“What’s best for me is to stay here. I’m not going anywhere. I need you to butt out.”
Patrick smiled, proud of her for sticking up for herself. Despite all that Sara’d been through, she was so much stronger than anyone thought. She was smart and funny, talented and full of love. He hated that her sister had turned on her; family was a big deal, and while he could understand it on some level –Jules’ concern –he just wanted her to leave them alone.
“I’m afraid we can’t… butt out. I really like you, Sara, and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. I have my little girl to think about, though – if you really went through with something, you could not only hurt yourself, you could hurt my family.”
“Then get out of my house.”
“Sara!” The toe of Jules’ shoe tapped loudly on the linoleum, and Patrick followed its movement, mesmerized.
Ginny sat, waiting. Knowing Ginny, she was probably just biding her time until it seemed like the right time to speak.
“I’m serious. There’s nothing wrong with me , and I’m not about to kill myself. It wasn’t like that.”
“And what was it like?” Jules asked, volume rising.
“I have no intention of hurting myself.” Sara turned her eyes toward the ceiling, leaning forward into Patrick’s shoulder. “I just want you both to go and leave me alone. Everything is fine here. I’m not depressed or delusional. I’ll call the police if I have to, you know.”
“I’ll get Mom and Dad out here, and they’ll – ” The tendons in Jules’ neck bulged as she screamed.
Megan grasped Jules’ arm, warning her with cautioned look. “That’s not helpful.”
Jules took a deep breath. “Sara, I can’t force you to get help, but I can make things very difficult for you if you don’t.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Patrick asked, advancing on the woman until he was nose to nose with her. “Are you threatening her?” He hated that he was so helpless in all of this. He wished he could force them to go.
“Mom and Dad can talk at me until they’re blue in the face,” Sara said, her voice flat. “I’ll change my phone number, and you’ll never hear from me again. This is your last warning –get out of my house, or I’ll call 911. Ginny is here as my witness. You won’t go, and you’re threatening me.”
Ginny nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid that is what it looks like.”
“You may be a danger to yourself,” Megan said. “You have a history of mental illness. Roger has a lot of pull at the local hospital. It won’t take a lot of effort to have you committed involuntarily… at least for a few days. I don’t want to do this and ruin our friendship, but… well, it would really make your sister feel better.”
“What? No!” Patrick tried to shake the woman, but his hands went right through her. She shivered and stood straighter, face determined.
“Right. I think what would make Jules feel better is dousing me and this house in Holy Water.” Sara snorted out a bitter laugh and said, “I think you’re forgetting I’ve been in a mental institution, and I’m not an idiot. Do you know how hard it would be to get me locked up unless I did something crazy?” Sara glared at Jules , reaching into her pocket for her phone and flipping it open.
“You don’t think believing a ghost is your boyfriend is crazy?” Jules laughed, her face ugly in its derisiveness . “Here’s the bottom line - if you don’t sign yourself in voluntarily, I’ll get Mom and Dad to petition the court for power of attorney if we do manage to get you committed , and we’ll sell this house.”
Patrick froze, and a tense silence hung in the air. Sell the house? Could they do that? He turned to look at Sara, fear coursing through him. She looked freaked out. “You can’t.”
“We can, and we will.” Jules jutted her chin out.
“Now, now,” Megan said, patting Jules’ shoulder.
“She’s not crazy,” Ginny spoke up. “There’s no need for this.”
“If she’s not crazy, she’ll spend a few months getting help, come back here, and pick up right where she left off, won’t she?” Megan tentative ly step ped forward toward Sara, and Patrick stood in front of her, crossing his arms over his chest. He didn’t know how she couldn’t feel the weight of his glare .
He’d been taught to respect women and never hit them, but he was sorely tempted in that moment. Not that he could, but he wanted to. How dare they hold this over Sara’s head? This was ridiculous.
“Megan, get out of my house.”
“We’ll have to call for an ambulance. You’re clearly agitated, and you don’t know what you’re saying,” Jules said.
Megan took another step forward but stopped cold when she hit the space where Patrick stood. She reached into his chest while he winced at the feeling, but it was short-lived –she retracted her hand immediately.
Sara’s lips tightened into a straight line while glaring between Jules and Megan. “I have a witness who can testify the two of you schemed to get me locked up against my will and threatened me.”
“And I have a witness who heard you threaten to kill yourself,” Jules said. “We may only be able to get you locked up for a day or two, but if we can get a judge to listen to Mom and Dad, this house is gone. I’ll make sure some nice family buys it, someone who will stay here for a long time, and you’ll never get it back.”
“You bitch!” Patrick yelled, making Sara jump. He felt her slump against him, and he turned to see a single tear slip down her cheek. He grasped her by the elbows. “We’ll fight this,” he said in a desperate tone.
“No, it’s over. If I go, it’s just a few months, and then I can come back. If I don’t, I could lose…” Sara wiped her cheek with her thumb, and Ginny slipped an arm around her waist, the three of them huddled together.
“I’ll make sure nothing happens,” Ginny whispered so low Patrick barely heard her. “I’ll look in on the house. Don’t lose him.”
“Will you visit me?”
“Of course,” Ginny said, rubbing Sara’s back. Her eyes were glassy.
“I wish I could,” Patrick answered at the same time. “I’ll see you every night in my dreams.”
Sara clenched her eyes shut, and her face crumbled for a moment. She turned toward Ginny, but kept her body pressed against Patrick’s. “There’s a notebook I found in the attic, along with a couple of pencils. They’re in the bottom desk drawer in my office. Sharpen the pencils, and leave them on the desk with the notebook, okay?”
Ginny looked puzzled, but she immediately nodded. “Okay.”
Patrick smiled, recognizing her plan immediately. He pressed a long kiss into Sara’s hair. “Very smart, angel. It’ll be almost like I’m with you… I’ll write to you every day.”
“Me too,” she murmured. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” A small sob caught in her throat.
“I lo–”
“No,” she cut him off while Ginny patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Save it for when I come back.”
He didn’t say a word; he simply laid his cheek against her hair and focused on the burning prickles of tension and emotion high on his cheekbones. If God existed, He’d show up right now and do something to keep this from happening. Like every other prayer Patrick had ever said, he didn’t expect this one to be answered, but how he wished it would.
It was coming… the moment she’d leave. They stood together, not saying a word. He memorized the warmth of her skin, aware of each minute movement of her body. He pulled away, ducking his head to look into her face. Her eyes were closed, although he could see them moving frantically back and forth behind her eyelids. He memorized each detail of her face –the chicken pock mark below her lower lip, the way her nose seemed to turn up just a little at the end, the way the tips of her lashes seemed lighter than the rest. He kissed her mouth, but she didn’t respond . She was facing her sister and the neighbor, and he knew she didn’t want to give them any more ammunition than they all ready had.
Sara snapped her head up, her glare ice co
ld as she locked eyes with Jules. “Fine. Let’s go. Right now.”
“Just like that?” Jules asked.
“Just like that,” she agreed. “I’m going to go, get this over with, and then you and I are finished.”
“You’ll thank your sister,” Megan said. “This really is – ”
Sara’s laugh was bitter. “I very much doubt that.”
Sara’s absence was a hole through his chest. Every day he woke up and roamed the house, looking for some sign that she was back. He bled on the inside, his heart split open wide. He really felt the weight of what he was now: just a ghost, haunting his old house.
He silently stood at the front window for hours, watching the leaves – dry and desiccated –fall from the trees and blow across the yard. The flowers outside withered, needing to be cut back, but no one tended to them. The yard was a wreck. If it wasn’t for Sara’s things in the house, Patrick could have imagined he’d dreamt everything about being with her – everything seemed so familiar, so much as the same as it had been after his parents left.
He carried the sea glass around with him from room to room, rubbing his thumb over the smooth surface. The connection it gave him to Sara seemed tangible, and if he concentrated hard enough, he swore he could feel some of the warmth leftover from her own hand. It was stupid, but he missed her. He did what he could to feel close to her.
Ginny came the first time the day after Sara left. Unfortunately, she’d never been able to find the pencils. She’d left a bunch of sharpened ones and a few pens on the desk, but Patrick’s hands had passed right through them when he tried to pick them up. He’d tried to write Sara a letter anyway, pressing his fingernail into a blank sheet of paper from his notebook, but by the time Ginny had shown up again, the indents had faded. She ended up back at the house five days later.
“She’s doing okay,” Ginny said as she looked around the living room. “She told me to tell you she misses you.”
“I miss her, too.” Patrick’s voice was rough with emotion, and he touched her arm, just enough to make her shudder and know he was present . “I imagine she’s here with me every day. I wake up sometimes and feel her arms around my waist.”
“She wanted to write you a letter, but they’re monitoring everything she does… and they won’t let her have a pencil. Apparently it’s a choking hazard.”
He heaved out a sigh and sank down onto the bottom step. “This is killing me.”
“She’s in an institution a few counties over. I’ll probably go visit her again in a week. Julie flew back to Oregon, but Sara said she’s coming back with her mother next week. I guess her dad can’t come with them. She said something about a bakery.”
“When is she getting out?”
“Sara asked for her copy of The Turn of the Screw.” She waved the book in her hand. “She wanted a piece of glass she said you gave her, but we don’t think they’d let a mental patient have something sharp like that if they’re not even allowed to have a pen.”
She and Patrick both grinned humorlessly, Patrick chuckling while he looked at the sea glass in his hand. He carefully placed it back in the bowl – Sara liked to keep it there, so that’s where it went when it wasn’t in the palm of his hand .
Ginny left a few minutes later, and he was glad. He’d been happy to see her at first, but it was a painful reminder of exactly what he was missing.
Patrick kept track of the days this time, carefully and meticulously. He used the rocks he’d collected in the cigar box. Putting one on the windowsill of Sara’s office for each day she was gone. On the twelfth day, Jules bustled into the house, an older, stocky woman with short, blonde hair behind her.
“This is it,” Jules said, gesturing to the general space of the living room. She held a stack of brown cardboard under arm.
Patrick flew at her, glaring. “What are you doing here?” he yelled, his fists clenched. “Get out!”
“This looks just like her,” the older woman said. She looked familiar… Sara’s mother, he realized with a start.
“Can’t you do something?” Patrick pleaded, moving to her side and touching her shoulder. Mrs. Oswald pulled the edges of her black sweater closer around her.
“It’s cold in here.”
“Looks like the heat hasn’t been turned on yet. Not like it matters.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Screw you,” Patrick blurted, staring hard at Jules. He turned back to Mrs. Oswald. “Don’t you see that Sara’s not crazy? Talk to her!”
“I don’t feel right about this,” her mother said, taking a photograph off the mantle and gently touching the glass. “She said she’s not interested in moving.”
“Oh, come on, Mom,” Jules said. “She’s going to get past this, and she’s going to want to be close to home when she does. Packing up her stuff will make it easier on her.”
“She doesn’t seem… “
“She’s just gotten good at hiding the crazy,” Jules argued. She was stubborn, like Sara, but as far as Patrick was concerned that was the only similarity. Where Sara was loving and sensitive, Jules was cold and hard. He hated her.
“She barely talks to me.” Her mother’s voice was wounded and sad.
“She won’t talk to me at all.” Jules set the cardboard down on the floor and began folding them into boxes. “She’ll get over it. Mom, you weren’t here. You don’t know. Ghosts! That’s delusional! And I’d prefer to think she’s nuts rather than intentionally playing with evil forces.”
His anger bubbled through his veins like blood. “She’s not making shit up, nor am I anything other than a regular guy . You are… God, can’t you just bring her back to me?” He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to keep his temper in check. He was close to picking up one of his books that lay on the end table and whipping it at her head. That would show her delusional .
“You don’t know that ghosts don’t exist. Your Aunt Martha said Dan’s ghost visited her every night for the first year after he died.”
“And you believed her?”
“I’m just saying it’s possible to believe without needing mental help or a visit from a priest.”
Patrick breathed against the back of Mrs. Oswald’s neck, but it didn’t seem to have an effect. He didn’t want to scare her; he liked her because she seemed open to the idea of ghosts and appeared to be trying to rein in her daughter, but he wanted her to know he was there, wanted her to see it somehow. Sara deserved to have more allies than just him and Ginny.
“So, it’s possible your daughter was playing kissy-face with the ghost of a boy who died in this house?”
“Well, when you say it like that…”
Patrick groaned and cursed at Jules, calling her every dirty name he could think of and making up a few. He didn’t really believe in karma –if he did, he’d have to believe that both he and Sara had done some horrible things in their lives –but he hoped something precious would be torn away from Jules. He wanted her to suffer.
“Just a couple of boxes. We don’t have to pack up everything. I just want to give Sara a head start.”
They wrapped photographs in newspapers Sara had stacked under the end table and took her Georgia O’Keefe print off the wall, the red flower seeming to wink at Patrick as Sara’s mother carried it to rest against the wall behind the rocking chair. Jules packed up the volumes on the end table, including a few of his. He vowed to immediately hide the rest of his books in the attic as soon as they left, along with everything else of his he could manage. He couldn’t stop them from uprooting the life Sara had built for herself, but he’d be damned if they’d take anything else of his.
Sara’s movies were next, followed by the movie player. Jules picked up the silver bowl from the coffee table and stopped, picking out the sea glass Patrick had given Sara, the surface winking in the dim light from outside.
“God, she really went all out,” Jules said. “What a piece of work.”
“Don’t touch that,” Patrick seethed, circ
ling around her. “Put it back!”
Mrs. Oswald looked over from a box she’d been folding closed. “What’s that?”
“A while ago Sara sent me something she’d written, something about a man giving a woman a piece of sea glass. A green, heart-shaped chunk of it.” Jules laughed bitterly and held the stone up to the light. “It was really romantic. At least I thought so at the time.”
Patrick didn’t know she’d written about it, but the idea warmed him. “Sara, I miss you so much,” he said, hoping she’d hear it, even if she was miles away.
“I’m failing to see how this makes your sister a ‘piece of work’.”
Jules smirked and closed her fist around the glass. “The man in the story was a ghost, Mom. She either found this glass or she bought it, and she made up this huge scenario around the fantasy that this ghost was in love with her .”
“I am in love with her.” Patrick grabbed at the glass, fingers sludging through Jules’ wrist. Her hand tremored, mouth puckering like she ’d tasted something sour.
The defiant glint that came to her eye forced Patrick a half step back. Before he could decipher what she was doing, Jules threw the glass to the floor, and it broke in half, the larger piece shooting across the wood.
“What are you doing?” her mother shrieked, shrill over Patrick’s litany of cursing.
“She’s not going to use this in her delusions anymore.”
“Get out of my house!” Patrick yelled, a dangerous-sounding growl in his throat.
“That’s it!” Mrs. Oswald declared. “We’re here to help your sister, not break her things. Get your purse. We’re leaving.”
“Mom, she needs this.”
“You’re being cruel, Julie. This ends now.” Her mother’s voice was sharp, and Patrick stood beside her, wishing he could give her a fierce hug.
Oddly, the tone of her authoritative demands made him homesick for his own mother. He never thought he’d miss something he hated to hear when he was alive, but he would have given almost anything once to be back in his bedroom, listening to his mother bitch at him to clean up his crap . While he still yearned for his mom, his only wish now was for Sara. He craved her like the air his lungs used to need.
Between Seasons Page 20
