by Nina Lane
My heart pounds. She’s under my skin. Inside me. Her cherry taste, sweet soft body, skin like cream. All the parts of her that I broke. Her shattered sleep and terrorized psyche. Her perfect, pure heart. Her belief that hope still exists. That she’ll find it again.
I call her twice more. Finally she responds, and the sound of her voice is like fresh water pouring down my parched throat.
“Sorry, my phone was off,” she says. “How did the launch thing go?”
I unclench my fist from the railing and take a breath. “It was loud and obnoxious.”
“Ah, then you fit right in.”
I laugh. “What’d you do today?”
“Trespassed on your property and vandalized your garden wall with an utterly brilliant mural.”
“I approve.”
“Thank you again for letting me do this. Given that the wall is right outside your office window, I know it’s not easy for you.”
“Making you happy is always easy.” It’s the truest statement I’ve ever spoken.
Well. The second truest.
“Oh.” Her voice softens with tenderness. “Even now?”
“Especially now.”
The real confession pushes up inside my chest. Smothering it, I grip the phone tighter. “Tell me how it’s going.”
She starts talking about the priming and outlining, and a little boy and his mother who painted sea plants.
I let her voice wash over the burn inside me, the fire that won’t go out, the festering agony that started the second I walked out of her hospital room and tried to convince myself I was doing the right thing.
“You still there?” she asks after a brief silence.
“I’m here.”
I’ll always be here. But I can never tell her that not for one second in the past eleven years have I stopped loving her.
Chapter 13
Josie
* * *
After four days of steady work, I start to catch up with the timeline I’d established to complete the mural. I arrive early in the morning, so I can get a few hours of work in alone before an audience starts to gather. The time allows me to prepare for more painters and to ensure the design is still consistent with my plan and color scheme.
As I open a fresh can of paint, a shadow falls over me. I glance up. Cole is standing nearby, gorgeous in a charcoal-gray suit and striped tie, his thick hair combed back from his forehead. Though I still have a hard time reconciling this vision of corporate fortitude with the rumpled boy who’d make me pancakes on Sunday morning, my body lights up with excitement.
“Hi,” I breathe. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Got in early.” He steps toward me, skimming his warm gaze over my paint-splattered overalls and the bandanna covering my hair. “You look good.”
Pleasure tingles through me. I want to fly right into his arms, but neither of us moves to touch the other. Pedestrians are walking past us, the square is crowded with people…and since Cole and I are still figuring out how to navigate this new space together, there’s no need to draw attention to us.
But oh, how I want him to kiss me.
“So do you.” Suppressing a rush of desire, I indicate the mural. “What do you think?”
“It looks great. You’ve gotten a lot done in the past week. You work all day?”
“Until about three or four, and with a few breaks in between.”
“When’s your next break?”
I glance at my watch. “Probably around ten.”
“Come to my office.” He steps toward me, his gaze slipping to my lips. His eyes darken. “I can’t wait to kiss you.”
Heat blooms through my chest. I nod in agreement. He winks at me and turns to stride into his office. Tempted though I am to follow him, I force myself to wait. At three minutes to ten, I hurry into the inn. The security guard waves me to the stairs without looking up.
Cole is waiting for me at the office door, his beautiful mouth curving with a smile, his eyes crinkling. He holds out his arms. I break into a run and leap right into them. Our lips meet, hot and hard. Our bodies press together. My heart spins like a Ferris wheel, multicolored lights twinkling against the night sky.
* * *
Life eases into a welcome routine over the next few days. Morning yoga in the sunroom, coffee and toast, and I’m off to Lantern Square. I work on the mural for most of the day, pausing often to chat with passersby. I feel my parents’ pride and enjoyment about the project, and the excitement of the visitors fuels my energy.
“Can I paint one of the Nemos?” A little girl with blonde pigtails stops beside me and points to the outlined school of clownfish.
“Of course.” I take a clean paintbrush out of my case and hand it to her. “Paints are right over there.”
Two students from Ford’s College arrive to paint a shark, and a lobster fisherman stops by specifically to paint one of the half-dozen lobsters I’ve drawn on the ocean floor. Every day, a crowd has gathered to both watch and help, though I’ve had to limit the painters to five at a time to allow them room to work.
Aside from requesting that they stick to my established color scheme so the final mural doesn’t end up discordant, I let them have at it. Though I hadn’t expected people to want to paint the mural with me, I’m delighted by both their response and enthusiasm.
In the morning, Cole stops by on his way into the Snapdragon Inn, always bearing the gift of a take-out coffee—large mocha with whip, the kind I’d used to order all the time—and a banana-nut muffin. Also my old favorite. Aside from that gesture, he and I continue to keep our relationship discreet, getting together only in the evenings at Watercolor Cottage.
Though I know Cole is also publicly distancing himself from me to try and protect me from the animosity directed at him, I don’t press the issue. Finally we’re on reasonably solid ground again, and I’m not about to do anything to change that.
On Wednesday during my lunch break, I stop at the basement archives of Ford College’s library. Charlotte the librarian, clad in a gray dress and sweater, welcomes me with the stack of blueprints and drawings she’d set aside for me.
“I pulled a few more for you, if you’d like to see them,” she says.
“No, that’s okay. I have everything I need.” I pause by her desk, unaccountably nervous. Charlotte is about as timid and nonthreatening a woman as I’ve ever encountered, and she doesn’t seem like the type who would start a friendship with a bunch of personal questions. So…
“There’s an exhibition of historical manuscripts over at the museum,” I explain hastily. “I wanted to know if you’d be interested in going to see them and maybe grabbing lunch.”
She blinks with surprise, like she can’t fathom such a thing. “You’re asking me to lunch?”
“Yes. I’m not in town for long, but all my friends here have moved away, so I just…um, wanted to know if you’d like to hang out.”
A flush crawls up my face. This is nerve-wracking. How do people manage to ask other people out on romantic dates?
“Thanks for the invitation, but actually I…don’t really hang out much.” She smiles weakly and fidgets with a button on her sweater.
Good lord. She and I are the poster children for Awkward Neurotic Women Needing Social Lives.
“Okay, well, let me know if you change your mind.” I grab a notepad from her desk and scribble my cell phone number. “Thanks again for the evil-eye amulet. I think it’s working.”
“That’s good.”
As I leave the library, a rush of pity fills me. Does Charlotte spend all her time just working alone in the archives? She can’t be much older than me, but she dresses like she’s eighty and she seems even more anxious than I am. And that’s saying something.
I’ll try asking her again later.
“She’s kind of like one of your wounded animals, Josie. Maybe you should rescue her.” My friend Harper’s voice echoes from many years ago. She’d said the same thing about Cole whe
n we’d seen him one night at the pier.
I like to think Cole and I had rescued each other. Maybe we’re doing that again now.
Popping a cherry Lifesaver into my mouth, I return to the mural and get to work. At four, when the light starts to change, I clean up the paints and hang a “Back Tomorrow” sign on the scaffolding. I grab a lemonade from a nearby café and sit on a bench to check my phone before making the hike back to Watercolor Cottage.
A large tour bus pulls into the square. Two tour guides descend the bus, followed by a motley group of senior citizens, families, and a couple of college kids. A sign on the bus reads: Haunted Tours of Eastern Maine.
Seems more appropriate for October rather than June, but I guess specialty tours are popular year-round. I sip the lemonade, watching the tourists admire and take photos of the Snapdragon Inn.
“Built in 1894, this inn is believed to be haunted by the original owners, Frank and Eleanor Watson,” the tour guide calls to the crowd. “Though it’s now private property, guests who have stayed at the inn in the past reported sightings of a woman in Victorian clothing climbing the stairs, lights flickering at strange hours, tapping noises, and unexplained footsteps. One guest reported walking into her room and encountering a man wearing a dark suit and hat, who informed her she should return home. Then he turned and vanished into a wall.”
The tourists murmur with appropriate awe, cell phones and video cameras clicking.
“If you’re interested in a tour, we offer them twice daily during the summer.” The second tour guide, a middle-aged man wearing a Haunted Tours baseball cap, thrusts a flyer at me. “Tours last five hours and cover all the haunted buildings and sites in the area, including the Stonebridge graveyard.”
Out of politeness, I take the flyer and nod my thanks.
“The price includes lunch at the Farmington Lodge, which is haunted by a Civil War soldier,” he continues. “Some of our customers have said he’s joined them at their table.”
“I’ll think about it,” I promise. “Thanks.”
He hurries over to pass out flyers to a couple of women strolling toward the plaza.
Sipping the last of my lemonade, I skim the flyer and start to set it aside when I notice the list of “haunted sites” beneath several pictures of the tour bus, the graveyard, and an old B&B.
* * *
Site #12. TRAGEDY AT OLD MILL BRIDGE!
* * *
The last stop on our tour, the bridge on Highway 16, is the location of a terrible accident that killed three people. Visitors have heard a woman wailing in the night and seen the ghost of a young boy drifting along the shore of the rocky inlet and crying out for—
* * *
Nausea boils into my throat. The plastic cup falls from my cold fingers.
“Josie.”
Cole’s voice. God in heaven.
He’s at my side, ripping the flyer from my shaking hand. After scanning the print, he crushes it in his fist and throws it in a garbage can.
“Come with me.” He picks up my backpack and grabs my hand, tugging me to my feet.
Blindly I follow him to his office. The instant the door closes behind us, he pulls me into his arms. He’s shaking. I press my face to his chest, trying to let the strength of his body, his heartbeat, soothe the shock and panic ricocheting through me.
“What…” I swallow past the tightness in my throat. “What was that?”
Before he can answer, a knock sounds at the door. Cole detaches himself from me to open it. An older man stands in the corridor, his features drawn with concern and a glass of water in his hand.
“You okay, Josie?” he asks.
Managing to nod, I sink into a nearby chair. My whole body is still trembling. Cole strides to the window, narrowing his gaze on the tour bus.
The other man hands me the water. Gratefully, I take a swallow, trying to block the image of Teddy’s ghost wandering along the coastline…
Is that what I’ve been seeing all this time? The creepy white faces and empty eyes…are my family’s ghosts haunting me?
My heart hammers. Lowering the glass, I look at the older man, trying to focus on his face.
“I’m Gerald Parker.” He pats my shoulder gently. “Cole’s uncle.”
“Of course.” I wipe a drop of water from my chin. I’d met him only once when Cole and I were together, but Cole had always spoken well of him.
“I’m sorry this happened,” he says. “We just saw the bus through the window.”
“How…” I pull a breath into my aching lungs. “How long has this been going on?”
“Too long.” Cole turns, his eyes hardening. “People have never stopped talking about the accident. By the time I moved back here, that night had already become part of Castille’s folklore.”
Folklore? The accident that killed three-fifths of my family and destroyed my relationship with the love of my life?
I look at Gerald, as if willing him to refute Cole’s statement. Instead he nods somberly.
“They turned the worst, most unimaginable night of both our lives into a legend.” Cole paces across the room, his back stiff. “And they’ve kept all the rumors alive, especially the ones about what happened. I was drunk at the wheel. Jealous that you’d been with another guy. I deliberately ran off the road. They know it’s all bullshit, but they’ve been talking about it for a decade.”
An ache pushes at the back of my head. I’d known about the rumors, but Vanessa had shielded me from the worst of them. Then I’d moved to California just two months after the accident, needing to get away from everything. Including my sister.
Cole approaches me, his shoulders lined with tension and his eyes dark.
“The tours started shortly after I moved back,” he says. “Teenagers still have campfires out there late at night, hoping to see the so-called ghosts. The Seagull Inn got a shitload of press for being the last place your parents were before they died. It makes me sick.”
“Cole shut down at least five tour packages over this,” Gerald tells me.
“How?”
“Money. He bought them out.” Gerald’s mouth twists. “But the damned haunted tours are like that whack-a-mole game. They keep popping up.”
“The Castille tour companies will never offer them again. I put a stop to that.” Cole looks out the window at the bus. “That one is based over in Fernsdown. I guarantee this will be the last time they offer a fucking haunted tour.”
Another knock comes at the door, and a slender young man pokes his head in the room. “I’ve got the budget reports in.”
Cole throws his uncle a pointed look. Gerald hurries over to usher the other man out of the room. The door closes.
“I’m sorry.” Cole shoves his hands into his pockets, his pained gaze on me. “It’s shitty and horrible. I never wanted you to find out.”
“Is that why you were trying so hard to make me leave?”
A humorless chuckle escapes him. “One reason. Yeah.”
Heavy silence weights the air. I grip the glass in both hands, my insides snarled and tight. My brain can’t shake the image of a pale, transparent version of Teddy, still in the suit he’d worn to the anniversary party but without his tie, which he’d taken off less than half an hour after arriving.
It’s exactly something I’d paint in one of my insomnia-induced hazes.
What the fuck is happening to me?
“Josie.” Faint alarm edges Cole’s voice. He settles his hand on the back of my neck. “Lower your head. You look like you’re about to faint.”
I press my face into my hands. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“I’d thought…hoped…that coming back would make the nightmares stop. But not only have they not stopped, I’m seeing them in the daytime now. Decapitated heads, red eyes, all the creepy shit in my paintings. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.”
Cole’s breath escapes in a heavy rush. He kneels in front of me, pulling my hands a
way from my face. Conviction and something else I can’t read burns in his eyes.
“You are not going crazy.” He tightens his grip on my wrists. “Coming back here after ten years is bound to cause trauma. But you’ll heal through all the good you’re doing.”
With every cell in my body, I want to believe him. But how can I when my mind is still so fractured and dark?
My pulse beats heavily against his fingertips. Cole is the other survivor of that night. No matter what happens with us, we will forever be linked by that horrible connection.
“Why did you warn me about Nathan Peterson?” I ask.
He jerks his head up, wariness discoloring his eyes. “What?”
“When you saw him at the cottage. You gave me a warning to stay away from him.”
“Because he’s no better than his brother.”
“That’s not true.” I shake my head and tug my hands from his. “Nathan is a good guy.”
Tension stiffens his spine. He pushes to his feet. “The Petersons and I have enough bad blood without you needing to get in the middle of it.”
I frown. “Nathan’s father was the police chief the night of the accident. Nathan was there too.”
“And?”
“Henry Peterson was the interrogating officer.” My unease deepens. “I know you never liked him, but did he say or do anything strange?”
“No.” He pulls a hand through his hair and twists his neck. “I mean, he was a cop then, not my father’s friend. Far as I know, he handled the investigation well.”
“Did you read the police reports?”
“Yeah.” He turns back, his forehead creasing. “Why are you asking?”
I rub my aching chest. “Because you’re the one who remembers what happened.”
“You know what happened. It’s all in the reports.”
