Quite Precarious

by Lyla Payne

  “Hey, Travis! We got an extra thing of lamb curry for you!” Tom beams at me like he’s brought home the World Series trophy for the hometown team.

  “Thanks, I’ll pass.” I get up too fast and grab my jacket off the back of the chair. It falls on the floor and I step on it trying to pick it up. By the time I manage to get it on, they’re both staring at me. Great. Even their thick melons have realized something’s up.

  My face feels hot. “You two are on duty alone until Gayle comes in at five am. You can go home, but you’re on call.”

  “Yeah, we know how the overnight shift works,” Ted drawls, slower than even normal and sounding far too amused. “We’ve worked here longer than you have, remember?”

  “Just make sure you don’t fall asleep with your phones in another room this time,” I snap, trying to redirect their attention.

  Their stupid grins say I’ve accomplished the opposite. The best thing to do is just to get the hell out of here, so that’s what I do, landing in my car and getting back to my rental house without much memory of the trip. An hour later the ramen noodles are still in the package and there are three empty beer bottles on the counter. The storm hasn’t moved all the way in, but the splatter of fat raindrops against my cheap, single-paned windows promise it’s not going to pass us by altogether.

  I stare at my phone, a twist in my guts that makes even the thought of eating painful, no matter how hungry I was a few hours ago. The Ryan twins should be okay—with the first big storm of the season rolling in, the few troublemakers in town should have other things to keep them occupied. Unless someone dies. Like the pastor of an aging church, being the detective in this town is more often than not about calling the coroner’s office.

  Hell, that’s all I’d be doing if it weren’t for my sister.

  I glare at my phone now, wondering why Gracie hasn’t called. Wondering why her cousin— my cousin—hasn’t rung to tear me a new asshole or cry in my ear or scream obscenities or something. What were they waiting for? Is it possible Gracie hasn’t opened the email from my parents? That it never made it? Got deleted on accident?

  Not knowing is driving me mad. One glance in the mirror reveals bloodshot eyes and hair sticking up six different directions, and even I can tell my breath is rancid.

  Calm down, Travis. No matter how pissed they are, they can’t hate you forever.

  They’re family. That’s why you’re here—to meet your family.

  I take a deep breath. Brush my teeth, comb my hair. Change into clothes I haven’t sweated through, swap my contacts for glasses. The unsteadiness of my gait convinces me to slow down further. I cook the ramen. I make some coffee.

  Once I’m calmer, with food in my belly to soak up some of the anxiety and alcohol, I start to go over what I’ll say when Gracie’s in front of me. It’s best to do this in person.

  I’ll go over to their house, and when one of them opens the door and sees it’s me, it should be obvious whether they know or not.

  By now, I’ve figured out that Gracie and her mother weren’t particularly close. I don’t think that will matter once my bombshell drops—no one likes to face the cold, hard truth that maybe she never knew her mother at all. That her mother never trusted her enough to tell her about an older sibling, one given away in a fit of responsibility.

  If they don’t already know from the errant email, that leaves me with some serious decisions to make. Coming here, it had been my intention to tell both Gracie and Amelia of our familial connection. If Gracie’s been poking around in my past and that email from my parents is on her phone, it won’t be long until she finds out, anyway.

  I still don’t know how and why she’s been snooping, and that churns up a cloud of worry. My detective gut—which is solid, despite my frequent troubles at work since the start of my career—says it has to do with this whole thing with Clete.

  As crazy as Gracie and her antics made me, it doesn’t change the fact that I want to know her. And Amelia. The second relationship has been going better, but it was clear right off the bat that the two of them are as thick as thieves.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of them circling the wagons to shut out the latecomer. The guy who doesn’t belong, whose presence will rock the boat.

  I’ve been that guy my entire life. The boy who’s nothing like his parents—not in looks, not in beliefs, not in conscience. The adopted boy in a town where everyone else’s great-grandparents put down roots.

  I came here hoping to find a place that feels like it fits. Heron Creek, in many ways, reminds me of the small town in Texas where I grew up. Living there was like never being invited into a clubhouse when everyone else has the key to the door. The difference could be Gracie. Amelia.

  Family.

  If only I had the courage to look them in the eye and ask for the secret password.

  Chapter Five

  Amelia

  Sitting hunched over the computer makes my back and neck ache. My eyes are dry and my wrists are sore, but putting down the laptop means giving up. There have to be rumors out there about Charlotta and James, or the families of Drayton slaves or freed workers who have put together their own histories dating back to the plantation era. I’m not the expert my cousin is at digging, or at research, and it’s easy enough to see that I’m out of my depth, because if those things are out there online somewhere, I can’t uncover them.

  There’s no reason to believe that anything we find will convince Mama Lottie to abandon her desire to curse the Draytons. Just because there’s an African-American in their lineage…from what Grace has told me about the woman and how she’s all over that family like a duck on a junebug, we’re going to have to do better than that.

  I sigh and take a deep breath, taking a moment to stretch out my kinks. It’s been hours since Brick left, since Grace shoved this laptop into my hands and told me to start looking, but a quick glance at my watch says it hasn’t been that long since she walked out the door. The thought of her out there, on her way to tell Mama Lottie why the curse didn’t work, makes me feel sick to my stomach.

  There’s a little clump of hair from the illegitimate line of Draytons in my cousin’s purse, which on a normal evening would be disturbing enough but these days it barely registers on the weirdness scale.

  While it’s true that Grace’s penchant for trouble has enchanted me since forever, this whole thing is a little different than petty theft as a child or some good-natured destruction of public property. She’s out there, about to help an evil spirit put a curse on the family of the man she loves like she’s never loved anyone, and acknowledging that fact knocks the wind out of me like a physical blow.

  Grace had loved Will—was crazy about him, drunk on him, needed him like oxygen—

  but we were all kids, and naďve ones at that. Their perfect, nostalgic, first love was real, no doubt, but not built to stand any serious tests. A fact they proved themselves when they both moved on without putting too much time and effort into letting go.

  But Beau? What’s between them is real, real. The kind of real that’s going to take weeks, maybe months, and possibly therapy or a regression to drinking a couple bottles of wine every night to shake.

  The look on her face tonight when she came downstairs and found Brick here was like an arrow to the heart. As much as he helps me—and it’s immeasurable—we’re not going to be able to stay friends if she and Beau can’t work things out. I won’t do that to her, no matter how he feels like a life preserver in an angry sea.

  My chest hurts thinking about giving up his texts and phone calls and reassuring presence. I’ve never been through one of those twelve step programs, but based on what I’ve heard and seen, Brick feels like my sponsor—my depression sponsor.

  Depression. The word sounds slimy in my head, and I imagine it will taste awful on my tongue the day I finally get enough courage to name my monster aloud.

  Brick gets all of it without me having to say anything, and best of all, he doesn’t for
ce me to do anything, not even talk, if I don’t feel like it. His encouragement is given in the

  way only another survivor can provide. Brick has scratched his way out of the darkness and behind him, there are little pinpoints of light for me to follow. If he leaves, and the whole thing caves in on my head, there won’t be enough air to find my way back.

  Not again.

  I’m texting Mel about Beau and Gracie when the doorbell rings, startling me out of my pity party. All of my worries over Grace crash back into the empty space. She wouldn’t be ringing the doorbell, but no one else should be either. My heart squishes into my throat as I slam my laptop closed and race into the foyer.

  Don’t let it be a cop. Don’t let it be a cop. Cops mean death and accidents and trouble with a capital T.

  I fling open the door to find…not a cop. Instead it’s a tiny Asian girl bouncing in a pair of beat-up, high-top Chuck Taylors. She cocks her head at the sight of me, a frown touching the edges of her crimson lips as her gaze slides over my belly and back to my face.

  “You’re not Gracie,” she comments, shifting to adjust the weight of the armload of books she’s carrying.

  “No. Who are you?” Leaving her out in the rain is rude, no doubt. If I could see ghosts the way Grace could, I’d bet my Grams is standing over my shoulder trying to swat me for forgetting my manners, but there are too many variables in our lives.

  Then again, even if she’s here to kill me or deliver a special new curse from the ghost of Mrs. LaBadie, this chick is tiny and I’m basically the Hindenberg. I could probably knock her sideways off the porch with a gentle swipe from my pregnant belly, but why not at least ask what the heck she wants first?

  “I’m Jenna Lee,” she replies in a perky voice that matches her wide open face. “Who are you?”

  The name rings a bell, but my addled baby brain takes its sweet-ass time extracting why—Grace was working with her. I snap my fingers, opening the door wider to let her past. “The brilliant preservationist from Drayton Hall! It’s nice to meet you, finally. I’m Amelia. Grace is my cousin.”

  “I should have known.” Jenna nods at my belly. “She’s been worried about you.”

  “Grace needs to spend more time worrying about herself,” I mutter, giving Jenna a tight smile to try to dislodge some of the concern in my tone. “Can I take those from you?”

  The books shift again, inches from tumbling onto the floor. They look old, but not so old they belong in our library archives or anything, and Jenna doesn’t seem too worried about bending corners or dropping them.

  “I just need somewhere to put them down. Gracie asked if she could borrow them.”

  “Sure. Follow me.”

  Jenna trails me into the kitchen, confirming my observations about her load when she dumps the lot of them in a heap on the table. She stretches her back, groaning a little bit, then gives me a wry smile. “I’m aging too quickly, always bent over things out there. I’ve been meaning to lobby for extra health insurance.”

  A snort escapes. “Good luck with that.”

  “Cordelia doesn’t hate everyone as much as she hates your cousin. Gracie’s special.”

  Jenna’s smile disarms me. It lets me know whose side she’s on, and Grace trusts her.

  “That she is.” I’m tired to the bone but at the same time, amped up. It’s because my cousin is out there, on her way to meet the devil, and I’m sitting here on my hands. As usual. My hands go to my stomach in a protective motion that must be coded into female human DNA as I nod toward the books. “What’s all that?”

  “Diaries. Charlotta Drayton wrote them.” Jenna holds up a hand after taking a look at my face, which I realize too late includes a dropped jaw. “She didn’t tell me why she’s so interested in the woman, so don’t spill unless you want her pissed at you.”

  “She didn’t?” It takes all of my willpower not to snatch them and start reading. We know Charlotta is the one who started the illegitimate line, but we don’t know anything about the father. James.

  “No. She has some cockamamie idea that she’s keeping me safe even though I told her that if there’s some dangerous people—dead or otherwise—roaming the Hall grounds, it would be better, at least in my mind, to be in the know.”

  “I tend to agree with you there, but Grace is stubborn.”

  It’s Jenna’s turn to snort. “That’s like calling a cougar a pussycat.”

  “You’ve got her pegged, I’d say. She liked working with you. Said you were her kind of people on more than one occasion.”

  “She talked about you, too. I mean, before she opened her mouth and told Mrs.

  Drayton a few things we’d all been wanting to say for a very long time.”

  Out of my memory comes conversations with Grace about this girl—how brilliant she is, about her thesis project that will certainly land her a job at any historical site in the country, and how she’s a little too enthusiastic about playing cloak and dagger. An idea catches in the back of my mind, flickering. Tempting me to come a little bit closer.

  I run a finger over the journals, my curiosity quickly overtaking any fatigue. Jenna rubs her delicate features like maybe she’s not feeling the same second wind, and in that moment I decide to do what Grace didn’t—let her in.

  We need help, and from what my cousin has told me, Jenna knows about everything there is to know about that property. The history of the place isn’t her specialty as much as the structures, but she’s smart, she’s curious, and she wants to help.

  “I’ll make you a deal, Jenna. I’ll tell you why Grace needs to read these journals if you help me read them. Tonight.” Maybe if we both scour we can find something that will help my cousin before she sacrifices her entire future to a witch.

  It’s probably a dumb idea. There’s no reason to think knowing more about what

  happened between two people a hundred years ago will do anything to change the path Grace is on with Mama Lottie.

  There’s no reason to think it won’t, either.

  Since my cousin returned to South Carolina, I’ve seen a ghost. I’ve almost died, I’ve killed a man. Almost lost my baby to a voodoo curse on more than one occasion. It’s been a long learning curve, but we’ve both gotten to the point where no angle is too strange to run down.

  I raise my eyebrows at Jenna, who’s studying me with a sparkle in her dark eyes that promises she’s going to say yes. I’m not sure what to make of her, traipsing around in a pair of leggings, a long t-shirt bearing a picture of Robert E. Lee with Most Likely to Secede underneath it, and an army jacket. She gives off a good vibe, though.

  She shrugs. “Throw in some coffee and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Great.” I get to work on the coffee, gritting my teeth as the warm, nutty smell fills the kitchen. A little less than three more months and I can have a cup of my own. “Are those her real journals? They don’t look that old.”

  “No, they’re copies. The originals are locked up in family archives. These have never been released to the public, for obvious reasons.” She pauses, maybe wondering how much Grace told me, then keeps going. “The admission of the daughter having an illicit affair with a black guy isn’t part of the narrative they want to tell.”

  Her enthusiasm for history and easy judgment of the people most often writing it reminds me of Grace. It makes me smile. “Have you read them?”

  “Not all of them.” She shrugs, grabbing for her coffee and wrapping her hands around the hot mug. “She wrote a lot, and most of it is day-to-day stuff—ordering new furniture, china patterns, things like that. Not really my thing.”

  I get myself a glass of herbal tea before settling in beside her, determined to do something to help even if it turns out to be nothing in the long run.

  “Well, let’s dig in.”

  Chapter Six

  Will

  “I cannot believe you’re being so cool about getting tossed in a goddamn prison cell.” My wife wears an expression of exasperation so int
ense that every instinct I’ve developed during my tenure as her husband warns me to back away slowly. I can’t. No matter how hard I clench my teeth, words keep slipping through. “Prison, Mellie. Is that how you want your daughter to see you for the first time? Behind bars?”

  I can’t stop tears from wetting my eyes. Seeing her in that jail cell did something to me that can’t be undone by her calm or Gracie’s promises that she can fix it.

  “Oh, I think they still let you give birth in a hospital even if you’re in prison.” She pauses, eyeing me with a mixture of pity and irritation, and throws up her hands when my reaction doesn’t materialize. “Come on, Will. We’ve been through this. We agreed we had to help Gracie, and I don’t know what you’re all pissy about now. It was all fine when you were the one risking your life and giving up your job.”

  “I was not risking my life, and prison was certainly never on the table.”

  “Oh really?” Her eyebrows go up as she puts on her innocent face.

  I back up a few steps until my back hits the kitchen counter, but there are still only a few feet between where she sits at the kitchen table and me. Mel kneads a ball of bread dough with too much calm and I suppose she’s right—the chances I took to help Gracie get the information to help Mayor Drayton out of trouble could have landed me in hot water.

  But they didn’t.

  A closer look at Melanie says she’s not interested in the distinction. A deep sigh finds its way out of my chest. “Fine. You’re right, we’ve both taken chances, but—”

  “So help me, William Gayle, if you say something right now about you being the man and Grant needing me more than you, I’m going to be madder than an old wet hen.”

  “I was going to say, we’ve done it for a good reason, but I hated to see you like that.” I rub my hand over my face, listening for my mother’s car for a second before slumping into the seat next to her. Mel’s knee is warm under my palm and I give it a squeeze. “I know you think it’s archaic and dumb, but I’m a man. Wanting to protect the woman I love is coded into my DNA.”