Ghost in His Eyes

by Carrie Aarons

  “Stop it. He might not even need my help.”

  The damn dog lifts a paw in the air, as if objecting. And before I argue again, I stop myself … realizing I’m having a petty, childish argument with my black lab. Sighing and throwing my hands up, I go to the closet and throw on a rain jacket before walking down to the first level of my house, and out into the storm.

  Carson is in a T-shirt and jeans, boots caked in mud as he kicks the tires on his pickup. His body has changed in the last ten years; where he used to be long and lean, there are now muscles. A man’s arms, roped and bulked, lead down into fists with fingers I remember like my own name. His chest, broad and tapered at the waist, is so much bigger than the one I used to know. His jeans are almost soaked through, and sticking to his thighs in a just so way that makes every carved muscle visible. That dark mop of hair that I’ve run my fingers through a thousand times.

  How much this familiar person had changed from a boy into a man, how much of his life I'd missed.

  "You need to call the tow truck." My voice carried over the howling wind.

  Carson's head shot up, his eyes crackling with embers beneath the charcoal irises. "Blake ..."

  Maybe he hadn't noticed what house he'd gotten stuck in front of. Maybe he didn't remember.

  "I have the number, if you need it. But, you're not getting out of there."

  His lips tipped up, the small beauty mark at the corner moving with his smile. "You don't have to tell me twice. I remember hauling you out of a pickle once or twice."

  The memory was both a whip to the heart and a soothing balm to the soul.

  I can't smile, even if he did make a joke. My face is unused to it, the expression has been stored in the back along with happiness and trust.

  "Can I use your phone then? Mine is dead." Carson holds up a cell phone with a black screen.

  It's like inviting the vampire in, but I do it anyway. "Come in out of the rain."

  I don't watch to see if he follows, just simply step back inside and continue up the stairs. I take my jacket off, shaking it out in the laundry room. When I come back with two towels, I find Rhett lying on his back in front of Carson, who is rubbing his belly.

  "That's Rhett. You're not special, he's a mooch with everyone." I toss him a towel and try to skirt around where he stands in the room. "I have that cellphone number for Larry the tow guy whenever you're ready."

  He's not looking at me though. Instead, his eyes roam the room, his big wet body the center of the universe in here.

  "It's not how I remember it."

  The house, I suddenly realize, is what he's talking about. This house was as much a part of his childhood as it was mine and Joel's.

  "I redecorated a lot after ..." My thoughts trail off, the second biggest loss in my life crowding my mind.

  "He was a great man, Blake. The best." Carson's face is the definition of sadness.

  I clear my throat. "That he was, but it's been a few years. I made it my own." I don't want to talk to him about my father.

  "I know you want me to take that number so I'll leave. But ... can we just, talk? I know you don't owe me a damn thing, but this Cold War has gone on long enough. We both can't live our lives holding this enormous thing between us."

  The last thing I wanted to do was talk. "No. But I'll make more tea while you call."

  I turn on a wet boot and March towards the kitchen, the great room split by half a wall. He can't see me as I put the kettle on the stove and toe out of my shoes, stretching my arms over my head.

  Then the familiar opening crescendos of a song begin to play, and instantly the tears gather at the corners of my eyes.

  "Turn it off," I beg, rounding the corner.

  Carson's eyes are as bleak as the storm outside, and he shakes his head as his jaw tics.

  And the sound of my past closes in on my heart, stretching its icy cold hands around the chambers and squeezing.

  12

  Carson

  This house, and everything that’s in it now, is so unfamiliar.

  In the corner where a white overstuffed armchair sits, there used to be a scotch cart. Patrick, her father, used to measure all of the bottles to make sure we hadn’t stolen anything from them.

  Where there is now a blue and teal striped rug on the floor, I see the old maroon and olive one that Joel and I would race toy cars over as Blake pretended she didn’t like Barbies.

  She’s taken all of the pictures down … there used to be tables and walls full of them when this had been Patrick’s house. I don’t need to ask why they’re gone. Just stepping foot in here is painful for me. I can’t imagine living in it.

  Walking across the room, I spot one thing Blake did keep. Her father’s old record player. Memories of him setting classic vinyls on the thing, teaching us about music, fill my thoughts. Not that my old man didn’t have good taste in music, but Patrick Sayer regarded it as a religion. He would speak of songs and records as if they were sacraments. My very first Pink Floyd album, which sits packed in my boxes at home, is from him.

  I set the needle on the record player, ensconcing the room in the melodies of Frank Sinatra. His crooning voice fills the blank space between us, the silence of words unspoken almost bearable.

  I hear her cross to a counter, the sounds of her pouring the steaming water into two tea cups, adding the bags and swirling them. I watch each motion in my head, wanting so much to round the wall and grab her up into my arms. On a deeper level, down to the soul that I know has been torn in two. Because of me.

  And then a few familiar chords strike up as the next song floats into the air. I’m transported back to a night I’d snuck into the Sayer household, and in a far off room this song was playing behind a closed door.

  “It’s the song he plays for my mother. The beacon he hopes will bring her back to him.”

  A crystal tear had slid from her eye when she’d confessed it, and I could practically hear her father’s heart breaking from rooms away.

  Sinatra laments the room with “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and if she only knew.

  If she only knew how many times I’d played this song over the years, hoping beyond hope that maybe that night, my banishment would end. That she’d send one word, at least call and hang up.

  Blake stumbles as she comes into view, her body frozen as the twinkling melody laced with sadness penetrates both of us.

  “Turn it off.” I know she’s trying to make her voice steely, but it’s not working. There is too much emotion laced into it.

  I shake my head, watching her as Frank sings the song of our storied history.

  At this point, I can’t not touch her. The song fuels me, moving my feet until I’m standing beside her, moving her into my arms. The minute her skin touches mine, we both gasp, the contact something so akin to pain, that it’s euphoric in its burn.

  I gently move us, swaying as the flood breaks over our heads, cascading to our hearts.

  I whisper the words into her ear, the sad soft melody invading our joined limbs, ducking my head so that I can fit our cheeks together. I’m nearly choking on the past, on the slicing heartbreak that has coursed through me for ten years.

  “I can’t.” Two words bring the moment crashing down, and Blake looks up at me with tears rolling down her cheeks.

  She stalks away from me, and I wish I could hold her against me almost the instant she leaves. “I know how hard it has to be for you. I know because there are nights that the grief literally drowns me.”

  Blake whirls around, fire and pain mixing like a deadly cocktail in her eyes.

  “It doesn’t get easier. The pain. I’ve read all of the self-help books, done all of the online chat groups. They say it’s supposed to, that these stages of grief act as a tool to pull you out of the misery. If they are, they never helped me. Nothing has lessened, the agony in my body from missing Joel everyday has not waned. You don’t understand, Carson. Sure, you lost someone. But he and I, my brother, we started
together. We were created together, in the same moment. Do you know how rare that is? To share every single second of your life with someone? And he left it, way before I thought I’d ever have to live without him. Moving on isn’t possible.”

  I’ve done the self-help books too. I’ve done the drinking and the drug-hazed stupors. I’ve done the other women, not many, but enough to know that there is no one in this world for me but her.

  “I can’t begin to understand what it feels like for you, because you’re your own person. Your pain is real and so is your heartbreak. But take a second, Blake. Just take a goddamn second to consider me.”

  My blood flares in my veins, and anger I didn’t know I held towards her rears its ugly head.

  “Take a second to consider what it’s been like for me. You two were my world; you were the air that I needed to breathe. And in five minutes, I lost you both. I see Joel’s face in that car every time I shut my eyes. I bare the scars to remember it. And you, God … in the one moment I needed you most, you turned against me. Blamed me for it all. Left us so hurt and torn that it caused a rip in the fabric of our lives. You lost someone that day, but I lost two people, Blake. The two people who mattered most.”

  The room is silent with what we’re not saying, and the tension in the air is so palpable that it’s got its hands wrapped around my neck. I want her to say something, anything. Fight with me, throw a vase at me, punch me … anything.

  But instead, her eyes go dark like a moon too out of orbit to see. “You should go call the tow truck from your car. I don’t want you in my house anymore.”

  My hands shake from where they just touched her skin. “Blake, we have to talk about this.”

  “I’m not ready.” She turns her back on me, just like she did a decade ago.

  “It’s been ten years, when will it be enough time?”

  She turns, the record getting stuck on the vinyl, stuttering on the needle. Such a perfect metaphor for our relationship.

  There is no use pushing her more today. Twice I’ve actually spoken to her since I’ve been back, and twice she’s let me in a fraction only to shove me out a mile. Hopefully, I’ll be able to break her all the way down with more time.

  “Thank you for the phone number, and for the time to dry. I hope that I’ll see you again soon.”

  Blake doesn’t speak as I walk out of the room and down the stairs that are so familiar, I remember the creaky one towards the bottom.

  The tow truck doesn’t come for another forty minutes because of the storm. Every second of which is spent sitting in front of the Sayer house, looking up at the windows to see if Blake is staring down at me.

  She never once looks.

  13

  Blake

  So while I might be on my lonely island of isolation, I wasn't completely alone all of the time. Living out in the sand dunes, your neighbors became a source of family and help when you needed it.

  Case in point, my monthly dinner with the residents of Carova. Since the accident ten years ago, I haven’t been very social. There was the two years at North Carolina State, and those had been a train wreck, and then I'd cut my losses and come home. Since then, I’d pretty much kept to myself. I talked to Aunt Carolyn, emailed with my clients, occasionally smiled at grocery store clerks, and gathered once a month for a potluck dinner with the full-time residents of Carova.

  Nelly, the seventy-year-old woman who lived a few houses down from me, had set it up two years ago. She’d insisted we needed to know who was out here three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and if they could do anything to help us. The very first dinner had been a who’s who of skills. I was the computer whiz, and could help anyone fix their Internet or PC. Nelly was good with cooking, and always had extra sugar or milk on hand. Her husband Alfred knew electric inside and out; he’d fixed my generator after a particularly bad storm. Megan, the woman whose house bordered the back of my property, was a genius with cars and could fix anything that might be wrong. The married couple on the cul-de-sac, Jim and Betsy, were great when it came to travel plans, whether you needed to get out, rent your house out, or have someone come and visit you.

  There were thirty of us total, the people who occupied this isolated haven. We all knew the horses by name; we all knew the rules of living out here. We helped each other out, even if we weren’t the most social bugs. Hell, we lived out on a strip of sand, clearly we didn’t want much human interaction.

  But tonight was the night. We had a rotating schedule of whose house it would be hosted at, and my stomach was swinging from nausea to paranoia with all of these people in my home for this month’s dinner. The noise was foreign, the people sitting on my things unseen for such a long time. I’d cooked homemade macaroni and cheese, meatballs with red sauce, key lime pie, and chocolate walnut cookies. All my specialities, all so not meshing with the others. Everyone in the neighborhood brought what they could cook best, and we had a sampling of the randomest foods under the sun.

  A tiny part of me craved this, and had a lot of fun conversing and socializing for a night. But I was so out of practice that it felt awkward, stilted.

  “Oh that horse is just beautiful, isn’t she?” Nelly was speaking to Jim in the corner of my living room, by the record player.

  My mind flashes back to a wet Carson holding me in the same spot.

  “That she is. I think the other one is pregnant too, Harriet. She looks like she’s pregnant. Maybe I’ll call the association and check.” He taps his finger on his chin.

  “Oh, I heard the Cole boy is running the joint now. A fancy vet and everything …”

  I pass by and Nelly hushes, not wanting me to hear her conversation about Carson. Too late.

  She’ll likely know from rumors just what went down between him and my family. She didn’t live here at the time, but anyone who moves to Carova knows how Joel Sayer died. There’s a gravestone down by the water and everything.

  “Blake, how is the job with the association going?” Victoria, an older woman with vibrant hair that she dyes a shocking shade of orange, asks me.

  “Job? I’m not working with the association.” I set my plate of food down.

  “Oh, someone saw you in a meeting with them last week, we all assumed you were doing their books.” How the hell did she know that? God, the gossip in this town.

  “No, they offered me some graphic work, but I turned them down.” Not that this was anyone’s business.

  Nelly spoke up. “What?! You would be great for them; their logo is so outdated. You should say yes.”

  Part of me just thought Nelly wanted to meddle. She’d been on me for a long time about a boyfriend, and I’d yet to date anyone under her steady watch. She knew my history with Carson … maybe she thought it would lead to something. I knew she wanted the best for me, but I kept my neighbors on a need-to-know basis. At arm’s length.

  “Yeah, you’d be so great. Your work is killer.” Megan nodded her head. I’d done all sorts of marketing materials for her auto business six months back.

  In my head, the wheels started to turn. What colors I’d choose, what horse graphics or stock photos. If I’d include the ocean, or Jeeps. Designing for the association would be fun …

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  It was a bad idea. But once the artistic side of my brain got going, I couldn’t do anything else but design until the creation was out on the page.

  A knock on my door was the last thing I was expecting. When you’re a recluse with a penchant for hiding from anyone or anything that comes within fifty feet of your house, you’re typically not inviting anyone to come over. And in Carova, drop-by visits aren’t really the norm.

  I walk down the stairs of the second floor to the landing that houses the front door. Peeking over the stairwell, so that they can’t see me through the stained glass, I see a woman standing on my front porch.

  A very familiar looking woman.

  Understanding blossoms in my chest, and I know immediately why she’s here. W
alking down the steps as she rings the bell again, I open the front door for her.

  “You can’t just email me the most amazing fucking graphics and then not answer!”

  Melissa struts into my house as if I’m hiding marketing materials under my bed where she can’t find them. And to be fair, I did do exactly what she’s accusing.

  After the dinner with my neighbors, the next day I had to sit down at my computer and create the entire gamut of marketing materials for the North Carolina Wild Horse Association. Business cards, pens, signs, T-shirts, bookmarks, Facebook ads, tiny horse figurines … anything you can imagine, I toyed around with it.

  And then stupidly, in my hectic excitement, I’d gone to Melissa’s email in my inbox and sent them to her. I usually got on a design high; I was so hyped up about the cool graphics I’d created that I had to share them with someone.

  Except this someone had been the exact person I shouldn’t have done that with. I’d already told Carson I wanted nothing to do with his business, had stormed out of lunch. A lunch Melissa had graciously set up. And come to think of it, I’d never apologized.

  “Come on in.” I wave a hand sarcastically, my socialization overdrive too much right now.

  I didn’t expect to be around another person so soon after the dinner, and it was grating. I used to be the life of the party, the girl who everyone wanted to be around. But maybe that was because I was attached to Joel and Carson. Now? I couldn’t go two days being around people. It was grating on my nerves like a shredder on Parmesan.

  “She has a sarcastic side, who knew?” Melissa looks at me, an eyebrow raised in appreciation.

  The petite brunette walks up the stairs to my main living area, completely uninvited.

  “Um, excuse me …”

  “Do you live here all by yourself? Damn girl, I can barely afford my apartment above the ice cream shop next to the office. Maybe that’s because I have an online shopping addiction and a weakness for Sephora, but whatever.” Melissa shrugs like she isn’t talking a mile a minute.