by Lyla Payne
I pause, a moment or two passing before I force my hands and arms back into action. It’s clear by the way he says the word ghost that he doesn’t believe, which is kind of a touchy subject in our family at the moment, but who can blame him? He’s not from the lowcountry. He wasn’t weaned on tales of spirits, didn’t spend his childhood evenings practicing séances in the cemetery, didn’t feel the presence of history the way we did…do.
How could he? He’s from Texas, and even though there’s no way the Alamo isn’t haunted, they don’t like to believe in anything that can’t be killed with a shotgun.
“Hmm.”
He finishes the corn, cutting me a look as he pops the last ears into the microwave. The table is set and there’s no way to avoid the challenge in his gaze. “Well, I figured if anyone had advice for me in this department, it would come from someone in this house.”
“You don’t think it’s really a ghost.” I’m trying to get a handle on what exactly he wants me to say before saying anything real.
“Do you?”
“I mean, you’ve surely guessed by now that I think they exist.” I stop, look him straight in the eye. “I know they do because I’ve seen one. That said, I’m not sure what a ghost would need with prescription drugs and boxes of latex gloves.”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking. The feed…There’s some evidence that it might have been doctored, but it’s going to be impossible to figure out by whom.”
“I cannot believe you just said whom.”
“You believe in ghosts but not proper grammar?”
“Apparently.” I pull the chicken out of the oven and grab a pair of tongs, ready to transfer the crackling, aromatic meat to a platter. “Could you go yell at Grace and Beau? Don’t go upstairs if you value your vision, just holler from the bottom of the steps. I’ll be damned if their sex life is going to take precedence over hot chicken.”
“I’ll second that. I’m starving.”
My hands shake slightly, making my task harder than it has to be. It’s nothing specific that frightens me but more of a premonition. A feeling that things aren’t going to settle down in Heron Creek anytime soon and that my cousin is going to continue to be smack-dab in the center of all the trouble. We’ve always had Anne Bonny hanging about, and the occasional claim that one’s house was haunted by phantom footsteps or the random cold spot, but this is different. The dead have pushed against the curtain in our little town, testing for weaknesses. They’ve found Grace.
My fingers go instinctively to my belly. Of course, things aren’t over. Jack isn’t thirteen, and if Mrs. LaBadie has her way, he never will be.
The chicken and corn, sliced tomatoes and mashed potatoes, are all steaming on the table by the time Dylan returns. He shoots me a wry smile. “They’ll be down shortly.”
“You know,” I start, sitting at the table and resisting the urge to bend over and rub my feet, “I know you don’t really buy into all the hype, but you should ask Grace to take a look at the tape.”
“What tape?” my cousin asks, flushed about the face as she sweeps into the kitchen in her bare feet, even though we discussed dressing for the meal. Traitor.
Beau trails her, eyes lighting up at the sight of the actual meal on our actual table. I’m pretty sure he does most of the food-getting for the two of them, whether it’s grabbing carryout from the Wreck or making tacos or pasta, his two go-to’s. “Wow. This looks fantastic.”
“It does,” my cousin agrees. “And I even made the potatoes. If you find a lump, let me at it.”
I roll my eyes, catching Dylan’s thoughtful gaze before I’m done. It’s hard to say whether he’s wondering why I brought up asking Grace to help out or already regretting considering it.
“What tape?” Grace asks again, taking a seat and unfurling her napkin to lay it on her lap. Her boyfriend follows suit and so does the detective, and we all start to load up our plates.
It’s odd, for the briefest of moments, that we don’t say grace, but then the strangeness passes.
“The hospital was robbed of some medications and other items two nights ago, and we caught some strange images on the security cameras.” Dylan brings it up after swallowing half his chicken.
Beau’s impressive eyebrows knit together, his fork paused halfway to his mouth. “Why would you want a civilian involved in the investigation?”
What he really means is why would they want Grace involved. In his mind—and mine, for that matter—she’s been involved enough these past months. But she’s got a gift, no matter what she thinks about it or what that Daria woman told her the other day, and she should help if she can. If ghosts are going to start breaking and entering, we might be in more trouble around here than we thought.
“It appears to be an apparition of some sort. Walks through the door to the storage room without opening it and back a few minutes later wheeling a bag.”
“Huh.” Grace’s expression is guarded, but I know her. She’s curious as all get-out. “No one noticed a wheelie bag going down the hallway on its own?”
“It was late. Skeleton staff and the…perp took hallways that get little use. Whoever’s behind this knows the hospital. Knows the schedule, knew right where to go to get what they were after.” Travis takes a bite of potatoes and swallows. “It might be helpful for you to take a look, Miss Harper, if you don’t mind. Someone with your…experience might be able to tell us what we are—or aren’t—dealing with here.”
He cuts a glance toward Beau, almost as though he’s seeking permission. Or forgiveness. Either is wasted because no matter how crazy my cousin is about a guy, she would never ask his permission before making a decision as simple as this one.
Hell, my cousin doesn’t even talk to her boyfriend about big stuff. Like her long-dead father possibly coming for a visit.
“Sure. I don’t mind. I actually met with a woman the other day who does this sort of thing—helps with investigations. She suggested we do some work together. I’ll call her.” She smiles, but it’s wobbly. Nervous.
She feels it, too. My premonition. The scent of trouble in the air. Of something coming, like the wet tinge on the breeze, the way leaves blow so you can see their pale undersides, even if it’s hours before the sky darkens and the first raindrop lands on your face.
A storm is on its way. It has something to do with Travis’s ghost.
Or maybe it’s been here all along, clinging to our family in the form of this centuries-old curse. My eyes meet Grace’s across the table. Twin green gazes that share one single, silent surety: we’re not ready.
Chapter Ten
Leo
“When is Mommy coming home?”
I do my best to keep the irritation off my face before turning to confront the four-year-old tyrant who moved into my heart the day she was born and into my house two years ago.
“Any minute now.” She’s asked me no less than a hundred times since we woke up this morning. It’s impossible to blame her. She’s excited and time doesn’t move the same for children as it does for adults.
When my mind wanders back over the years I spent growing up in this town, they’re full of long, lazy days that felt as though they would never end. It never went fast until it was over.
“Come here and let me fix your piggies.”
She sighs, twisting up her face like she’s going to protest. In the end she doesn’t, and I know the reason. It breaks my heart that she’s had to live like this for so long, that it’s resulted in this quiet, thoughtful little girl who would do absolutely anything to not only please her mother upon her return, but who is desperately scared that not doing so will make my sister disappear again.
It’s the one thing Marcella hides from me and from her therapist, who she’s seen once a week for over a year. The fact that she thinks, deep down, that Lindsay going away was her fault.
And how was I supposed to explain to a toddler that her mother was a drug dealer?
Her black hair is like spun si
lk between my fingers as I carefully tug out the pink rubber bands and redo her pigtails. She runs into the bathroom and comes back with ribbons, which I dutifully tie in the best bows I can manage. Even I have to admit they look better than they did when she came to me.
“Okay, beauty. Everything’s ready.” We’ve put up a Welcome Home sign and some streamers, and there are cookies on the table in the front hall—oatmeal raisin, Lindsay’s favorite—even though my sister will dislike every bit of the big deal we’ve made.
It’s just the two of us, though. Not that anyone else would have come had I asked. Gracie, maybe, but even after everything that went down a couple of weeks ago, Lindsay probably isn’t ready to be best friends with my old enemy.
“Want to read a book while we wait?”
Marcella shrugs, looking a little deflated by the fact that we’re still killing time, but slumps off into the bedroom to choose a book from her shelf, anyway. It will likely be the one about the koala, which we’ve read approximately two hundred times since she brought it home from the library last week.
Both of our fears go unrealized when the front door swings open without so much as a tap, revealing my sister. One of them, anyway.
I wanted to pick her up at the prison but she insisted on taking a cab. That she wanted to come straight to see Marcella and didn’t want her daughter to have one more memory associated with the state penitentiary.
We stare at each other for a solid ten seconds. It’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking as her gaze leaves mine and wanders around my small, two-bedroom house on the wrong side of Heron Creek’s tracks. The two of us are the black sheep of the family—my status cemented because I didn’t turn my back on her, which makes us an unintentional sort of team.
“Hey,” she says like she just got back from a morning run to the bank. Like she’s only been gone for ten minutes. Twenty, tops.
But the sheen to her eyes, the sort-of disbelief clouding her gaze, tells me how overwhelming this day must be for her. For all of us.
“Hey,” I reply, standing up and moving toward her, reaching out to grab the knapsack of possessions they returned at her release. She relinquishes it. My arms try to move, start to wrap around her after waiting so long to have this justice served, but her expression stops me.
She’s holding it together very carefully. I can’t be the one to topple her.
“I rearranged the second bedroom so there’s room for you and Marcella. You can stay as long as you want.”
Her gaze lands on the toys strewn around the living room, slides to the picture window that overlooks the backyard, which houses a swing set I spent the better part of a weekend putting together. A faint smile lifts the corners of her lips. “Thank you, Leo. I’ll probably never be able to repay you for loving her the way you do, but I…I’m grateful.”
“You’re family, Linds. Marcella’s family. You need me, I’m there. That’s how it works.”
“Maybe for you,” she mutters, any hint of happiness chased away by the barest of mentions of the rest of our family.
My own chest tightens at the sudden onslaught of memories. We’d grown up poor, mostly because there were so many of us, but the Boone kids? We were the best of friends.
I can’t even explain what happened to us.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“I’ll take a beer, if you have one.”
“If I have one,” I tease, trying to inject some lighthearted normalcy into the late afternoon. “Marcella’s in her room picking out a book.”
She’s not, though. She’s standing in the hallway, staring at her mother, the book about the koala dangling from her fingers. Her hand twitches and the book bangs into her knee but she doesn’t seem to notice.
It’s the moment she’s been waiting for with such excitement, but now she’s overwhelmed. Tears well up in her big brown eyes and her lower lip trembles.
Maybe some mothers would have been hesitant. Would have waited for their little girls to decide whether to come to them, whether they forgive them after all the time away, but not Lindsay. My older sister crosses the room in three big steps and sweeps her daughter up in her arms. They’re both crying big, silent tears and holding on for dear life when I slip out of the room, swallowing my own emotions in the kitchen.
I stay there most of the evening. I write some songs, pop frozen pizzas in the oven and deliver them to the living room, but mostly I figure they deserve time alone. Together. Listening to Linds read Marcella the koala book, to my niece shake off her uncharacteristic shyness and relay the events of the past few days—going back to school, having a picnic by the river, the family of bunny rabbits we saw in the backyard—to her mother, warms my heart.
In a small, selfish way it makes me a little sad, too. She’s not mine anymore, but then again, she never was. Our relationship is going to change. I’m going to miss her, even though things are at least on their way to getting back to the way they should be.
I never thought I’d be the guy excited to rear children. Now, there’s no denying it.
It’s almost nine before Lindsay finds me on the screened-in porch off the kitchen, a beer beside me and a new mystery novel open on my lap. I buy them at the used bookstore because I don’t want to go into the library and have Gracie all up in my business about it.
The smile on my sister’s face is huge, helping diminish the lines of exhaustion around her eyes. She looks twenty years older than she did three years ago, but the life she led before that wasn’t doing her any favors, either.
“There’s a couple more beers in the fridge.”
“Nah. I’ll pass out on my feet.” She flops into the wicker chair on the other side of the small round table.
“You don’t have to keep me company, you know. I’m a big boy.”
“I’m not ready to go to bed. It’s like…” Her cheeks color, the change barely visible in the glow coming from the kitchen window. “I’m afraid I’ll wake up and it will have all been a dream.”
I reach over, turning my hand palm up on her knee. She drops hers into it and squeezes. “It’s not a dream, Linds. You’re home, Marcella’s good, and we’re all going to be fine.”
“Thanks to Graciela Harper.” The look she shoots me from the corner of her eye puts me on guard.
“I guess so.”
“Why was she helping me?”
“You know Gracie. Always sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. Breaking rules if she thinks it’s for a good reason.” I shrug, worried she can hear the admiration in my tone. I clear my throat. “But helping you was incidental. She was helping her boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend. The guy who put me away.” Venom drips from her words, so thick I’m surprised it’s not sliding down her chin.
“He’s not innocent, Lindsay.” I think of Beau’s apology by the river the other day. Of how it surprised me with its honesty. With how much he and I might have in common. “But he’s not the big bad wolf of this story, either.”
“Always quick to defend her choices. Even if it has to do with a guy in her bed who isn’t you.”
My stomach clenches. I’m fifteen again, with the same sweet smell of catnip wafting through the screens. I roll my eyes, forcing myself to remember that I’m an adult. “We’re friends, Lindsay. Always have been, in our way, and yeah, there’s a lot I admire about Gracie. But that’s all.”
“Leo, you’re never going to get over her if you can’t even admit you have feelings for her.”
“Had. I had feelings for her ten years ago.”
“That you never expressed.”
“She had a boyfriend. Then she moved away and got engaged. I got over it.”
“Did you?” The look in my annoying sister’s eyes says she’s thinking about how, even though I’ve dated, it’s never been serious.
That doesn’t have anything to do with a dumb crush I had when I was in high school. It’s a bit that I just don’t have that much interest and partly that the options i
n a small town, one where I know the entire family history of every single woman in my age group, are limited. Taylor has only lived here for about five years, and we’ve been on two dates now. I like her.
“Yes. Because there wasn’t anything to get over. And anyway, I’m seeing someone.”
“But you still follow Gracie around like a puppy dog. Do her bidding,” she pushes, ignoring my comment about dating someone.
“I do no such thing, Lindsay. We’re friends. I enjoy mysteries.” I wave the beat-up paperback in her face. “Gracie gets involved in some good capers.”
“Right.”
Irritation flashes, hot through my gut. The last thing I want to do is fight with my sister on the day she got out of prison. It’s been a good afternoon, the first totally peaceful one I’ve had since the morning she was sentenced, and this entire conversation is pointless, anyway.
I drain the rest of my beer and stand up. “I know you never liked Gracie. I know it’s because you love me and you’re loyal, and that’s what makes you my favorite sister.” She smiles at the irony. She’s the only sister I have left. “But she’s my friend. She’s going to be around and I’m probably going to talk about her once in a while, and just so you know, Marcella adores her. So get over it, or pretend to.”
It takes a few breaths for her shock to go away. I don’t stand up to her like this—at least, I didn’t. Then she sits back in the chair and shrugs, giving me a look that says she heard me. Whether or not that means she’s actually going to back off is another matter.
I know better than to think, after all this time, that the pendulum is going to swing in my favor.
Chapter Eleven
Gracie
I’m in the middle of reading a previously published article on Dueler’s Alley in Charleston, scrolling to find the portion dedicated to Dr. Ladd and his ex-friend, when the screen suddenly goes black. A blink of the eye later, it’s on again, but the article is different.
It’s about Henry Woodward.
