Michael shrugged. “Heartbeats are overrated.”
“You know, I think so, but then again, I haven’t had one in like, twenty years.”
“And you’re totally awesome without one,” Michael assured him with a laugh.
“Thank you. Finally, you acknowledge this!” Brink held his hands up in mock victory. “So, you wanna hear more about Gavin and Gail?”
“No.” Michael didn’t even need to think about it.
“What? Why not?”
“Several reasons. One, I don’t want Kate finding out. Two, I don’t want Luke finding out. Three, I’m a really terrible liar, and I especially don’t want to lie to my girlfriend. And four, we only have one more night in this place and I’d really like this last day here to be as uneventful and peaceful as possible.”
“You know everyone is going to find out, don’t you?” Brink asked.
Michael didn’t answer. His attention had fallen on the stained glass window near the end of the hall. If he’d glanced up a second later, he’d have missed it: the figure of a man, his outline distorted by the contours and textures of the glass, passing by, unseen and unheard, just outside the window.
Chapter 22
Michael should have just let him go. He knew that. Every rational voice inside his mind scolded him for sprinting out the front door of the manor and following the spirit’s footsteps into the forest, but something else, perhaps a flawed and rather egotistical belief that he could still make a difference for the guests and residents of Stanton Hall, kept him moving forward.
He knew that he had no obligation to go after Sterling. In fact, if he was smart, he’d have just pretended he’d never seen the ghost and gone back to the dining hall. He was sure the others were wondering what was taking him so long and he’d probably missed any chance he had of a hot breakfast. Not to mention, they were leaving first thing the next morning. He had no real reason to even attempt to talk to Sterling again.
And yet, he sort of did. He remembered the look in Mrs. Drake’s eyes as he confirmed her daughter’s fears, and he knew that he had to at least try to help them. The only way to do that, of course, was to help Sterling. Loathe as he was to admit it, perhaps there was a reason that he’d been granted his ability, or his gift, or whatever he was supposed to call it. If he had to live with it, at least he could try to do some good.
He followed Sterling down what he realized was a familiar path through the forest and toward the place where he had fallen the day before. He knew where they were headed before they arrived.
Sterling was leading him to his tombstone.
So what did that mean? Had Sterling really known all along? If he knew where he was buried, then surely he knew, at least on some level of consciousness, that he was, well, dead.
Unsure of whether or not Sterling knew he was there, Michael kept a fair distance between them as the ghost slowed to a stop in front of his grave. He wasn’t close enough to read the expression on Sterling’s face, but he could have sworn he detected a sense of relief. Perhaps facing his untimely fate had been what he had needed all along. Michael could only hope.
He’d just made the decision not to disturb Sterling and head back up to the manor when the ghost called out, “So it’s true, then.”
His eyes drifted up to where Michael stood half-hidden by a tree. Michael immediately felt ashamed and a little cowardly for hiding, but he really didn’t know what he was doing, following Sterling out there. Actually, he really didn’t know what he was doing most of the time.
Almost as if Sterling had read his thoughts, he continued, “It’s alright. I knew you were following me. Impossible not to notice with your clumsy footsteps shuffling through the leaves.”
Well, so much for stealth.
“Are you alright?” Michael asked, taking a few hesitant steps toward him.
“I’m dead,” Sterling answered shortly.
“I know how hard that must be for you -”
“No. I don’t think you do. How could you? How could any of you know?” Sterling demanded. “What once was my life, my existence, my love, my memories, all of that lies buried in a filthy, forsaken tomb. I am nothing. I have nothing.”
“You have Joanna,” Michael reminded him.
At the sound of her name, Sterling’s eyes widened, and his forlorn expression melted away into one of hope and redemption.
“You’ve seen her?” he asked.
The look on his face tore at Michael’s conscience. He hadn’t considered that by mentioning Joanna, he may have inadvertently been making false promises to a man stricken, no, crippled, by grief. He should have known by now that Joanna was Sterling’s life, his everything, his one vulnerability. To use her against him, to give him hope for her where there was little, was simply cruel.
“Well, no...” Michael could hear the shame in his own voice. “But she is out there somewhere. If not here, then she’s waiting for you.”
“Where?” Sterling demanded.
Where? That was a good question, one to which Michael wished he knew the answer.
“Wherever’s next,” he finally said.
“You believe that? You believe that there’s more than this?”
“I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by ghosts. I think I kind of have to believe it.”
“But you believe in a world beyond this one. In a Heaven or Paradise where all souls will be reunited after death?”
For a guy who’d been too distraught to notice a little thing like being dead for a hundred and fifty years, he asked surprisingly deep and complicated questions.
“I can’t say for sure what I think is out there.” Michael tried to choose his words carefully. “I’ve never seen it, and I’ve never met anyone who has. I’ve read accounts of people who say they have, and it sounds wonderful. But I don’t really know.”
“How do you get there if you don’t even know where or what it is?”
“You’d have to ask someone who’s already there. But from what I’ve seen and experienced, the reason people stay behind even after they’ve died is because there’s still something holding them here. A secret they never shared, an unspoken injustice, lost love, or maybe they just weren’t prepared for death. I can think of a hundred reasons why a spirit might still be bound to this world, but there’s no way to know for sure. I’ve met people who chose to stay behind, and I’ve met people who didn’t know why they were still here. People tend to think that death is absolute, the one thing we can all be certain about, but that’s not the case. Death is complex. It’s powerful and timeless. The truth is, when it comes to death, nothing is impossible.”
Sterling stood for a long while, staring down at his grave and absorbing everything Michael had just said. He hoped he hadn’t gone too far or given Sterling the impression that he was an expert on the afterlife. After all, what did he really know about death? When all was said and done, he wasn’t anything special. Anyone could communicate with another person. The only difference was he talked to people whose bodies were no longer functioning. But all things considered, it was pretty much the same thing.
After a long silence, Sterling finally spoke. “She’s not there.”
“I’m sorry?” Michael asked.
“Joanna. She hasn’t moved on.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she wouldn’t!” Sterling exclaimed, startling Michael by his outburst. “Because she loved me and she wouldn’t leave me behind. She wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Okay, I believe you,” Michael held up both hands, hoping to soothe Sterling and to remind him that he wasn’t a threat. “Tell me about her, Sterling.”
“Why?” the ghost demanded.
The real reason Michael had asked was because he thought it might distract Sterling from his foul mood. He knew it worked for himself. Just the thought of Kate could make him smile, even on the most dreadful of days. He wasn’t sure that would be enough for Sterling, however, so he said, in the sincerest tone he could mu
ster, “I want to know what she was like. From what I’ve heard, she sounds incredible.”
Sterling’s expression softened, and for a moment, Michael thought he might actually smile.
“She’s more than incredible,” Sterling said. “Joanna Elizabeth Stanton is the most glorious, the most radiant, the most magnificent creature to ever walk this Earth. Her hair is the color of ebony velvet and her eyes, bluer than the deepest ocean. When she smiles, the light of every star in the sky begins to fade, because they consider it a crime to outshine her.”
Okay, that was very romantic, and a little sickeningly poetic, but that hadn’t been what Michael had been hoping to hear. He’d thought that if he knew a little bit more about Joanna’s personality, her interests and hobbies, then maybe he could find her, bring her to Sterling, and have the two of them move on together. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very optimistic. Despite Sterling’s insistence that Joanna wouldn’t have left him behind, Michael couldn’t shake the feeling that that was exactly what had happened.
So what then? If it turned out he was right and Joanna had gone on to the next world, where did that leave Sterling? Would he ever be able to move on? Perhaps his love for Joanna and his desire to see her again would be enough to motivate him to cross over.
“When you see her, you’ll know,” Sterling continued. “You’ll know why I love her.”
“I’m sure I will,” Michael conceded.
“This was our favorite place, you know,” Sterling smiled fondly. “Here, beneath these trees. Her father was a fishmonger, and she always feared for his safety out on the open ocean. She often said she couldn’t bear to even look at the waves, so she turned to the forest. It made her feel protected. It was in this very spot that we shared our first kiss. It was also the spot where I took her hand and asked her to be my wife.”
So that explained why Sterling had also chosen it as his final resting place. It was the one place in the world, perhaps besides the house itself, that he felt closest to his beloved Joanna. It also explained why he had been there the day before. He hadn’t been spying on Michael and Kate after all. He’d been there for his love. That was something Michael should have realized long before, that Sterling’s complete and utter adoration for Joanna moved and motivated him. It was the driving force behind his every thought and every action. It was honorable and romantic, but in Michael’s mind, it was also a little sad.
He loved Kate, and he knew his world would come shattering down on him if anything were to ever happen to her, but he also had an identity outside of his love for her, and he knew that she was the same way. That was the way he preferred it to be. He wouldn’t want Kate to be so consumed by her love for him that she no longer found value in anything else. He wanted her to live a rich life, full of love and laughter and memories of all kinds of people and places. He wanted to be the one she loved, but he never, not for one moment, wanted to be her everything. Wherever Joanna was, he couldn’t imagine she’d wanted it for Sterling either.
As though he had read Michael’s mind, Sterling asked, “The young lady who was here with you yesterday, is she your wife?”
“No,” Michael replied.
“But you love her.”
“With all my heart,” Michael confirmed.
“Then you understand the lengths to which I would go to be reunited with Joanna.”
“Of course I do. I completely empathize. But Sterling, I need to ask you a question, and I don’t want you to get upset, but what if...” Michael chose his next words very carefully and hoped that what he was about to say wouldn’t come back to haunt him. Really. “What if you don’t find her?”
The look on Sterling’s face made Michael want to take his words back immediately. He couldn’t tell if Sterling was more hurt that Michael would suggest such a thing or outraged that he would even think it.
“You didn’t know my Joanna. She would never leave me. She loved me.”
“I know she loved you. But I don’t think you get to decide whether you stay or go. If you’re here, it means that something is keeping you here. If she’s not... it only means she was ready. It doesn’t mean that she didn’t care for you or want to be with you.” He could tell by the look on Sterling’s face that he still wasn’t convinced. “Listen, I know this is hard for you, but it might do you good to at least consider -”
“She’s waiting for me. I know she is,” Sterling insisted.
“You’re right. She is waiting for you. But she might not be waiting here.” Michael anticipated Sterling’s wrath, a rebuttal, anything that might contradict what he was trying to say, but it never came. Instead, Sterling turned his gaze down at his tombstone once again, his eyes lost and vacant. “Sterling, I want you to know that I am trying to help you. So are Luke and the crew, even though I know that we don’t always seem like it. I wish that I had more answers for you. If I could, I would find Joanna for you and bring her back. Any of us would.”
“Just like your Kate?” Sterling said. Michael wasn’t sure he understood what he was asking. “If she was lost, you would do everything within your power to bring her back,” Sterling explained.
“I’d do more,” Michael assured him.
Sterling looked him in the eye. He seemed... proud, almost like a guide or a mentor whose pupil had just answered a trick question correctly.
“Good.”
And without another word, Sterling Hall vanished, leaving Michael standing alone and confused at the foot of his grave.
Chapter 23
After having been absent for what seemed like hours, but in fact had only been about thirty minutes, Michael finally returned to the dining hall, looking pensive, but thankfully no worse for the wear.
“Hey, there he is,” Luke announced loudly as Michael took a seat next to Kate. She’d covered his plate with a paper towel, hoping to keep his food warm, but she wasn’t sure how much good it had done. “Glad you’re back, buddy. Any longer and we would have sent out a search party.”
“Is everything okay?” Kate asked him.
“Yeah,” he replied a little too hastily.
No one else seemed to pick up on it, but Kate knew Michael well enough to know when he wasn’t telling the whole truth. However, she also knew that if he wasn’t telling her, it was because he didn’t want to say it in front of the entire group.
In an attempt to help take his mind off of whatever was troubling him, Kate smiled at him and said, “So guess what?”
“What?” Michael asked once he’d swallowed his mouthful of toast. “Luke says that he doesn’t need us for filming this afternoon. I was thinking, you know, if you want to, maybe we could do some sight-seeing or go to the beach. I hear the area around Cape Porpoise is amazing. There are lobster traps everywhere and boats and I think there’s a lighthouse somewhere. What do you think?”
Michael didn’t have to think about it. “That sounds perfect.”
~*~
An hour later, Michael and Kate were enjoying the sights and sounds of Goose Rocks Beach. It was a beautiful day: sunny and cool, but not chilly enough to deter a few dedicated beach-goers. The beach itself was lovely, with sand as pure and soft as any Kate had ever seen, bright sparkling waves that reflected the color of the vibrant sky, and small patches of beach grass here and there.
“One day, I’m going to live at the beach,” she told Michael. “Or at least have a really nice beach house that I can visit whenever I want.”
“I think I could live with that,” Michael grinned. “Where would you want it?”
“I think the Gulf Shores.”
“Not here?”
Kate shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, this place is beautiful. But I like the south. It’s warmer there.”
“That’s very true,” Michael acknowledged and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “So, you really didn’t want to spend the last day with the crew?”
“No. I wanted to spend it with you.”
“But you didn’t want to see what goes on beh
ind the scenes when they’re just out filming?”
“No offense to the guys, but I think I’ve gotten enough behind the scenes action to last me a lifetime. Parts of it have been fun, but I think after this experience, I’m just going to enjoy Cemetery Tours as it’s meant to be enjoyed.”
“And how’s that?”
“From my television screen,” she quipped. “No, I would much rather spend my last day here enjoying the beach or exploring the village or watching a bunch of men on boats catch lobsters.”
“Boats and lobsters, huh?” Michael grinned.
“I’ve never told you this, but I am a big, geeky tourist at heart. Even when I was little and my parents would take Gav and me places, I was always the one carrying around the disposable cameras or dragging them in to see the world’s biggest toothpick or whatever other bizarre attraction happened to pop up.”
“You like to experience things.”
“I do,” Kate said. “That’s part of what makes the whole losing two years of memories thing so annoying. But I’m excited to make new ones.” She whirled around, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him swiftly as a salty gust of sea wind toyed mercilessly with her hair, sending it flying in all different directions.
Of all the days to forget a hair-tie. Fortunately, Michael still smiled at her in a way that made her feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. Just for that smile, she kissed him again.
“Finally, this trip is beginning to seem worth it,” Michael remarked with a wry grin.
“Tell me about it,” Kate agreed as they took each other’s hand and resumed their walk along the shore. “So what happened this morning? I know you went to talk with Mrs. Drake, but I could tell you had something on your mind afterward.”
“Well, to be honest, I really didn’t spend a whole lot of time talking with Mrs. Drake.” He proceeded to tell her about his talk with Sterling down by the gravesite. It sounded like it had been a surprisingly amicable and constructive conversation.
Between Worlds (Cemetery Tours Book 2) Page 17