Death Comes Home

by K. J. Emrick

  “Daddy!” Colby squealed from the kitchen.

  Darcy blinked. Had Colby just said… Daddy?

  “Jon?” she whispered. He wasn’t supposed to be home for two days. At least, that had been the plan. Although the way Colby had just sounded didn’t leave much doubt about it. She only ever got that excited for her daddy. Or her mommy.

  So Jon must be home.

  The dark feelings surged within her.

  Making her feet work, Darcy pushed herself to follow Colby into the kitchen. Everything looked like it should. The countertop where she’d left last night’s dishes. The stove with its blue teakettle. The white erase board on the front of the fridge that outlined this week’s chores. Colby sat at the table, happily pretending to feed an apple to her Bittie Bunny.

  “Hi, Mommy,” she said, not looking up from her stuffie. “See who’s here?”

  Darcy sucked in a sharp breath. Colby wasn’t alone at the table.

  She was sitting with her father. Jon was here.

  Only, he wasn’t. Not really.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

  Darcy couldn’t answer. She could only stare at the transparent form of her husband sitting there, staring back at her, smiling a sad smile. Her hands began to tremble and she needed to lean against the wall for support. How many times had she seen this, with other people? How many times had she sat and talked with people who weren’t really there… because…

  Because they were ghosts.

  The feeling from earlier squirmed inside of her again, and now she understood why it felt so different.

  Tears flooded her eyes and made it even harder to see the dim outline of him. Jon’s face, so ruggedly handsome, was turned up so that she could look straight into his blue eyes. He wore the same clothes he’d been wearing when he left to go to that symposium with Grace. Black slacks. A white button-up shirt. Casual police clothes that were suitable for a police chief representing his small town department at a conference.

  He held a hand out to her, and Darcy reached out to take it before she knew what she was doing. Her husband wasn’t really here. She couldn’t hold his hand. She would never be able to hold his hand again. This was only his ghost.

  Jon Tinker was dead.

  The world stopped spinning. The walls of her perfect life came crashing down on her and it was all she could do to keep standing under the weight of it all. How could this… no. It couldn’t be. Oh God, please don’t let this be real.

  Colby looked at her oddly. “Mommy, don’t you want to give Daddy a kiss? He’s really lonely where he is.”

  That was exactly what she wanted to do. Darcy wanted nothing more in that moment than to hold Jon. Kiss him, talk to him, feel his breath on her cheek and hear his heart beating against her chest. She wanted that like she’d never wanted anything in her life before. Only, she couldn’t have that. Not now, not ever. Jon wasn’t coming home ever again.

  The rational side of her brain tried to make it make sense. Police work was a dangerous profession, and she had lived with her man for years knowing that he could be hurt any day he went to work. She had always known that, but now that she was faced with the stark, horrible reality of it she found herself fighting against the truth. She did not want it to be true. She did not want to be sitting here talking to her husband’s ghost.

  If only wishing could make it so.

  “Jon, please… don’t do this to me.”

  Jon lifted his hand to his mouth, his fingers curled around the handle of a cup of coffee that was just suddenly there. He took two sips, set the cup down, and spun it slowly by the top.

  Darcy gasped and put her hand up over her mouth. She remembered that moment. She had lived it, with Jon, right here in this kitchen a few days ago. Before he left to go to his conference. It was like he was living it all over again… if that was the right phrase.

  Then the coffee cup was gone, and he gave her that sad smile again. With one finger he pointed at the table. As Darcy held onto the counter to balance herself, their daughter leaned in closer and watched Jon begin moving his finger back and forth, back and forth.

  Darcy was drawn in by the hypnotic movement of it. Back and forth, back and forth.

  Back… Forth…

  A knocking sound jarred her down to her toes. Her head whipped around to see the dark silhouette of a man through the curtained window of the front door. After she could manage to swallow her heart back into her chest she called out, “Just a moment!”

  Then she turned back to the kitchen table, and Jon’s ghost was gone.

  “Daddy said he had to go,” Colby explained, playing with Bittie Bunny again. “He wanted me to tell you that he loves you.”

  “Um. Colby?” Darcy tried not to cry. She couldn’t break down and sob. Not in front of her daughter. Not until she knew what was going on. “Did Daddy, um… did Daddy say when he’d be back?”

  The girl shrugged. “I think he said later. Can we have pancakes now?”

  Knock knock knock.

  “Sure, Sweetie,” she told Colby, wiping away the moisture from her cheeks. “In a few minutes. All right? I have to talk to the nice man at the door first.”

  She had a feeling she knew exactly what was going to be waiting for her when she opened the door. Maybe not the who, exactly, but definitely the what. Someone was waiting to talk to her. They were bringing her a message.

  Her hand hesitated on the doorknob. “Who’s there?”

  “Darcy,” said a familiar voice. “It’s me. It’s Sean Fitzwallis.”

  Sergeant Sean Fitzwallis had been a family friend for a long time. Their relationship had been complicated to be sure, and the secrets that he’d kept from her had nearly crushed her, but in the past few years he’d managed to redeem himself in her eyes. Jon’s too, which was why Jon had kept him on at the police department.

  “Sean, this isn’t really a good time,” she called out to him through the door.

  Instead of leaving, Sean knocked again. “Can I… Darcy, we need to talk. Please open up.”

  Darcy closed her eyes. Of course he needed to talk to her. Jon’s ghost had just been sitting at their kitchen table, and now the police were at her door. To talk. It could only be about one thing. Her husband, and why his ghost had been here in her kitchen.

  Barely able to breathe, feeling like she was moving in slow motion, she opened up the door. Sean Fitzwallis, tall and thin with a full head of graying hair, stood uneasily on her porch. He shifted from foot to foot in his blue uniform, the shoulders a bit droopy on his frame, the brass polished and the seams ironed in. His hat was in his hand, and he rolled it in his fingers, never quite meeting her eyes.

  “Darcy. Um. I’m so sorry to come here. Like this.”

  Amazingly, Darcy found her voice. She just wanted him to come out and say it already. Say that her husband was dead, so she could get answers to the questions bubbling inside her skull. “Sean,” she said to him. “What happened?”

  He sighed. “Darcy, there’s been an accident.”

  An accident. Was that what had killed Jon? It sounded too simple. Her husband was dead and there should be earthquakes and fires and floods and the whole world should know that something was wrong, because Jon Tinker was dead.

  Then Sean took another breath and told her the rest.

  “It’s your sister, Darcy. It’s Grace. She was in an accident, and she’s hurt bad.”

  Around her, the world came to a crushing stop for the second time.

  Chapter Two

  Misty Hollow wasn’t a big enough place to have its own hospital. Maybe someday, considering how things were going for the town, but not now. So, Sean brought them to the hospital over in Meadowood. Saint John Camilus Hospital. Darcy had always thought she spent way too much time there, for one reason or another. Like sneaking into the hospital morgue to investigate a mystery. Now, she was going back there for what might be the worst moment of her life. Her sister was badly hurt, and lying in a hospital bed.

&n
bsp; But would Jon’s body be there, too?

  The whole way, Sean kept watching Darcy out of the corner of his eye as if he was expecting her to ask a slew of questions. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  Perhaps, because she knew at least part of the answers.

  Grace and Jon had driven together to the conference, in her beat up old sedan. They’d left Jon’s car at the station, and gone together. Darcy had been telling her sister for a couple of years now that she needed to get a new car after everything she’d put that one through but she just loved the thing so much… Anyway. They had been together.

  Now Grace was in the hospital after an accident. Jon’s ghost was in her kitchen.

  The answers pretty much scripted themselves.

  This was not how I wanted to start my day, she thought to herself. With a thin smile she added this was not how she would want to start any day.

  Oh, Jon…

  Sean stayed with her when they went inside, straight past the reception desk and to the elevators that went up to the patient rooms. On the second floor, down the hall, she could see a room guarded by two of Misty Hollow’s police officers. That was the room that Sean led her to.

  At the door, he told her to go on inside. He’d wait out here.

  The beeping of the machines inside the room was what Darcy noticed first. They beat out a strong and steady rhythm. It was a safe sound, and it gave her the courage to go in further and push aside the hanging curtain from around the one occupied bed. When she did, her sister Grace smiled at her weakly, propped up on pillows and covered neck to foot in stiff white blankets. Wires taped to her skin under a hospital gown led to monitors displaying numbers next to moving lines. None of it meant anything to Darcy.

  “Hey, Sis.” Grace’s voice was weak, and considering what she’d been through it was no wonder.

  Not that Darcy had all the details yet. From the little bit Sean had told her she figured the accident had been bad. What she saw now confirmed it for her.

  The head of the bed was raised for Grace to sit up. Her right arm was set in a cast that left only her fingers poking out. Purple bruises puffed her cheeks around both eyes, obscuring the family resemblance between her and Darcy, but it was still there if you knew where to look. It was in the color of her eyes, and the dark shade of her hair.

  Darcy had always been able to read her sister’s face. She read pain there now, even as she tried to smile. A lot more than Grace was letting on.

  “Don’t you ‘hey sis’ me,” Darcy said, her voice a lot harsher than she’d meant it to be. She wanted to be comforting. She wanted to be concerned and caring and loving, but all she could be was worried.

  Jon, she thought. Tell me about Jon.

  “Grace, what happened?”

  “Oh, Darcy.” Grace reached out to her, with her uninjured hand, and suddenly the tears that both sisters had fought to control were falling freely. “It was bad, Sis. One minute I was driving, the next I was upside down in a ditch. The car… kind of disintegrated around me. I’ve been to dozens of accident scenes, Darcy. None of them were this bad.”

  “I’ve been in a couple myself,” Darcy offered.

  “Not like this.” She nodded, her eyes focused off into the distance, like she was reliving the accident in her mind. Then she shivered and blinked the memories away. “So, where’s Colby?”

  “I left her at the bookstore with Izzy. I didn’t want to send her to school after… you know. I didn’t want her to see you like this, either. Plus, I needed some time, you know? To figure out how to explain things to her.”

  “I appreciate that, Sis, but really. I’ll be fine. Aaron said the same thing about Addison. He kept our daughter out of school too so he could talk to her and make sure she was prepared to see me. Can you believe that? I mean, come on. I’m fine. I’m just banged up real good.”

  Darcy had meant she needed time to decide how to explain to Colby what had happened to Jon, but she figured Grace knew what she meant. It would be hard enough telling a five-year-old that her daddy wasn’t coming home any more. With Colby, it would be even harder. It was going to be nearly impossible to explain things when she could see her father’s ghost just like he was really sitting at the dining table with her, watching her eat breakfast just like he always did.

  Colby was special. Special didn’t always mean easy.

  Her lips were trembling, and she needed to push herself to ask Grace, again, what had happened. She needed to know, and at the same time she was afraid to.

  “There was another car,” Grace began with a hitching breath. “It came out of nowhere, down a side road, and slammed right into my car. It pushed me off into the ditch… I must’ve rolled like a dozen times. When I came back to my senses I was here. I don’t remember the in between parts.”

  Lifting her arm up in its cast, she grimaced. “Something tells me I’m glad I don’t remember any of it.”

  Darcy leaned across her sister and gave her a gentle hug. The two of them stayed there for a long time, listening to the machines keeping track of Grace’s breathing and heartbeat and life.

  It took several attempts before she could find enough breath to ask, “What about Jon?”

  Grace pushed her back to the edge of the bed. “Jon? What happened to Jon?”

  “Nobody told you…?

  “Told me what?”

  It felt like someone had just hit her between the eyes with a steel rod. Looking into Grace’s eyes, Darcy could see it was true. Grace didn’t know. She hadn’t heard. Well technically Darcy hadn’t heard the news yet, either. She only knew because Jon had come to see her. Sean hadn’t said anything about it, and Darcy hadn’t been brave enough to ask. No doubt he could see that Darcy already knew about Jon. He must have figured someone else had told her, and no need to pour salt into that wound. Grace was Jon’s partner, though. Somebody really should have told her.

  Apparently, it would have to come from her.

  “Grace,” Darcy said, slowly working herself up to saying the words out loud, “when the accident happened, you were driving, right?”

  “Well, sure. Hard to get anywhere in a car unless you’re driving.” Grace tried for a laugh and couldn’t find it. “The crash wasn’t my fault, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

  “No, Grace, that’s not it at—”

  “Listen, Darcy, that other car came out of nowhere.”

  “I get that, Grace, I get it. I was only trying—”

  “I’m telling you, it’s just like I was targeted. The guy didn’t even try to stop. He rammed me… so hard…” She lifted her one good hand to cover her mouth as the muscles in her jaws flexed. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. And that includes the time Aaron got kidnapped. I thought I was dead. I was there in that car for hours before they found me.”

  “Nobody’s blaming you,” Darcy promised.

  “They better not. The guy rammed me. On purpose. I’m telling you, Darcy, I was a target. This accident? It was no accident.”

  Silence fell between them. Darcy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The accident was an attack? Someone had used a car as a weapon and tried to kill Grace. And Jon was… dead.

  Darcy squeezed her eyes shut tight and gave herself a moment to think. Who would want to kill Grace and Jon? Well. Actually that was a pretty long list. There were any number of people that the two of them had put in jail over the years. She’d never thought of it this way before, but there actually might be lots of people who wanted her husband and her sister dead.

  Police work had always been dangerous. She knew that when she first started dating Jon. Then they’d gotten married and had a baby and made a life, and in all that time it never occurred to her that someone might get angry enough to kill Jon.

  “Grace,” she said, bringing her thoughts back to the present. “Nobody blames you for what happened. Now if you were targeted… who do you think would have wanted to kill you and Jon?”

  “Well, there’s a few p
eople I… wait. What did you just say?”

  “I asked who would have done this. Maybe if we went through some of your old cases. The ones you and Jon worked together.”

  “Darcy, what’s Jon got to do with this?”

  Reaching out, Darcy laid her hand over Grace’s fingers in their cast. “Okay. I know this is going to be tough to hear. I was sure someone would have told you by now but I guess, I don’t know… I guess they were waiting for you to recover a little more. I mean, Sean Fitzwallis came to get me at my house and didn’t talk to me about it either.”

  Grace searched her sister’s eyes. “Darcy, what are you talking about?”

  “The accident, Grace. The one that put you here and broke your arm. Jon…” She took a moment to steady herself. “It killed Jon. He’s dead, Grace. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I know that. So let’s figure out whose fault it is. Together. Let’s figure out who did this and put them away forever. Let me help you. Please? Don’t give me that line about how this is just for cops, okay? This one is personal. For me, it’s personal. I have to do this. For me, and for Jon.”

  The machines beeped. Outside of that room, time ticked by in seconds, and then minutes. Finally, Grace spoke again.

  “Darcy, I don’t understand. What happened to Jon?”

  “I know,” Darcy said, still trying to accept it herself. “Jon didn’t make it out of the accident, Grace. Please, understand. This is hard enough as it is.”

  “But… Darcy,” her sister said. “Jon wasn’t in the car with me. I was the only one there.”

  ***

  Darcy sat in one of the chairs set up down the hall from her sister’s room. They were green and padded, meant for people who were waiting to visit loved ones. People could sit here for as long as they wanted to and worry, or pray, or contemplate the mysteries of life.

  Right now, Darcy was doing a little bit of all three.

  The chairs were actually very uncomfortable, and she doubted anyone would choose to sit in them if they didn’t absolutely have to. They pinched her legs, and they leaned way too far back, and the fabric crackled with every move she made. So she sat very still and ignored the crick she was developing in her back, and continued to stare at the black and white tile squares on the floor. Somewhere not far away, a voice over the intercom speaker called for a nurse in room one-oh-four. Televisions in patient rooms droned softly. Someone coughed. To Darcy, it was all just background noise.