by H. P. Bayne
Besides the immediate family, they were to be joined by Lachlan, Emily Crichton, Bulldog Bird, Paul Dunsmore, Marc, Raiya and Mara’s sister, Lindsay.
Sully lent what help he could in the kitchen, but he soon found himself with another task that was more important.
He’d been checking in with the hospital daily, and was repeatedly informed Forbes was doing much better physically and was to be released on Christmas day. Not so heartening was the fact he had been refusing all visitors.
Today, Sully intended to remove that option.
Still midway through the process of trying to convince the government he did, in fact, still exist, it seemed a driver’s licence was some distance away. Dez happily took a break from kitchen duties to drive Sully to the hospital.
“You going to tell him what happened to Greta?” Dez asked en route. “The truth, I mean?”
“Maybe,” Sully said. “Eventually. Not today, though. Today, I want him to think of her as the person he wanted her to be.”
Dez waited in the running car while Sully went in, in search of Forbes. He found him in his room, seated in a wheelchair, his clothes rumpled and twisted in a way that suggested he’d dressed himself without waiting on staff to help.
He turned a glower up on Sully as he entered the room. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to pick you up. Dez is downstairs.”
“I was going to ask them to call me a cab as soon as I finish signing the papers.”
“Not going to happen. We’re your ride.”
“I don’t need one.”
Forbes, it seemed, in fact needed far more than that. Sully ignored the warning glare as he walked fully into the room and sat in the lone visitor’s chair. “I tried to come see you, you know. They told me you didn’t want visitors.”
“I didn’t. Still don’t.”
“I know you’re going through hell right now, man, but—”
Forbes held up a hand. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood.”
“Tough. ’Cuz here’s the thing, man. You and me, we’re family. And that means something to me. It means I’m going to sit here until they sign you out, and then I’m going to wheel your stubborn ass down to the car. It means I’m going to stay on your ass until you agree to talk to me. It means while you’re sitting in the dark, I’ll be sitting there with you.”
Forbes had turned from him midway through, his face a mask of stone. Now a tear slipped through. Just one. But it was enough.
Forbes lowered his face into a hand as the tears started in full. “I thought I could help her. I thought I could save her.”
Sully dropped a hand onto Forbes’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. He didn’t say anything. Nothing he could say would help. Not yet.
But one day, yes. As long as Forbes gave him the chance.
“I’m pretty sure they don’t want you alone for a while with your injuries,” Sully said. “You’re welcome to come to our place, but I’ll bet your dad would love to see you.”
“I told him I wasn’t up to Christmas this year. He gave up trying.”
“I doubt he gave up. Probably he’s just waiting for you to come back around. Anyway, Christmas doesn’t need to be about celebrating anything. It’s just being with people you care about. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I know. But don’t shut out the people you still have because of the ones you don’t, okay?”
Forbes met his eye at last. “Do you see her? Greta?”
Sully shook his head. No, he didn’t see her. He hadn’t seen any of the Dules. And he thanked God for that.
“I want to find out who shot her,” Forbes said. “Will you help?”
“One day,” Sully said. “When we’re both ready. But for now, we’re just going to take things one day at a time. Your dad’s probably really worried about you. So how about it, us taking you over there?”
Sully was relieved to see the nod.
“Okay,” Forbes said. “Okay.”
The food was secondary at the Braddocks’ Christmas dinner, Sully far more invested in watching the faces around him and listening to their happy chatter back and forth.
It wasn’t just Sully who’d had a weight lifted from him. It was like a whole new group of people sitting here, telling jokes, making fun of each other, sharing goofy stories. And despite the fact they’d all lost someone close to them, they took joyful solace in each other.
After the guests departed, loaded down with leftovers, Sully helped Dez with dishes while Mara, Eva and Kayleigh watched a movie downstairs. Once Kayleigh went to bed, reality dawned fully on Sully.
Flynn and Aiden were close by, hovering, demanding he act as their intermediary in this parting.
In a way he never had before, Sully hated his role.
He took the stairs into the basement slowly, interrupting a lighthearted conversation between Dez, Eva and Mara.
“Hey, guys?”
Three sets of eyes turned to him, questioning. He waited, trying to get his thoughts in order, his emotions under control as he searched for the right words.
Mara found them for him. “They’re going, aren’t they?”
Sully nodded. He didn’t speak. Now that he’d come this far, the lump in his throat precluded anything further.
Mara approached him, drawing him into an embrace. He sank into it, hugging her back, letting his walls crumble as he released the tears that had been threatening all day.
“Sweetie, it’s okay,” she said. “It’s time. They’ve stayed this long only to ensure we were safe and to see justice done. Everything is fixed now, as much as it possibly can be. It’s time we let them go.”
Sully nodded against her shoulder. He sucked in a shaky breath, released it in a slow whoosh. He looked up long enough to meet Dez’s eye. Dez was weepy, but not broken, his eyes holding only sympathy as he regarded Sully.
The confusion hit as Sully pulled away from Mara. He’d expected far worse. Perhaps his thoughts were clear on his face, because Mara answered his unspoken question.
“Sweetie, we said goodbye to them already,” she said. “We don’t have the same ability you do, to see them. For us, their being able to go and find peace, that’s a wonderful thing. But for you, I know it’s something else. You didn’t have to say goodbye, not really, because they were still so very palpable to you. Now they won’t be. But I am absolutely convinced they will be just as present in our lives going forward as they ever were. Seeing and believing, those are two very different things. You’ve taught us that.”
Sully nodded again, then sucked in a threatening fresh round of tears as he turned to Flynn and Aiden. “I love you both. So, so much. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. You’ve saved me—you’ve saved all of us—over and over. But we’re going to be okay, because we’ve got each other. And I know we’ll still have you too.”
Dez approached, draping an arm across Sully’s shoulders while Mara’s wound around his waist. Eva, joining them, held one of his hands. There, nestled within the support of three of the people who meant the most to him in the world, Sully watched as light surrounded Flynn and Aiden.
It shone from Flynn’s face while, beside him, Aiden’s shape changed. He grew tall and broad, transforming before Sully’s eyes from a small, sopping-wet child to a healthy, beaming twenty-four-year-old man.
“Wow,” Sully breathed.
“What?” Dez asked.
“Aiden. He’s grown up. He looks a lot like you.” Sully couldn’t resist. “Only better looking.”
Aiden chortled silently as Dez landed a playful punch to Sully’s gut.
The two Braddock men scanned their family once more, then locked eyes and hands before fading into the light surrounding them.
Sully stood on the front stoop, scanning the nighttime street, aglow with Christmas lights.
The corner lot just down the road had gone full bore, half a dozen blow-up characters littering the lawn and what looked like a manmade sleigh mounted on the roof. A house kitty-c
orner to Dez and Eva’s was a hive of activity, Christmas music playing a little too loudly as people inside laughed and chatted, drinks in hand. Up and down the street, as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a single spot left to park.
Families, friends, people who cared about each other. Few, if any, could have come unscathed through life, and most likely had lost someone along the way. What many probably didn’t know was that their loved ones had never truly gone.
The door opened behind Sully and he turned only long enough to see Dez moving to stand next to him.
“It’s late,” Dez said. “We’re going to bed right away. You coming in?”
“In a minute.”
Dez shivered, pulling his unzipped coat a little tighter around himself. “Colder than a witch’s teat out here.”
Sully smirked. “Don’t draw that comparison in front of Raiya.”
“Ah, hell,” Dez said. “She’d laugh harder than anyone.” He paused, and Sully sensed the impending question before it had even been asked aloud. “You okay?”
Sully nodded. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Out of all these people, how many do you think know there’s another world outside the one they know?”
Dez shrugged. “Probably not many. If it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t know either.”
Sully nodded again, then dropped his head, scanning his boots. They were easy to see, the stoop lit by a string of bright, white lights. “It’s easy to lose faith, to forget. When you can’t see it, I mean.”
A few seconds passed. Then he felt a hand land on his shoulder. “They’re still here, with us. I can feel them.”
“I can’t. I don’t know why.”
“It’s hard to feel things when you’re grieving,” Dez said. “Give yourself a few days. I’ll bet you’ll start sensing them too.”
Sully smiled up at Dez. “Have we switched roles here somewhere?”
Dez smiled back, then dropped his hand and leaned against the railing. “You’re not the only one who’s seen them.”
This was new. “What do you mean?”
Dez didn’t look at him, his eyes instead fixed on the party across the street. “I didn’t tell you this before. Don’t know why, except maybe I wanted to keep it to myself a while. But when I was in that morgue cooler, I almost died. Came really close to it, I think. Anyway, I saw Dad and Aiden. I went into some sort of place where everything was this really bright white. They were there.”
Sully stared at Dez, trying to get past how close his brother must have been to death. “What did they say?”
“Aiden told me it wasn’t my fault, what happened to him.”
“I’ve told you that a million times.”
“I know. But coming from him, that was different. I’ve lived with the guilt for so long, I almost don’t know what to do now that it’s gone.”
“So you know now? That it didn’t happen because of you?”
Dez nodded. “Yeah. I get it. I get what it was you were trying to hammer into my head all these years. But I guess I needed it to come from him.”
“I get that.”
“He also said he was happy I ended up with another brother. Didn’t disagree with him on that either.”
Sully smiled. Dez patted him on the back, then continued.
“But it was what Dad said that maybe you need to hear. I know you can’t hear them, that you can just see them. But what Mom told you, that was true. Dad told me the same thing. He said he and Aiden would always be around to watch over us, that he’d stay with us. ‘Forever and ever, kiddo.’ That’s what he said.” Dez’s voice cracked and he needed a pause before he could continue. “And he said to watch for the signs.”
“What signs?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. The way Dad was always trying to keep us out of trouble, he probably meant ‘Stop’ and ‘Yield.’ ”
Sully laughed, a real laugh, the unexpected kind that possessed an explosive quality. He was rewarded by the rumble of laughter that bubbled from Dez’s broad chest.
They stood there another minute or two, Sully ignoring the fact he was now genuinely cold. He didn’t want to move. Not yet.
A light snow was falling. The revellers across the street were now performing an actual conga line. And he was standing next to one of his favourite people in the world, the brother who had saved him over and over.
Who was saving him again now without fully realizing it.
A loud flapping nearby made Sully jump, and he took a step back as first one raven, then a second, descended onto the porch railing. The birds faced them, blinking and tilting their heads as they locked eyes with the two humans.
“Bloody hell,” Dez muttered. “Dad used to have full-on conversations with the ravens on our acreage. Remember?”
Sully did remember. It had been one of Flynn’s most endearing quirks. He’d seen videos of ravens that had learned to imitate the human voice and to pronounce a few words. Flynn had made it a weird goal to get one of the birds to answer him back.
He’d never succeeded, and these two birds weren’t talking, either. Then again, they didn’t have to. They were saying plenty just by being here.
Because Sully felt them now, his dad and Aiden, standing nearby, guiding the birds here—Flynn likely leaning toward one of them and hopelessly repeating the words “pretty bird” over and over.
“Thanks, guys,” Sully said.
Dez’s phone ringing in his pocket ended the moment, the birds flapping off into the night.
“Goddammit,” Dez muttered. “Lachlan.”
Sully looked up to find his brother’s eyes shiny with tears, but he sucked them back as he punched the talk button. “It’s Christmas night, Lachlan…. Yeah, he’s here.”
Dez put the phone onto speaker and held it so they both could hear.
“Sullivan, now that you’re officially alive and all, you’re going to need a job,” Lachlan said. “Given you’ve already been doing a fair bit of work for me, how’d you like to make it official?”
Sully and Dez exchanged a look. “Are you offering me a job?” Sully asked.
“Yep, but what I’d really like is for the two of you to go get yourselves licensed. If you’re going to be officially in my employ, I’d like the Ts crossed and all that.”
Sully grinned up at Dez as he answered Lachlan. “I could get on board with that. One problem, though. I’ll have to wait until the government decides I’m really alive.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lachlan said. “Technicalities. That’s fine. In the meantime, I’ve got a case for us to tackle.”
“I’ll say it again,” Dez said. “It’s Christmas night.”
“Not tonight, you gargantuan buffoon. In a couple of days, once the turkey’s digested. You promised me we’d sort out what happened to that other ghost of mine.”
Sully chuckled. “Right. Right, okay. We’ll get on it soon.”
They disconnected a moment later, Dez heaving a giant sigh as he dropped the phone back into his pocket. Then he peered at Sully. “You going to be able to stand working with that guy full-time?”
“I like him,” Sully said. “It’s working with you I’m not so sure about.”
Dez grabbed Sully in a headlock, rubbing a fist hard through his mop of long hair as he dragged him back inside the house.
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Afterword
Thanks so much for reading! While these three books bring The Sullivan Gray Series to an end, I am working on a series of standalone Sully and Dez books to be entitled The Braddock & Gray Case Files. If you would like to be kept updated on future projects and release dates, just sign up for my mailing list. As an adding bonus, a growing anthology of short stories, entitled Haunted: The Ghosts of Sullivan Gray, is available as a gift to subscribers. Visit my website at hpbayne.com to sign up or simply click here to join up and pick up the current v
ersion of Haunted.
The books in The Sullivan Gray Series can be read as standalones to some extent, each with a plot that wraps itself up by book’s end. But there is a deeper plot that threads throughout the series so, for that reason, I always suggest the books are best read in the following order (click the titles to check them out individually on Amazon):
Black Candle
Harbinger
The Dule Tree
Crawl
Hollow Road
Second Son
Spirit Caller
And one more big, big ask: if you could please take a moment to leave me a review on Amazon, I would be eternally grateful. Reviews mean more than many people realize, as they are often the difference between a would-be reader simply browsing or deciding to take a chance on making a purchase.
Thank you so much for reading. Having readers like you pick up my books is truly a dream come true for me. I hope you’ll come back to visit Kimotan Rapids again soon!
All the best!
-H
Acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks as always to my family, friends and readers. You are my constant inspiration and my reason to keep writing.
To my brilliant editor Hannah Sullivan and my amazing cover designer Fiona Jayde, you have helped me turn this series into actual proper books, and for that I am eternally grateful. I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with both of you!
And to my advance reader team, your enthusiasm and your collective eagle eye ensures I can continue to launch my books with confidence. And perhaps more importantly, you make writing even more fun for me.
Thank you to all of you!
About the Author
Fascinated by ghost stories and crime fiction, H.P. has been writing both for well over two decades, drawing on close to two decades as a crime reporter. Raised on a farm on the Canadian Prairies, H.P. enjoys reading, portrait drawing, travel and spending time with family and friends.