by E. C. Bell
“You’ve been trying to get away from him for a long time.”
I shivered again. Couldn’t tell if it was his breath on my skin or the realization that he was right about Arnie. I had been trying to escape from that man—and that godawful relationship—for a very long time.
“Sometimes it feels like forever,” I whispered, and took a teeny step closer to James. His arms tightened around me again, and for a second, it felt like coming home.
“And now he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“So, how do you feel?”
I shrugged, but unconvincingly. “Relieved, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I can’t really believe it. Why wasn’t he in Remand? I thought they were going to keep him there until the trial.” My throat tightened. “It was like I was following him here. And now he’s—dead.”
“Apparently, I followed him, too,” James said. “And—”
“He did try to burn down your place,” I said.
“Yes, he did.”
I glanced at him. “You think we’re in trouble?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said. Then he shrugged. “We didn’t do anything wrong.” He glanced down at me. “Did we?”
“No!” For heaven’s sake! “Of course not.” I returned his glance. “Did you?”
He laughed, and for a second I wished I could be that cool, calm, and collected. “No.”
“Well, that’s good then.”
“Yes.” He rested his chin on the top of my head. “But I wonder what will happen next.”
“I imagine good old Officer Tyler will want to talk—”
“No,” he said, his voice impatient. “What will happen to Stillwell’s spirit. Or ghost, or whatever it’s called.”
Oh.
“It could stick around. Couldn’t it?”
I tried to pull away from him, but he held me easily.
“Relax,” he said. “Just asking a question. The way your mom explained it, sometimes a spirit clings to the world, looking for answers.” He loosened his arms and looked into my eyes.
I felt my face heat as he stared at me. Why oh why couldn’t I act like a grown-up? Why did I always blush when he stared at me that way?
“Do I have it right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re a quick study.”
He half-smiled. “Thanks. I’m thinking that from all that crap he pulled in Edmonton, he’ll have more than a couple of questions for you before he’s ready to move along.”
“Move on,” I said.
“What?”
“Mom calls it moving on,” I said.
“All right. Moving on.” He looked into my eyes, deeply. “So. Will he come looking for you?”
“Probably.”
“So that means he’s not out of your life, yet.”
“Probably not.”
“Explains why you’re not celebrating.”
I flinched and pulled free, leaning against the cold of the sink. “He’s dead,” I said. “Even if his spirit has already moved on, I can’t celebrate something like that.”
“After everything he did to you?” James asked. “Nobody would blame you if you did.”
“Yes they would. At least the people in this town would.” I wished I could crawl back into his arms, but I couldn’t. He’d crossed them over his chest, and he looked angry. I turned away from him, but could still see his angry visage in the bathroom mirror.
“They knew what he did to you, right?”
“I tried to tell them,” I said, “but they thought it was my fault. They still think it’s all my fault.”
I felt a painful knot form in my throat, and swallowed.
“Who would think that?”
“Nearly everyone that I know here,” I said. “They think that if I’d just married him—he wouldn’t have carried on the way he did.”
“Carried on?” James grabbed my arm, swung me around so I had to face him. “They called what that son of a bitch did to you carrying on?”
“Boys will be boys and all that,” I said, trying, way too late, for a lighter tone. “Don’t try to make sense of it. It’ll make you crazy.”
“Wow.” James shook his head.
“I know.” I shrugged. “But what can you do?”
“Celebrate when we get to Edmonton?”
I felt a sudden, wild burst of relief, and laughed. “I like that idea very much. And you know, we can be there in five hours. Less, if you drive.”
“Hey, I gave you the car,” he said. “As back pay. Remember?”
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the keys. “I know how much you love that car. I was just returning it to you.”
He took the keys from me and stared at them for a long moment. “Are you taking that other job?”
The other job was with Leary Industries. I’d applied for the job after James had offered me a full-time position with his fledgling private investigator’s office and I’d accepted.
“No.” I looked up into his eyes. “I wasn’t going to take that job. I just got scared that you’d find out—”
“About the ghosts.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “About the ghosts.”
“And now that I know, we’re good. Right?”
I didn’t answer.
“Right?”
Probably not.
“Hearing about it is a lot different than living it,” I said.
“I get that,” he said. “At least give me a chance.”
He looked so hopeful, I couldn’t tell him what I knew would happen. That he’d get tired of the ghosts—and of me—and walk out, never to return.
“I will if you will,” I whispered. I could have cried when I saw how happy he looked. “So, let’s hit the road and see what happens. We’ll get the business up and running and—”
“No.”
“Why not?” I tried to keep the whine that was burbling just under the surface out of my voice. “It isn’t because Rhonda’s making lunch, is it? She doesn’t care if we stay—”
“No,” James said. “It isn’t about the lunch.”
“Then what is it?” Whine in full force, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
“The police want us to stay. Remember?”
“Oh yeah.” I sighed. “The cops. I forgot.”
“It’ll be all right,” James said. “It’ll just be a day or two, and then we can head to Edmonton.”
“Promise?” This time it was me looking up at him ever so hopefully.
“I promise.” Then he smiled. “Now come on, let’s go see what Rhonda made for lunch.”
WE DIDN’T GET a chance to enjoy Rhonda’s tofu salad that probably tasted like nothing at all, because James got the phone call as we were walking into the kitchen.
Mom answered the phone and had the decency to look sympathetic when she put down the receiver and turned to James.
“That was Officer Tyler,” she said. “He wants to see you.”
“Now?” Rhonda sounded supremely pissed off. “But lunch is ready.”
“Now,” Mom said. “Marie, drive him down. You remember your way to the cop shop, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “I remember.”
Arnie:
Gotta Be Some Kind of a Record
THE SUN SLOWLY set, and I realized I’d been in town almost exactly twenty-four hours. Jesus. Just twenty-four hours, and I’d managed to get myself killed. Had to be some kind of record, even for this town.
Rosalie’s balcony looked down on a little cemetery. No word of a fucking lie, a cemetery. She told me she thought it was peaceful.
“Peaceful?” I’d said. And then I’d said, “You are one fucked-up chick, aren’t you?”
She’d just looked at me with her cow eyes, her fist tight to her mouth like she was trying to keep the words she actually wanted to say stuffed in her gob.
She looked like that a lot, around me.
Whatever.
She lived besi
de a cemetery, and so I stared down at it. In it. Trying to see what I could see, through the trees.
And then I found myself on the balcony. No longer staring through the window, but standing on the actual balcony. I could hear the traffic on the Franklin Avenue side of the building, but it was muffled. Just a steady hum and whine that seemed to make the silence and stillness of the cemetery all the more remarkable.
It was fucking peaceful, and for just a second, I felt bad for the way I’d talked to Rosalie about it. Maybe she was right about this one thing.
Marie:
That’s Me. More than Famous.
THE LAST TIME I’d been to the cop shop on MacDonald Avenue, I’d learned all about the paperwork I had to fill out for that restraining order on Arnie. The next day, I’d moved to Edmonton, thinking that the stupidity of that relationship was finally over and I could get my life going, for real this time.
So much for that.
The cop shop looked exactly the same. The only thing I didn’t recognize was the young officer parked at the front desk, but when I walked up, he called out my name.
“Marie?” he asked. “Marie Jenner?”
James snuck a look at me, and I shrugged. That was me. Marie Jenner. More than famous.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
The cop ignored my question and turned to James. “And you’re James Lavall.”
“That’s right,” James said.
“Officer Tyler is waiting for you. In the back.”
In the back. In the interview room, or interrogation room, depending on your point of view.
The buzzer sounded, the door opened, and the inside air wafted over us. It smelled the same as the last time I was there. Bad coffee and sweat. Or depression. Again, depending on your point of view.
The young cop pointed at a door. “Through there,” he said, then shook his head when I moved forward. “Not you,” he said. “Mr. Lavall.”
Shit. They were separating us. And then I remembered. I was just the driver, the deliverer. Tyler wanted to talk to James, not me.
“How long will he be?”
“Hard to say,” the young cop said. “It all depends on Officer Tyler.”
“I’ll call you when we’re done,” James said. Still looked cool as the proverbial cucumber. “Save me some lunch.”
Oh yeah. Lunch with the family.
“Maybe I’ll wait.”
He turned. Touched my hand, and it felt so intimate that my face grew hot. “No,” he said, and handed me the keys. “I’ll call.”
I hated leaving him in that place, with those people, but I had to. The young cop’s eyes had hardened, and I knew he wasn’t going to let me stay, even if I wanted to.
So I turned my back on James and marched out of that place, feeling like a traitor even as I did exactly as he asked.
RHONDA WAS GONE when I arrived, so that was something. Mom and her little dog sat on the threadbare couch, watching TV. I swear, that little dog was following the action better than Mom. Mom looked three-quarters asleep—dead—but lurched back to something like life when I closed the door.
“So they kept him.” A statement more than a question, but I answered her anyway.
“Yeah.”
“Rhonda put the lunch away. In the fridge, if you’re hungry.”
I had never been so far from hungry in my life, but checked out the plastic containers sitting in the overcrowded fridge anyhow.
Rhonda had marked one for James and one for me, even though they looked identical. I took out the small rectangular plastic container with my name written in purple ink on a Post-It note, and popped the lid. Took a cautious sniff, and my stomach rejoiced. Guess I was hungry after all.
I found a fork and dug in as I returned to the couch and Mom.
“What are you watching?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Some talk show, I think.” Mom patted the little dog on the head. “She likes it, so we watch it.”
I wondered whether Mom had developed a new gift in the last stage of her life or something. Could she read that dog’s mind?
Didn’t ask, because I didn’t really want to know. Just parked myself next to the little dog and stared at the television as I ate Rhonda’s meal. It tasted as good as it smelled, even though it was mostly salad. One thing about Rhonda, she could make rabbit food taste quite wonderful.
“How long do you think they’ll keep him?” Mom asked.
“No idea,” I mumbled around the last of the salad. “You know how Tyler can be.”
Mom grunted, “Mhmm,” and nodded. “Man’s like a dog on a bone.”
“But James didn’t do anything.” I hoped.
“Jackson Tyler will figure it out for himself,” Mom said. “He is pretty good that way.”
“I suppose.” I set the container on the scarred coffee table and rattled the fork in it. As I settled on the couch, the little dog heaved a sigh and scuttled closer to me. Leaned against my leg, sighed once more, then crawled into my lap.
“Am I in her spot or something?”
Mom smiled. “No,” she said. “She figures you can use a little comfort, is all.”
“Oh.” Looked down at the top of the little dog’s head, and she looked up with her big doggie eyes. The look on that dog’s face convinced me that she was trying to comfort me, weird as that sounds. I patted her head, told her she was a good dog, and, as she settled, I did feel some comfort.
From a step-on dog. Who knew?
“MOM,” I SAID, after a few minutes. “Can you give me that lesson now?”
Mom stared at the television like she hadn’t heard me. I reached over and touched her arm. “Mom?”
She started. “What?”
“That lesson,” I repeated. “How to keep a ghost from attaching to me.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Now’s probably a good time.”
“So what do I do?” I asked.
Mom stared thoughtfully for a few moments. “You must put up boundaries,” she finally said.
“Boundaries?” I glared at her. “This isn’t psychobabble, is it?”
She almost smiled. “I guess you could look at it that way. It’s a matter of you not letting the spirits too far into your personal space. Think of it as a wall of glass around you. The spirits can interact with you, but they can’t get close enough, and comfortable enough, to stay with you. Understand?”
“But—”
“Imagine a wall of glass surrounding you.”
“But—”
“Do it!” she barked. “Close your eyes and see a wall of glass, all the way around you.”
I sighed, but closed my eyes anyhow. “All right,” I said. “Seeing the glass.”
“Are you really?”
I opened one eye and shook my head. “I don’t see anything.”
“Maybe glass won’t work for you,” Mom said. “Can you think of something that could surround you, protect you—”
“What about bat wings,” I whispered. “Would bat wings work?”
Growing up, I used to watch really old cartoons, early on Saturday mornings. One of them was a silly thing about a sort of superhero who was a bat.
“My wings are like a shield of steel!” he’d cry in every cartoon. And I’d loved the idea of having wings like that, to protect me.
“Try it,” Mom said.
I closed my eyes, and thought of steel bat wings surrounding me. Protecting me. Keeping me safe.
“Does this really work?” I asked.
“If you believe,” Mom replied. “Just remember, you have to protect yourself. Keep some psychic distance from the spirits. Then, they can’t attach.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Practice, and it will.” Mom touched my arm, and the wings of steel disappeared when I opened my eyes. “If you get in trouble, I’ll help you, but remember, I won’t always be around. It’s a good trick to have.”
I sighed. “All right. I’ll try.”
So, as Mom and
I sat on that threadbare couch and waited for the call from James, I practiced surrounding myself with wings of steel. But every time I opened my eyes, they disappeared. All I could see was the television, with the shows that flitted past like ghosts. Millie watched them, but Mom stared off into the distance, thinking her own dark thoughts.
Wings of steel, wings of steel, I thought, feeling kind of foolish. I couldn’t see how it was going to work, but I’d told her I would practice, so I did. Then something on the TV caught my attention, and I forgot to practice anymore.
Just watched TV with my mom and her dog, as time drifted on, hour after hour.
JAMES CALLED, SIX hours later.
Yes. Six hours.
Millie followed me to the door.
“Does she need to go outside or something?” I asked, even though I was desperate to save James from the cops. He’d sounded upset—no surprise—and tired. Like he needed to be saved. But the dog was staring at me with her big soulful eyes.
“I don’t think so,” Mom said. “Looks to me like she thinks you need a bit more comforting, is all.”
“Dog’s psychic,” I muttered, and pushed her away with my foot as I opened the door. “See you in a bit.”
JAMES WAS WAITING out in front of the cop shop when I arrived, and I took that as a good sign. If they’d made him stay in the station, I’d be having a difficult conversation about lawyers and whatnot with good old Officer Jackson Tyler, and I didn’t want that. Didn’t want anything but to get James away from there and safe.
“You want to drive?” I asked.
“No,” he said, and slouched into the passenger’s seat. He leaned his head against the headrest and sighed. I could smell bad coffee and depression on him from his time in the cop shop. Definitely depression.
“What did Officer Tyler want?”
“Oh, he wanted to know everything.” James put his hand up to his face and rubbed, like he was trying to wipe away the memory of Officer Tyler questioning him about all aspects of his life up to that second.
I remembered that, from my time in this wonderful town.
“I’m so sorry about this,” I said.
“You didn’t make me come here,” he replied. “I was the one who wanted to meet your mom.” He sighed, like he was hurting.
