by Lyla Payne
“Why is that, I wonder?”
“She’s not very nice.”
That makes him laugh harder, and a curly fry lands in my rat’s nest of hair. “Since when does that do anything but make you sassier?”
I frown, trying to remove the French fry. “I don’t want to upset the apple cart. It’s been brought to my attention by several parties that my friendship with Leo makes people uncomfortable.”
“Well, not all people. Like, I’m fine with it.” Will smirks. “But I can see how it would bother people with a vested romantic interest in either of you, sure.”
I sigh, aware it’s too loud and overdramatic, and also aware the Ryan brothers are listening to every word. Tom’s about to tip his chair over he’s leaning so far backward.
“I’ve had enough lectures straight out of When Harry Met Sally this week, thank you. You should know better than anyone that Leo and I have always been friends. It’s never been anything else.”
Will studies me for a long time. I grow uncomfortable under his scrutiny but am too stubborn to move or look away, as though any tiny shift could reveal something I’m not even aware of stirring inside me.
“That’s true,” he agrees finally, getting up and gathering our trash.
He’s just dumped it in the trash can when Trent Boone, trailed by Knox, barrels through the front doors of the station.
They spot me and come right over, and I waste a few precious seconds on introductions.
“I remember Will, Graciela. I grew up here, remember?” Trent’s face is tight, and I swear it seems as though there are more lines than there were this morning. “What’s up? Did you find Ellen?”
I defer to Will, since he’s law enforcement and in charge of this case now.
He seems surprised to realize that fact but gets it together fast enough. “No, but we did find a child that we believe is yours. A boy.”
“What makes you think he’s mine?” His face is pale, as though all of the blood sank right out.
“He looks just like you,” I say. It’s blunt, but we don’t have time to beat around the bush. “Is it possible that the night you spent with Autumn…” I trail off, unable to find a nice way to finish the very personal question.
Everyone hears it, anyway, and Trent lowers his gaze. “I don’t think so. We used protection.”
It’s not one-hundred-percent, of course, but this bit of information makes it more likely that Noah is Ellen’s son with Trent.
“Okay,” Will takes over. “Autumn Wasserman has a child we believe is yours. She has absconded, as of this afternoon, and we’re calling her a person of interest in the disappearance of Ellen Hargrove. If you’re willing to press kidnapping charges against her, then we can put out a statewide APB and have a better chance of finding her.”
“Can I do that? I mean, we don’t have any proof that it’s my…” He stops, his eyes wide, then swallows hard. “That it’s my son.”
He’s never said those words before, I realize. His son. Now he’s facing the reality of not only being a father and having his child perhaps stolen from him but that he’ll be asked to step into the role of a single parent after all this is over.
He looks like he needs to sit down.
Knox seems to realize the same thing and yanks a chair over, forcing his friend down into it. “Take deep breaths. This is a load of shit being shoveled at you in a short amount of time. Breathe.”
“We can fudge it if you’re willing to lie on a signed document,” I explain, so Will doesn’t have to suggest such a thing. “There’s no proof you are the baby’s father, but there’s also no proof you aren’t. If you say you are, and we can prove he has no birth certificate, it leaves enough outstanding questions that we can justify needing to talk to her, at the very least.”
“Where’s the document?” Trent asks without a moment more of hesitation.
Ted Ryan brings the paperwork over and shows him where to sign, which he does without reading any of what he’s attesting to. Good thing Will’s the most trustworthy guy I know. Maybe Trent remembers that about him.
With the paper signed and Will already on the phone with the state police, a sense of relief tries to pass through me. It only fails, I think, because Beau barges into the police station at the exact moment I breathe out. I shoot to my feet, feeling guilty for some inexplicable reason, as his eyes sweep the room.
They stop when they land on me, and he looks as though he has his own brief respite from worry. A moment later his arms are around me. I lean into his chest, locking my fingers behind his back and squeezing hard.
“Hey,” I say into his chest.
“Hey, yourself. I was worried when word got around that you were hanging out at the police station.” He pulls away, looking into my face like he’s trying to decide if I’m really fine.
“I know, I’m sorry. Things have been pretty crazy.” I feel the weight of a roomful of gazes and step a bit away from Beau, clearing my throat and wondering where to start. It’s not as though he won’t find out everything, anyway, but most of what’s happened today is Trent’s story to tell and not mine. “Um, this is Trent Boone and Knox…” I trail off, distracted by the fact that I don’t think I know his last name. Or maybe by the way he’s looking at me, with a sparkle of amusement in his eyes as I struggle.
“MacArthur,” he finishes.
“Like the general?” Ted Ryan asks.
“Um, yeah.” Knox extends a hand to Beau, and they shake.
“Beau Drayton.”
For some reason, it looks like a challenge to me. A manly, testosterone-filled challenge in the air between them.
Then Knox steps back, Will hustles in from the other room, and everyone breathes out. I can’t help but think I must have imagined the entire thing.
Chapter Nineteen
Beau walks me all the way home. I fill him in on everything that’s happened since we last talked, and he tells me at least five times how glad he is that Will and the police are handling Ellen’s case now. I hold his hand and don’t say much even though I’m glad, too. Like a weight off my shoulders. All of these secrets aren’t only Ellen’s and mine anymore.
“I won’t be able to sleep easy until I know Ellen’s happy,” I confess while he unlocks the front door to my grandparents’ house.
“What do you mean?” Beau steps aside to let me into the foyer and then takes my coat, hanging it, along with his, in the front closet.
The placement of it makes me think of Autumn’s house, and a strange sense of sadness rolls over me like a cloud. I suppose the whole situation is filled with sorrow. Ellen never meeting her son, Autumn scared to lose the one she’s raising, even if he’s not truly hers by blood. And poor Trent, finding out over the last week that the love of his life is not missing but dead, that she was pregnant with his child and couldn’t bring herself to tell him, that he’s a father and has already missed a whole year of his son’s life.
“I won’t know for sure that this is what she wants until Trent’s back with the baby and everything.” I shrug. “I hope it is. I can’t imagine what else it would be.”
“Maybe she also wants people to know what happened to her,” he suggests, whispering since all the lights are off. No doubt Amelia went to bed awhile ago.
“She made it pretty clear that Noah is her priority, but yeah. I can’t imagine she would be upset about her family getting closure.” I head upstairs, more tired than I can remember being in a long, long time. “But we’re never going to know what happened unless we find Autumn.”
“And she talks,” Beau adds, trailing me into my bedroom.
“True enough.” I toss my purse on the floor and stare longingly at the bed, knowing I need to shower first. “I think she will. The thing is? I don’t think she is malicious.”
“She threatened you, Gracie Anne,” he points out, as he sits on the edge of the bed. One eyebrow raises. “And she was the last person to see Ellen alive, and she may have kidnapped that baby. At the very least, she’s ke
pt him from his family.”
“We don’t know that. It could be her baby.” I reconsider my statement before it’s all the way out of my mouth. “I guess she kept him from his family either way.”
“Yeah, she did.” His voice is soft, and when our eyes meet, they’re warm. “But we don’t know the whole story. I get it.”
“I’m not sure I get it.” I sigh and sit next to him. “This isn’t like the other ghost cases I’ve solved. It doesn’t feel like there’s really a villain, even if I’m on Ellen’s side.”
I don’t know why I’m finding it so hard to hate Autumn. There’s just a feeling, deep down in my gut, that she’s scared, and that if she could do things differently, maybe she would. The look on her face when I told her that Trent knew about the baby… She was heartbroken. He told me he regretted the night they spent together. Had he told her the same thing? Had it hurt her?
There are still so many questions. I hate the fact that I might not ever know the answers.
“Don’t drive yourself crazy, gorgeous. They’ll find her, and you’ll get your answers.” Beau rests a hand on my cheek, his thumb stroking my jaw.
A smile twists my lips as I look up at him. “You just assume I’m going crazy over this.”
“I guess I’m getting to know you.”
“I’m sure I still have a few secrets. Don’t get cocky.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He leans in and presses a lingering kiss to my lips. “Mmm.”
“I’m going to take a shower,” I tell him with a smile. “I’ll be back.”
“How about I join you?”
That makes me smile bigger than I thought possible with the weariness deep in my bones. Beau is good for many things, one of which is distracting me from the problems that lurk outside his arms.
Three days pass without any news. The bulletins are all over the news, but otherwise our lives are pretty normal. We go to work. We have story time. It bothers me that neither Leo nor Lindsay bring in Marcella. I haven’t heard from Leo all week, as a matter of fact, even though I’ve texted to ask him about running a couple of times. It’s hard to say whether he’s mad over my contact with Trent or their family is in upheaval over this whole situation. Or both.
It’s my day off, and I went for a run by myself after sleeping in a little. I stopped at Westies afterward and said hi to all the old ladies, lingering long enough to catch up on the gossip about Ellen and the Boones. According to Dorothy and Laurel, everyone’s talking about how Trent passed Leo on the street and they may as well have been strangers.
Which means it’s not only me who’s wondering what happened between them all now.
The sight of Ellen hanging out on our porch swing in broad daylight when I get home surprises me. She hasn’t been around at all since Trent signed that paper alleging kidnapping charges against Autumn. Instead, Henry has been bugging me, even though I’ve told him a hundred times my package from England hasn’t arrived yet.
“Hey,” I say to her, like an idiot on her first day of ghost-seeing. Sometimes I miss drunk, naïve me.
She doesn’t say anything in response, of course. Her gaze is focused on the front door, and the anxiety she’s displayed since the day she first showed up feels as if it’s almost gone. The barest tickle swipes at my stomach before it disappears.
The way she’s staring at the door, though, brings up some jitters of my own.
“You want me to go inside?”
At least I know it’s not Amelia. She’s at work and has been since early this morning.
Ellen’s gaze strays to mine. Strength passes from her to me, along with sadness, resignation, and the slightest glimmer of hope.
I take a deep breath and shove my key into the lock, then turn the knob and step into the foyer. I’m probably being stupid, imagining all of these feelings from a ghost nobody else can see. Then again, someone did break into our kitchen armed with dead and decaying rodents not long ago.
I’m holding my breath on my way through the living room, and my heart starts to pound in my ears at the sound of a baby babbling in the kitchen. I step into the doorway, then stop at the sight of Autumn sitting at the table, baby Noah on her lap. He’s got one hand in his mouth and is talking in the language only he knows while she stares into space, all of the stress and anxiety I’ve associated with Ellen and more pulling tight, deep lines around her eyes and across her forehead.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t call the police just yet,” she says softly without turning around. She must have heard me come in the front door.
I walk around her and sit on the edge of the chair in front of the baby, who grows serious as he regards me with his huge Boone eyes. “Okay.”
All of the questions rattling around my head fight to get off my tongue. I swallow them all back in an attempt to let her tell me what she’s doing here on her own terms, even if I do want to nail her to the wall for breaking into our house a second time. It doesn’t take long, at least.
“Sorry about your window and the mice and everything. I never would have hurt you or your cousin.”
I bite my tongue harder. Laying into her isn’t going to get me—or Ellen—any closure. “I know you wouldn’t have. And we don’t scare easily.”
I don’t add that it’s because we’ve had practice being threatened.
“I figured. Which is why I’m here. I’m going to leave Noah with you on one condition.”
“Okay,” I say a second time when she trails off and doesn’t continue.
“You have to give him to Trent. There’s a birth certificate that I never filed, and I know it isn’t notarized, but it should give him sufficient cause for a paternity test.”
“I don’t know if they’ll let Trent keep him, Autumn. Not until the test comes back.” They might, but there’s no way we’re getting out of this now without involving social services. “But I promise to make sure he ends up with his father, if that’s what you’re telling me Trent is.”
Her fingers tighten around the baby’s arm. “He’s Noah’s father.”
“And…is he your son, Autumn?”
Her eyes fill with tears that drip on Noah’s head. He doesn’t seem to notice or to care. After several moments, she shakes her head.
“He’s Ellen’s,” I confirm.
She sniffs, then wipes her nose with her sleeve and gives a little laugh. “I think of him as both of ours, now. He might not— I didn’t give birth to him, but for the last year, he has been my son in every other way.”
“I can see that you love him. Anyone could.”
She nods over and over, still crying but doing it silently, as though she’s trained herself to weep so that people won’t hear her and ask questions. She sniffs and wipes her nose again. “I loved him, you know. Trent. Maybe I still do. And Ellen… It was like she didn’t even know what she had.”
It takes me a minute to catch up. At first I thought she was talking about Noah. “You mean with Trent?”
This time, Autumn’s nod is slow and there’s only one. “Yes. Since forever. But the one time I got up the nerve to act on it, we were both drunk and he never forgave me.”
I can’t help but reach out, to cover her hand, which is flat against the table. “It’s not just your fault, you know. It takes two to tango and all of that.”
“He’s never been able to look at me again.” Autumn refuses to meet my eyes, closing hers and leaning down to take a deep breath with her nose buried in Noah’s hair. “Like I was something he couldn’t bear to acknowledge.”
“I think you’re exactly right,” I tell her. “But he wasn’t mad at you. He doesn’t hate you. He hates himself.”
“That makes me sad. Ellen forgave him, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
She smiles and opens her eyes. “She wanted to call him. She was going to tell him the truth, to ask him for another chance, but she didn’t end up having the time.”
Behind Autumn, Ellen hovers in the doorway. There’
s a slight, nostalgic smile on her face that’s underlain by pain as she stares at her son, so different than the last time she must have seen him. My throat tightens until it’s hard to breathe.
“What happened to her, Autumn? What happened to Ellen?”
It takes a moment, but she takes three deep breaths that seem to steady her. This time, she meets my gaze with determination. “It all happened so fast. One minute we were sitting around in the living room looking at old pictures and she was complaining about indigestion, and like, ten minutes later she was screaming that the baby was coming and there was no time. I Googled what to do, had the water and the towels and the scissors to cut the cord. She wasn’t exaggerating. He was coming.”
“Did you call an ambulance?”
“I was going to, but my phone was dead.” She laughs a little and shakes her head. “Crazy, right? Like, my whole life changed because I didn’t charge my phone.”
“What about Ellen?”
“She didn’t have one. She was flat broke.” Autumn falls silent for a beat or two, then picks up the story where she left off. “Noah was born fast, in twenty or thirty minutes, I don’t know. It seemed faster at the time. I caught him and cut the cord, then cleaned him off and made sure he was breathing. He was perfect, like a little squealing doll.”
This time when she falls silent, her face is a mess of emotion. Wonder, at recalling the moment this little human she loves was born, but something else, too. Something dark.
“I held him up so Ellen could see, but she…she wasn’t looking. Her eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. I took Noah to the couch and tucked him under a blanket, arranged some pillows so he wouldn’t fall off, then crawled back to Ellen. I think I knew. There was so much blood, and she was so pale I could almost see through her.”
“Do you know what happened?” I ask, captivated by her story. My eyes stray to Ellen, but she’s still watching Noah, a faint smile on her face. I can’t help but think that she looks as if she’s thinking, even now, that it was all worth it.
“No. I’m not a doctor or anything, but she died fast. It was quiet, and she didn’t suffer. After that…I don’t know. I looked at Noah—he was so small, but I swear you could already tell he was Trent’s son—and I fell in love.”
