Lance hung up, all thoughts of his sub forgotten, and headed out onto the porch, thinking he’d enjoy the evening air in one of the porch swings while he waited for his food.
After all, how often was he at the beach?
* * *
While he waited, alone with his thoughts and the one-sided conversation with the ceramic frog on the porch, Lance saw the warm orange glow flickering on the horizon above the dunes across the street.
They’re back, he thought and wondered how long they’d been coming to that spot and how long they’d stay.
The pizza arrived right on time, Lance paying cash and tipping the driver and bidding him a good night. Once the delivery car had driven away, back up Sand Dollar Road, Lance turned and looked at the frog, who seemed to be eyeing the pizza box in Lance’s hands with intense focus.
“Look, I’d offer you a slice,” Lance said, “But don’t you mostly eat bugs?”
The frog did not answer, and Lance took this as silent resignation.
He took his pizza and went down the porch steps, working his way through the gate and across the road, through the empty park and over the dunes.
And they were there, the five of them. The college kids from the night before. Three were seated on the pieces of driftwood—two boys together on one side, one of the girls alone on the opposite. Down by the water, the other girl—the one with the long hair who Lance had assumed was older than the others—and boy stood side by side just on the edge of the surf as it rolled in and out.
The bonfire burned bright in the center of it all. Flames leaping and wood cracking, flooding a wide circle of light out around them all, and Lance wondered which of them had started it.
The girl who sat alone on the one piece of driftwood looked away from the flames and saw Lance standing there at the end of the path. She didn’t look particularly friendly or unfriendly, but there was recognition there, and Lance raised one hand in a wave. She waved back, and he made his way through the sand and over to her. “Hi, I’m Lance,” he said. “May I join you all?”
The girl nodded, red hair splayed around a freckled face which she brushed out of her eyes. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a tank top, freckles peppering her shoulders in the golden light from the fire. Lance sat next to her on the driftwood, taking a moment to find a comfortable position, his enormous sneakers troublesome in the sand. He left a good amount of space between he and her, setting the pizza box in the open space dividing them and opening it, selecting a slice and taking a bite. He chewed, staring into the flames, and after he’d swallowed, he said, “I saw you guys last night, if you remember. Thought maybe I’d come back and see if you all were here again. I don’t get to hang out with people my own age very often.”
He took another bite and waited to see if she’d answer.
She turned to face him, pulling one leg up under her. “We’re here every night. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to go.”
Lance nodded. “Yeah, the Sand Crab doesn’t seem like my sort of joint either. Never been big on alcohol, or the bar scene … or country music, really.”
She laughed, and it was the first semblance of emotion Lance had seen from her. “Let me guess,” she said, “you played basketball—because you just look the type—and you’re a hip-hop fan.”
Lance popped the last bit of his pizza slice into his mouth and swallowed. Picked up another slice, smiling and nodding. “Good guess,” he said. “Yes, I did play basketball, but no, not a hip-hop fan. I’m not really a big music fan in general, to be honest. My mother, though, she always was…”
He trailed off, catching himself. Fought back the image of Pamela Brody swaying to the live music that night, dancing like nobody was watching in the Hillston Farmer’s Market’s parking lot while the live band rocked the crowd. It was only a very short time before she’d died.
“She’s dead,” the girl said knowingly.
He nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thank you.” He ate in silence for a while, watching the flames and hearing the waves crash to his left.
One of the boys from the other piece of driftwood across the fire spoke for the first time, asking, “Why are you here?”
He was pale and short, wearing blue jeans and a baggy hoodie. He had the hood pulled over his head and his hands tucked into the front pocket of the sweatshirt.
Lance felt the weight of the question.
“I’m here to help people,” he said, much like he’d told Todd from the diner.
“Who?” the boy asked, sitting forward.
“You know,” Lance said, “I haven’t quite figured it all out yet.”
The boy nodded, as if this made complete sense. The boy next to him, taller and more muscular, wearing board shorts and a t-shirt and a baseball cap on backwards, asked, “Do you know how long you’ll stay?”
“No,” Lance said. “I usually don’t.” He finished his next slice of pizza, and his curiosity won him over. “What about you all?” he asked. “What brought you here?”
The girl and boy that had been down by the surf were now standing off to the side, in between the two pieces of driftwood, having made their way up from the water. Up close, Lance verified his assumption of the girl being a bit older than the rest, and the boy as well. Not much, only a couple years, but still, there was more wisdom, a different presence in their eyes.
“Hard to say,” the woman said. “We all just felt drawn here.” As she said the words, she nodded toward the fire, the scene before her. “Does that make any sense to you?”
Lance remembered his walk on the beach the night before, how he’d been so tired but had all at once felt compelled to make his way toward these flames, this group. There’s an answer here, he thought to himself before saying, “Yes. That makes complete sense.”
The woman’s body relaxed, her shoulders loosening, as if Lance’s understanding was some great relief. Then she said, “We just keep coming back.” And then she turned and made her way back down to the water.
Eventually, the other two boys got up from their seats and made their way down the sand, standing side by side with the others by the water, leaving Lance and the girl with the red hair alone. Nobody here seemed particularly fond of conversation, and Lance figured this was one of the reasons they had all managed to find themselves together. Finishing all the pizza he wanted and closing the box, he looked at the girl and asked, “Okay, you pegged me as the basketball player, and I’ll give you that one, even though it was easy. But what else is it you see when you look at me?”
The girl tucked her hair behind her ear again and didn’t even look at him. Simply said, “I see a boy who’s trying really hard.”
Lance was about to chime in, make a quip about how ambiguous a statement that was, even though he was startled at its accuracy. But the girl quickly turned and looked him in the eye. “But,” she said, “he needs to realize he doesn’t always have to do it alone.”
Then, without another word, she stood and went to join her group by the surf.
Lance sat quietly for a long time, one burning question blazing hot as the bonfire across his mind.
Who are you all?
20
Lance found the garbage bin along the fence near the gate of the Boundary House and tossed his pizza box into it, one remaining piece left inside—a treat for a lucky rat or stray cat who might be patrolling the dump. Lance wasn’t usually one to waste food, but he found he didn’t have the patience to lug the box and extra slice into the Boundary House’s fancy kitchen and search for aluminum foil or a plastic baggy in which to store it until he was ready to eat again. He found he couldn’t focus on much of anything except the parting words the redheaded girl by the bonfire had offered him before she had gone off to join the rest of her group by the water.
“He needs to realize he doesn’t always have to do it alone.”
There was a part of Lance that digested these words with a bit of hopefulness, thinkin
g that the Universe was pointing him to Leah. But the practical side of him, the side of him that’d seen the Evil in this world, had narrowly escaped the Reverend and the Surfer and whatever plans they had for him, refused to believe it would ever be okay for him to bring her into his life any deeper than she was right now.
Not yet, anyway. It was way too soon.
But still … the girl by the fire knew something about him. Though he knew very little about her.
Lance walked up the steps and across the porch, pushing through the door to the Boundary House and hearing noise from the kitchen. Loraine was back, and Lance was glad. He needed to pay her.
He ran up the stairs to his backpack and grabbed some cash, returning to the downstairs and finding Loraine Linklatter at the breakfast nook, sipping tea and reading a paperback novel. She looked up when he walked in and nodded at him with a weak smile.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Lance said, crossing the wood floor and asking, “Good night?”
Loraine shrugged. “About as good as it gets around here for me.”
Lance didn’t know what to say to that. The woman’s energy, which had seemed plentiful upon his arrival, and her mood, which had seemed abundantly pleasant, had both dropped off a cliff.
Instead, he asked, “How much is it for the two nights? I’d like to pay you now. You know”—he shrugged—“so you know I’m not a freeloader.”
Lance gave a small grin of his own, seeing if Loraine would rise to the challenge of returning it, but instead all she did was give him a dollar amount which he found incredibly low, considering the accommodations. Lance peeled off some bills from his stack of cash—he’d need to find an ATM soon—and laid the amount on the table.
“Thank you,” Loraine said.
“No, thank you. This place is very nice. You could probably charge a lot more than that and still be packed during the summer months, right?”
“Lance, I want to apologize to you.” Her words came out fast and short, as if she’d been winding up to pitch them out and finally decided now was the time.
“I’m sorry?” Lance said, confused.
“For earlier,” Loraine said. “I was prying into your life, and I was clearly making you uncomfortable, and I should have stopped. So…” She sighed and took a sip of her tea. “I just want you to know I’m sorry. For that, and then the way I shut down when you asked about whether I was married. It’s just … I was…”
Tears welled up in Loraine Linklatter’s eyes, and Lance slid into the breakfast nook opposite her, wanting to make himself appear less opposing to this woman in her vulnerable state. Something was happening here, a moment that Lance felt was important.
Loraine gave off a weak laugh and wiped her eyes. Took a long sip of her tea and swallowed loudly. “It’s still hard, even after all this time. After Daisy, well… her father took her death very badly—and I don’t blame him, not at all. I mean, who really knows how to prepare themselves for the death of their child?”
Or their own parents, Lance thought. Though he knew there was a difference. One he couldn’t begin to understand.
“But he …” Loraine continued. “Instead of getting help, or letting us try to work through it together, he left me.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Here one minute, gone the next, like a fucking magic trick.” She caught herself. “Sorry for the language.”
Lance shrugged. “S’okay.” People shouldn’t be expected to censor themselves while emotional.
Loraine stood from the table and walked her cup of tea to the sink, dumping out the rest and rinsing it out. “Anyway,” she said, recomposing herself, “he left me, so within a month, I’d lost my baby girl and my husband. I don’t know where he is, and honestly I haven’t tried looking that hard.” She shrugged. “He could be dead, for all I know.”
She took a deep breath and grabbed a dish towel to begin drying the teacup. “So when you asked me about him earlier … well, how could you have possibly known? So, I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t expect the wound to still be so fresh. I apologize if I was rude. I hope you can forgive me.”
But I did know, Lance thought. Not all of it, but I knew it would sting.
* * *
Lance and Loraine Linklatter bade each other goodnight, and Lance headed up the stairs, not sure what he was going to do since he’d only been up a few hours since his marathon nap. His head was swimming with contradicting emotions: confusion and frustration, sympathy and compassion. He felt bad for Loraine Linklatter and all she’d been through, worse still that he’d set her up earlier with his question about her husband, but all the same, there was a tugging coming from elsewhere that was trying to pull him toward another side of the story, another angle he was not seeing.
Because—
He opened the door to his bedroom and found Daisy sitting in the same chair where he’d found her waiting last night. At the sight of him, her face lit up in a smile that melted him.
“Can you read to me?” she asked cheerfully.
Because why is she here?
21
“Dying to figure out what happens next, huh?” Lance asked, walking across the room and sitting on the edge of the bed to face Daisy in the chair. Then, embarrassed, he realized what a poor expression that had been (dying to figure out what happens next) and quickly continued, “Yeah, Coben’s good at that, isn’t he?”
Daisy didn’t seem too concerned with the novel’s mystery, however. She just jumped from the chair, climbed over Lance and assumed the same position she’d been in the night before as he’d read to her—lying back on the covers with her head against the pillow, hands crossed in that same way that brought to mind corpses. Lance swiveled around to face her, kicking his sneakers off and pulling his legs up onto the bed.
“Daisy, I’ll read to you, I promise, but can I ask you a few things first?”
Daisy, who’d had her eyes closed in mock sleep, opened them and looked at Lance with excitement. “Is it like a game? A guessing game?”
Lance pursed his lips. “Um, no, not really.”
Daisy’s face fell. “So, it’s like questions on a test?” she asked with complete contempt.
Lance shook his head, trying to quickly think of an approach that might spark some interest in Daisy long enough for her to help him, or at least for him to get a couple answers that might lead to something else that could help him.
“Daisy, you’re a big girl, and very smart, right?”
The compliment struck gold, and Daisy’s face perked up. She nodded. “Yes, I am. Mommy always told me so.”
“Well, I’m sure she’s right,” Lance said. “So, the thing is, I need some help, and I think you’re one of the only people who can actually help me. Because you’re so smart, I think that together we can figure something out. So, what do you say? Can I ask you a few things and see what you think? I think you have the answer I’m looking for.”
“Is it because I’m dead?” Daisy asked. “Is that why you think I’m the one that can help you?”
Lance smiled, a genuine show of admiration. “You are a very smart girl, Daisy. I wouldn’t lie to you. So, yes. That’s part of the reason I think you can help me.”
Daisy sat up a bit, thankfully unfolding her hands from in front of her and leaning back on her elbows. “Thought so,” she said. Then, as if she suddenly possessed all the power in the conversation, she asked, “What do you want to know?”
Lance stood from the bed, walked in front of it and started pacing back and forth. When Daisy looked at him with raised eyebrows, he said, “Sorry, helps me think.” Then, after a few seconds, he started with what he figured to be the simplest question. “Daisy, why do you think you’re here?”
The question, which had seemed simple when it had left Lance’s mind, suddenly loomed very large in the room, and he realized its enormity. He could see the same sense of realization on Daisy’s face, so he walked her through it.
“What I mean is,” Lance said, “wh
en you passed away, why did you stay here and not go off to be where … wherever else the rest of the people who’ve passed on go to?”
Daisy answered immediately. “Oh, that’s easy. I didn’t want to leave Mommy.”
Lance, while moved by the girl’s love for her mother—an emotion he could very much relate to—figured this to be an incorrect answer. Maybe not in Daisy’s mind, but certainly in the Universe’s grand scheme. Lance didn’t believe, in his experience, that spirits had the ability to choose when they moved on—not completely, that is. More often than not, they were left here because of an unfinished task, incomplete business, or—especially in the cases of the beings that Lance had encountered—they were waiting for someone to show up.
Him.
Though Lance didn’t think that the spirits actually knew that they were waiting for him. To them, they must think…
Okay, Lance didn’t know what they must think as they lingered in between worlds.
The longer he lived, the more he realized how little he knew about any of this. His gifts and abilities showed him much more than other people were ever cursed to know, but for every question he had answered, a hundred more arrived in its place.
“I understand,” Lance said. “You must love your mommy very much, right?”
Daisy smiled and nodded. “She’s the best mommy in the whole world!”
“I bet,” Lance said. “And I know she loves you very much.”
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 12