by Lyla Payne
It’s not because she’s dead and sitting here. It’s not even because I knew her, and three days ago she was alive and giving people abominable haircuts. The look in her eyes says that whatever I’m about to learn about her, I’m not going to like.
And maybe she doesn’t like having to tell me.
“I guess it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing since no one else can see you. Right?” I glance around, jumpy. Amelia’s reminder not to talk to invisible people rings in my ears, and I lower my voice again. “Maybe we could just get on with it. Lose the cryptic hesitance and the lip biting and start pointing me in the right direction? Hm?”
Her reluctant gaze falls to my phone, then raises to my face, then drops to my phone again. I pick it up off the grass and hold it out, my chest squeezing at the thought of going through a second round of ghostly charades. “Well? Do you want me to scroll through my contacts? Or … ?”
She shrugs, then nods, every pore of her wispy body oozing dread. It drips onto the bench between us, as though she’s dissolving into a puddle of distress.
“Fine. Here we go.”
I drag my finger down the contact list, moving slowly past the names. There aren’t many left since everyone that I spent time with in Iowa was deleted from my life along with David. The ghost of Glinda Davis sits up straighter when the Ls appear, and a shimmery arm raises to point a transparent finger when the name Leo Boone crosses the center of my screen.
“You think I should ask Leo about you?” The revelation doesn’t please me. Leo’s still blessedly in the dark about my new talent—the only one of my old acquaintances who is—and the idea of telling him stings my eyes with tears. “But what do I ask him?”
She disappears the same moment I hear a stick snap on the ground behind me.
“Are you Graciela?” a jovial, bemused voice asks.
Oh, good night nurse. Why couldn’t I follow the one piece of very sound advice offered by my cousin?
I turn, breathing through my nose and hoping the expression on my face resembles something other than a shithouse rat. The man standing a few paces behind me isn’t tall. A handsome, babyish face and a mop of dark blond hair sit atop a wiry frame, and the faint smile on his face doesn’t match the slight concern in his light blue eyes.
“Yes?” Heavens, I wish I could say no. But Heron Creek is too small to have good hiding places.
“Oh, good.” He pauses, looking around. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one.” To the stranger’s credit, he lets that go without comment and even manages to corral a stray raised eyebrow in the space of a breath or two. “Who are you?”
“Brick Drayton.”
“Drayton.”
“I’m Beau’s younger, much more handsome and affable brother. He asked me to come find you.”
I shoot to my feet, my stomach rattling around in my knees. Fabulous. The first impression I make on Beau’s family is me sitting alone by the river, talking to myself. “Hi. I mean, it’s nice to meet you.”
It’s a tad strange that Beau never mentioned having a brother. Even after a closer look, the brothers don’t resemble each other much at all. Beau never really talks about his family at all, with the exception of the day we rescued Amelia from her husband Jacob Middleton’s violence. And that had only been to allude to the fact that his childhood had been less than ideal, despite the distinguished family name and piles of money so old they’ve probably molded.
“Do you want me to leave you alone with your … phone? I can always tell my brother you were nowhere to be found. Far be it from me to disturb a lady.”
I shake my head, uncomfortable for some reason, especially when I see Randy Wideman glance my direction as he hurries from the trees back to the house.
“No. It’s fine. I was looking for my cousin, but she’s not here. I mean, no one’s here.” Pressing my lips together barely traps more nervous words that try to somersault off my tongue. Brick Drayton, for his part, looks to be suppressing something of his own—amusement.
“Well, right this way.”
“I can find him. Thank you, though.”
“You know, I’m not surprised you’re the independent type,” he says conversationally, keeping pace with me as I try to leave him behind. “My big brother has never gone for meek women.”
“I don’t know what he’s told you, but I’m not his woman.”
That makes him chuckle, but he drops the subject, keeping pace in silence until the noises from the party would make talking quietly impossible. I spot Beau up on the deck, leaning back against the waist-high railing and holding court with a group that still includes Mrs. Massie. Of course.
Amelia is still nowhere to be found, but it is creeping past nine o’clock. She usually passes out before eight. Growing a human being seems exhausting. A quick check of my phone reveals a missed call and a voicemail, which dispels my knee jerk worry.
Beau looks up and sees me as I step onto the deck. A smile starts but arrests when he spots his brother over my shoulder. “Brick. I didn’t know you were here.”
His voice vibrates like a plucked banjo string. It jitters confusion through me, followed quickly by indignation, and I whirl on Brick. “You said he asked you to come find me.”
There’s no response to my accusation other than a smirk, so I step to Beau’s side. I’ve got plenty of drama in my own life and family without adding the Draytons’ to the mix, and based on my limited experience with old money, it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.
“He said you asked him to come find me,” I repeat, looking at Beau this time.
His gold-green eyes soften as they sweep my face. His fingers grip my waist, as tight as his voice. As stiff as his smile. “It’s not your fault.”
Discomfort ripples through the assembled group, manifesting in cleared throats and shuffling feet, but if there’s one thing the mayor knows how to do it’s put people at ease. He introduces his brother to a chorus of nods and nice to meet yous, but Ms. Massie uses the first good lull to ruin my night further.
“So, Graciela, I hear you’ve started seeing ghosts now?” Her hawklike eyes rend my confidence like talons.
“I’m sorry?” I manage. The weight and heat of every other set of eyes in the circle—which includes Beau’s brother and the town’s new detective—slam into me like bullets. It’s hard to stand up, hard not to turn and run, but goddammit, I ran here.
Heron Creek’s supposed to be my sanctuary, and even after losing Gramps, I have to believe it is. Regardless of the few-and-far-between bitches like Mel’s mother.
“I heard Melanie and William talking about it a few weeks ago, during that horrible mess with the Caribbean woman from the library. Something about you sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong on account of Anne Bonny’s ghost.”
There are a million explanations. For one, people are always claiming to see Anne Bonny around these parts and no one thinks they’re crazy. A little touched, maybe, or a tad drunk—either of which could describe me—but not clinically insane or anything.
Then there’s the minor detail that Melanie’s own family history tangles with Anne Bonny’s, through her friend Mary Read—and that Ms. Massie is an eavesdropping horror show—but the fact that I’m standing here with Beau and a bunch of people who I’m supposed to be impressing makes defending myself harder than it should be. “I’m sure you misheard them, ma’am. You know how it is when you’re straining to hear conversations. Especially at your age.”
Her face goes white, especially her lips as she presses them together. The discomfort in our circle expands, grows jaws, and snaps at my fingers and the edges of my clothes. The air goes out of Beau, and the only person in the group who’s not horrified is Brick; he looks like a little kid who came downstairs Christmas morning to find an already-hooked-up PlayStation.
Or whatever the cool thing is these days.
Despite my snotty bravado, my throat burns. Shame and humiliation and the desire to go home a
nd pull the covers over my head wells up, along with the tears, and I swallow. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m not feeling well. I’ll talk to you later, Mr. Mayor. Happy birthday.”
I’m halfway around the house with fresh-cut grass sticking to my ankles when Beau catches up with me. I keep walking until we’re around front, out of earshot, and do my best to swallow the lump in my throat. He tugs me into his arms, which doesn’t help anything in regard to controlling my emotions, but despite the fact that I don’t want to, I let him hold me.
“Graciela, stop overreacting to this ghost thing. It’s going to be okay,” he murmurs against the top of my head.
I put my hands against his chest and push, taking a few steps back and trying harder than ever to harness my building eruption. “Stop saying that! People aren’t going to think you’re crazy. Except that you want to spend time with me, of course.”
“Gracie …”
“Don’t Gracie me. I mean, could this night have illustrated how horrible of an idea this is any better? Your brother caught me talking to Glinda down by the river—of course, he thinks I was out there having a conversation with my addled self—and Eula Massie just informed your friends and family that I’m off my damn rocker.”
“But you’re not off your rocker. You’re beautiful and smart and determined, and for some reason, you can see things other people can’t. You’re not giving the people in this town enough credit. They embraced you as a child, and they’re ready to do it again. You’ve always been colorful, if half the tales they tell in the barbershop are true.”
All of that sounds lovely, and it might even be true, but I’m not sure who I am anymore. The Gracie who raised hell in Heron Creek, the one who spent her summers running around barefoot painting, people’s chickens and falling in love on muggy, salty nights by the river, is still in me somewhere, but so is the Gracie who ran away in search of grand adventures and ended up with the wrong guy, the girl who came running back here to face everyone’s I told you it would never work out expressions.
The parts haven’t reconciled yet, and I don’t know who exactly I’ll be when they do, but it won’t be the girl who chases ghosts.
I don’t think.
Chapter Four
I act like a real grownup on Sunday and avoid Beau’s phone calls. Amelia was gone when I woke up, having left a note saying she’s spending the day in Charleston with her parents but would be back in time for work on Monday morning. It means that I spent the entire day in bed with my laptop and a book on local history in yet another fruitless attempt to identify the wobbly, despondent spirit who has started to spend more time with me than not.
I’m planning to give Millie the lowdown when she gets to work—she’s already fifteen minutes late—but in the meantime I’m going through the archives trying to reorganize so I can figure out the best way to expand.
“Hey. Sorry I’m late.” My cousin peers into the archives, squinting a little in the beams of light. The grooves around her eyes, deeper than they looked even a couple of days ago, make me frown. The red lines spinning spiderwebs through the whites don’t improve the picture. Whatever she went home to Charleston to find obviously didn’t do her much good.
“It’s okay. What happened to you the other night?” I ended up walking home after saying goodnight to Beau because the car was gone. Millie’s message had explained, but still. “I could have gotten snatched by a witch lady on the way home.”
Amelia winces. “That’s not funny.”
“I know.”
She wanders over, trailing her fingers across the piles of papers on the room’s main table without seeing them, then sits in the chair across from me. Fatigue washes the pink from her cheeks and leaves deposits of gray under her distracted eyes. “How did the party go?”
“Hm. I met Beau’s brother.”
“He has a brother?”
“Yes. And he caught me talking to Glinda—or, you know, thin air—down by the river.”
“Oh, Grace.” My story slumps her shoulders, as though she’s mere inches away from folding into a square so small it might disappear. “We talked about that.”
“Well, she showed up. I forgot.” I pause, eyeing her. “And then Mel’s Aunt Eula called me out about seeing Anne Bonny in front of a group of people that included employees at Beau’s office and the new detective.”
“You mean Dylan Travis?” She perks up slightly, ignoring the tragic piece of my story in favor of something that doesn’t seem all that interesting to me. “He’s handsome. I met him the other day at the pharmacy. He was buying an armload of antacid.”
“That’s not surprising, given the fact that he’s got absolutely no sense of humor. But did you hear me? The party was a disaster. Everyone Beau knows—including his family—is more sure than ever that I’m an unbalanced freak show.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be,” she murmurs, distracted by the window, by the world inside her head, once again.
It makes me impatient. Not that my relationship with the mayor is the most important thing in our lives, or that I expect it to be the constant topic of conversation, but she disappeared on Saturday night and I haven’t seen her since.
But I have to remember that Millie’s husband just died—that she was forced to shoot him. That she’s carrying his child, a little boy that the insane enforcer of a centuries-old curse would like to murder. And the frustration in my heart softens to worry. “Millie. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
It’s a dumb question, because I know the answer.
“Everything, Grace. Everything’s wrong.” Her eyes fill with tears that she doesn’t bother to blink back. “What am I going to tell my son about his father? About what I did? About why I’m going to watch him like a hawk for the first thirteen years of his life?”
The questions are like razor blades, each syllable scraping her throat more raw until her lips seem to bleed pain. My chest squeezes, and my hand covers hers, holding on for dear life. A million responses flicker through my mind, dying like cooling embers before they can catch fire. There’s nothing I can say to make this better.
When her eyes meet mine, I give her a tight smile. “I don’t have answers, but I’m here for you. We’re in this together, and we have time. The most important thing is for you to get better, get your head wrapped around your new life, and move forward. He’s going to need his mother more than answers, Millie.”
“I know. You’re right. I’m working on it.” She sits up and reaches for the stack of documents closest to her, straightening them into random piles. “Remind me not to go talk to my mother the next time I’m feeling blue. That was the opposite of helpful.”
“Yeah, I totally could have told you that.”
“What did you do all day yesterday?”
“Stayed in bed. Read some more local history books, poked around on the computer looking for my mystery man.” I wish Glinda would show up again so I could get on with figuring out what she wants, but she hasn’t. I left Leo a message but he hasn’t called me back, either. He took his niece on a fishing trip over the weekend.
“Find anything?” I shake my head, and Amelia purses her lips. “You’re supposed to be some kind of historian, right? Can’t we get any clues from his clothing?”
I give her a look. “I’m some kind of historian, but as I’m sure you’re aware, history spans a few millennia and I’m not an expert on all of them. Plus, he changes clothes.”
“He changes? Anne Bonny always wore the same thing.” She sits forward, some of her lethargy falling away to make room for curiosity.
“I’m learning that Anne was more the exception than the rule. She was steady. Focused and determined. It makes sense that she appeared as a pirate, because that’s how she identified herself. This guy … sometimes he’s in, like, maybe seventeenth-century British garb? Other times he’s dressed like a pirate, other times he’s almost naked. He dons a Spanish hat and shoes on occasion. It’s weird.”
“So, we’re looking for a seventeenth-century Englishman who’s also Spanish, and who may or may not have spent time as a pirate.”
“And enjoyed airing out his boys.”
“You’d think that would be easy.”
“You’d think. Except if he’s not well-known enough to be in the history books or local archives, then it’s going to be a lot harder.” An idea hits me in the middle of my own lament, makes me sit up straighter too. I’d been sleepy before Millie arrived, but now the thrill-of-the-hunt adrenaline pops in my blood. “Maybe that’s what he wants. To be remembered.”
“Isn’t that what we all want?” she murmurs.
Not me. At this point, I’d be happy to be forgotten—my embarrassing engagement, my involvement with Anne Bonny. Finding Glinda. All of it.
Well, maybe not life up to the age of eighteen. That had been largely okay.
A bell tinkles, signaling the arrival of a patron. It’s the first one of the day, so I leave Amelia to clean up in the archives and head out front to do my job.
My step hitches at the sight of Detective Travis, but I force a smile onto my face. “Good morning, Detective. Can I recommend a good book?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to comment on how tired he looks, to make some quip about how he’s probably up all night angsting over the rain forests and starving kids in Africa and whether or not to grow a beard, but for once, I manage to keep my mouth shut.
He frowns. “I’m here to see you, actually.”
I stop in front of my new desk, bare except for typical office implements since we cleaned it out after Mrs. LaBadie’s departure—I can’t wait to display a picture of my new little cousin in a few months—and I lean back against it, trying to appear calm. I didn’t do anything wrong. But having to talk to him, to answer more questions about how and why we ended up at Glinda’s that night makes me grip the edge of the desk.
Lies are lies, and if there’s one thing a liar can count on, it’s that they always come out eventually.