Not Quite Mine

by Lyla Payne

“Yeah, excuse me?” Knox seconds, his eyes wide but no less amused than they have been since we met. “Is that who you were talking to by the Angel Face?”

  “What? Ellen’s on my boat?” Trent starts to stand up but knocks over his beer, spilling the last third of it on the table. “Shit.”

  I grab some napkins but Knox motions for Dolly, who shows up with a rag. By the time the beer is mopped up, Trent has collapsed back onto the hard bench. Shock pales his windburned face, and his expression suggests that he’s not sure whether to trust me or call the police.

  “What you’re experiencing is a pretty normal reaction to learning about the whole ghost thing. Your brother took it all pretty much in stride, but he’s not normal,” I joke, trying to ease the tension.

  The mention of Leo does the opposite. The color not only returns to Trent’s face but it goes bright red. His blue eyes turn to icy jewels, and instinct pulls me backward until my spine is pressed tight against the back of the booth.

  Okay, so don’t mention Leo. Got it.

  “Ghosts, uh, they come to me when they need help finishing some kind of business,” I say. “I’m not sure what Ellen wants yet. If she wants me to figure out what happened to her or she wants me to tell somebody something.” I shrug, feeling like an idiot for not having a better explanation but unsure how to fix it.

  “And what do you want from me?”

  “Anything you remember about when she disappeared. Like, was she acting weird, had she made any new friends, did she say anything that didn’t make sense?”

  He blows out a breath and runs his hands through his hair, again reminding me of Leo. “I told the police all of this a year ago. We weren’t together at the time. I hadn’t seen her for maybe a month before she went missing.”

  Regret and sadness drip from the words and straight into my heart. They play off the pain twisting his expression and tell me one thing for sure: whatever was or wasn’t going on between Trent Boone and my ghost at the time of her death, he cared about her deeply.

  I don’t reply, hoping that he’ll remember more or open up further if I don’t push. Dolly brings our food, and I dig into my tuna melt, not even thinking about the state of the kitchen in the face of my hunger. The warm tuna salad and melted cheese are delicious, as promised, and I’m halfway through the thing when Trent starts talking again.

  “She called me a week before she went missing, said we needed to talk. I was still angry with her about what happened the last time we saw each other—she’d fallen in with a bad crowd and was acting like a horrible person—but I agreed.” He shakes his head, pushing the fries away like the smell makes him ill. “She never showed up where we’d planned to meet, and a day or two later the cops came by asking if I knew how long she’d been missing.”

  “That’s awful, man.” Knox puts a hand on the back of Trent’s neck and squeezes, the awkward physical interaction between two manly men who don’t know exactly how to show each other they care.

  Tears shine in Trent’s eyes. “I wish I would have been nicer to her when she called. If I had, maybe she would’ve come right over. Maybe we would have been together and whatever happened to her wouldn’t have taken place. Or taken her…” He looks at me. “Do you think someone kidnapped her? Hurt her?”

  He chokes out the last question, and my own throat burns. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him he can’t think that way, that all of the what-ifs will ruin his ability to see anything clearly. But I don’t, because the truth is, no one can make the questions stop. When Amelia was missing, when Beau was on trial, when Anne needed my help…the people left waiting are always full of questions about how they could have done things differently to create a better outcome.

  Telling him to stop won’t help—not him or the situation.

  “Did she say what she wanted to talk about?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No, but I got the sense that it was something important. Not the typical thing where she apologized or asked if we could get back together. We would always get back together. The two of us? We were like, I don’t know, inevitable or something.”

  “Her mother said the same thing,” I confide, knowing it will make him feel better.

  He chuckles, giving his eyes an angry swipe with his sleeve. “I always thought the old broad hated me.”

  “I’m not saying she liked you, just that she recognized the passion between you and her daughter.” I pause, trying to prepare myself for the answers he might give that will be hard to hear. “What did you think of her parents? How did Ellen get along with them?”

  “They weren’t great parents, but they weren’t awful. Not enough money, too much discipline, and they didn’t bother trying to understand her. Instead of embracing or directing Ellen’s wild, inquisitive side, they tried to suffocate her.” He shrugs. “That family was a perfect storm that created my best friend and my first love. It’s hard to hate them, but sometimes I did…for her sake.”

  His words have the ring of truth to them, and I’m relieved that I don’t have to be angry about how the Hargroves treated their daughter on top of everything else.

  “Her mother thinks she ran away on her own and that something happened to her after that.”

  “It’s possible. Ellen wasn’t known for thinking things through, but…”

  “But…?” I nudge, biting into the second half of my sandwich.

  “But why would she have called me after a month of silence and said she really needed to talk to me, then not bother to show up?”

  It’s a good question. Trent has a bunch of good questions, but I still don’t have any answers. The day has been interesting but not particularly productive, and the next time I see Ellen I’m going to tell her that it’s time she start pointing me in some sort of useful direction. The last thing I need is another Henry Woodward moping around for an extended period of time.

  Chapter Seven

  It’s a good thing that I ended up getting back to Heron Creek by dinnertime because I almost forgot that I’m supposed to meet Brian at nine. On the way, I texted Jenna and asked her to come along, and she agreed without asking for details. Another thing I like about her.

  Amelia and I eat together, and then she falls asleep on the couch a half hour later, as per usual. I cover her up with a blanket and head into town, deciding to walk and leave the car at home. The weather has settled into the low fifties, which is pleasant inside my coat, and I spend the stroll thinking about Ellen, who walks besides me. She makes me nervous.

  I decide to ask Will to pull her file at the station. At the very least, I can read statements from everyone the cops interviewed at the time so I don’t have to waste time tracking down names, or re-treading the same territory.

  My ghost disappears when we’re a block from Pistol Pete’s. I’m about twenty minutes early, so I order a whiskey on the rocks, plus a basket of fried pickle chips. We had meatloaf and baked potatoes for dinner, which is one of my favorite meals, but the fact that I was omitting telling her the second half of my evening plans made it hard to choke down. Maybe it’s time to face the fact that as long as my ghosts keep coming, as long as I feel the tug of loyalty toward them, there may not be a way to always be one-hundred-percent upfront with the living people in my life. It’s not that Amelia or Beau would try to forbid me from doing what I want, but my plans would upset them.

  This is your problem, not theirs, one of my devils snickers. They care about you, and you just don’t want to deal with that.

  What kind of loser makes it halfway into her twenties this emotionally stunted? his pal guffaws.

  Jenna walks in the bar then and saves me from their uncomfortable truths—I can say that I’m trying to save my loved ones from worrying about me all I want, but in truth, I lie and dodge because I don’t want to deal with the fact that they worry about me.

  More than that, I don’t want to deal with the fact that they might be right about the chances I take.

  I smile and wave at Jenna, but insid
e my head I inform the second devil that if he’d had the pleasure of meeting my mother he might have understood my issues a bit better.

  Drayton Hall’s resident preservationist slides into the tall chair on the other side of the high-top table for four, her feet dangling a good foot and a half off the floor. She pulls off her stocking cap and unwinds a rainbow scarf from around her neck but leaves on her fingerless gloves as she blows on her fingers.

  “It’s not that cold outside.” Really, it’s not.

  “Says the girl who spent her winters in Iowa. It might as well be Antarctica outside as far as I’m concerned.”

  I roll my eyes. “Well, have a drink. It should help.”

  “Obviously.” Jenna glances around the one place in Heron Creek that could legitimately be considered a hole in the wall. And it’s ten times cleaner than the place I ate lunch.

  “You might have to go up to the bar. Ginny must have gone for a smoke.”

  I haven’t seen our waitress, one of two thirtysomethings who look at least a decade older, since she took my order and escaped past the bar.

  The place isn’t too crowded, with only ten or so people sipping half-empty drinks around the lacquered bar top. Luck seems to be in my favor for once, because even though I recognize most of them, none of the faces belong to people who will care who Brian is once he arrives.

  That’s another reason I wanted Jenna, or someone else, here. People in Heron Creek love to talk. I don’t need gossip flying around that I was spotted having a drink with a man who is around my age and not Mayor Drayton. First because it would piss me off, and second because it would force me to tell Beau who I’d been drinking with. Which I’m trying to avoid.

  This should be quick, though. That’s what I keep telling myself.

  Pete catches my eye from behind the bar and raises an eyebrow. I hold up my almost-empty glass along with two fingers. He nods, getting the message, and drops our drinks off a minute later.

  “Thanks, Pete.”

  “Anything for you, Graciela. Who’s your friend?” Pete’s over sixty and looks exactly like Old Man Gower from It’s A Wonderful Life, but neither of those facts stop him from expressing interest in anything remotely resembling a female.

  “This is Jenna Lee. She’s a friend from Charleston.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says.

  Jenna goes to shake his hand but I kick her under the table, startling her into pulling it back. He’s going to try to kiss it and they’re almost always out of soap in the bathroom.

  “Uh, you too. Thanks for the drink.” She busies herself picking up the glass and taking a sip, which works to send Pete away after a couple more awkward moments.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “But you don’t want to go there unless you carry hand sanitizer in your purse.”

  “I heard using too much of that stuff has the opposite effect,” she murmurs, studying the other patrons over the rim of her glass. “I’ll take the germs. That way when the zombies come I’ll be good to go.”

  There’s nothing to say to that logic, or whatever it is, so I shake my head and pick up my own glass.

  “Who are we meeting?” Jenna asks, a sly smile on her face. “A ghost?”

  “Ghosts don’t meet in bars. Or drink, though they’d probably like to.” I sigh, again feeling like her willingness to believe anything, and to put her own interests on the line to indulge her Nancy Drew fantasies, is going to get her into trouble.

  And I would know. So would Mel, Amelia, and pretty much everyone else I’ve let into my life, but I can’t keep any of them out of it, either. Hell, Mel wants further in, no matter what common sense tells her.

  “A tour guide from Charleston. He’s spent a long time researching…someone I need to know more about.”

  “One of your ghosts,” she guesses at the same moment Ginny pops back up beside our table with my fried pickles and ranch dressing.

  The waitress gives me a look that people typically reserve for vacuum salesmen who show up uninvited on their doorsteps. “You really done lost your mind, ain’t ya? Well, it’s none of my never mind if you want to see ghosts and run all over nearly getting yourself killed on their account, but I wouldn’t talk about that stuff in here. Sure wouldn’t.”

  Ginny drops the basket on the table along with a pile of napkins, then leaves without waiting for a response. Good advice, probably, although her delivery could use a little work.

  “She’s sweet,” Jenna comments dryly.

  “Welcome to Heron Creek, where even people you’ve never spoken to outside of ordering food have opinions on how you live your life.” I dig into the pickles, not all that concerned about Ginny’s tirade. The most troublesome thing is how much she seems to know about my life. “I hope you didn’t want to order any food.”

  She waves a hand, dismissing my worry. “But really, this guy knows stuff about one of your ghosts, right? Which one?”

  I relent because this is the main reason Jenna’s here—her historical expertise. “His name is Henry Woodward. He led an amazing life, if half of what historians believe he did was true.”

  I go on to detail how Henry came to the colonies on one of the first exploratory expeditions to the Carolinas as the ship’s cook and doctor. When they decided the New World was ripe for settlement, the ships returned to England to gather the families chosen to embark on the adventure, but Henry was left behind to cultivate a relationship with the natives.

  “Was there an exchange?” Jenna asks, her eyes wide. “Like, they usually sent a native back to England when they left someone behind.”

  “Yes, I think there was. And Henry did a wonderful job ingratiating himself with the local tribe and living among them for a time. But when the tribe was attacked by cannibals—”

  “Excuse me?” she interrupts, her eyes wide.

  “Yeah, I know. Another tribe attacked them, but Henry managed to escape. He ran south to Florida and asked the Spanish at Saint Augustine for refuge.”

  “But he was English. Surely they turned him away. Or flayed him.”

  It feels so good to discuss history with another woman who doesn’t need to be fed details in order to keep up with the conversation. It makes me miss graduate school, and Iowa, for the first time since I left. The fulfillment of it also makes me wonder if I should consider a professorship more seriously, even if it would mean leaving Heron Creek.

  “You would think so, but he was also a doctor. They needed him.”

  Jenna sits back in her chair, then notices Ginny at the table behind us and snags her sleeve. “Could I have a bacon cheeseburger?”

  After Ginny nods, Jenna turns back to me. “This is an amazing story. How have I not heard it before?”

  “I haven’t even gotten to the amazing part.”

  Her eyes grow big as I relay how Saint Augustine was subsequently attacked by pirates, and again, Henry proved wily enough to save his own life. The pirates were enemies of the Spanish, so he claimed to be a prisoner. When the pirates found out he had experience as a ship’s doctor and cook, they took him on board.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask what happened next,” Jenna breathes, her expression captivated. “Or to ask how on earth this could possibly be true.”

  “He’s one man, and no one of importance. We both know history often forgets those sorts of people, no matter how extraordinary their tales.”

  “But still…”

  My phone buzzes, and I glance down at it—a text from Beau. I also see the time and note that Brian should be here any minute, so I decide to wrap up my tale with Jenna before that happens and text my boyfriend later.

  “The pirate fleet wrecked during a storm, but Henry, yet again, managed to survive. He washed up on a deserted island but was found days later when the Carolina—a ship carrying the settlers back to the very territory where he was left—stopped on the island to refresh their fresh water supply.”

  “So he ended up back here.”

  “Yes. He’s l
isted among the original settlers of Charles Towne.”

  “What then?”

  “He worked as a translator since he spoke the local native dialects, but died a short time later of disease. Maybe smallpox. He wasn’t very old.”

  “How can all of that be true?” An expression that I recognize as academic skepticism pinches her pretty features.

  “I don’t know. There’s not a lot of proof. His story is here and there on the Internet and he has a Wikipedia page, but I’d never heard of him before the tour guide, Brian, told me he existed.” I purse my lips. “I have to wonder if any of it is verifiable.”

  “I’m guessing a lot of it would be oral history. Maybe you could track down diaries or letters?”

  “Maybe. You know as well as I do how time-consuming that would be.” I shake my head. “And I don’t even know what Henry wants. The other ghosts at least try to point me in the right direction, but he just mopes.”

  “Huh…”

  I sit up straighter when Brian walks through the front doors. He looks about the same as he did the last time I saw him, except when he shrugs out of his jacket it looks as though he might have lost a few pounds. Our eyes meet, and a bolt of fear seizes me. It strikes me as odd since, intellectually, I could list ten reasons why I’m not afraid of Brian.

  “Are you okay?” Jenna’s watching me, then twists in her chair when she follows my gaze. “Is that him?”

  I swallow and nod, pulling myself together by sheer force of will. I wave him over the way I did Jenna and work on not sweating as he approaches.

  Brian slings his coat over the back of the chair and then stands there, his hands twisted together. He looks a little sweaty himself. “Graciela, I am so sorry. I wanted to apologize again for the…for everything that happened last summer. I don’t know what came over me, and…”

  He trails off, swallowing hard and blinking back tears. The shame on his face is poignant but doesn’t move me. I’m not going to tell him it’s okay that he tried to burn me to death, but it’s in my current best interests to at least get him to sit his butt in a chair.