by Jacquie Gee
“Hey, you,” Sandrine Crossman falls to one side, leaning on the jamb of the door she’s just opened, her sandy brown hair dropping down over her shoulders in braids. “Haven’t seen you in a long time?” This is not a surprise as Sandrine Crossman is pretty much a recluse; thus, she holds the perfect position up as lighthouse keeper. She folds her arms and smiles at me, gray eyes sparkling in the dim light of the rustic cottage she lives in, attached to the rear of the lighthouse she cares for. Waves lap the rocky shores behind us, making conversation difficult, not that Sandrine has much to say to anyone—ever.
I peek through her door. The place is pretty cute, considering the meager wage the township pays her. I don't know how she manages the funds to decorate. I glance past her, at the smooth metal staircase that winds through the center of the belly of the lighthouse, in back. The staircase that leads to the lantern room. I've always wanted to go up there.
“What brings you out here?” She steps to the side, blocking my view. “I was expecting your Dad.”
“Yeah, well, Dad was busy.” This is a total lie but she doesn’t need to know that. The lighthouse is two hours out of Heartland, also, an hour and a half past a certain someone’s haunted dwelling—not that I noticed while passing. I haven’t been out this way since the dreaded night of the…—back to the conversation Jules—“Besides, I could use the break,” I sigh.
I fidget in place as I finish that sentence, thinking how I’m just about as much of a recluse as Sandrine is, only I’m confined to the bait shop for no good reason. And she, being in charge of the lighthouse, has a very good reason. I need to work on this.
“Well, it’s nice to see you.” Sandrine smiles then lowers her head. As I said, she’s not much of a talker. “I’d offer you coffee,” she mumbles, “but I don’t keep it in the house.”
“Oh. Well, that’s okay,” I say. “I-I should be going, anyway.”
“All right, then.” She goes to swing the door shut before I’ve even handed her her bait. I stick a hand out stopping it.
“Hold up! Here’s your crawlers.” I pass her the brown paper bag through the crack in the door. The bag crunches when she accepts. “The minnows are in there, too. In containers, so they’d last while I was driving. But you’d better deal with them quick though.”
“Thanks. I will.” She glances down at the bag she’s crush-hugging to her chest, like I’ve just given her the greatest gift. This could be why Sandrine is still single.
She gets this strange look on her face like she’s suddenly thought of something juicy. Which is weird for her because, she’s never out enough to catch up with town gossip. Or so I think. “I noticed your truck parked out in front of the Caldwell Manor on my way into town the other night.” She flips a wry smile in that direction.
Oh, it would figure the one night Sandrine Crossman decides to leave her house, would be the one night I was over at that place.
“You getting to know the new guy that bought the mansion?” she asks.
I take a breath then answer sharply. “No. I’m not.”
“Oh. I-I just thought.” She swallows down her previous comment, then murmurs something more from her shoes. “I saw him out front once, cutting the lawn with his shirt off.” She glances up. “He’s quite the hunk.”
Sandrine! My eyes flash. She’s never said anything this suggestive in her life before. I fight to feign disinterested. “Yeah, he’s not bad.” I casually tilt my head and this weird thing happens to my breath, and Sandrine almost laughs.
“Well, thanks for the crawlers and the minnows.” She flicks her brows as she starts to shut the door.
“Wait!” I stick my hand catching it. “How did you know it was me visiting that night in the truck and not Dad?”
“Good guess.”
I squint.
“Honestly? I overheard Anna in the grocery store talking with him.”
So, that’s it! “Thanks,” I say.
Mental Note: Duck tape Anna’s mouth when I get back to town.
“No problem.” Sandrine tilts her head and shuts the door.
“Wait!” I try to catch it again, but it’s too late, she’s already closed it. Okay, so I’ll just charge the crawlers to her tab.
I turn to go, trotting down the steps of the front porch and onto the boardwalk that runs from the lighthouse cottage, over the beach, and back to where I parked my car. My head is down, so I’m startled to find someone’s standing at the other end it.
I look up and freeze. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter 30
Jules
Jayden?
“How did you know I was here?” I look around. My heart crowds into my throat. I’m not ready to talk to him yet, but the truck is too far to run to it. All number of sinister scenarios run through my head. Was Sandrine holding me up, just so he could…
“Please don’t—” Jayden reads my eyes and holds up his hands like he thinks I’m about to bolt. Good guess. I glance at him and then to the side, mentally planning my escape. Seagulls swoop, natter and tease, distracting me.
“Just hear me out?” He steps toward me, cautiously closing the gap between us, his eyes wide and pleading. He keeps just enough distance to allow me my space, though his expression begs me to invite him closer.
“How did you find me?” I snap, trying not to give into his charm. I don’t know what it is about this man, but I can’t resist him, that smile, those eyes— that well-groomed beard…
“Anna told me you were out here.”
“That traitor,” I say at the edge of my breath and turn my back.
"I just needed to tell you something." He gulps and jumps forward nearly touching me. "It won't take a minute." His hands hovering in the air around me, destination-less. The wind pushes my hair forward, flapping around my face. Jayden stares.
“What?” I narrow my sour gaze. “You looking for more answers to invasive questions?” It’s rude, but I can’t resist.
“No,” he says slowly. He lowers his eyes and then brings them back up sharply, his gaze penetrating. “I’d like to provide you with some.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I dart toward the truck.
"Wait, please—" he grabs my arm, soft and tenderly, but with intent, as I step off the boardwalk and try to escape. "I have to tell you. I need to tell you. I’ve come here to tell you the truth.”
The look in his eyes is so intense, I can’t stand it. As angry as I still am, I relent.
“I promise to tell you. Every word of it. Every blessed word," Jayden adds. "If you'll hear me."
I drop my arm and turn to face him. My feet sink into the sand. I don’t want to be here, but I can’t turn away. I don’t know what it is about this man, but his lure is relentlessly wicked.
He looks nervous, stutters, then begins his story, a hand raking his through his matted curls. "Why I did what I did, why I said what I said, the true reason I've come to Heartland Cove is..." He swallows looking down at his shoes then up, and then longingly into my eyes. He looks as though what he's about to say will break my heart and his too.
“Go on?” I say my breath uneasy.
He seems relieved that I’m allowing him to speak. His words come out in a jumbled rush— an apprehensive, jumbled rush. “My questions, that night, at the house, when we were alone— they weren’t my questions.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t my idea to interrogate you. It was his. It was Edgar’s. Edgar Locklear’s.”
“The ghost?” I sound repugnant.
"Yes. They were Edgar's questions." Jayden nods. "He gave them to me in my sleep, along with a message that if I could get his questions answered by you, he’d give me the answers I needed.” He touches his chest.
"So, it was a totally selfish motive on your part, is that what you're saying."
“I guess you could say that.” He tugs at his hair again. “But if it’s any consolation,” he looks up from the sand, “my thoughts on that have changed.”
“Ho
w, so?”
“If I had it to again, I’d be more honest,” he says. The look in his eyes tells me that’s true. “A-and, you’re right. I did homework on you before I showed up here.” He gulps. “That’s how I knew exactly where to find you, and about your mother’s book.” He looks sheepishly up from the ground. “Also, when I arrived, I intended to meet you— it wasn’t serendipitous in any way— it was planned. Just as I intended to buy the house— for full price— and have you over to dinner. They were all things Edgar had instructed me to do." He swallows. "Though I didn't mess with Anna's plans…that must have been Edgar, but it's not what you think—" he quickly adds, his gaze begging me to believe him. I gasp and he looks away. "It was all part of Edgar's plan. Edgar's plan to get to the truth and I see that now—"
“What?”
"Because I had to meet you in order to find out—"
“Find out what?”
“Everything.” His lips quiver.
"So," I glance away, not knowing what to make of any of this gibberish, fighting to stay annoyed. "You really do speak to the dead." I glance back.
"Not usually, no." He raises a brow. "But I have made this one exception." He wrings his hands and I almost laugh, but restrain myself and return to annoyed again. "That's another thing," he stammers. "I'm not a ghost hunter, I'm a reporter. From Milan, originally. Though I travel the globe on assignment, that's where I'm from. And I have a friend back home in the office that you should know, texts me often, but it means nothing.”
“Nothing?” I narrow my gaze.
“That’s right, nothing. She’d like it to be more, but it’s never gonna happen, though she has been very helpful of late.”
He pulls out his phone to show me something, and I have the urge to step back from him. Something about his energy force feels wrong today— clinging and encompassing, but at the same time, enticing. “Back in Italy, where I’m from…”
“Wait.” I shake my head. This is not going together. “But your accent, it’s not—”
“I know. Because that’s not where I’m actually from. Bear with me. You see, my parents were killed in a car crash when I was very young, who I thought to be my parents, anyway, and the people who took me in after they died, my father's business partner and his wife, relocated to the countryside outside Milan. I struggled to learn the language and was very withdrawn, and according to them, they became immensely worried about me when I started having visions of people who they knew to be dead."
A small gasp escapes my lips.
“The worst of which, was the vision of father crawling out of the car wreckage and telling me I needed to find my real father, in order to find myself. It was a reoccurring vision that haunted me all through my youth. My adopted parents thought, perhaps I’d become possessed.
I could never figure out what the vision meant. I had already had two fathers, was there another?
My adopted mother feared me. She was a devout Catholic and decided one day, after I had a vision of a man hanging by his neck from the rafters of a coach house, somewhere near the sea, that I needed to be exorcised.
So, she called the priest, and they set about it, thinking I was a demon or a medium or possessed of some evil power that I needed to be rid of. But when the priest's efforts failed, and I kept having the visions, my adopted mother threatened to have me put away. That's when I ran." He lowers his eyes and wrings his hands. "I've been on the run ever since."
A part of me falls apart as he recounts this. A small boy with no understanding, haunted by visions he can’t explain. I feel myself sinking further into the sand around my feet, disbelieving what he’s telling me, wondering why he is, and feeling guilty of my distrust of him.
The breeze off the ocean whips my skirt around my hips, and I get the eerie familiar feeling like we’ve been here before…like I’ve stood in this very place, with him, had this very conversation…or something close. I look around, feeling panicked.
“What is it?” he says.
“Nothing,” I garble. “Go on.”
“I didn’t know it at the time, I didn’t understand,” he says. “But now I do.” His eyes capture me, full of hope. “I was being visited by a ghost— the ghost of Edgar Locklear. It was him inflicting the visions upon me so I could see the truth. So, I could finally find my way home."
“What do you mean?”
"I know it's hard to believe but, the man who kept coming to me in my visions, whispering in my ear for over a decade in ghost form, was Edgar Locklear, trying to communicate with me. I didn't know then, but I do now. He was in my dreams, in my head, and responsible for the visions I was having of my father crawling from the wreck and the rest of my visions, too.
He was trying to show me something, trying to lead me here, trying to tell me we were related.”
“What?”
“Edgar Locklear, it turns out,” he steps closer, “is my great, great, great grandfather.” He smiles, weakly, tears glistening in his lids. “And he has reason to believe you are a descendant of his lost wife, Arianna.”
“Wait? What? How are you related to Edgar Locklear? And that’s ridiculous. I have nothing to do with Arianna.”
“I know, I thought the same. But then, he led me to this.”
Jayden unfurls a very ancient-looking, yellowed piece of parchment paper with badly tattered edges. As it unrolls on the hood of his car, he smooths it out for me to see, revealing the makings of a family tree scrolled in black ink. Carefully constructed boxes contain the names of distant people, their birth, marriage and death dates scrolled in calligraphy, by many different hands.
"Edgar's been trying to find me for as long as I've been trying to find out who I am," Jayden continues. "Along with a string of other past relatives all named here." He points. "I realize now, I've met several of them in my dreams, just for fleeting moments, but they've been there, none of which has been as strong or persistent to communicate with me as Edgar though. And now it all makes sense. Edgar was the only one able to permeate my visions so consistently because Edgar is only one who hasn't yet passed over to the new world."
“But that’s not possible.” I shake my head. “Once you’re gone, you’re gone.” My hands splay at my sides.
“You’d think so. But I’m here to tell you otherwise. I’ve talked to him myself.”
“Who?”
“Edgar.”
“What? How?”
"Through my equipment, at first. Through the monitors and speakers, I brought to the house and then in person—"
“What?”
“I’ve seen him in his human form.”
An icy shudder flutters down my spine.
How can this be? A dead man returning from his grave to walk the earth again. He’s crazy. He’s gone mad, living in a house with a ghost!
"Not exactly human. But as close to it as he could get. We had a conversation. He told me all this, himself.”
“Maybe it’s just another of your visions; you ever think of that?” My voice squeaks.
"I did." He gulps. "Only this time, he sat across from me, and there was no denying his existence." His eyes flash. "Listen, I wouldn't have thought it possible either if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." His gaze implores me to believe, but I have to admit, I'm still struggling.
“So, what does any of this have to do with me?” My voice quivers.
Jayden’s face grows pained. He looks down then up again. “Allow me one question?” he asks, and I nod. “Does the name Magda mean anything to you, Jules?”
I feel as though he’s knocked the wind from my guts. It’s not a common name. He couldn’t have guessed it. “Yes,” I snap. “It’s my middle name, why?” I snap.
He unfurls the parchment again. “Because your name appears on this paper.”
“What?”
“Look here.” He points to the family tree boxes that travel down the second half of the page. “There’s a Fiammetta Magda, then a Sofia Magda, an Iseppa Magda, Rosanna Magda, and the
n Arianna Magda… Locklear.” He hesitates, looking up.
“So?”
“So? This is Edgar’s beloved wife Arianna’s, family tree.”
“So, what if it is?”
“So, Magda appears to be a family name, passed down, generation to generation through the woman.”
“And?”
“Your name appears on it. Look, it continues, Glorianna Magda, followed by Julieta Magda… female, born in 1959—”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, as hard as it is to believe, I think you might be related to Edgar’s missing wife.”
“That’s ridiculous! You’ve made this up!” I snatch the paper away.
“I haven’t. I swear.” He holds up his hands, as I work my way down the line again, my eyes fixing on the name Julieta.
“That’s not possible.” I shake my head. “Besides, the date is wrong. I was not born in 1959—” I stub a finger to the paper.
“How about nineteen ninety?” Jayden points out a second Julieta Magda listed in a box below the first. “I know it’s Julieta, not Jules, but—”
"I am a Julieta," I breathe out the words out. "I just go by Jules." I stare down at the paper, feeling stunned—at the record of a baby girl born, June 2 of 1990— the very same day as me. A Julieta Magda… Arquette.
The theme song to Psycho crashes around in my head.
This can’t be, can it?
"This is wrong." I look up, in complete denial. "I am not, and have never been an Arquette. And my mother was a Gibbs before she became a Bates, and she's never been anything else!" Despite the fact, the birth and death dates of the first Julieta are uncannily the same.
“I know, but you have to admit, it’s strange, right, the use of Magda, the name Juliet—”
“This is not me!” I state firmly. “It’s just a coincidence.”
“You’re sure your mother’s never gone by another name?” Jayden presses.
“Why are you doing this?” I jerk back from him, then lunge forward again, stubbing a finger on the record of the first Julieta Magda, on the page. “This is wrong. You are wrong.” I cancel him out with my hands. “I don’t know what you are up to here,” I back away, “but you need to stop it. I am not a part of this!”