Not Quite Mine

by Lyla Payne

  “The library subscribes to special research search engines, and I still use my ex’s login to access the ones that only provide information to educational institutions.” I squint at the list of names she pulls up in a Word document. “But if you’ve got general timeframes when these people owned the property, we should be able to narrow it down and do a simple death record search. That might give you a clue.”

  “When do you think the woman you saw lived?”

  I think for a moment, conjuring her image in my head in an attempt to get it right. “Late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, based on the style of her nightgown.”

  “Okay, let’s see.” A notebook appears from her bag next, along with a mechanical pencil. “There was a family that lived there until 1892. A widow and six children. She sold the house when her last child married, to a childless couple, and they lived there together until 1910.”

  “I think the PC term these days is childfree, not childless.”

  “What?” Mel looks at me through a fog I recognize as one caused by the film of the past shrouding the present. “Oh. Well, that makes sense. Freedom is a vague concept to me these days.”

  I barely hear her, my brain wrestling with what she said about the owners of the house. “Why did the second couple only live there for a little while?”

  Eighteen years might seem like a long time these days, but back then people didn’t really move around, not after they bought property.

  I can’t help but wonder if they’d stayed a short time because the place was already haunted. If that’s the case, then the previous widow could be the culprit.

  “Oh. I was wrong. The husband owned the house until 1950, when he died, but there’s no mention of the wife on the sales deed.”

  “Huh. Maybe she died before then? The woman I saw was pretty young, perhaps in her twenties. Her anger made her seem older.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s worth taking a look. If she died young, maybe it’s her.” I motion for the computer, and she sets it on my lap. “What were their names?”

  “Geoffrey and Rebecca Davis.”

  I tap the keys, pulling up county death records, and find a couple for women named Rebecca Davis during the time in question. It’s a common name, but it only takes a few minutes to cross-reference marriage records and find the right one. “Here.”

  I give Mel the computer back. She needs to know this is her case to work, even if I’m helping. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for me to remember the same thing.

  “It says she died at twenty-six after a fall down the stairs,” Mel reads. “Weird, right?”

  “A little. Did they do an autopsy?”

  She frowns. “I don’t think they did those then. Why?”

  “I don’t know. The woman I saw was more than a little pissed off, and from my experience, pissed-off ghosts usually want us to know something about the way they died.”

  “You think maybe she didn’t fall down the stairs?”

  “I’m not accusing a dead man of murder, but I think it’s an angle worth looking into.” My heart speeds up at the sound of tires crunching against the gravel out front. “Come by the library later and I’ll set you up with the search engines. It’s a local story, so it would be worth checking out back issues of the Creek Sun.”

  “Thanks, I will.” She checks her watch. “I should get home, anyway. Grant is probably already up, and Will needs to sleep in after working late.”

  “Okay. See you.”

  Mel pauses on her way out of the living area, turning to raise an eyebrow at me. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you’ve been silent on why you’re here so early in the morning. You’re telling me everything at the library.”

  I give her a salute, which makes her laugh. For the thirty seconds until Daria takes her place in my presence, it’s possible to believe that our lives really will find a way to be normal again in the face of all of the punches we’ve rolled with together.

  “What are you doing here?” the medium asks bluntly, dropping a duffel bag on the floor. It clatters like the one she brought the last time we confronted Mama Lottie, so it’s likely full of crosses and herbs and sage sticks and whatever else Buffy would have in her arsenal.

  Daria must have been out cleansing a property, not on a fact-finding trip. It can’t have been back to Taylor’s house, though, since Mel hasn’t even figured out who the woman is yet.

  “You know, you’re the second person to ask me that?” Daria doesn’t rise to the bait, ignoring me as she strides over to the bar and starts mixing up what looks like a Bloody Mary. “Mel did a good job organizing for you, huh?”

  “I’m not going to be able to find shit now.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” I try not to bristle at her dismissal of my friend’s hard work. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, I figured. Do you want a drink?”

  “No. I have to go to work.”

  “Suit yourself. I don’t know when you’re going to stop pretending to be normal and get a schedule that suits what we do.” Daria brings her drink, which looks delicious, over to the couch and sits down. She frowns a little, as though maybe she misses the cloud of dust making her sneeze. “Out with it, Graciela. I want to go to sleep.”

  Her demand stops me from reminding her for the hundredth time that I like my job. Not to mention that despite her refusal to see it, what she does and what I do are two different things. My ghosts don’t make their requests on a schedule. They’re as likely to show up in the middle of the day as the dead of night. As long as I’m alone, I’m fair game. Not having a job during regular business hours wouldn’t make much difference.

  But that’s not even the real reason I don’t want to quit the library. The truth is that even though I’m more comfortable with my new abilities, and even the purpose they’ve brought me, I’m not ready to hang out a shingle the way she has. Daria is braver than I am. Advertising as a ghost hunter is as good as the bright red A on Hester’s sweater, and I don’t know if that’s something I’m prepared to do. Ever.

  I clear my throat in an attempt to do the same for my head and try to remember why I’m here. “Do you know a girl named Ellen Hargrove?”

  Daria sips her drink and seems to ponder the question. “I don’t think so.”

  Her response sounds genuine but doesn’t ease my anxiety. Why would Ellen have led me here if Daria knew nothing?

  “Should I?”

  “I don’t know. She was about twenty. Blond hair, pregnant.”

  Daria’s drink freezes halfway to her mouth. Her dark eyes open wide, and it takes her a moment to gather her composure. “Was?”

  I nod. She closes her eyes for several moments, and when she opens them, I see her sorrow.

  “Damn. What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. She showed up about a week ago, and we’ve been working out a communication system. I just found out she was pregnant and that the baby, a boy, was born alive. Then she brought me here.” I peer at Daria, sure now that she knew Ellen but unclear why she tried to pretend she didn’t. “You knew her?”

  She sets the drink on the table, where it will leave another ring for Mel to scrub off, and sits back with her hands pressed between her knees. “Not well. Not even her real name. She told me it was Rae.”

  “That’s her middle name,” I say, distracted by trying to make sense of the whole thing. Why Ellen would come here. Why she would lie. “How did you meet her?”

  “I found her holed up in one of the houses I was walking—an abandoned place near Driftwood—and told her if she didn’t come home with me I was going to call the cops.”

  “She stayed here? For how long?”

  “A couple of weeks? Maybe a month. I’m not sure.”

  It’s my turn to let my mouth fall open. “Daria, she was reported missing. People were looking for her.”

  “I didn’t know that, but I did know that she was a legal adult and she said she didn’t want
to go back where she came from so I wasn’t going to make her. I wasn’t her mother. I was just someone who didn’t want a poor pregnant girl sleeping on a cold floor.”

  She looks slightly uncomfortable with even that level of caring. Frustration that a clue has been so close makes me blow my hair out of my face with more force than necessary.

  “Fine. Where did she go when she left? Did she say?”

  Daria shakes her head. “She just said that she’d talked to someone she trusted and she was going to stay there until the baby came.”

  “Was it the father?”

  “Don’t know that, either.”

  I wish, not for the first time, that Daria were a more verbose or forthcoming person. Or someone who asked normal human questions of other humans living in her house. “Come on. Think. She died sometime between when she left here and around when she had the baby. You must have cared to bring her here and let her stay for so long.”

  The rest of her drink is gone and she’s made a second one before another word comes out of her mouth. I sit quietly and try to put the pieces together, but too many of them are still missing.

  “I don’t think it was the father, but I can’t be sure. The last time we discussed it she still hadn’t decided whether or not to tell him.”

  I wonder again what made her change her mind about meeting Trent. “I don’t think she ever did tell him.”

  “Then she definitely didn’t go stay with him. She was getting pretty big by the time she left here.”

  “When did you find her?” I ask, my breath coming faster at the idea that I could at least start to put together a timeline.

  “I guess it was October, about a year ago. Before Halloween, because the empty house I was walking was for sale and some people were thinking about buying it and running a haunted house.” She smirks. “Turns out they didn’t want an actual haunted house, and that place was crawling. Didn’t bother Rae, though.”

  “Ellen,” I correct her absentmindedly. “She disappeared in late August, so she was either bouncing around for a while or staying in that place for five or six weeks at that point. And you say she was pretty far along when she left here, when, a little before Thanksgiving?”

  Daria nods. “I thought she could pop anytime, honestly.”

  That plays along with my theory that Ellen had hidden her pregnancy for far longer than her friend Autumn figures. If she was already close to six months when she ran away from home, she would have been in her last few weeks when she left Daria’s.

  “Was that helpful?” Daria looks at me as though she’s hoping it is but also like she’ll punch me in my face if I make any kind of comment about her feeling that way.

  “It is, actually. It means we have a better idea of when the baby was born, and from what I can figure, there aren’t that many people Ellen would have trusted enough to lean on at that point in her life.” I frown, ticking them off in my head. If Trent didn’t know about the baby and Autumn is telling the truth about the last time she talked to her friend, then I must have missed someone.

  “Good. I liked her. Find out what happened.” Daria gulps half of her second drink. “Now get the hell out of my house. I want to sleep.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It’s after work now, and for once, I’m in the house alone. Amelia went to therapy and then Brick picked her up, insisting she could use a good meal. I know she wants to hear about his trip, too, but I’m undecided on how much I want to hear about it if there’s much to tell about the renewed search for Lucy. Something will come along soon enough to rock the boat Beau and I are balancing, because that’s the way life and relationships work, but there’s no reason to go searching out reasons to worry.

  Beau’s in late meetings but said he would come over afterward if I’m not asleep. I’m only twenty-six years old but something about living in a small town where everything shuts down by ten p.m. has flipped some switch on my internal clock, so there’s a good chance I might be passed out by ten.

  I frown at my computer screen. Nothing I’ve turned up online leads me to anyone else Ellen would consider a good enough friend to keep her secret. Her Facebook and Twitter accounts are still live, plus Instagram and Tumblr feeds that were more active. She got plenty of likes and comments, and Ellen even had quite a knack for taking pictures, but I don’t see anyone who looks closer to her than anyone else. No one who seems dangerous. I have to believe the police would have checked something as obvious as social media threats.

  I’m going to have to talk to both Autumn and Trent again. Maybe Leo would have some insight, but I doubt it, considering Ellen disappeared after he stopped talking to his family, and even Trent hadn’t seen her in over a month. Her mother is the same; she obviously assumes all of her daughter’s friendships were fleeting and superficial. She hadn’t even mentioned Autumn to me when we talked.

  With leftovers in my belly, a cup of coffee cooling on the table beside the couch, nowhere to go, and a couple of hours to kill before Beau shows up—my hormones want to try to stay awake—I’m thinking about trying to get further with my father’s family tree research when a banging from outside catches my attention.

  I stop what I’m doing to listen, and when voices join the faint noises, I get up to go see what’s happening. It can’t be my ghosts since they’re silent, and I haven’t attracted a poltergeist. Yet.

  I peer through the windows at the top of the front door, peering past the glow of the porch light and into the dusky evening. It’s after six, which in December means the sun has all but disappeared. The moon is full and lends a bit of a glow, and I spot not one but two familiar men dragging boxes around the side of the house.

  I step out onto the porch, thinking about how nice this warm spell feels, and cross my arms. “What in tarnation are you two doing out here?”

  Both Leo and Cade startle at my hollering and put down their boxes.

  “I don’t know what he’s doing here,” Leo says with a frown, pointing toward Cade. “But Amelia asked me to come by and see to your Christmas lights.”

  “She asked me the same thing,” Cade replies in a defensive tone, shooting a look toward Leo that says the two of them are off to a rocky start.

  A sigh winds past my lips as I step off the porch and onto the lawn, making my way over to them. “You’re making a racket.”

  “She didn’t tell you we were coming?” Leo asks.

  I wave a dismissive hand. “No, but she’ll just blame it on pregnancy brain, and I can’t argue with her because Mel swears it’s a real thing. The real question is, why are you doing this in the dark?”

  “I had to pick up Marcella and feed her dinner.” Leo glowers in Cade’s direction again. “I tried to tell him I don’t need help but he’s deaf, I guess.”

  “Have the two of you been properly introduced?” Neither of them answer me. “Okay, so, Leo Boone, this is Cade Walters. Cade, Leo.”

  They shake hands with some reluctance, but at least one of them was raised in the South and probably doesn’t have the physical ability to be rude in this situation.

  “Cade is an author,” I inform Leo.

  “I know. Stella talked about him often.”

  Stella. So strange that Mrs. Walters had affection for other people my age in this town. It seems to have been me in particular that she took issue with, though I’m sure showing up drunk last May upon my return to town hadn’t done me any favors in her eyes.

  “And what do you do?” Cade asks Leo, an attempt at friendliness that I hope will be rewarded.

  “I’m a jack of all trades, I suppose. A little of everything.”

  “And is Marcella your daughter?”

  “Niece.”

  They’re not being overly friendly, but both of them have relaxed. I wonder what caused the tension in the first place but figure it’s probably something stupid and male, like a pissing match over Amelia and me.

  “So are you really going to do this in the dark?” I ask.

  “I…”
Leo clears his throat. “We figured we’d start with the lights on the roofline, since that will be quick. I can come back tomorrow and dig through the shed to see what else you’ve got in there.”

  “Yeah, I know there are, like, wreaths and garlands and things, but you’ll probably want to wait for some direction from Amelia before you dig into those. She’ll be home during the day on Friday. She’s off.”

  Mr. Freedman still gives us both a day off during the week since we were only hired for five days. The ones when I’m there by myself drag on forever.

  “Will do.” Leo eyes me. “Maybe you want to stay out here and help.”

  I laugh, which makes him shake his head with a small smile. “Maybe you’ve lost your mind. I’ve got work to do, but you’re both welcome to knock when you’re done and come in for some coffee.”

  “Has Amelia made any more cookies?” Cade asks hopefully.

  “I think she put a bag away in the freezer.” I pause. “How long are you staying in town?”

  “Oh, I suppose another month. Why?”

  I shrug. “Just wondering. And then the house will go up for sale?”

  “Yeah, but no one in the family is expecting to sell it too quickly, not in this place.”

  The housing market in a town like Heron Creek must be slower than molasses in January. If he’s planning to stay until it sells, he could be here for a while.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to leave you two alone. Play nice.”

  Leo gives me a look that makes me giggle, then goes back to glowering when he catches Cade staring at my ass. It’s weird, but no matter how good-looking Mrs. Walters’s grandson is, I don’t get the sexual vibe from him like my cousin does. Not even when he appears to be ogling me.

  Back inside, I put on a fresh pot of coffee in case either of the guys takes me up on the offer, dig Amelia’s last bag of cookies out of the freezer, and settle back on the couch with my laptop. The fresh air and the conversation revived me a bit and I’m excited to dig back in to the research on the Fourniers.

  My rosy outlook lasts about an hour, until I’ve gotten tired of trying to read birth and death records in French. I have yet to find any record of Carlotta Fournier, the one he said to start with, and finally slam the laptop closed with a growl.