Not Quite Fixed

by Lyla Payne

  “Thanks.” I blink, surprised to find wetness in my eyes. I clear my throat, shoving my emotions to the side in favor of focusing on the mystery of why he called me here in the first place. “So, what’s going on with Trent?”

  “He’s been seeing his dad.”

  That sentence knocks every other thought from my head—because in that moment, I know exactly who I saw standing in the shadows near the porch last night. Who I saw flickers of today at the library.

  Harlan Boone. Who is definitely dead.

  “Why do you look like…” He trails off.

  I hear myself laugh, though it’s a faint, rattled version of my real laugh. “What? Like I’ve seen a ghost?”

  “Well…yeah.” He squints at me, chewing on a bite of soup. Or a matzah ball, I guess. “Exactly.”

  I take a beat, but only one. There’s no real reason to play coy with Knox.

  “I think I saw Harlan, too. Last night, and again today. What has Trent been saying?” Despite the words coming out of my mouth, my mind is on Leo, not his brother. My heart, really. What could it mean if the ghost of his dad is back? What could he want?

  Could it have anything to do with the rift in the Boone family?

  I still don’t know when the separation between Leo and his siblings began. I’ve always assumed that it was about Lindsay, about supporting her or standing by her after her erroneous arrest, but now it dawns on me that it could have had something to do with their father’s death.

  All I know for sure is that it all went down while I was gone from Heron Creek.

  But five years is a long time. It occurs to me that my curiosity over what happened to the Boones is coming home to roost just a few weeks after Leo and I put our friendship on hold or whatever. It feels strangely convenient. Or inconvenient, depending.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Knox comments.

  It takes me a minute to backtrack, to climb out of my obsessive thoughts about Leo and his family and remember what I said last. Oh, right. I saw Harlan. I think.

  “Interesting, yep. But said you were worried about Trent?”

  “Right, right. Yes. He’s been drinking too much when he’s not with his kid. Skipping runs, turning down charters even though I know he’s a couple of payments behind on his slip.”

  “He told you about his dad?”

  “About seeing him? Yeah. When he was drunk a week or so ago.” Knox leans back in his chair and takes a generous sip from his own glass. “I don’t know much else about the guy, because he never came up before recently. Just that he died unexpectedly in some kind of accident.”

  That’s more than I knew.

  I keep my mouth shut, not wanting to tip my hand as far as that. I don’t want him to realize I don’t know as much as he assumed and decide against sharing whatever he knows. Which could be more than he thinks.

  “Do you know when he died?”

  Knox shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to think the question is odd, at least. We’re in this sort of client-investigator dynamic at the moment, and it’s working in my favor. “Not exactly, but it’s been a while. Almost three years.”

  That’s after Lindsay went to prison.

  I guess the real question is, why would Harlan Boone show up now?

  That’s always the question with my ghosts, of course. Why now? Why me?

  But perhaps the most interesting question of the bunch is why Trent can see him at all. I’m the one who sees ghosts, not him. There’s some precedent, I suppose. Amelia saw Anne Bonny, and so did my Aunt Karen, and I suspect it has to do with their genetic ties.

  Neither of them had seen a ghost before, and as far as I know, it hasn’t happened again.

  But still. I’m going to need to talk to Trent. There’s something…I don’t know—unsettling, maybe?—about learning that I’m not the only person Harlan has reached out to. In fact, it seems that I wasn’t even his first choice.

  “You want me to talk to him.” I glance at Knox, who gives me a reluctant nod. “He’s going to know you said something.”

  “I know. He might be pissed at first, but he knows we take care of each other out here.” Knox stops talking then, like he bit back the rest of his sentence. The rest of his thought.

  Somehow, I hear it anyway: because if we don’t, no one else will.

  My chest aches a bit at the unspoken confession. At the flash of pain in his dark gaze and the lightning-quick way he hides it. It makes me want to know more about him, about the life that led him here. About what created the throbbing current of heartache that runs beneath Knox’s cool, laid-back exterior.

  I push those thoughts, as irrelevant as they are intriguing, out of my head. With a clear mind, something occurs to me. “Maybe he doesn’t have to know you told me. I mean, whenever I see a ghost I recognize, the first thing I do is try to talk to their family.”

  “What about Trent’s brother, though? Aren’t you two, like, joined at the hip?”

  I wouldn’t have thought a virtual stranger’s assumption about my relationship with Leo could hit me so hard. It does, because I should be talking to him about Harlan.

  But I’m not.

  I fight the desire to lie, then the desire to tell Knox to mind his own business. He doesn’t know that he struck a raw nerve, and he doesn’t need to.

  The whiskey helps calm me down and wet my suddenly dry throat. “Leo doesn’t like to talk about his father. Or his family at all, really.”

  “Huh. Trent doesn’t talk much about anyone but his mom. I gather they’re close.”

  They used to be, all of them. The Boone clan, thick as thieves and twice as dirty. I remember my grandma saying that their mother was assured sainthood upon her death after putting up with all of those kids on earth.

  “They are. Or at least, they were growing up.”

  We lapse into silence. Knox has said what he wanted to say, I guess. Passed the burden of Trent’s mental health from his shoulders onto mine. We’ve wrapped up our business, which probably means I should leave. But my sandwich is only half gone. More importantly, so is my whiskey.

  “You don’t have to leave just because I told you what I wanted,” Knox drawls, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he watches for my reaction to his mind-reading skills.

  Presumably.

  He’s pretty damn observant. Much more than I’m used to these days. Most people either know me well enough to think they don’t have to watch, or they’re too wrapped up in their own shit to bother.

  Except for Cade Walters, but Knox’s watchfulness doesn’t creep me out the way our new neighbor’s constant surveillance has started to. Part of me knows I should be grateful to Cade for finding me in the garage after Gillian tried to kill me; another part of me hates that he was the one to see me so vulnerable. He’s definitely gotten under my skin.

  I catch Knox’s concerned look and shake off my lingering—so far unfounded—unease about our new neighbor.

  “Okay, well, you know my life story, including the embarrassing parts like my ex-fiancé cheating on me and how I became the town crazy. So why don’t you give me a little something in return?”

  My face feels warm again at the way the question popped out; it sounds suggestive to my ears, even though I honestly didn’t mean it like that. Knox surprises me, once again, by acting as if he doesn’t notice.

  “First off, I don’t think seeing ghosts or being cheated on is embarrassing.”

  “You may be in the minority there, but I’ll concede the point.” I sip my drink, feeling better about life already.

  “My life is pretty boring. I come from a small family, just my parents and my sister and me. Graduated from high school and did two years of junior college before realizing that working in any kind of office would make me want to kill myself. In a strange turn of events, I inherited this boat the same month I quit school. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  There’s more to that story on both ends—what sort of parents he had, for one, and how he ju
st happened to inherit a fishing boat for another. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, though, and seeing how we’re neither friends nor dating, it feels rude to press for details.

  After all, he didn’t ask me to elaborate on how my engagement ended, and I left out plenty of my twenties, like how Amelia and I fell out of touch. Or how I basically hung my grandmother out to dry in the final months of her life.

  I finish my soup while Knox launches into a funny story about the fishing charter he took out earlier in the day—a bunch of guys in suits who had obviously never touched a fishing pole in their lives trying to impress their Japanese clients. I give him one about Daria in return, and we keep trading while hours evaporate.

  It’s not until I go to the bathroom and check my phone, finding three increasingly worried texts from Amelia, that I realize it’s far later than I intended to be out tonight. I answer, telling her that I’m fine and I’ll be on my way home within the next ten minutes.

  There are two things about the late hour that make me nervous—one, as of late, being alone and in the dark is less than smart. Two…I’m not sure how I feel about time slipping away this easily with a strange man.

  Maybe I’m overthinking things. My friends would certainly think so. Beau’s gone. Figuring out his own life. Leo isn’t interested in being more than friends, and even then, only on his terms. Knox is nice and handsome and fun, and what’s the harm in enjoying an evening with a man like that? What’s the harm in feeling wanted?

  If I were in the market for a guy to help me forget my troubles for a few nights, I doubt I could find one better suited to the task.

  “Everything okay?” he asks when I emerge from the head.

  “Yes, but I lost track of time. I should probably get going.” I offer him a smile, a little self-conscious now for some reason. “You’ve probably got an early charter, too.”

  “Not too early. Sunrise is later this time of year, and these yuppie types are babies about the morning fog, and the chill that goes with it. But I could definitely sleep. I had fun tonight, Graciela.” He gives me a smile, and our gazes hold for several seconds. The room gets warmer, and even though Knox doesn’t move from where he’s rinsing out dishes in front of the sink, there’s a shift in the air.

  An advance, however subtle.

  “Me, too,” I manage to get out. Because it’s true. “Unexpected, but definitely fun.”

  Knox tosses the dishtowel down on the sink and stuffs his hands in his pockets. His gaze drops from mine toward his shoes, then rises again with a reluctant determination. “I…I’m not sure if you feel this attraction between us the way that I do. If so, well, here’s the thing. I’m interested in acting on it.”

  “Oh.” My thoughts feel numb, like someone doused them with ice-cold water. Except there’s nothing cold about me at the moment. It’s partly what he’s saying and partly that he’s saying it at all. I’m definitely not used to a guy being so…direct.

  “I’m not finished.” His lips twist into a rueful smile. “If you decide you feel the same way, I need you to know up front that I’m not interested in anything other than a casual relationship that lasts as long as either of us wants it to. I’m respectful. I’m healthy. I’m attentive.” His smile turns a bit devilish. “But I’m not…I can’t handle more than that.”

  Nothing in his body language—not to mention his actual language—implies that follow-up questions will be entertained. Either I accept or I don’t. I admire that; it’s exactly how I would have approached things given my current emotional state.

  Which is not to say my curiosity over his current emotional state, and what might have caused it, isn’t running wild.

  “Oh,” I say again. I don’t sound disappointed. The word sounds stunned to my ears, which is exactly how I feel.

  Well, that and interested. Or maybe intrigued is a better word.

  My body has some very intense feelings about Knox MacArthur.

  My heart? Is in seclusion. Unreachable.

  It sounds like Knox is in the same position. Which could make him the perfect distraction from everything else going on in my life. If I want to take the plunge.

  “I…” I stutter to a stop, licking my lips as he moves closer, invading my space for the first time tonight. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that,” he says, his voice husky as he reaches behind me and unhooks my rain jacket from the back of the chair. He’s so close that I can smell his skin. The salt of the sea, the freshness of the wind outside, and something else—something earthy that ties him to shore, too.

  He lingers close enough to touch, but doesn’t make any contact. Instead, he holds my jacket up in front of my nose. I take it, hoping he doesn’t notice the way my fingers tremble. The way I’m breathing too hard.

  Maybe he’s more of an ass than I think. The shit-eating grin on his face seems to suggest he knows exactly how he’s affecting me, and that he’s definitely done it on purpose.

  The flash of annoyance gives me enough of a level head to toss him a haughty glance after he sees me safely back to the dock. A funny feeling, almost like happiness, niggles in my chest as my feet land on solid ground.

  “I’ll talk to you soon, Graciela.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Don’t wait by the phone.”

  His booming laugh follows me all the way back to my car, nipping at my heels like a playing border collie. Herding me. Shepherding me.

  As I pull out of the lot, I notice that he’s still watching. Making sure I’m safe.

  And as hard as I try to pretend otherwise, I like it.

  Chapter Four

  I decide to run my car into the shop the next morning to see whether my old tire can be fixed. Knox might have given me a new one, but there’s no sense in wasting money. Not to mention I should probably keep a spare in the trunk to avoid finding myself in the same situation in the future. Like a grownup.

  Also, Amelia was busy with Jack and running to the shop gave me an excuse to duck out before she could insist we have breakfast together to hash out my trip to Seabrook. I’ll tell her about it eventually, even the parts about how Knox basically said he wants a no-strings-attached fling and how I’m seriously entertaining the idea, if only to blow off a little steam.

  There’s also the tiny matter of Brick drinking again. It’s not exactly the sort of thing I can bring up while she’s trying to feed Jack and I’m trying to down coffee and get to work, but neither can I sit across from her and not bring it up.

  The tire is the perfect excuse to avoid the whole debacle for a few hours, even more so because it’s also a good idea. Which makes No Guts No Glory the perfect place to spend my morning.

  Glory Jean Rogers is the owner, and a Heron Creek treasure. She’s about ten years older than I am, from what I can figure, and has run the only garage in town ever since Burt’s Mechanic went out of business. There’s still Jackson & Son, but they work out of a gas station so maybe it doesn’t totally count.

  The pictures on the walls of the G&G office show Glory Jean’s childhood spent smeared with grease, her small body half-disappeared inside one engine or another.

  “Glory Jean?” I call, not seeing anyone inside the small, one-room garage or in the office. The place always has business. No one has ever thought to give her any competition, and Heron Creek probably isn’t big enough to support more than one auto repair shop, anyway.

  “One second!” The reply is muffled. A minute later, the sound of rolling wheels on cracked concrete fills the air, and she emerges from underneath an Oldsmobile that’s older than both of us.

  She wipes her hands off with a rag that doesn’t look fit to clean anything, smiling at me in the process. Her face is unlined, her cheeks smooth and peachy, but underneath a blue bandana, her hair is a mess of gray spirals. Premature, but she’s never had any interest in coloring it as long as I’ve known her.

  “Well, if it isn’t the legendary Graciela Harper! I’ve been wondering when you were going to bring
that hunk of junk in to see me.” She grins wider. “Don’t get my hands on many of them foreign heaps around these parts.”

  “No, based on the parking lots around town, I’d say you might just qualify as the nation’s leading expert on domestic boats that should have been traded in half a century ago.”

  She pats the hood of the Olds. “Aw, she didn’t mean it, honey.”

  I raise my eyebrows as she turns to talk to me. The human being in the room.

  “Half a century is a bit of an exaggeration, and besides, they don’t make ’em like they used to.”

  “Careful,” I warn her. “You’re starting to sound like your customer base.”

  “Well, if you can’t beat ’em…”

  I cut her off before she can spout any other mid-twentieth century platitudes at me. “I know, I know. Believe me. Listen, do you have a few minutes to check a tire for me?”

  “Sure. You get a flat?” Glory Jean peers around me and gives my old Honda a once-over. “No donut. Which tire?”

  “Um, driver’s side rear. I didn’t have a donut, so the person who changed it brought me a new one.”

  “Humph.” Now she gives me the once-over, clearly wanting to say something—probably about my decision to let someone else change my own tire. Or my lack of a donut.

  Or, more likely, both. I’m pretty disappointed in myself, but not in how my evening turned out, so score one for ineptitude.

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “Thanks.” I try a smile, which she returns grudgingly. “I was hoping the old tire could be repaired so I could leave it in the trunk, but you let me know. If not, I’ll need to buy a spare from you in case this happens again.”

  “Spare won’t fit in the well. Need a new donut for that.” Curiosity lights her ice-blue eyes and I know she’s wondering what happened to my old one.

  To be honest, I kind of am, too. It may have been a while since I’ve had a flat, but putting the donut back is common practice. Isn’t it?