by Minard, Tori
Let’s face it, talking to your invisible friend isn’t nearly as bizarre as hugging that friend.
“You know, you don’t need Caroline’s cooperation to deal with any of this,” Fred commented.
“I realize that.”
The problem was I wanted it. I wanted an excuse to spend more time with her and I wanted to protect her from whatever spirit entity was trying to intrude on her. Not that I thought Caroline was in danger, but I didn’t like the idea of her being made uncomfortable or afraid.
She claimed not to believe in ghosts. I’d seen fear in her eyes, though, when she’d described the blonde to me. Part of her believed, even if she hated to admit it. And she was no witch, like Selene; she’d have no tools or experience to fall back on in this situation.
Damn it. What was I doing? The only reason I was friendly toward Caroline was to take her from my stepbrother. I wasn’t supposed to care about her or get emotionally involved with her. I needed to get hold of myself before I blew the whole project.
A disturbing thought wormed its way into my brain. Was it truly so important that I hurt Trent? Did I really want to use Caroline that way?
I pushed out my breath without looking at Fred. Yeah, it was and I did. The gods knew he deserved some kind of consequences for everything he’d done to me over the years.
She’d seemed so upset, though, and the ghost-girl wasn’t the only reason. Trent had told her about my past. He’d put the worst spin on it that he could, probably embellishing with all kinds of bogus details.
My gut went cold at the thought that Caroline knew what I’d done. She hated me now. She judged me—I’d seen it all over her face. I’d never be able to get close to her now she knew the truth about me.
My face flushed as a wave of shame washed over me. My prick of a stepbrother would never let me get past what I’d done to Carter, no matter how many years went by. That hideous deed would follow me everywhere I went, haunting me until the day I died.
Caroline’s good opinion meant nothing to me except for the fact I wouldn’t be able to use her as a weapon against Trent if she kept avoiding me. I had to find out exactly how much she knew. Maybe I could explain myself, get her to understand.
Ah, hell, who was I kidding? Nothing could explain away the shooting death of my three-year-old brother. Nothing.
Chapter 7
Caroline
Mid-November days in the Willamette Valley tended to be rainy and cold, but the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was an exception. We had a rare blue sky and I took advantage by taking my studies outdoors to a bench outside the student union. Unfortunately, the bench was wet, something I didn’t think of until after I’d already sat down.
I hadn’t seen Max since Monday. He hadn’t even been in class this morning. He must be avoiding me.
That was sensible of him. Neither of us needed any extra drama in our lives and Trent would never tolerate me being friendly with his stepbrother, even if nothing ever happened between us. The ridiculous thing was, I couldn’t get Max out of my head. I’d thought about him every day since I’d met him, and the thoughts always came with generous sides of lust and butterflies in the stomach, even after finding out what he’d done.
I should have been catching up on my reading. But instead of pulling out my books, I took out my phone and called my mom.
“Looking forward to Thanksgiving?” she said cheerfully as soon as greetings had been exchanged.
“Yeah.” I guess. “Trent and I are leaving as soon as we’re done with our afternoon classes.”
“I hope you drive carefully, especially if you hit any ice.”
“We will.”
“You sound kind of down. You don’t want to go?”
It was always annoying when my mom saw through me so easily. She had mom superpowers, including mind reading and eyes in the back of her head.
“It’s kind of weird,” I said.
“How come? Trent’s a great kid.”
He wasn’t a kid at all, but I let that one pass. I guess to someone my mom’s age, we college students were all kids.
“I’m just not sure where this relationship is going.”
“Oh. I thought things were good between you.”
How much should I tell her? “They’re okay, I guess.”
Only they weren’t okay. I was daydreaming constantly about another guy. My feelings for Trent had gone from fantasies about marriage proposals to resentment and boredom. This wasn’t going to end well.
“He’s got a lot of potential, Caroline. And he’s so good looking.”
“Yes, he is.”
I couldn’t tell her I didn’t feel any passion for him. I mean, she’s my mom. That would be, like, the most awkward conversation in the history of all mother-daughter conversations.
“Well, I think you should go. Sometimes you have to put some work into a relationship.”
“Yeah, I know. And anyway, it’s too late to back out.”
“It’s never too late if you’re that uncomfortable. You can stay in the dorms, can’t you?”
“Yeah, mine is open for the holiday. But I don’t want to do that to him.”
The conversation lagged. I watched clumps of students pass me as they crossed the quad separating the student union from huge, old Merriweather Hall. Everyone seemed happy, lookign forward to their holiday.
“How are studies going?”
“They’re fine,” I said.
“It’s not too late to pick up a minor in education, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t want to teach.”
There was a long pause. Mom was probably trying to pull herself together on the other end. She got so worked up over the fact I didn’t have a solid career plan.
“And Paige?” she said, with a bit of strain in her voice.
“She’s great, Mom. We see each other almost every day.”
“I’m so glad you have such a good friend. Is she going home for the holiday?”
“Yeah.” Paige’s family lived down in Medford, so she’d be traveling in the opposite direction from me.
“I think it’s great that you’re getting to meet Trent’s family. He’s been to see us, so now it’s your turn to meet his folks.”
I hesitated, wondering how much I should confess to my mother. “The thing is, I found out something about him, Mom.” And that discovery had irrevocably changed the way I felt.
“Oh?”
“He has a stepbrother named Max. He never told me about him. I found out by accident.”
“Why didn’t he tell you?”
“Because Max’s family hates him. I met him on campus. He seems like a nice guy. I don’t understand why they hate him so much.”
Actually, I knew exactly why, but I didn’t want to say that to her, or go into any details about his odd involvement in magic. I didn’t want to prejudice her against Max, just in case.
In case what?
Yeah. I didn’t want to go there, not even with myself.
“That’s too bad,” my mom said. “I had no idea there was anything like that in Trent’s family.”
“Neither did I. How do you date someone for a whole year and not know something like this?”
“Maybe you’ll find out more over the holiday.”
Maybe I would. The thought of spending over three days with those people made my stomach feel like I had swallowed a really big rock, though.
“Yeah. I don’t think they’ll talk to me about him,” I said. “They hate him.”
Oops. I so did not want to explain Max’s history to my mom.
“Really,” she said. “Why is that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, you accepted Trent’s invitation already, so go up to Montana with him and do your best. You should probably avoid talking about Max. And if it doesn’t work out, at least you’ll have important information about his family.”
“Such as that I can’t get along with them?”
“Exactly.”<
br />
We both laughed. I loved my mom, even if she did push me in the direction of a life I wasn’t sure I wanted. What would she think of Max and his unorthodox beliefs?
My parents were the kind of people who thought that if you couldn’t see it, touch it, taste or hear it, then it didn’t exist. The idea of spirits and the unseen were ridiculed when I was growing up. I mean, look at Aunt Jo. She was a shining example of what could happen to people who messed around with that stuff. If I said anything about Max, or my recent experiences with Retro-girl, I’d get an earful. Or maybe just pained silence, which might be even worse.
***
It takes about fourteen hours to drive from Avery’s Crossing to Billings, and that’s if you don’t stop for lunch, snacks, and pee breaks. Of course, it’s also if you don’t drive eighty miles an hour, like Trent. Either way, we had to stop overnight in a motel somewhere in Idaho.
I wished I’d brought something beefier to wear than my pea coat. It was made of wool but relatively thin. The mountain wind drove right through it and every time I got out of the car, I was shivering nonstop.
We made Billings at four o’clock on Thanksgiving Day. Compared to Avery’s Crossing, it’s a big town but compared to Portland, not so much. At least, that was the impression I had as we drove through the outskirts and into Trent’s subdivision, one of those developments where both the lots and the houses are enormous.
A thin layer of snow covered the ground. We went past a parade of gigantic houses in all kinds of styles until he finally turned into the driveway of the biggest one of all. It looked like a lodge hotel or something, it was so huge, and all made of logs. A log castle. There was a giant bank of windows in the front and through them you could see a palatial living room glowing with lamplight from the gigantic Western-style chandelier hanging from its cathedral ceiling.
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah. Wait until you see the inside.” He pulled up in front of a separate, five-car garage and parked.
“Is this where you grew up?”
“Mostly. My stepdad built it not too long after they got married. I was six, I think. Carter was a baby.”
And Max didn’t even get a mention. Not that I could blame Trent, considering what his stepbrother had done.
I stared up at the beautiful monstrosity in front of me and tried to imagine him living here. The Max I knew didn’t seem to fit in a place like this. Of course, no-one I knew would really fit here, except maybe Trent. The house I’d grown up in was a featureless little ranch from the seventies that my dad had bought right after Aunt Jo moved out. My parents were so busy working that they’d never really updated the place and now all that seventies stuff was cool again.
But this house...this house had seen a murder. Was it haunted? Did a little boy ghost run through its rooms?
That was such an Aunt Jo train of thought that I shut myself down before I could follow it any further.
We pulled our bags from the car and scrunched through the snow to the front door, which was one of those giant double doors made to intimidate visitors with how grand they are. These were in a rustic style with wrought-iron hardware. Each door sported a wreath made of Indian corn and wheat.
One of them opened to a slim blonde of indeterminate age with a huge smile on her face. She wore an apron, but her hair was up in a French twist. She looked so much like Trent that I knew she must be his mother.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said, putting her arms around Trent. “It’s so good to see you finally.”
“Hi, Mom.” His voice was muffled against her hair.
She released him and turned her blinding smile on me. “And you must be Caroline. We’re so glad you could come for Thanksgiving. We’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Kincaid. I’m glad to be here.” A little polite lie wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?
“Come on in and put your bags away. Dinner is ready.”
We made our way into the foyer, which rose at least two stories above us. Somewhere in the stratosphere, another Western chandelier like the one in the living room dangled above our heads. A sweeping staircase with a wrought-iron banister led upward. The floor was covered in slate tiles and a mountain landscape painting hung on one wall. They were really working the Western theme here.
“I’ve put Caroline in the blue guest room,” Mrs. Kincaid said. “Go get your stuff put away and come to the kitchen.” She almost bounced with eagerness.
I gave her another polite smile as Trent led the way to the second story. I was hungry and the house smelled delicious, like roasting turkey along with something oniony and a hint of sweet spices. But I was also incredibly tired after such a long drive and what I wanted more than anything was to soak in a very big tub of really hot water.
“Sorry about the guest room,” Trent said when we reached the second floor landing. “My mom doesn’t want us sleeping together.”
“That’s all right.” I didn’t mind at all.
The landing was more like a grand hall. It was so broad there was room for a bench on one wall and some potted plants, plus more landscape paintings and a table with a bronze sculpture of a horse. I looked at the procession of doors along its length and wondered which one had been Carter’s, which one Max’s.
Trent led me to a generous room decorated in blue toile, thus breaking the strict Western theme. There was a floral rug on the floor in blue and cream, and curvy French-looking chairs in the reading nook. It even had a crystal chandelier, very ooh-la-la.
“This is a beautiful house,” I said as I set my bag on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“Thanks. My mom hired a decorator.”
“I’ve never even been in such a nice place.”
He grinned at me. “I’ll tell her you like it.”
“No, I’ll tell her. It’ll score me a couple of points.” I winked at him, although I wasn’t really feeling it.
The truth was, I couldn’t get Max out of my head. He’d grown up here, too. Had he run up and down that gigantic upstairs hallway when he was a kid? I would have.
Had they replaced the flooring after the shooting? My skin crawled as I thought about what had really happened here twelve years before.
“Let’s go eat,” Trent said, taking my arm.
The kitchen was super-sized, just like the rest of the house. It had black granite counters, Shaker-style cabinets in some kind of pale wood, and more Western-style light fixtures. A long, farmhouse-style table covered in platters of food took up the breakfast nook. A low arrangement of green and white hydrangeas marched down its center like a floral stripe.
“I hope you don’t mind that we’re doing this so casually,” Mrs. Kincaid said to me. “We decided to make it family only this year, so we’re eating in the kitchen.”
This was casual? My family ate in the kitchen every year because we didn’t have a formal dining room. And we never had floral arrangements on our table.
“This is great. You have a beautiful home,” I said.
She beamed at me.
A man emerged from some back room of the house and I almost gave a visible start. He looked exactly like Max, except older. He was tall, with the same nearly-black hair and dark-blue eyes, the same straight nose and faint dimple in his chin. He gave me a welcoming smile, and more dimples appeared in his cheeks. He was like a picture of how Max would appear in twenty years or so.
“Hi, Caroline. I’m Peter Kincaid,” he said, extending a hand.
We shook, but I didn’t feel anything like the energy I’d experienced coming from his son. “Hi, Mr. Kincaid.”
“We’re glad to have you join us,” he said.
“Me, too.” I felt my face heating. Did he know I was acquainted with his lost son? Did he know how much Max resembled him?
“Now, let’s eat,” he said.
We sat down to one of the best Thanksgiving feasts I’d ever tasted. The conversation, though, lagged. There was so much I wanted to say but couldn’t. Max sat invisib
ly in one of the empty chairs, like the proverbial elephant in the room, and I felt like we were going out of our way not to mention him.
It probably wasn’t true. They were used to pretending he didn’t exist. The elephant was really in my head, because I kept trying to imagine Max here at this table, eating with them. With us. It was hard to wrap my mind around the picture. Add in Carter in a booster seat and my brain just froze.
“So what are you planning to do when you graduate?” Mr. Kincaid said, interrupting my gloomy thoughts.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I hear you’re a French major.”
“That’s right.” I glanced at Trent, whose face was carefully neutral.
“There’s probably not a lot you can do with that,” Mr. Kincaid said.
“You’ll figure it out eventually,” his wife offered. She smiled at me. “And there’s always the wife and mother path.”
“Yes, there is that.” I took a large bite of turkey and started to chew. They couldn’t expect me to talk with food in my mouth.
They seemed to like me. His mom even seemed to think Trent and I might get more serious, like engaged serious. I wasn’t ready for that step.
Until I’d discovered he’d been hiding the fact of his stepbrother’s existence, I’d been looking forward to maybe getting more serious. I’d even had a few fantasies of marriage proposals. Now, the idea made me squirm. We’d dated for a year and he’d never mentioned Max. Not once.
How could I marry him? What else was he keeping from me?
Finally the long dinner was over. I complimented Mrs. Kincaid on her cooking and claimed exhaustion. They were so understanding as Trent and I left the room that it crossed my mind they might have been uncomfortable too. Maybe he didn’t bring many girls home with him. I was one of a privileged few. Why didn’t that make me feel any better?