by Sarah Wynde
“What wouldn’t have made a difference?” Grace asked. She didn’t remember her father being angry. There’d been no yelling, no arguing. But then she’d barely gotten home before her mother was gone, too.
Max picked up a photograph. She couldn’t see which one he held. “I gave him CPR until the ambulance came. She told me it was too late, that he was gone, but I refused to listen. I didn’t want to believe her.” He set the photograph back down and picked up another one.
Grace didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t known that. She’d never asked for more details after the bare harsh truth of the fact of Dillon’s death. But she’d been the one to find her mother’s body. She understood how someone could persist in trying to change an unbearable reality long past the point of reason.
Max glanced over his shoulder. “You did the same, didn’t you?” He gave her a wry, tired grin. “More like me than your mother, after all.”
“I couldn’t believe it was real,” she said. “It felt like a nightmare. An impossible nightmare. I kept thinking it had to be a bad dream, but I couldn’t wake myself up.”
“I didn’t want to let go,” her father said.
“I know just what you mean.” Grace placed her hands on her desk, spreading her fingers wide, staring down at them as if the sight would block the memories. She hated thinking about that day. That week, that month.
She hadn’t known before that grief came in waves, that the pain of loss would batter her and then recede, and then return, again and again and again. But time did heal. The space between the waves grew, until entire days went by when she didn’t think about her mother or Dillon. Maybe even weeks. Not yet months, though.
“I wonder sometimes if it’s my fault,” her father said.
Grace made a noise, somewhere between a snort and a chuckle. “Survivor’s guilt,” she said briskly, closing her hands into fists. “Natalya says it’s natural and to get over it.”
She’d blamed herself, too. So many times, so many ways.
If only she’d come home for the summer. If only she’d been there to talk to Dillon. If only she’d set a better example, made him see that living without a psychic gift was nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to dread. If only she’d known what he was thinking about doing.
If only she’d gone upstairs a few minutes earlier. Found her mother sooner. Done more to help her, been a better daughter.
Washed that damn juice glass instead of leaving it in the sink.
If only.
“Not their deaths,” her father said, again looking at the photograph he held. “I don’t blame myself for that. But maybe Dillon’s still here because I refused to let him go.”
“That’s not…” Grace began an automatic denial, but paused before she finished. “That’s… hmm… I’m sure you’re wrong.”
Akira claimed that ghosts weren’t stuck between worlds because they had unfinished business. She said she’d tried to help them, more than once, without success. But what if the business wasn’t theirs? What if some ghosts were trapped, not because of what they still needed to do, but because someone living still needed something from them?
But no. Max had to be wrong. If he was right, the world would be filled with ghosts. No one wanted to say good-bye to their loved ones. No parent would let a child go. No mother would leave her children. Sure, some people died reasonable deaths — timely, appropriate, after loving farewells to their relatives and friends — but wouldn’t everyone else wind up stuck between the planes of existence?
“I suppose you’re right,” Max said. He didn’t sound convinced.
Grace wasn’t sure she was either. She needed to think more about it, but meanwhile, a rush of affection for her father pushed her to her feet. She came around her desk and joined him at the shelves, leaning into his side. He slid an arm around her shoulders and set the picture down.
The photographs were all older. Most of them had belonged to her mother. Vacation shots, college graduations, a single family portrait with Cinderella’s castle as a backdrop, taken when they were young. No Dillon in that one.
But there was one of three-year old Dillon, seated in Santa’s lap, his expression dubious. Grace remembered him bursting into tears seconds after the photo was taken. Her fault: she’d been eleven, too old for Santa, and Dillon had been sensitive enough to catch on to her disdain.
And another — a kayak with Grace in the front, Max in the rear, Dillon in the middle, when Dillon must have been about ten. That was the last picture she had of him.
Teenage Dillon had never wanted his picture taken, ducking out of shots when he could. And they’d all been so busy — Lucas mostly away, working on establishing GD’s government business, medical school for Nat, college for Zane and Grace — that they’d never gotten together for an updated family portrait. It must have seemed like there’d be plenty of time for that someday.
“I should frame one of the group photos from the wedding,” Grace said. “Add it to the set.”
“And one from Nat’s wedding, too. One with all the kids,” her father said. “And another with the baby, when he gets here.”
“Definitely.” Grace took a sideways peek at her father’s face. He was still looking at the photos, but his expression seemed more resolute than sad. “Something to look forward to?”
“Absolutely.” He gave a quick squeeze and let his arm drop. “First we have to help Dillon, though.”
“And how do we do that?” Grace tried to keep the question light.
“I wish I knew.” Max sighed.
“Will hiring Noah Blake help Dillon?” Grace asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Max said. He seemed surprised by the question.
“You don’t know?” Grace wanted to stamp a foot in exasperation. What were they talking about if not Dillon’s connection to Noah?
“No.” Her father blinked at her. “Why would it?”
“Dad!” Grace rolled her eyes. “Why do you want me to hire Noah?”
“I recognized him,” her father said. “He belongs here. You just need to make sure he stays until he realizes that.”
Grace snorted. “He lost his stuff to a bear. That might keep him here for a while.” But she frowned. It wouldn’t take him long to replace whatever he’d lost, but it did give her a window of opportunity.
Time to take advantage of it.
12
Noah
Deciding it was time to get the hell out of Dodge was easy.
Acting on that decision? Not so much.
Noah hated the idea of calling for help, but what else could he do? No wallet meant no ID, no cash, no credit cards, no driver’s license. No way to fill his truck’s gas tank. He wasn’t going to make it back to DC on half a tank.
He stared at the phone in his hand, trying to nerve himself up to press the buttons.
“Everything okay?” Avery asked. The innkeeper had generously and without prompting offered Noah the use of a cell phone when he’d explained about the bear, his backpack, and the lost key to his room. “You need me to look up a number for you?”
“No, I’m good.” Noah held up the phone and gestured toward the door to the patio. “You mind if I take your phone outside?”
“Feel free.” Avery continued wiping down the counters in the small kitchen.
Noah stepped outside. The day was warm, the aromas of the flowering plants lifting into the air and saturating the breeze. He sat on the nearest bench, hand closing around the phone. He had two choices, the only two numbers he knew by heart, but the decision was obvious. And it could be worse. At least he had the choice.
He tapped the number. It rang once, cut off in the midst when his brother picked up.
“Yeah?”
“Yo.” Noah’s tone was more brusque than polite. But he was fighting unexpected emotion.
What the hell. It was just his brother. But how long had it been? Six months? More?
“Noah?” Niall breathed out the name. Noah could hear that he was
in a crowd, background chaos hammering away. “Hang on.”
Noah rubbed the back of his neck and waited. Shit. He shouldn’t have called. Or he should have called sooner, a couple of days ago, that imagined friendly call to ask about hot redheads. That would have been infinitely better than this plea for help.
Niall must have shut a door because the sound fell away. “Dude, where are you?”
“Um, Florida.”
“Florida? Seriously? Uh, okay.”
Noah wanted to laugh. His brother sounded so surprised. Maybe he should have told his family when he came back to the States. Well, yeah, he should have. But he hadn’t.
“I need some help.”
“Yeah? Anything, you know it. You’ve got it. What do you want? Money? A lawyer? Dancing girls? Tell me, dude.”
“Dancing girls?”
Niall chuckled. “Whatever, man. If that’s what you need, you know I’d make it work.”
Noah’s smile seeped into his tone when he said, “No dancing girls. But — long story — I lost my ID. And my cash, credit cards.”
“Drunken binge?” Niall said the words lightly, but Noah could hear the undercurrents.
He tilted his head back and stared up into the clear blue sky. The muscles in his neck had tied themselves into knots already. Dealing with his family always did that to him these days. It’s not that he didn’t love them. It’s not that they didn’t love him. But finding common ground felt like shooting in the dark. He wanted to defend himself — he hardly ever drank, he didn’t even like alcohol — but it wouldn’t help.
“Bear, actually.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah, the big furry kind. Growly? Annoying? Big. Seriously, way bigger than you’d imagine.”
“Okay. Could be worse. Crocodiles, right? You got lucky, dude, good thing you didn’t get snapped up by a crocodile.”
Noah rolled his eyes, but a smile stole across his face as his brother started humming, then half mumbling, half singing, the lyrics to the old Peter Pan song about smiling at the crocodile.
“Pretty sure it’s alligators in Florida,” Noah said.
“Oh, right.” Niall stopped singing. “Disney, though. Hey, how close are you to Orlando? I could hop a plane, we could hit a theme park or two. Ride Space Mountain?”
“Don’t you have a job?”
“Friday afternoon, bro. I could be there by midnight. We could play all weekend and I’d be back at work by the time the market opens Monday morning. Easy.”
Noah took a deep breath. “Maybe next time. Right now, I want out of Florida.”
“You got it.” Niall sounded more resigned than disappointed.
“Not after we tried so hard to get him here!” the kid’s voice protested. “We have to stop him.”
“Stop him? We can’t do anything. We’re totally and completely helpless.” The crying girl sounded bitter, but at least she wasn’t crying.
“Hush. Not around him, remember?” Joe said, sounding annoyed.
“I’m sorry. I wish I…” Noah covered his eyes. The damn voices. They were driving him crazy. Surprising himself with an abrupt decision, Noah added, “I’m gonna get help. I’ll call the VA. Make an appointment, see a shrink.”
The hallucinations had been bad enough. But the idea that General Directions had done something to his brain, as tempting as it had been, as hopeful as he’d found it, had to be delusional. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, his problems were growing into more than he could ignore away.
“Noah, if you’re ready for help, you don’t have to wait for the VA. Come on.” His brother sounded impatient. “Come to New York. I’ll get you into the best doctor in the city in 24 hours. It’s just fucking money. EMDR, that’s how they’re treating PTSD now. It’s some eye motion thing. You stare at a light or something.”
Noah gave a puff of laughter. He shouldn’t be surprised that Niall had researched treatments for post-traumatic stress. His whole family had been trying to fix him for a long time. “Did you look that one up or did Mom?”
“Dude.” Niall sighed. For a moment, a burst of noise came through the phone as if someone had opened the door. “You didn’t even call on Christmas.”
“Yeah, I was…” Noah let the sentence trail off. He didn’t want to lie to his brother. He hadn’t been busy or away or any of the other excuses that came to mind: he’d been newly laid-off, sitting in his barren apartment, staring at the walls, and wishing something, anything, was different. Calling home had crossed his mind a hundred times, maybe more.
But he hadn’t done it.
Silence. It stretched. Painful and awkward and miserable.
And then one of his voices broke it. It was the kid, asking, in a piercing whisper, “That’s the holiday with the fat man in the red suit, right? I like him.”
“Shush,” Joe said.
“He should have called his mother. She gave him life. A phone call is the least she deserves.” The Arabic woman was whispering, too.
“It was right after AlecCorp lost their contracts, remember? He was laid off. He didn’t want to worry them.” That was Joe, also low-voiced.
Noah didn’t need to hear any more of his voices chime in. He knew already that the clean freak would complain about dust, the crying girl would cry, the angry guy would say it wasn’t right and the fake Chinese guy would make no sense.
Right on cue, the singing lady’s voice drifted into his ear, crooning, “Sleep my love, and peace attend thee…”
“Can’t we get her away from him?”
“It’s not right.”
“Look, can you help me?” Noah stood, feeling the urge to move, to escape.
“Of course,” his brother answered. “Money? Where do you want me to send it?”
“I’m in this little town called Tassamara. Florida, obviously.” Noah walked across the patio and into the yard, eyeing the overgrown bougainvillea draped along the back fence.
“Tassamara.” Niall sounded thoughtful, before his voice burst into excitement. “Holy shit, seriously? What the hell are you doing there?”
“I’m… I… it’s… what do you know about this place?”
“Hot babe alert,” Niall muttered. “Man, I would like a piece of that action.”
“What?” Noah snapped. His brother might be part of a Wall Street culture that Noah didn’t love, but he wasn’t crass. At least, not usually.
“Not the blonde,” Niall said hastily, before adding with a chuckle, “Although, I gotta admit, she’s quite something. You know who I’m talking about?”
“Grace Latimer?” Noah asked reluctantly.
“Yeah. Gorgeous, smart, oblivious. But the company — they’re golden, my man. They buy crap. Shit you’d steer your worst enemy away from. And then it turns out the company they’ve bought holds some obscure patent that everyone working in solar power needs, or has some no-name technician who turns out to be a super genius, or whatever. They’ve got the Midas touch. And the blonde — butter wouldn’t melt. Cool as can be as she walks into a boardroom to announce that they’ve just scarfed up majority interest and she’s the new owner.”
“It sounds like you’ve seen her in action.”
“Yeah, there was a deal a couple years ago. A subsidiary of Davis Corp. We had an option on…” Niall started talking stocks, percentages, shares — jargon that made Noah’s eyes glaze over. But he got the general point. His brother knew of General Directions and not as a top-secret research facility working on military experiments.
He interrupted Niall to ask, “Do you know anything about the research they do?”
Niall chuckled. “Eh, rumors only. I’ve got the impression that it’s whatever strikes Latimer’s fancy — teleportation, I heard. Like that’s going to go anywhere. But you never know, I guess. I wouldn’t rule it out.”
“Military work?”
“DoD stuff? Nope, definitely not. Government funding is public info. I’d know.”
“Why? Aren’t there thousands of
companies doing military work?”
“Yeah, but that one’s got the Midas touch,” his brother repeated. “You know me. Any edge, bro.”
Noah’s lips curved up. Yeah, he did know his twin. He didn’t know how they’d come out of the same womb, though. How had he gotten every idealistic gene and his brother every pragmatic one? But if Niall thought profit could be made by watching General Directions, he’d have the company under a microscope. “So, no shady medical experiments?”
“Huh.” Niall snorted. “No shady anything, as far as I know. Some SEC investigations into their stock trades, but that’s just because their luck is unreal. None have ever gone anywhere. Have you heard something? I think one kid is a doc, but she’s maybe a radiologist? Something to do with imaging, anyway. Nothing creepy. What do you know?”
“Not a thing. I’ve met a few people who work there, that’s all.”
“The blonde?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a babe, isn’t she?”
Noah ran his tongue over his teeth, half amused, half annoyed. He probably shouldn’t tell his asshole brother that he was an asshole, not when he needed Niall’s help.
“Yeah, don’t answer that. Twin telepathy, I know what you’re thinking.”
Noah chuckled. It had been so long. Years since he and Niall spent real time together. But in the moment, they could be back in high school, bickering over who’d called dibs on Niall’s hot lab partner first.
“Man, it’s good to hear your voice,” Niall said, sobering.
“Yours, too.” The words caught in Noah’s throat. Who was he to call his brother an asshole when he was the one who’d let his family down?
“So, money,” Niall said brusquely. “Wire transfer? Or Fedex. That’s easier. Yeah, I can overnight you a debit card and a cell phone. I’m assuming this number’s not yours?”
“Borrowed it from the guy — uh, person — who runs the place I’m staying, yeah.” Noah still hadn’t decided whether Avery was male or female.
“Give me the address. I’ll get you what you need by tomorrow midday.”
