“So like the wind or something?” Angela said.
Thankfully the waitress interrupted before Randy could reply. She set down glasses of water and rattled off specials, but instead of listening to her, Randy tried to think of what he could say to reassure Angela that it wasn’t a breeze.
“If it had been the wind or something, it would have happened more than once,” he said when the waitress left. He leaned forward and caught Angela’s eye. “It was a still night. No breeze. And the timing. It’s too much to be a coincidence.”
“So you think what? That she was returning to the garage after you came into the hall?”
He shrugged. That was exactly what he thought. It made perfect sense.
“Are you good at finding stuff online?”
“Sure,” he said, wondering how this was relevant.
“I need to try to find some people.”
“Look, I really think we should investigate again. Just me and you. And Bill. I need someone to monitor everything.”
“I think my parents were hiding things from me,” Angela said.
“Like what?” Randy asked. The fact that they were now having two parallel conversations was frustrating. He was trying to help her, but she wasn’t focused at all.
“Like other family they never told me about. Like why they really moved here.”
“Okay.”
“I think my dad has brothers and sisters. If we could find them, maybe I could figure out why my mother is,” she paused, considering her words, “not at peace.”
She was giving up on the idea of the ghost hunt, Randy could see. She was looking for answers elsewhere. But the answers were right there, in the house, and they needed to pay attention to sort it all out. “If we investigate again, we might get some clarity here. I really think—”
“Just us. I don’t want anyone else there. I don’t want people like Jen, saying I’m crazy. Just us.”
“Yeah, okay. Just us,” Randy said. If that was her condition, he could live with it.
As they ate, Angela asked him questions about himself and his life outside of amateur paranormal investigations. When he tried to get her talking about herself, though, she put him off. She was tired of thinking about herself, she said. She wanted a distraction. So he told her about his website design and maintenance company, which he’d started as a hobby in high school, first as a favor to one of his mom’s friends for her business selling homemade soaps. And she referred him to someone else, who referred him to someone else, and by the time he finished high school, he was doing enough business that he realized he didn’t need to go to college or get a job working for someone else. He had continued living at home and working out of his parents’ house until the previous summer when he decided he really needed more space. It was awkward always having to meet clients at coffee shops, and he knew they wouldn’t take him seriously if they saw his makeshift home office, so he found a decent two-bedroom, first-floor apartment not too far from his parents’ house in Palmetto Landing where he could use the spare bedroom as his office. Meanwhile he’d been teaching himself other coding languages and had started dabbling in app development.
“So you don’t think you’ll ever go to college?” Angela asked.
“Never say never, but for now it hardly seems necessary.”
He had taken a couple of business courses last year at the local community college when he was trying to figure out if he was really doing well enough to move out into his own apartment, but the classes had been too basic. They were for people who had absolutely no experience as business owners, and he found they didn’t teach him anything he hadn’t already figured out.
They finished their dinners, or rather Randy finished his and most of hers, and got the check, and he followed her out to the parking lot and to her car.
“So when do you want to try again at your house?” Randy asked, trying not to be distracted by how sad but also how pretty she looked in the glow of the street light.
“I know it’s kind of late, and you’re probably exhausted, but do you think you could help me with that internet stuff now?” Angela asked. She leaned against the car, and Randy felt like she was inviting him to kiss her as she looked up at him from under those long eyelashes, but he resisted. He didn’t want to sour the moment if he was reading this wrong.
He glanced at his phone. It was not yet nine o’clock. He didn’t have any meetings until after lunch tomorrow. How hard could it be to find some people online? If they existed, surely he could find them in a matter of minutes. Was this an excuse she invented to spend more time with him?
“Have you tried yet? Have you looked them up?” he asked.
“No, I found out all this stuff this afternoon.”
“So you want me to go to Grace’s with you?”
She shook her head.
He wanted nothing more than to bring her back to his place, but she hadn’t slept in God knows how long and she’d had a traumatic day. Even if it was her idea to go back to his place, if anything should happen other than some internet research—and at this point he felt certain she intended for other things to happen—he would feel like he was taking advantage of her.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. You’ve already done so much for me,” Angela said. She put her hand on the car door handle.
“It’s not that,” he said, stepping forward to block her from opening the door. “Are you sure you want to come to my place? I don’t want you to, you know, feel uncomfortable, or...”
“I should go,” Angela said, clicking the unlock button on her keychain.
“Look,” he said, stooping a little to force her to meet his eyes, “I definitely want you to come over. I want to help you with all of this stuff, and I really like you. I know this is the wrong time, and I probably shouldn’t even be saying this, but—”
She tilted her head and pressed her lips to his. When she drew back, he studied her for a minute, and then said, “Okay. Well, I guess you should follow me.”
Chapter 21
Devil’s Back Island, Maine
Brett took his paper cup of coffee and wandered back toward the hotel, wondering as he went why he had lied about having a girlfriend. The word “girlfriend” had popped out his mouth so unconsciously when Casey started flirting. He was tempted to say it was habit; after all, Ashley was the reason he’d gone vegan, so it was only natural to refer to her when turning down something so obviously not vegan. He suspected, however, that his subconscious was up to something more sinister than a mere Freudian slip.
Casey had gone from seeming tired and wearied by his presence to sultry and playful in the blink of an eye, and he responded with a remark ostensibly designed to put her off. The subtext of the words “My girlfriend would shoot me” was “Your flirting is wasted on me.” Except, Brett had noticed, that knowing a man was in a relationship often did not stop women from flirting. If anything, that knowledge made them more interested, as if being in a relationship proved a man was relationship material.
So by telling Casey, who had given every indication of finding him odious until she decided to flirtatiously sway him from his stated veganism (which, let’s face it, was not a good sign; what kind of woman so eagerly attempts to make a stranger deviate from his chosen lifestyle?), that he had a girlfriend, he may have actually, subconsciously, been trying to get her to soften toward him, to see him as more interesting and perhaps even a bit mysterious.
He couldn’t deny that he wanted her to like him. He wanted her to smile when he came into the café, not to roll her eyes and shake her head as she offered him a soy latte. She was beautiful, intriguing, and also one of the only people even roughly his age whom he’d encountered here. It would be nice to have someone with whom he could be social. He was going to be here for a couple of weeks on this trip, and then, if everything worked out—although he had no reason to believe it would work out—he’d be back to oversee the project.
Even as he thought this, he knew he wasn’t bein
g totally honest with himself. A drink with Casey would be nice, sure, but tracing his hand along her tattoo, kissing her pretty lips… He forced himself not to picture pulling off her tank top. What was he thinking? If he wanted to try to reconcile with Ashley, he couldn’t go sleeping with someone else.
But he wanted to. It had been a while. Too long. No wonder he was losing his mind. Before he and Ashley broke up, they’d been in a bit of a dry spell. In fact, they hadn’t had sex in weeks. And now they’d been broken up for weeks. Who could blame him if his mind slipped under the covers when he saw a woman as attractive as Casey?
She’d said yes to being his tour guide. Even if he’d had to wear her down to get her to say yes, it felt like a victory. He had to have scored some points by caving to the temptation of the cinnamon bun and then complimenting her so thoroughly (and genuinely—it was the best cinnamon bun he’d ever had).
He needed to scope out the island to work on his prefeasibility analysis, so his tour with Casey wasn’t only for fun, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the day. After the past few days, with all his meetings with engineers, architects, department of transportation and ferry authority officers, he could use some fun.
The more he learned about the island, the less likely it was that Sweet Water would move the project forward. The fresh water resources of the island were a major limiting factor to any potential development, and the rocky shoreline—Maine’s famous cliff rock—posed problems for building. In a climate like this, with major seasonal shifts, buildings needed substantial foundations, especially to be several stories high, but with the bedrock so close to the surface, the engineers had informed him, they wouldn’t be able to have a deep foundation. They advised the hotel be no more than two stories high, which didn’t mesh with the typical Sweet Water model at all.
“Think outside the box,” an engineer from one of the design-build companies had suggested, when he and the architect who had accompanied him discussed the site and possibilities with Brett.
But Sweet Water liked its box. Its box worked in all its other locations. Also, he was already outside the box by being in Maine. If he was going to suggest they go even further from the box, he was going to have to have darn good reasons. Maybe getting an up-close-and-personal tour of the island, with a charming and sexy tour guide would inspire him.
Realistically, proclaiming the whole project dead right now was probably the smartest course of action. But he didn’t want to. Not yet, and not because he had a schoolboy crush on a woman he’d just met. Even if the island wasn’t everything he’d hoped, and even if he knew it was going to be a long shot to convince Charlie to move the project forward, this was his chance to prove to Charlie and everyone else that he was an ideas guy who was capable of steering the company into the future. He wanted to think outside the box for his own sake, to prove to himself that he wasn’t only a mindless Sweet Water drone. Whether or not he came up with something the company wanted to develop, he had to come up with something he felt proud of.
When he got back to the inn, he sat out on the patio overlooking the beach, sipping his latte, and staring out at the water, willing his mind to let to go of everything it thought it knew about resort development. He needed a beginner’s mind—thanks to yoga-teaching Ashley for that concept—if he was going to think outside the box.
Chapter 22
St. Nabor Island, South Carolina
Angela sat beside Randy at his computer, and within seconds, she was staring at the Facebook page of a Helen Ellis Jenson of Beechmont, MA. She was 63 years old. In her photographs, with a throwback Thursday hashtag, there were grainy, black and white childhood photographs, presumably of Helen and her siblings, two girls and four boys. Only three people were tagged in the pictures: Helen, Mary Ellis Brinkman, and Stanley Ellis. Angela’s heart raced. She could hardly breathe. Any of the three untagged boys in the pictures could be her father.
She asked Randy to go to Mary’s page, but the security on it was locked down. Not much to learn there. Same with Stanley. They went back to Helen’s page and scrolled through more of her pictures until they came across another throwback Thursday selection, a picture Angela had seen before, her father and Marty in the front yard of a post-World War II ranch house. The caption read, “An early Memorial Day tribute: God bless my big brother, Marty, and all veterans who’ve lost their lives fighting foreign wars.”
Her father had the same photo. When she was a kid, it was in a frame on a side table in the living room. Now it sat on his bedside table in the nursing home.
Angela didn’t want to cry again in front of poor Randy, who had already seen her cry way too much, but she couldn’t help it. There was a picture of her father and his brother on Facebook on the page of an aunt she never knew she had. It was too much. At least she managed to cry silently, for a few minutes anyway, and then she had to blow her nose, and there was no quiet way to get up and find tissues. She pushed her chair back and went to the bathroom.
When she came back, feeling marginally more in control of herself, Randy had another picture up on the screen. It was from the mid-1980s, a crowd of people standing in a semi-circle around a seated elderly couple. In the crowd were Mary, Helen, Stanley, the other unnamed brother, and people who were most likely their spouses. And Angela’s father and mother! And children! Angela tallied them up and counted 12, among them her brother Ryan. The caption read, “The last time we had the whole gang together, mom and dad’s fortieth anniversary party. The only cloud on that day was Marty’s absence.”
The floodgates broke. Angela didn’t cry silently this time. She wept loudly and messily. Her family! Ryan had known these people. He had grown up surrounded by loving aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and Angela never even knew they existed!
Randy clicked the image and it disappeared, and then he wrapped his arms around Angela, gently pulling her from the rolling desk chair and over to the couch. He sat down and she nestled in against him, shaking with tears. How embarrassing, she thought, as she gradually regained herself. How ridiculous she was being. Randy must think she was the most weepy, unstable person in the world. But he stroked her hair and it felt nice.
When she had stopped crying and her breathing leveled out, Randy said, “So that’s them? Your dad’s family?”
Angela nodded, her cheek rubbing against his soft shirt.
“That was your parents in the last picture, and your brother?”
She nodded again. His fingertips, as his hand soothed her hair, brushed her neck and lingered there for a moment before gliding on. She closed her eyes.
“God. I’m so sorry,” he said.
She shook her head. She didn’t want him to talk. She wanted him to run his fingers along her neck again. She took a deep breath and leaned into him a little harder. His hand froze. She drew back and looked up at him. He slid his arm out from around her shoulders and moved away from her a little.
“Angela, I think we shouldn’t do this,” he said, softly.
Her lip quivered. She thought he was interested. She was sure she hadn’t misread the way he looked at her. She needed this now, to be touched, made to forget everything else in her life for a little while.
“I like you too much,” he said.
She almost laughed. He was turning down sex because he liked her too much? That was a new one. He had been right. It had been a mistake for her to come over here. She could have found her family on her own. It certainly hadn’t been difficult. She stood up.
“I should go,” she said.
“You don’t have to. I can crash on the couch, and you can have the bed, get a good night’s sleep.”
“No, you were right, this was wrong, I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”
She moved to step around him, but he put both hands on her upper arms, gently but firmly.
“You have no idea how much I’d like to kiss you right now and take you to bed with me. Seriously, no idea. But when we do that, I want it to be for the
right reasons.” He spoke softly, looking in her eyes.
Angela’s shoulders slumped. He was right, of course he was right. What was she doing, thinking she could use him for sex to make herself feel better? If a guy had done that to her, she’d have been out the door so fast he wouldn’t even see her go.
“I like you, too,” she said.
He kissed her on the forehead.
“Would you only lie down with me? No funny business, I promise, but will you?”
He took her hand and led her to the bedroom. They both lay down on top of the comforter, and Angela turned onto her side so he could spoon her. She was asleep within minutes.
Angela woke up to the smell of coffee brewing and sat up in bed, blinking and trying to get her bearings. Then she remembered: She was at Randy’s. They had never even gotten under the covers, but at some point Randy had fetched a fleece blanket, which was now draped over her fully clothed legs. She felt better rested than she had in weeks.
In the kitchen, Randy sat at the small table with a mug of coffee and his iPad. He smiled when he saw her, and she felt strangely shy all of a sudden.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said.
“No need to be sorry.”
He got up and fixed her a cup of coffee. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then he asked, “So are you going to contact them? Your family, I mean?”
Angela had no idea. She hadn’t gotten that far. She had definitely found her father’s siblings, but what she would do with that information, she couldn’t quite say. She felt like she needed more information. Maybe she should visit her father again, print out some of Helen’s Throwback Thursday pictures and take them to him, see what he had to say.
“I have to catch up on a bit of work this morning for some meetings later, but you’re welcome to hang out here,” Randy said. “I make damn good pancakes.”
Over breakfast, they decided to go back to Angela’s mother’s house that night. Having agreed to the second investigation, Angela wanted to get it over with as fast as possible. After all, now that she’d found some possible long-lost relatives, what did she really hope to gain from another ghost hunt? She could only send Helen Ellis Jenson a message. But Randy was so excited, so certain that they’d find something, that she didn’t feel like she could back out now.
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