Not Quite Mine

by Lyla Payne

Mel laughs and pulls her into a hug of her own, two pregnant women who look as though they’re barely touching because their stomachs are keeping them apart. “Thanks for watching Grant. We’ve gotta go.”

  They hustle out, and Amelia gives me a look. “What was that all about?”

  “She wants me to talk to Will about her doing this whole thing with Daria. She’s excited and loves it, and he just doesn’t understand. According to her.”

  “Doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand?” Millie asks.

  “Probably the latter, knowing Will. I’m going to text him to see if he wants to grab dinner when I get back from Driftwood.”

  “I’m glad Lindsay’s going with you. If this chick is behind the creepy mice and the brick, she can’t be as harmless as you’re acting like she is.”

  “Maybe not harmless, exactly, but I don’t think she’s going to eat my face off or anything.”

  “She’s not a chimpanzee you’ve subjected to one too many dress-up tea parties, Grace.”

  “I guess, but I’m glad Lindsay is going, too, though I’m still trying to figure out why she’s had such a change of heart where I’m concerned.”

  “It’s interesting, that’s for sure.” Amelia turns her back to grab some of the books she and Grant had taken out, but not before I see the look on her face.

  One that says it might be interesting, but she’s got ideas about why it’s happened.

  My email dings before I can annoy her into telling me what’s on her mind, and when I see the sender’s name, I pop it open without chasing her down. It’s from my grad school buddy, the one at Cambridge.

  Gracie!

  It’s good to hear from you. I swear, you cross one ocean and it’s like people in the States literally forget you exist. Or maybe they don’t think phones or email can cross the ocean. Either way, kudos to you for being one of the smart ones—not that I’m surprised.

  I took a few days to look into the woman you were asking about, and her family does have some documents stored in the royal archives due to her father’s proximity to the throne. If you give me your address I’ll be happy to ship you the copies I had run over. Grad students are the best! Do you realize that we were basically paid servants for our professors all those years? I’d be mad but now that I’m on the other end it would be a tad awkward.

  Anyway, let me know how you’re doing if you have some time, and if you’re ever in England I’d be thrilled to buy you a pint. Talk soon!

  Emily

  My fingers fly over the keyboard as I respond from the library’s address and offer to use PayPal to cover the shipping expenses. It’s better to have them come here, for professional reasons, especially if this is going to give me the information I need in order to verify Henry’s story. Or what I think is his story.

  Once that’s done, I text Will about dinner, and he agrees to meet me at Pete’s at eight, which is when he gets off work and leaves the Ryan twins in charge. I still can’t believe anyone puts them in charge at all.

  Amelia reappears when it’s time to clock out, and we go our separate directions—her, back home, and me, to Driftwood to meet Lindsay Boone. Travis is on duty again and texted to say he’s going to try patrolling the yard every hour or so. I told him not to get caught. Amelia isn’t going to be happy if she finds out he’s been watching her and I asked him to do it.

  That done, it’s time to get moving. I have no idea what to expect when we visit Autumn Wasserman. If I look too closely at how things have gone since I started chasing ghosts around the East Coast, I’d have to admit that I’m worried it’s going to be bad.

  So I don’t. What would be the point?

  Lindsay is waiting in front of the restaurant when I pull up. She looks tired, rings under her eyes, and like she could use a shower. I remember what it’s like working in a restaurant. The smell of whatever you’re serving sinks into your pores, into the roots of your hair, and sometimes a simple shower isn’t enough to dislodge it. Mexican food is by far the worst as far as sticking.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “You’re late,” she replies as she climbs into my passenger seat, then wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “You?” I suggest, even though she’s obviously talking about my car’s signature, yet unidentifiable, odor.

  “It smells like moldy armpit.”

  “There’s a pretty picture,” I reply. “Did you know you can get a yeast infection in your armpit? No? Happened to me once when I tried some hippie deodorant.”

  She blanches. “That’s delightful.”

  “I decided to take my chances with Alzheimer’s.”

  “I can’t say that’s a wise decision for you, but the rest of the world is better off.” She points. “Take a right up here.”

  It’s a relief to have someone give me verbal directions, but I don’t tell Lindsay that. Things are going halfway decent between us now, and it seems like bringing up my ghosts puts a damper on good banter, more often than not.

  I follow her directions through a maze of twists and turns until we end up on a street that’s as far from the water as it’s possible to get in this town. The homes are in varying stages of decay, with peeling paint, slumping porches, tangled Christmas lights, and overgrown landscaping all competing for my gaze. The cars in the driveways are at least as old as mine, many older, and all with spots of rust or missing tires.

  “She’s the blue one on the right,” Lindsay says, her mouth set in a firm line. “It’s the nicest house on the street, don’t you think?”

  I bite my tongue to stop my comment that it’s not much of a competition, because she’s right. On a road full of I don’t give a shit attitude in visual form, Autumn clearly does. The bushes in front of her house are neatly trimmed, with bright pink camellias still in bloom. The light blue paint is fresh, the shutters bright white. Toys litter the front lawn, a little tricycle and some digging tools spilled out of a bucket.

  “I guess tips aren’t that great, huh?”

  “Tips are decent, but she spends all of her money on the kid. The father doesn’t help out at all. I can relate.”

  “You do a great job with Marcella.” It’s the truth. Even though Leo’s house in Heron Creek is modest, it’s not in a neighborhood like this one, where I’m a little nervous about getting out of the car in broad daylight.

  “Thanks. We both know it’s mostly Leo. I couldn’t do it without him, even still.”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  She doesn’t answer, just unbuckles and grabs her purse off the floor. “You ready? What exactly are we going to, like, ask her?”

  “Um…”

  “Please tell me that’s not your whole conversation starter.”

  “No. I’m going to confront her with what I know and see how she reacts.” I frown. “If I look at you and pull on my earlobe, then I need you to distract her.”

  “Why would you need me to distract her?”

  “I don’t know, like if I want to snoop around and see what I can find.”

  “You really have no idea what you’re doing in most areas of life, do you?”

  It’s not really a question, and maybe I should be offended, but the tone of her voice is more amused than anything else. I shrug. It’s not as if I haven’t heard similar critiques before, sometimes from my own head.

  “Winging it has worked pretty well so far. If you don’t count all the times I’ve been arrested. Or almost died.”

  “Or gotten your friends in trouble,” she reminds me.

  Now the silence grows thick. I want to cut it, to apologize, but those are only words and I’ve said them a hundred times. “You don’t have to remind me of the trouble I caused Leo, you know. I won’t ever forget.”

  “I know. It’s the only reason I haven’t kicked your ass.”

  “Yikes. And you’ve been to prison.” I hold my breath, wondering if the prison joke is too soon, and relief cascades over me as she bursts into laughter.

  “
You know, I never really got the Gracie-love that seems to infect most people in Heron Creek, but sometimes you do make it hard to hate you.”

  “I think I’ve got to consider that a compliment coming from you,” I mutter, then unbuckle my own seat belt. “Shall we?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go wing this. Show me how it’s done.”

  We head down the street together, crossing the half a block too quickly. My confidence turns to flutters of nerves in my stomach, and I wonder if Ellen might be lurking along the tree line. I wish she were here with me now so that I could try to gauge if this is the right move. If I’ve missed something, or someone, in her life that makes more sense than Autumn, but without her, all I can do is follow the leads in front of me.

  And they all lead right here.

  I take a deep breath and rap softly on the door, mindful of the fact that she has a sick child and he might be sleeping. A moment later, the breath is crushed from my chest when she answers, a small toddler hitched up on her right hip.

  His blue eyes, his shock of black hair, the shape of his nose, and the way his ears are a little too big—he’s a Boone, no question about it.

  The gasp that Lindsay makes at my side, the pinch of her fingers as they curl around my arm, confirm my snap reaction. They all look the same, as if they were cloned from one source of DNA and not two, and this kid is one of them. Trent’s baby. It has to be. Ellen’s son.

  I slept with Autumn. Just once.

  His voice rings in my memory and gives me pause. Just because it’s his baby doesn’t mean it’s his baby with Ellen.

  But it could be. Autumn could have stolen him. How could I know for sure?

  “Well? What are you doing here?” she demands, sweat on her forehead and fear in her eyes. The second emotion clutches me hard—she’s done something wrong. But what?

  “Um, I had a few more questions about Ellen, and Lindsay said you weren’t coming in because your kid was sick…” My eyes slide to the kid. “He’s adorable.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Noah.”

  “Can we come in?” Lindsay asks, impatience clear in her face and the way she shifts her weight. The instant she saw that kid, she was in this as deep as I am.

  “I guess, but I was just getting ready to put him down for a nap.”

  “We can wait,” my companion snaps, then seems to realize she’s acting weird. “My feet are killing me. Long lunch shift.”

  Autumn stands aside and lets us into the house, which smells like old people and seventies carpet but seems clean enough. The couch is plaid and sags in the middle. It’s clearly secondhand, because there have been a few hundred butts sitting on it before us, but there’s nowhere else to sit and it would probably make Autumn even warier to come back and find the two of us pacing.

  She motions us to the couch and takes the baby out of the room. The hallway is short and Autumn turns into the first door on the right, too close for Lindsay and me to discuss the baby elephant in the room but far enough that we can turn wide eyes on each other and communicate silently.

  It doesn’t take Autumn long to put the baby down, and no protests emerge from the bedroom. Either he’s not really sick, she drugged him, or he’s the most magically well-behaved baby in the history of the world.

  “What else do you want to know?” she asks.

  For her part, Autumn doesn’t seem worried about making us comfortable. She stays standing, her arms folded over her chest and the smell of fear slinking off her and onto the floor. It trembles in my gut and somehow, I’m sure Noah isn’t hers.

  “I talked to someone who saw Ellen after she went missing, and she said that Ellen had decided to spend the last month of her pregnancy with a friend.”

  “Who?”

  I eye Autumn, taken aback by her too-quick response. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me, because as far as anyone seems to know, there wasn’t anyone she trusted but you and Trent.”

  “Maybe it was Trent. Maybe she told him about the baby after all.” The words are fast, insincere, and her eyes dart around the room like she’s a trapped rabbit.

  “Maybe…” I say slowly, trying not to spook her. Trying to figure out the sequence of events that led to her panic. “I don’t think it was, though. He seemed pretty shocked when I told him Ellen was pregnant and that she believed the baby was his.”

  Autumn recoils, as though my soft words were flung across the room like shrapnel. “You told him?”

  “Yes. I had to see if he knew.”

  “So, what? You think she came here?”

  “I don’t know. Did she?” I look around. “Were you living here then? You’re pretty young to own your own house.”

  “My parents died when I was eighteen. I inherited the place.”

  It’s not hard to see how she and Ellen had become friends. Their backgrounds seem to have been similar—two lost girls looking for love, for stability, for anything that could help them believe in the future. But if Ellen had trusted Autumn instead of Trent, I can’t help but think she made a mistake.

  “So she didn’t come to you at the end of her pregnancy?”

  “No.”

  “Was she still mad because you slept with Trent?” I ask, still speaking quietly. It doesn’t matter. This question assaults Autumn, too, pushing her back three steps until she’s almost hidden by the shadows of the hallway.

  “He told you?”

  Interesting that she assumes it wasn’t Ellen who spilled the beans. “Yes. He feels terrible about it, still, and that he never had the chance to make it up to Ellen.”

  All of the blood drains from her face. Tears gather in her eyes until they’re too full for her to blink them clear, and the drops roll down her cheeks. I look away from her pain, uncomfortable in the face of it, and make eye contact with Lindsay. I tug on my ear, partly because I’m hoping Ellen might show up if I’m alone and partly because I think Autumn might fall over if we don’t sit her down somewhere.

  Lindsay doesn’t respond, but when she forces her eyes back to Autumn, she comes through. “Let’s go get you a drink of water. You really don’t look well. Are you maybe coming down with the same thing as Noah?”

  Autumn doesn’t protest, allowing Lindsay to take her by the elbow and steer her into the kitchen. As though she heard my thoughts, Ellen’s ghost pops up as soon as they’re gone. She’s over by a closet hidden behind the still-open front door, pointing frantically.

  I force my legs to move fast, even though my mind feels sluggish in the face of the overwhelming stimuli of the past five minutes. The knob of the closet turns easily in my hand. The rod sags with the weight of a dozen coats, mostly for adults but a few baby ones thrown into the mix. On the floor, a heap of bags are piled up, their straps tangled together. Some are purses, others are shoulder bags, and there are two backpacks that look as though they’ve sustained heavy use.

  Those are what Ellen points to, so I dig them out of the back of the closet. She reaches for a light blue one with khaki trim, but her fingers slide through the strap like they’re superheated and it’s made of butter. Frustration twists her pretty features.

  I pull it open, breathing hard. My heart pounds at the sound of the women talking quietly in the kitchen. There’s no telling how long Lindsay will be able to keep her in there.

  Inside are wadded-up clothes, a few books, bags of chips, a half-drunk water bottle, and a load of trash. I pull out one of the books, a faded paperback of one of Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas stories. The pages are dog-eared and curled, and I flip it open out of habit.

  On the first page, in clear black pen, is the name Ellen Hargrove.

  This is her backpack.

  I panic, knowing this is proof she was here, but not proof she was here after she left Daria’s. Shuffling noises from the kitchen drench me in sweat. Ellen’s eyes are wide, fear swimming in them, and I do the only thing I can think of—I close the closet, open the front storm door, and chuck the b
ackpack out onto the front lawn.

  The door has barely clicked closed behind me when Lindsay and Autumn come out of the kitchen. There’s no chance that guilt isn’t written all over me, based on the way the latter’s gaze narrows on my face, so the best option is getting the hell out of here. For now.

  It’s also time to call in the backup Will promised. Without official intervention, there’s no way for me to verify if the baby in the other room belongs to Autumn and Trent, or Trent and Ellen. No way for me to find out if any of the items in the backpack could be placed after Ellen disappeared and not before.

  “Well, we should get going.” I raise my eyebrows at Lindsay, who doesn’t move. “Right, Linds? Didn’t you say you had something to do tonight?”

  I cringe at my awkward use of Leo’s nickname for her, but it seems to spur her into action. She turns to murmur something to Autumn, but the woman we came here to see never takes her eyes off me. I put on my best innocent face, but she’s spooked, and has been since we walked in the door and saw that baby, such an obvious copy of Trent Boone. Or a Boone, at any rate.

  “Yeah, I’m supposed to take Marcella to movie night at church.” She steps away and toward me, anxiety bouncing between us. The excuse sounds so good it might not even be a lie, but my familiarity with the goings-on at any of the town churches doesn’t allow me to know for sure.

  “We’ll see you,” I tell Autumn, already halfway out the door. “Hope Noah feels better soon.”

  I snag the backpack while Lindsay shuts the door behind us, and we practically run down the street. There’s almost zero chance that Autumn isn’t watching us from inside, zero chance she doesn’t realize I’m leaving with a backpack I didn’t come in with, but she doesn’t give chase.

  We get back in the car. On the way back to Heron Creek, I explain to Lindsay what I found as she goes through the contents, not finding anything more or less than I did as far as confirmation. There could be DNA on the water bottle or the clothes, but my limited knowledge on the subject means I have no idea if it could be, like, dated to find out how long ago it was left.