by Gaby Triana
“You’re not. At all.”
“Before I left home, I was drifting farther away from everything and everyone, but I had no idea why. Then I came to visit you, and you’re just the air I needed to breathe, Macy.”
She smiled.
“But on the third or fourth night, I found this place. I met these people. They’ve been living here, doing spiritual work.” It sounded absurd but at least I was coming clean. “They’re clairs.”
“As in psychic mediums?”
I nodded and explained how it all began, how I got roped in because of how badly I wanted to learn the skills to contact our dad, but how I’d managed to contact everyone but my father. How Cami’s visit had been the last thing I needed, because it’d set me back to feeling guilty.
She listened. I appreciated that she wasn’t oozing with disappointment. “What spiritual work are they doing?”
This would sound insane. “There’s a portal of energy here. The people who built this in the old days believed the land would heal the sick.”
“That’s how much of Florida got populated,” Macy explained, not surprised by my words at all. “Since the Ponce de Leon days, outsiders have been coming here trying to locate healing waters. Always been something alluring about this land. But the vortex, if it’s real, makes people nuts, too. ‘Florida man’ in the headlines?” She snickered.
I was aware of Crow, Mori, and Fae listening in from the dining hall windows. I lowered my voice and aimed it the other way. “So, these clairs can tap into that energy. Well, a few of them can. I can, too, apparently. And because this place might soon be razed, they’re desperate to find out all they can. They needed a fifth person to help.”
“Find out what?” she asked.
“Stuff that took place here. Stuff that wasn’t recorded. Each of them has something personal to gain.”
“Ah. I know all about unrecorded stuff.” She smirked. “Working for the Department of Tourism, you hear rumors.”
My ears perked up. “Like what?”
“Undocumented events, like you’re saying. Every state hospital has them.”
“Do you know what those are? How can we find out?” If Macy could help me uncover some of the Sunlake’s mysteries, the clairs wouldn’t have to delve into the dangers of the spirit world to find out.
“I don’t know, Vale. Those files are off-limits to me. I’m not an historian for Tourism & Recreation. I just make videos.” We stood in silence for a minute. “And that fifth person is you?”
I nodded.
She nodded, too. “I just want to make sure you’re getting something out of this, that it’s not all for them. I don’t want to come to find that you’re being taken advantage of.”
I thought about that. Maybe I was at first, but since I’d been with the clairs, I’d learned more about myself in two weeks than I had in eighteen years.
“So, something else,” I said. “This’ll sound crazy…”
“Ah, ah,” she warned. “No need to preface anything. Just say it.”
I sighed. Macy’s superpower was definitely empathy. “Since I was little, I could tell stuff about objects just by touching them. For the longest time, I thought everyone could. Eventually, I learned it was just me. And because that makes me sound like a freak, I ignored it. I stopped touching things. Stopped touching people.”
Then I took a risk with Antoni. He was the first sort-of boyfriend I’d ever had. As terrified as I was of “seeing” things in him, I trusted that God would guide me.
“To the point that people thought I was cold and standoffish,” I added.
“When you were just afraid of seeing the truth about them.”
Tears leaked out of my eyes. “I’ve suppressed everything about myself.” I’d turned the other cheek at least a thousand times, like my mom had with my dad, like my grandmother had supposedly done with stuff Cuco did behind her back.
“It’s okay…” Macy said.
I explained how we were ready to start the ritual when Cami showed up with her surprise visit. “I hated being rude, but I couldn’t play hostess. I don’t know what she was thinking.”
“She was worried about you.”
“I get that, but I left home for a reason.”
“Why was she so scared, though? She looked like she’d seen a ghost. Well, after what you just said, I suppose she had.”
“Macy, that girl can’t fathom anything outside her little bubble. I don’t mean to villainize my whole community, but the Catholics I grew up with? Even though they’re nice and mean well, they cannot see past their noses.”
“I wasn’t brought up religious, but I know people like that.”
Listening to her, I could visualize my dad and Macy’s mom’s relationship. Dad was probably like me, like Macy was probably like her mom, and if we got along this well, I could only imagine the two of them. Dad must’ve felt at such ease around her.
We both sighed and gazed around a while. She slapped at a mosquito. “You know what your situation with Cami reminds me of? The Everglades.”
I laughed. “Okay…”
“Every summer, lightning strikes from one of these massive storms we get and hits dry brush out there. What happens? The dry brush lights right up—fires. Then people start with the emergency calls. ‘The Everglades is on fire!’”
“Meanwhile, it’s normal,” I laugh.
“Exactly! And so’s this, Vale. What happened between you and Cami is a normal brush fire. The land clears the old to make room for the new. It’s a natural process. The earth knows what it’s doing, and so do you. Trust the process.” She jabbed a finger into my shoulder.
What a great analogy. Friendships ended to make room for new memories. Okay, but change still hurt.
Macy sucked in a breath. “Well. It’s officially creepy as heck here. Creepy, but beautiful.” She withdrew her gaze from the Sunlake and put it on me. “There’s another reason why I came to get you. I have someone at home, someone who wants to meet you.”
I knew. “Your mom.”
I’d seen her when we hugged. The woman was, right now, waiting at the house, nervous about meeting me. I thought about my own mother and the pain she might feel knowing her daughter was being asked to meet the woman my dad had had an affair with long ago. But I also remembered how my mom was grateful to Macy right before I left home for giving me a place to stay.
“Is that okay?” Macy asked.
Despite what my mom would think, I needed to meet this lady, to know what my dad knew, to see the other half of his secret world. I couldn’t be the mediator anymore.
“I would love to meet your mom. Let me tell the others.”
“They’re right there,” Macy said.
Mori, Fae, and Crow stood at the auxiliary door, watching us. Mori and Fae gave little waves, but Crow wore his usual scowl and shook his head like I was responsible for the ills of the world.
“Hey, if you guys don’t mind, I’m going back to my sister’s for a bit. I’ll be back. By myself. Promise.”
“Damn right you are,” Crow said.
“What’s his problem?” Macy growled.
“He thinks he owns this place. Let me grab my stuff.” I hurried to the doorway in a trot, pushing past the three of them.
“Your sister is heckin gorgeous,” Fae said.
“She is.” I walked backwards. “Inside and out.”
“And intuitive.”
“What?” I looked over my shoulder.
Mori smiled but didn’t answer.
“You seem to be a magnet for bringing in unwanted guests.” Crow followed me through the lobby. “Any second now, cops will be here.”
“It’s fine, Crow,” I said. “Lay off me already.”
“I’m just gonna say this. If I don’t get my chance in front of the historical society about keeping this place up, because of the negative attention you’re causing, you’ll pay for it, Valentina.”
I whirled to face him. “Stop threatening me. It’s
not like restoring the hotel is your main ambition, Crow. We all know why you’re truly here. Since when is opening an energy vortex part of a restoration project? Your only concern is seeing the Lady of the Lake. So just…stop.”
“That’s not a secret. It doesn’t change the fact that I won’t get to do what she asked of me. Only by doing what she asked of me will I get to see her. And only by seeing her will I get to ask my question.”
“The one about Hell,” I said, and he nodded. “You want to know if you’re headed there, and only the Lady can tell you. Crow, I know your parents and the church did a number on you, but you’re not going to Hell. You haven’t done anything to deserve it.”
I watched a flicker of sadness, or maybe fear, in Crow’s stare. “You don’t know that, Valentina. Don’t bring anyone else here.” He headed off.
But I wasn’t done with him. “Or what?”
He stopped in his tracks. “You don’t want to find out.”
“I may be Catholic, but that doesn’t mean I won’t send you to Hell if I have to.”
A wide smile cracked open his face.
Footsteps pounded down the hall, echoing through the lobby. Wilky skidded into the room with his drawing notebook. His words came out in raspy gasps. “I saw someone.”
“Who?” Crow asked.
“A real person or a ghost?”
“Both.”
“Both?” Fae and Mori joined us, as we huddled around Wilky who hugged his notebook to his chest.
“I was alone drawing. I heard a scream…I always hear screams. So, I followed it…I followed the scream. Sometimes it disappears before I can locate it, right? Well, this time, I stayed connected. I could hear a man, screaming.”
“What did he say?” Mori asked.
“I couldn’t tell. But the portal is open, guys. It has to be.” Wilky breathed deeply to catch his breath.
So, I wasn’t the only one.
“The portal is definitely open.” Crow hurled a chunk of concrete against a wall, creating a small crack in the wall. “People don’t just fly thirty feet during rituals. The changes since last night are pretty evident. In you guys, anyway.”
“Where were you again?” I asked.
“I followed the sound…to the atrium,” he said, eyes on me. “I saw the man you saw, Vale. The one with the broken neck, the chandelier guy. I stood in the doorway. I asked if he needed help.”
I listened, a tight knot in my stomach.
“When he stopped screaming,” Wilky went on, “I was able to get a good look at him. He said the lady wouldn’t let him pass.”
Crow’s face snapped toward him. “Lady?”
Wilky nodded. “He said, ‘The lady won’t let me through. I can’t get through.’”
“Can I see what he looks like?” Fae leaned in for a peek at his sketch.
He turned the pad around. I slid in to see it, curious if it would look at all like the ghost I’d seen with those horrible bloated eyes. Instead, the air inside my lungs evaporated. I clutched Wilky’s arm. Touching him didn’t help—now I saw both the sketch of the dead man and the image Wilky had seen of the same man in his mind. There was no denying either—it was my father.
TWENTY-ONE
It couldn’t be.
I’d seen that same man in my vision, same bulging eyes, same sharp angle of his broken neck, forever embossed on my brain. Blue tone to his face and neck. Shoulders slumped over in defeat. But there was no denying the cheekbones either, high and prominent, chin of a classic actor, the way he styled his hair, flopped over one eye. My mother loved his full head of heartthrob hair. His build, even throughout, was lean and proportional.
Wilky had hashed it all out in charcoal, the likeness was insanely accurate.
Until that moment, no one had noticed my silence. I slipped to the floor and quickly scrambled to my feet when it suddenly felt too hot and stifling inside the breezeless hallway. They hovered around me, while my world imploded, voices alternating from watery to tinny as if from an old-timey radio. Wilky supported me.
I stumbled through the lobby and out of the hotel.
It couldn’t be him. How could it? My father passed away of a heart attack. Why would his spirit be at the Sunlake Springs?
“What is it, Vale?”
What is it, Vale?
What is it, Vale?
What if the facts I’d been given about my father had been wrong? What if my dad had died here at this wretched hotel? He’d worked for Volusia County during the separation when he came to meet Macy. Sure, anything was possible, but why would they lie to me?
Outside, the sky had darkened. Macy, who’d been waiting in the driver’s seat, looked up from her phone and could see something was wrong.
“Is she alright?” she asked Wilky.
“I showed her a drawing, then this happened.”
“Of what?”
“Of a man in the hotel. She’ll tell you.”
Had he come here for work? An inspection? Urban exploring? Admiring the hotel just for fun? It was possible, given his love of Art Deco and Mediterranean style architecture. Had that been him in the atrium all this time, trying to get my attention?
“Vale, text me.” Wilky poked his head into the car. “I’ll come back for you, if you need, or want…” Wilky’s worry that I might never return after this was not lost on me.
But I couldn’t come back. How could I? Wilky’s drawing had just filled in a missing piece about why there’d been a closed-casket funeral for my father. If it’d only been a heart attack, his face should’ve looked normal. My mother said she’d made the decision to protect me from further damage; she didn’t want my last view of Dad to be his death mask. I’d believed her. But here was a new truth, assuming the hung ghost in the atrium really was my father—had he taken his life instead? Was the bloated, blue-faced man at the end of that rope my dad?
Macy closed the door, circled the hood, exchanged more words with Wilky. As we drove out of the parking lot back toward the gate, I fought for words.
“What did he say?” I stared ahead.
“He said you stopped talking after he showed you a drawing. What happened in there?”
“It was Dad.”
“Dad?”
“The man in Wilky’s drawing.”
Quietly, Macy drove over the blanket of cracks on the overgrown path. “Dad was the man he drew?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Wilky sketches. He also hears disembodied voices in the hotel. But I guess, since last night, he can see the spirits, too. And the one he just saw looked exactly like dad.”
The longer we sat in silence, the more I began to question my own sanity.
“Vale, are you sure about that?” Macy asked. “Maybe it was another man.”
“It was him. I don’t understand how. Dad died of myocardial infarction. That’s what the doctors said. That’s what was on his death records.”
“You’ve seen his death records?”
I looked at her, hoping to find some nugget of truth in her face. “No, but that’s what they told me.”
What they told me.
A vein in Macy’s temple twitched. She cracked her knuckles, then her neck. “I think that might be misinformation. When we get home, we’ll sort this out with Lucinda.”
“Who’s Lucinda?”
“My mother.”
I felt like a child lost inside of a fun house, navigating the lopsided rooms. My mother had no reason to lie. The doctors wouldn’t have lied to my mother either. However, if my father had died of a heart attack, why, like Wilky said, would he have been screaming?
We pulled into the street and up Macy’s drive where another car sat waiting. On our way to the front steps, she stopped and took my hands into hers. “It’s alright. Okay? Whatever it is, we’ll figure this out. I promise.”
“Is it, though?” I could barely breathe.
Macy’s expression, infused with sympathy, softened, then we trudged up the ste
ps. I heard dishes and glasses clinking in the sink. Motherly sounds. I missed my own mom at home. We entered the kitchen, where I prepared to see the woman my dad had had a relationship with before my parents got married.
Lucinda Edwins stood at the window, staring into the yard.
“Ma,” Macy said.
Lucinda turned halfway, a sad smile on her lips. “There you are.”
She was in her late forties, more statuesque than Macy, expressive deep brown eyes, darker skin than her daughter, but there was definitely a family resemblance. She reached for a towel with long, slender fingers, nails painted lilac, and studied me. She wiped her hands dry.
“Lucinda, this is Valentina,” Macy said, adding no further explanation.
Lucinda knew who I was. “Hello, Valentina.” A sadness broke across her cheeks, and she offered a hug. I accepted. The moment my hands held onto her wide shoulders, I felt a complicated, textured, unorthodox sense of compassion that nearly broke me.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Let’s sit a moment,” Macy said.
The two of us sat at the dinette while Macy brewed coffee and gave her mother a watered-down version of what I was doing at the Sunlake Springs. She made it sound like I was doing research, which I appreciated. Didn’t need my dad’s ex knowing, during our first minute together, that I was involved in pagan shenanigans.
“I know this is long overdue,” Lucinda said. “But I’m sorry for your loss. When Pablo passed away, I wanted to reach out to you, but circumstances being what they were…” She left it at that.
“It’s okay. This is weird.” I fought the urge to cry.
“Oh. Maybe we shouldn’t…”
“No, it’s fine. We need to talk about it,” I assured her. Outside, the sky was beginning to spill its own tears onto already oversoaked land.
“I know you have questions,” Lucinda said, following my stare out the window. “And it looks like we’ll be stuck here a bit, so…”
Macy handed me my usual mug. I stared at it—Failure Is Not An Option. When I first arrived here, I’d had visions of my dad while holding this mug, but I’d assumed he was just on my mind. Now I wondered…