to touch him, to hear his reassurances, but at the same time, it already feels as if they no longer belong to me. “I still care about you. That’s why I’m doing this.”

  “You’re quite a woman, you know that? I’m not sure I deserve you, or this, but I’m thankful that I met you. That it’s you sitting next to me right now.”

  I lean in and press my lips to his, because I don’t want to talk anymore. He’s only making this harder, drawing it out when it’s time to go. He responds, his lips molding to mine with a fit we’ve earned over these past several months, all of the anguish and loss and anger pouring between us. We share it, which is as it should be.

  And as I ease back, stand up, and walk away on shaking legs, I realize it could well be the last time we ever share anything.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I don’t have a car. It’s probably dumb that I don’t realize that until I’m standing in the parking lot looking for one, but it’s been an exhausting twenty-four hours. Still, the fact that I have no way to get home only makes me cry harder.

  I’m being dramatic, of course, and a few quick clicks on the Uber app on my phone produces a car less than five minutes later. He’s happy to have found a fare that’s going further than six blocks and chatters away the entire ride, either oblivious to the fact that I’m wrecked or trying to ignore it.

  My phone dings with a text from a long-distance and unfamiliar number as we’re pulling into Heron Creek. I click it open with a frown, desperate to have something to focus on other than the gaping hole in my chest.

  Graciela, it’s Cade. Walters. From down the street? I noticed y’all haven’t been home for a couple of days, but the FBI has been camped out in your driveway since dinnertime. Thought you should know.

  I have no idea how he got my phone number, but I’m grateful to whatever busybody in town gave it to him. It’s nice to have the thirty-second head’s-up, at any rate, because the familiar faces of my friendly local FBI are indeed watching me from my own front porch when I climb out of the car.

  My Uber driver’s eyes are big and round, as if maybe he’d like to stay and watch the show, but he reluctantly backs out of the driveway like a normal person. God love him.

  Cade’s not on his porch. It’s gotten fairly late, almost midnight now, and the neighborhood is cold and quiet as I squint up into the bright porch lights. Chaney’s face is all hard lines, but Warren looks tired—and maybe conflicted.

  Perhaps that’s me, projecting.

  “Gentlemen,” I start, wondering how bad I must look. Both of them are staring at me like I’m some kind of circus freak.

  “Miss Harper, I’m afraid we have some bad news.” It’s Warren, and he sounds as if he actually means it.

  I one-hundred-percent cannot handle one more iota of bad news today, but it doesn’t appear as if I’m going to have a choice.

  Chaney pulls his handcuffs out of his belt and steps down off the porch. “Graciela Harper, you’re under arrest for the murder of Frank Fournier…”

  He keeps talking, presumably reading me my rights, but all of it goes in one ear and out the other. He settles me in the backseat of their unmarked cruiser, reminds me three times to buckle up, and then they take off in the direction I’ve just come from—Charleston.

  Oddly, my thoughts are on Amelia and Jack, and what my cousin is going to think when I don’t arrive first thing in the morning with her requested breakfast—including her first hot coffee since she found out about Jack. I don’t think about my father, or my predicament, or what sort of proof they’ve cobbled together to make the arrest warrant happen.

  What makes even less sense is that Brick Drayton’s face is the first thing I see when I walk into the brightly lit precinct. The fluorescent bulbs hurt my eyes and I squint at him, wondering if he’s some kind of hallucination.

  “I didn’t call you,” I say dumbly when the agents leave us together in an interrogation room. They’re going to start processing paperwork, or something.

  “Yes, I know. I’m sure it’s just because you’re in shock.” He almost seems as if he’s teasing me, but that can’t be true. “Your neighbor called your friend Leo. Leo called Beau, and he asked me to help.”

  My throat closes up for the hundredth time in the past twenty-four hours. Beau still wants to help me.

  “You look terrible,” Brick observes. “I mean really awful. Are you okay?”

  I shake my head, unable to talk.

  “Right, dumb question. You’ve been arrested for murder.” He sighs. “Look, there’s no way we can get a bail hearing until this afternoon, at the earliest. I’m going to read the arrest warrant to see what else I can find out before then, but you’re going to have to stay in a cell until we can get you out.”

  “I don’t have money for bail.” The words sound far away, as though spoken by someone else under a large body of water.

  “Please, Graciela, don’t insult us. It’s taken care of.” Warren walks back into the room without knocking and Brick stands up, patting the back of my hand. “You just hang in there.”

  I nod, watching him walk away and feeling bereft. Warren tugs me to my feet by my elbow and leads me out of the room like a compliant puppy, which is how I go through the rest of the processing—fingerprints, photos, and then back into the interrogation room. I make sure and turn off my phone before giving up all of the things in my pockets and my purse so I’ll be able to use it later.

  That’s when both Warren and Chaney come in to tell me what they know and why they arrested me.

  “We found your fingerprints all over everything under the house, including the shovel. I know your old boyfriend at the Heron Creek PD claims he’s got proof you had nothing to do with the drugs, and that case isn’t in our jurisdiction, but you handled them nonetheless,” Chaney starts.

  “We found other traces—hair and skin—on the scene as well, along with a witness who says they saw the two of you together the day before the coroner establi
shed Mr. Fournier’s date of death. Which means you’re the last person to have seen him alive.”

  My brain struggles to process all of the information, which I’ll admit, seems pretty bad. But not open and closed, by any means. I’m confused, and it doesn’t take me long to figure out why. “But why would I kill Frank?”

  “The way we figure it,” Chaney says, “you were pretty pissed that he ignored you all of these years. Never told you he was your father, and then just showed up in your life the way he did.”

  “But Frank never knew about me,” I argue, even though I can hear Birdie’s voice in the back of my head telling me to shut up.

  “That what he told you?” Warren asks, looking pained. “Shame. But he was a liar, a fact that I’m sure didn’t escape you.”

  They stare at me for several moments, then Chaney pushes a sheet of paper and a pen across the table. “If you want to write down your confession, you can. Otherwise, we’ll take you to a holding cell where you can sit and think until your bail hearing.”

  “I don’t have anything to confess to,” I inform them. “I didn’t kill Frank.”

  Chaney heaves a disappointed sigh, but Warren, for his part, looks slightly relieved. As if he would have been disappointed if I didn’t put up a fight. They gather up the paper and call a peon to lead me to my cell, which I share with two other people, both of whom are asleep in the first beams of early morning sunlight.

  I sit on the bench alone, my gritty eyes refusing to close, my mind playing catch up. They can’t really think that I killed Frank, yet the warrant seems to suggest otherwise. Most of what they have is circumstantial or easily planted, but I can’t help but wonder whether, all together, it adds up to a pretty good case. They have forensic evidence, a witness—I can’t wait to hear who that turns out to be—and what they think is motive.

  Maybe it looks worse than I think.

  I’m glad Brick’s here. I’m glad Beau gives a shit, because this is a fight I can’t lose. I’m not going to rot in jail for something I didn’t even do, not when Amelia and Jack need me.

  I lean back against the cinderblock wall and try to work the kinks out of my shoulders. It looks as if I’ve got a fight ahead of me. As usual, I say a quick thank you to the universe for the team that’s somehow gathered around me.

  And then I spend a good hour fantasizing about what it would feel like to punch Chaney square in his plastic-surgery perfect nose. Confess that, asshole.

  Brick worked his typical Drayton magic, getting bail approved even if I did have to wait another whole thirty-six hours before my feet hit the pavement. We’re in a conference room now, just waiting for the paperwork to process so I can get out of here, and I’m struggling to focus on Brick’s questions about everything that’s happened in Heron Creek. I made the mistake of mentioning that Clete is missing, which only led to suspicions on his part about what else I’ve failed to tell him.

  “So Jasper Patton works at the hospital, now? That’s interesting,” Brick muses after taking in what I told him about the moonshiner, the tapes at the hospital, and the fact that Frank spent some time in mental hospitals. “Wonder why our guy didn’t put that in his report?”

  By his guy, I assume he means the investigator I’ve forgotten to check in on until now. “What has he found, exactly?”

  Brick makes an impatient face. “Not enough, which pisses me off. Your family shouldn’t be that hard to find.”

  I keep my opinion on that to myself—if they’re half as shady as Frank’s last letter or those journals have led me to believe so far, the fact that a professional investigator hasn’t found anything only lends credence to the idea that they are that hard to find.

  “Miss Harper?” A female agent sticks her head into the room, my personal effects dangling in a plastic bag from her fingers. “You’re free to go.”

  She hands over my things and I grab for my phone, turning it on. “I can still make it to pick up Millie.”

  “No. Seriously, Graciela, you look like hell, and you smell. It will only stress her out more to see you like this.” Brick’s no-nonsense tone grates on me, but the truth of his words grinds my protests to a halt. “I’ll pick up Amelia and Jack and bring them home, which should give you plenty of time to grab a shower.”

  “Fine.” I make a face and dump the contents of the plastic bag into my purse. “You should go, then. Don’t be late.”

  We sign some papers and he walks me out front and into one of the Draytons’ endless supply of Town Cars before slamming the door shut. In the window, I see the worry on his face. It’s impossible to not let it crawl straight into my stomach, which is at once empty and nauseous.

  I try consoling myself with the fact that I’m a free woman, at least until my trial—or until I prove who actually killed Frank, which is what’s going to happen. It has to. I can’t live with this whole thing hanging over my head any longer than…as short a time as possible.

  My phone dings with about a million messages on the way home, making me thankful that I’m riding in the backseat and not driving. Mel, Will, Leo—fifteen times—Cade, Beau, Millie, and even Travis have texted asking if I’m okay and what they can do, with at least half of them spewing curse words about Brick and Birdie stonewalling them about coming down to the jail to see for themselves.

  Travis’s second text catches my eye, something about finding a clue in the family tree information I sent his way a few days ago, and a flicker of hope lights in my middle.

  I text them all the same thing: I’m fine, I’ll be home in a few hours, and we can get together to talk about details. That should give me some time to clean up and get Millie settled before all hell breaks loose at our house on the river.

  It’s late afternoon, which means I have an audience of curious eyeballs as the car lets me out and then reverses in the driveway. I can feel them watching, making my skin crawl as I hurry up the sidewalk and stick my key into the front door.

  It swings open without my assistance.

  My heart catches in my throat, because there’s no way, even in labor, that my cousin forgot to lock the door behind her. She’s always been anal about it, and that was before she started sleepwalking.

  Maybe I should have stopped and called Will. At least grabbed Cade from down the street, or maybe a baseball bat.

  But I’m tired, and embarrassed, and more than anything I want to spend an hour crying in the shower. So I push the door all the way open, leaving it gaping in case I need to make an escape, and grab the baseball bat we’ve stashed in the front closet.

  “Hello?” I ask, forcing all of my impatience and rage into the question. “I swear, if someone is in this house, you’re going to wish you weren’t. I’ve had a hell of a week, and I’m dying to kick the shit out of someone!”

  Nothing. No response at all, and the stillness of the house feels like a held breath. I don’t think anyone is in here, but I’ve been wrong before.

  I take two steps forward, and when Henry pops up in front of me, I almost pee my pants. “What are you doing here?”

  The look on his face says ‘duh,’ and I think about taking a swing at him with my bat. “Well? Is anyone here?”

  He shakes his head no, but the sadness radiating off him does little to nothing to make me feel better. I don’t think he would lie to me about us being alone, though, so I manage to relax slightly.

  At least until I step into the dining room and the mess registers.

  Drawers are upended, papers and pens and letter openers scattered across the carpet. The couch cushions are ripped open, tufts of white stuffing and yellowed foam littering the room like fake snow. The sight of my grandmother’s china shattered inside the overturned cabinet scrapes what’s left of my heart raw against my ribcage, and reignites my anger at the same time.

  Both emotions—grief and rage—grow alongside a slimy feeling of being violated as I continue through the main floor of the house and find the same thing, over and o
ver again. The kitchen, with all of the silverware, plates, and glasses littering the linoleum, most of it in pieces. The living room, the television smashed into the carpet, the coffee table on its side, and Gramps’s chair gutted.

  Upstairs, it’s more of the same. I dig under my bed for Frank’s bag, and find it turned inside out, the family trees gone, along with the originals of the journals. A potent sense of relief weakens my knees at the thought that maybe this is what they were looking for, and thank god I’ve already sent a copy of the journals to Clara and texted names to Travis from the family tree. Not all of them, of course, but some. It’s better than losing everything.

  I still wish I had thought to make copies for myself, to keep duplicates somewhere safe, but who would have thought…

  You should have thought, Gracie. This is about par for the course.

  The sound of footsteps downstairs gets me back on my feet, and I’m halfway down the stairs before Amelia’s voice crawls up to greet me. “Grace?”

  “I’m here. Coming. Don’t move.”

  I hate that she’s bringing Jack home to this. That she’s coming home to this, when she should have been able to relax.

  Most of all, I hate the fact that someone was in our house looking for something, and I have no idea who. Or what.

  Or how to stop them from coming back.

  THANK YOU!

  Thank you for reading Not Quite Alive, and for being excited to continue Gracie’s story in Heron Creek! I expect to release the next title, Not Quite Free, on January 10th, and then offer a free novella in February and March. If you enjoyed this installment, please take a moment to review it - things like that are such a big help and I so appreciate your time!

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