Not Quite Mine

by Lyla Payne

  I wonder again why he’s so nervous. He was even before his tart of a girlfriend opened her mouth.

  Beside me, Beau tenses. He doesn’t like Leo coming to my defense, not when sides should so clearly be drawn. Things are going from bad to worse, but right then, the waiter shows up with our salads and gives us something else to focus on for the time being.

  We eat in silence. Despite the fact that Victoria chose me as her target, I feel bad for Leo. Not to mention that I would like to avoid giving my boyfriend another reason to feel anxious about my friendship with him. So I dive back in.

  “Have you been out to The Wreck for fish tacos since you’ve been in town?” I ask Victoria. “If not, Leo really should take you. They’re as good as anything on the menu here, and you can buy them with the change you find in your couch cushions.”

  “I’ve had them. I grew up in Mount Ellison, so I’m not exactly a stranger.”

  So much for conversation. Leo tries a couple of times, asking Beau about what’s going on with the proposal to build a community center and swimming pool, but there’s not much to say.

  I escape to the bathroom between dinner and dessert, taking my time in the stall and then letting hot water run over my cold hands. Then, just as I think that the evening can’t possibly get any worse, I look up into the mirror and see Ellen standing behind me.

  “Oh man, what are you doing here?” I hiss, my eyes darting around the bathroom. I’m the only one in here, but still. It’s a pretty public place for one of my shier ghosts to show up.

  She makes an impatient gesture, a come with me type thing that has me shaking my head.

  “I can’t. I’m here with people, and I didn’t drive.”

  Ellen’s ghost repeats herself as though she didn’t hear me.

  “Trust me, if I could use you as an excuse to get the hell out of Dodge, I would do it in a heartbeat.” Not really, because as nice as it would be to slip out the back door, I can’t leave Beau.

  I also can’t give Victoria another reason to think I’m nuts because for some reason, Leo really seems to like her. If they start spending more time together, and I can’t spend time with the two of them, that means significantly reduced Leo in my life.

  While those thoughts tumble through my head, they loose a couple more and I remember my list of questions for Ellen.

  “Was your baby a girl?” She shakes her head no. “A boy?”

  She rolls her eyes, then nods. I suppose the second clarification wasn’t strictly necessary, but her reaction reminds me how young she was when all of this happened, and sadness pulls at my heart.

  “Did he live?”

  Ellen’s eyes fill with tears, and she nods, vigorously, over and over again. Then she repeats her request for me to go with her—where, I have no idea, but hopefully she’ll take me to the place she went when she left town. Without at least her first stopping point, I don’t see how to uncover the final one, even if I do know now that I can at least search for any records of a baby boy born within the past year.

  “Ellen, I can’t go with you now, but I swear, as soon as I get home I’m all yours. We’ll go wherever you want. Can you wait in my room?”

  She makes a face, one that’s hard to read but looks like irritation, maybe tinged with disgust.

  “Is it Henry? Just ignore him. I always do.”

  The door to the bathroom swings open, and Ellen disappears so fast I could have imagined she was there at all.

  Victoria steps in, her eyes sweeping the small room before wandering back to my face. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Talking? Me? No one.” My answer comes too fast, my voice too tight, for her to believe me. Hell, a stranger passing on the street wouldn’t believe me. Well done, Gracie.

  “Your boyfriend wanted me to come check on you. You’ve been gone for a while.”

  “Have I?”

  Victoria stares at me, not bothering to answer. Now that we’re alone, I can’t hold my tongue.

  “What’s your problem with me? We just met and you’re treating me like a woman who stole the dog you wanted to adopt from the shelter.”

  “I don’t like dogs,” she comments, her nose wrinkling.

  “Well, that explains a lot,” I grumble, checking the mirror again, this time to make sure my lipstick is still in place and not for ghosts in the background.

  “Look, I don’t like that you and Leo spend so much time together, okay?”

  I take my time putting my lipstick back in my clutch and swiveling around to face her. Victoria’s expression is more embarrassed now but also more open, and it feels good to at least have the truth. It’s like Amelia said: friendships between men and women are tough.

  “We’re just friends,” I tell her quietly. “We’ve known each other since we were kids, and since I came back to town, we work out together sometimes.”

  “And sometimes he gets shot trying to protect you,” Victoria retorts.

  For what it’s worth, her attitude comes straight from the fact that she obviously cares about Leo, which makes her harder to hate.

  Not impossible, but harder.

  “No one feels worse about that than I do.” I sigh, seeing that my words haven’t moved her. “I care about Leo, too. We’re friends. And because we’re friends, I’m glad that he seems to have found someone he likes enough to spend time with, and that you seem to care about him, too. It would suck if he were to lose either one of us because everyone can use as many people in their life who actually give a shit, don’t you think?”

  It takes her a minute to follow my roundabout logic, but she arrives at the end and presses her lips together tight.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry for coming after you, but Leo always looks so…happy after he’s seen you. It’s hard to deal with when you’re the new woman, you know?”

  “I know. Thanks for that.” I try a smile, the first one since I met her that doesn’t feel strained. “Maybe we could start over?”

  “Maybe.”

  I guess that’s better than nothing, I think as we walk together back toward the dining room.

  Beau catches my eye as I sit down, worry shadowing his typical good humor. “Everything okay?” he whispers as he leans in with the excuse of kissing my cheek.

  “Yes. Everything will be fine.”

  For now, anyway. When we get home I’m going to have to find a way to send him packing so I can drive around with a ghost. I suppose there will come a time when he’ll be used to such a thing. Maybe it will even be tonight.

  One can hope.

  Chapter Twelve

  It turned out that Beau was not keen on losing out to a dead person, gracefully or otherwise. We argued halfway back to Heron Creek, and then again when he insisted he could come with me wherever we were going. I know he’s worried about the brick and the text, and so am I. But there’s no way around the fact that Ellen won’t show up if he’s hanging around, and even if he waits outside, she’ll have to come along for the ride since I don’t know where she’s going.

  Where we’re going, rather.

  She’s beside me now and Beau’s at home, probably asleep since Henry hung around for hours the entire night and Ellen’s ghost didn’t appear until he left, just after dawn. As much as I’ve loved the couple weeks of downtime I’ve had with my boyfriend, and the hours we’ve been able to spend reconnecting, just the two of us, a thrill runs down my spine at being back in my car following ghostly clues.

  I love Beau, and I’m starting to be more comfortable considering a future that has him in it, but my ghosts give me a purpose beyond being a good friend, girlfriend, and librarian.

  I can’t feel guilty about that, even if they do get me into trouble more often than not.

  “Okay, Ellen, where to?”

  We’re idling at the last stop sign before we pull out of Heron Creek. We can go right, which takes us toward Charleston, or left, which takes us up toward Myrtle Beach. Left is also the direction I would turn were I going to visi
t Clete. The thought of him grabs my spine with a different feeling altogether. As handy as it is having a man like Clete in my quiver of arrows, if I never have to ask him a favor again it will be too soon.

  Ellen thinks for a moment and then points to the right. I check for cars, even though it’s early. One would have to be crazy to be out this early, which means maybe checking twice for other cars would be the smartest thing to do.

  For some reason, I assume we’re going to Charleston and kind of go on autopilot for a while, enjoying the sun rising to our left and the heat trickling from the vents. Ellen’s quiet, of course, though her nerves make it hard to really relax. She shifts around in the seat, glancing out different windows and attempting to fiddle with the knobs on my dashboard. Her fingers go through them, and I have to laugh at the frustration on her pretty face.

  “It takes some practice, as I understand it. Henry can bug the shit out of me pretty much like a living person, but he’s been dead a good long while.”

  She sits back with what would be a giant sigh, could I hear her, and looks out the window. It almost seems as though she’s learned how to pout from Henry, but we haven’t gone much farther when she sits up again and points straight ahead, right off the highway.

  There’s a trailer there, a few yards back with a sign over the top of it. I don’t need to get any closer to read what it says, because I already know: Daria’s Readings & Investigations.

  All of the blood drains out of my face, then my neck, then my heart. What are we doing here? How can Daria know anything about what happened to Ellen or her baby?

  “Here?” I confirm even though there’s literally nowhere else Ellen could be pointing unless we’re going off track into the woods or something. For a moment, I entertain a fanciful, if dark, narrative about a witch that lives in the woods and steals babies à la Hansel and Gretel.

  The truth is, there’s no reason Daria can’t be involved in Ellen’s case. I’ve never asked her about my latest ghost, since Ellen hadn’t appeared yet when she took me to the supposed poltergeist’s house the other night.

  Hell, there’s not even any reason Daria couldn’t be the witch in the woods, snatching up babies for devil spells or whatever the hell else witches need babies for in the stories.

  For heaven’s sake. Calm down, Gracie.

  The urging might have worked had I not pulled up to Daria’s to find only Mel’s car parked in the small, muddy area reserved for customers. Daria is probably still out hunting or expelling or whatever, but what’s Mel doing here at this hour?

  Ellen nods at me, then disappears through the car door so that she’s standing outside, pointing toward Daria’s trailer.

  “Okay, okay, I get it. Go inside.” I climb out of the car, too, and glare at my ghost. None of this is her fault, per se, but confronting Daria and now Mel before eight on a workday requires someone to blame. “I already know who I’m going to find, and she’s not going to be happy to find me here so early when she gets back.”

  I watch Ellen’s reaction carefully and see that my comment about Daria doesn’t come as a surprise. In fact, the ghost smiles slightly. There’s something nostalgic about it, as though thinking of Daria and her crankiness about mornings brings back memories that aren’t the stuff of nightmares. My sense of her feelings confuses me further, as if perhaps it’s not that Daria killed Ellen and sold her baby on the black market, but that she could be a help in solving Ellen’s mystery.

  The thought sticks in my head, feeling slightly untrue. I put an absentminded hand on the hood of Mel’s car when I pass, noting that it’s cold. She’s been here awhile, which vexes me further.

  Ellen disappears as I walk up to the front door, not bothering to reappear to make a face at me when I hiss that she’s a traitor into the empty morning. My knock, surprisingly, is answered within a few seconds.

  Mel’s mouth forms a surprised o at the sight of me. It’s hard to say whether it’s because I’m here or that I’m upright before the sun makes it all the way above the horizon.

  “Gracie? What are you doing here?”

  “Me? What are you doing here?” My gaze slides down over her rumpled flannel shirt and jeans.

  “Come in. It’s chilly out there.” She stands aside to let me pass, and inside, the tidy nature of the front office gives me immediate pause.

  The two desks have been cleaned of their clutter and no layer of dust covers the ancient desktop computers or keyboards. Loose papers have been formed into neat stacks, and the thick books, previously stored in piles that slumped on the floors, have been shelved and organized by color.

  I turn a gaze on Mel. “You did this? How long have you been here? Did you move in?”

  She shrugs and keeps walking toward the back room, where Daria keeps a living area and a bar. She sleeps on the sofa bed, or so she says—I’ve never seen it pulled out. The second space has been tidied much like the first, with the couches clear of junk and the sweat stains from a hundred drinks wiped from the glass-topped coffee table.

  Worry makes my palms itch. I was joking before, but between the cold car and the state of this place, I need a real answer to the question of how long Mel has been here.

  She sits on one of the couches. For the first time since I met Daria, it does not belch dust in protest. I go to the bar and start a pot of coffee, then sit across from her and give her my serious stare.

  Mel waves me off. “Oh, chill out, Gracie. I’m just here to sort of audition, and since I’ve gotten stuck on the case research, I thought I’d make myself useful.”

  “In the middle of the night? This had to have taken hours.”

  “Will and I had a fight and I couldn’t sleep. I knew Daria worked late so I came out here, and she agreed to let me stay while she went out on a job.”

  “You’ve been here all night?” I ask softly. She nods, and I swallow. “You told Will about wanting to do this kind of thing, I guess?”

  “Yes. He took it about as well as can be expected.” She shrugs, trying to look confident but unable to fool me. The tremble in her bottom lip, along with the fact that she won’t look me in the face, both give her away. “He’ll come around.”

  “I know.” I move to sit next to her and put my hand over hers. “He will come around, Mel. He loves you, and he wants you to be happy. It just must have come as a surprise.”

  She laughs, but it sounds more like a hiccup and an attempt not to cry. “Will likes to pretend not to recognize things that make him uncomfortable.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure he thought he hit the jackpot ending up with stable you instead of impulsive me. And now you go and tell him you want to follow in my footsteps.”

  She’s quiet for long enough that I start to wonder if I’ve said the right thing, suddenly worried that we aren’t at the point where we can talk about the fact that we both love Will and that there was a time in our lives when he belonged to me and not her.

  “Sometimes I feel like a faint copy of you, Gracie. Do you know that?” Sadness fills her words until they feel like they’re ready to burst, to rain sorrow down around both of us.

  My heart aches. “Mel, don’t be—”

  She cuts me off with a hand, held up to ward off protests. “Not all of the time, and not even most of the time, but the days when I do…they’ve stopped me from saying I want to try this for weeks.”

  “What, like investigating nonsense is my thing?” I ask, incredulous. I’m still reeling from the first thing she said. A faint copy of me? Mel?

  She’s not a copy of anyone. Least of all her terrible mother and drunk of an absent father.

  I stop to reconsider, remembering that she came from the same original stock as I did—Mary Read was a woman strong enough to join a ship full of pirates in a time where women weren’t supposed to so much as raise their eyes to meet a man’s.

  “I guess. Sort of.” She meets my eyes now, and they beg me to try to understand what she’s struggling to say. “I don’t want you to think I’m try
ing to horn in on your territory.”

  “I want you to be happy. I want you to have a job you love, and for you and Will to not have to worry so much on a daily basis about getting by. I want us to be friends for the rest of our lives.” I smile, watching her so she can’t look away. “You think I care that much about anything else?”

  Tears fill her eyes. “You’re a good friend, do you know that?”

  “Yeah, I’m the best. Since I’ve been back I’ve almost gotten you and Will murdered, you lost your job, and both you and Leo almost went to jail. And don’t even get me started on Amelia.” A sour taste coats my tongue as the admissions slide past. Even so, it almost feels good to let them loose after so many weeks of focusing on how to fix the problems instead of on my feelings at having caused them.

  “You saved Amelia, Gracie. Everyone knows that. And as far as the rest of it, we only did for you what you would have done for us. Every one of us.”

  We sit in the quiet for a few minutes, an air of relief hugging the two of us tight together. Talking to Mel always made me feel better as a girl. She had a way of telling it straight and was the oddball teenager who had figured out how to like herself before the rest of us even figured out that was an option.

  “I think you’re going to be a kick-ass investigative assistant, for what it’s worth.” I grin at her, feeling lighter after our conversation, even if we didn’t resolve anything. “Can I help with whatever’s giving you trouble?”

  I realize she hasn’t asked what I’m doing here and I don’t know how to explain it without making it seem like Daria might have done something wrong. Daria and I aren’t exactly friends, but I feel like she deserves the chance to respond to my ghost’s vague accusations in private.

  “Yeah! That would be great.” Mel leans over the arm of the couch and snags the strap of her bag, pulling it over and sliding out her laptop. “I’ve been looking into the people who lived in Taylor Nash’s house previously, but all I can get through county websites are names, no details. How do you find historical records?”