44 Book Four Read online

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  I walked out of the store. As I put my bag in the back of the Jeep, I realized that Conner had actually helped me without even knowing it. When we were dating back in high school, I thought that I was in love with him. But after loving Jesse, I knew that it wasn’t even close. And if Conner hadn’t broken up with me, I might never have had that time with Jesse before the accident.

  Really, it had worked out.

  I headed to Back Street. Tonight was the night that I would tell Mo that there was a ghost who wanted to talk to her.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was dead at Back Street from seven o’clock on and we were already talking about closing early. David left at eight, although he lingered for a while, practicing some of his lines in front of me. But when he got a phone call, he took off.

  “Bye, you two,” he said. “And remember, stop talking so much and get to work.”

  The bells on the door chimed after he left and I stood by the window, watching his Camaro tear out of the lot.

  I took a deep breath. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but I glanced back down at the table where the ghost was the other night and knew that I didn’t have a choice.

  “Hey, Mo,” I said, walking up to her.

  My voice was too high and I was nervous but I hoped she hadn’t noticed. She was cleaning out one of the machines.

  “Yeah?” she said, not looking up.

  I thought about waiting to talk to her until we officially closed up because I didn’t want to be interrupted if a customer came in. But it had been really quiet tonight.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. She still didn’t look at me. “About something important. Could we close up a few minutes early and talk then?”

  She looked up finally, her dark eyes curious.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said slowly. “What about?”

  Her energy darkened a little and I could tell she was annoyed. I couldn’t blame her. She had no idea what it was about and being that we spoke exactly three sentences to each other all month, she was rightfully suspicious. Maybe she thought I was going to try and convert her, get her to join a church or something.

  “It’s about your tattoos. I just had a question.”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  She put down the sponge and turned, facing me.

  Our eyes met but I quickly looked away. I had a plan, knew what I wanted to say, but she wasn’t making it easy and the words were all jumbled in my mind.

  “Well…”

  “So you’re thinking of getting one after all,” she interrupted. “I get them done in Eugene. I can give you the name of the guy if you want.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, it’s not that,” I said, trying to smile and lighten the mood. “I’m too much of a chicken. No, I wanted to know about that one.”

  I pointed to her arm, and she held it out in front of her, trying to figure out the one I was talking about.

  “This one?” she asked, touching the broken heart.

  “No,” I said.

  She hesitated as she moved her finger down, touching his face. She didn’t say anything.

  “Yeah.That one.”

  As she glanced at her arm, I could see that I had hit a raw nerve and could almost hear the pain inside her in the silence that followed.

  “What about it?” she said finally.

  “Well, I was just wondering who that was.”

  She looked over at the door as if a customer had come in, but nobody was there. When she looked back at me, her eyes were flat. She sighed loudly.

  I played with the towel I was holding. The conversation wasn’t going as I had hoped, but there was nothing else to do. The ghost boy was connected to her and I had to find out about him so he would leave me alone.

  “Spenser. He was my brother,” she said. “He died in an accident.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”

  She studied me for a moment, and then started walking away.

  “Wait,” I said.

  She turned around and came up to me, a little too close.

  “Look, I get asked about this once in a while. I get it. It’s a tattoo and some people think I’m putting it out there for the world to see and for them to ask me about it. They think I want to talk about it to them. But they’re full of shit. That’s not why it’s on my arm.”

  “That’s not where I’m coming from,” I said.

  And then I dropped it on her. All of it.

  “I see ghosts sometimes and I’ve seen him. I’ve seen Spenser.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t even blink. And for a moment I had the feeling she might slap my face or throw a punch into my gut, but she didn’t. She just stared at me for a long time before heading into the back of the store.

  I knew exactly how she felt. I didn’t like to talk about these kinds of things either. But I was going to have to. I didn’t follow her. I flipped the sign and closed the blinds and sat down at the table and waited.

  Mo came back out a few minutes later and saw me sitting.

  “Come on, we got work to do,” she said, shouting over the music.

  “One more thing, Mo,” I said.

  She came over. She folded her arms and stopped a few feet away, still glaring at me. I held her chilling look, and then saw the resemblance. She had the same serious eyes as Spenser.

  “I know you don’t know me that well, but I bet you know a little bit about me. I bet you’ve heard some of the stories,” I said.

  I was taking a shot, but it was a good one. I could tell by the expression on her face that she had heard about me. For a while after my drowning, I was known all over town as the girl who came back from the dead. It felt like everyone knew my story. I would be in a store and strangers would come up and talk to me like they knew me. Some of them were scared of me. Some of them thought I was cursed.

  And being that Mo and I had gone to the same high school, she probably would have been familiar with my name. There was also a good chance that she had heard about me dying and then coming back to life.

  But she still didn’t say anything.

  “Your brother…” I started, but she wouldn’t let me finish.

  “Stop it,” she said, holding up her hand. “I don’t know what scam you’re working, but I’m not buying it. Just leave me alone. Back the fuck away, Love Hewitt.”

  Her voice was shaky and sharp.

  “He says he needs help. But I don’t know how to help him without knowing more about him. He’s following me around. He was even here, over in that corner the other night.”

  She turned around and looked at the table I was pointing to.

  “He wears a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and jeans and has scars and bruises all over his face. I’m just trying to help him, Mo. But I need more information about him.”

  She walked over to a table and picked up a balled-up napkin and stuffed it in the trashcan.

  “You seem all buddy-buddy with my dead brother,” she said. “Just ask him and leave me the hell out of it.”

  She walked back over to the machines and finished cleaning them out. We didn’t speak the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER 17

  As I took a batch of lemon cookies out of the oven, I couldn’t stop thinking about Mo. Asking about her brother and then telling her that I had seen his ghost lurking around the coffee shop had been a mistake. We had worked together two times since that night, and she still wasn’t talking to me, even though I had gone out of my way to be friendly. She was still angry, her energy dark.

  But I couldn’t just drop it. I needed a new plan.

  The cookies were for Ty, who was on his way over. We were going out to dinner and a movie.

  I let them cool on the rack, and then ate one before sliding some into a tin. It was the first time I had used the recipe and they were sweet and tart at the same time.

  Kate was in the hallway, up on a lad
der.

  “I left you some cookies under the glass dome,” I said, standing under her.

  “Thanks,” she said, gliding a paintbrush across the wall, right under the ceiling. “They smell like hazelnut.”

  “What color is it?” I asked, thinking it odd because I hadn’t used hazelnuts.

  “Hazelnut,” she said.

  “Sounds like a good one.”

  She glanced down at me.

  “You look nice. When is Ty picking you up?”

  “He should be here any minute,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  “No, but thanks. I want to finish.”

  I was happy that Kate was almost done with all the painting, although I wasn’t sure what she would do now with her extra time. I was really looking forward to not smelling those strong paint fumes every time I came home and opened the door.

  “All right,” I said. “Oh, I forgot to tell you that I bumped into Conner the other day.”

  “Conner? Oh, yeah. You mean that worthless punk you dated in high school?”

  “Yeah. I was buying some new soccer socks and as I was checking out, there he was. He works at Dick’s.”

  Kate stopped painting.

  “How apropos,” she said, smiling. “Being that he is one.”

  I heard a noise out front. I went to the living room and saw Ty outside in the driveway. He grabbed something from the bed of his truck. When I opened the door, he was coming up the path, carrying two of the old coffee cans we had found in the desert, each one full of daffodils.

  He handed me one and gave me a quick kiss. I had those usual fluttery feelings that flew around inside whenever I saw him.

  “Wow, this really does look cool,” I said, staring down at the can. “Thanks.”

  He greeted Kate and handed her the flowers and told her the story about how we had found hundreds of burned out cans in a pile when we were hiking in the Badlands.

  “I thought it looked kind of Western and artsy,” he said. “Perfect for the lodge theme you have going on here.”

  I was surprised how she really seemed to love the can and flowers as much as he did. She put hers on one of the new tables.

  “They’re fantastic,” she said. “You really have an artist’s eye.”

  It made me happy that they were such good friends. It felt right.

  “Kate, come with us,” he said, when he heard she was staying home. “Or how about meeting us at the movie later?”

  “No, I’m going to pass. But you guys have a great evening.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But if you change your mind, we’re going to the 10 o’clock showing of the new Liam Neeson movie.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “But honestly, I’ll be in bed by then with my Kindle.”

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “Bye, guys,” she said.

  “Bye,” I said.

  I grabbed my new Guess jacket off the coat rack and put it on and then remembered the cookies and headed back to the kitchen.

  “These are for you,” I said.

  “Excellent,” Ty said, taking the tin from my hands. He opened it up and inhaled deeply and then took a cookie and stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Amazing,” he said. “Thanks, Abby.”

  As we drove over to the Old Mill, we talked about work and the things that happened over the last few days. It was always good to see Ty and I noticed that the energy that surrounded him was bright and moving fast as we talked.

  He kept his window opened a crack, even though it was freezing outside, and his light, long hair blew around in the air. Ty was never cold. Sometimes he picked me up in shorts and a hoodie when it was snowing.

  “How was work?’ I asked.

  “Good. I’m still hoping that they’ll teach me how to brew.”

  “Do you like 10 Barrel beer as much as the beer at Deschutes?”

  I remembered Ty’s story about how Deschutes Brewery was the reason he moved here from Montana.

  “I do,” he said. “Deschutes is good, but there are a lot of really great beers here in Bend. 10 Barrel knows their stuff. And I have to say I’m looking forward to learning how to brew. I could totally get into that.”

  I flipped on the radio and found the new rock station. Sometimes Mike put it on at work and so far I liked it. As we cruised down 14th, a song from one of the local bands I had heard at work came on.

  We decided to go to Flatbread Pizza. We went there once in a while, when I could drag Ty away from the pubs.

  “You look great, by the way,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders as we walked slowly past the movie theater, past REI, and toward the restaurants.

  We got a booth and ordered. After the waitress left, Ty finished telling me about his day at work and I told him about Mike being okay with the river job in the summer.

  “So, did Brad get hired as a guide?” I asked.

  “They’re still thinking about it,” he said, picking up a breadstick. “I don’t know. Now Rebecca is saying that they might not hire anybody new this summer and just let us absorb the extra hours.”

  “I hope they change their mind,” I said, now that I had told Mike I wanted to work both jobs. Last summer, Ty was working seven days a week on the river.

  I tried to think of things to tell him about my week. I wished that I could tell him about all the things that were happening, like how I saw the ghost or about how Mo was mad at me. Ty was great with people and if I told him, he could probably offer some good suggestions on how to talk to her.

  It couldn’t be good for a relationship to have such secrets, but I didn’t want him to think he was dating someone who rented headspace out to squirrels. Plus, I wasn’t really sure what Ty’s reaction would be if I was honest and told him I saw ghosts. Some things can’t be predicted.

  And that I talked with Jesse once in a while.

  Ty and I had never discussed religion or beliefs or any of that stuff. The only thing I was sure of was that he hated all those popular vampire movies. I knew if we were to continue and if things were going to get serious between us, I would have to tell him. Eventually.

  But not tonight.

  “What do you want to do for your birthday?” he asked.

  “Come on. You sound like my sister,” I said. “It’s still months away.”

  “It’s not that far away. And it’s the big one. How ‘bout we go bar hopping?”

  “Okay, let me think on that,” I said.

  “You’ll like it,” Ty said. “You’ll see.”

  I took a bite of the pizza.

  “Don’t let Kate throw me a party. She’s been hinting at it and it would be great if you could tell her that I’m not up for it. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I really don’t want one.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll let her know. So what then?”

  “I’ll give it some thought. Something quiet. But special.”

  It was funny talking like this with Ty, discussing these plans for the future. It was nice, comfortable.

  I argued with him when the bill came, but he insisted on handing his credit card to the waitress and then went to the restroom.

  The tingling feeling that bubbled up inside when I was with him felt nice. But sometimes it made me feel like I was betraying Jesse.

  We still had a little time before the movie so we strolled along the river, holding hands, up and over the bridge where plastic flags flapped wildly in the bitter wind. The clouds were gone and it was a moonless sky with thousands of brilliant stars scattered in the blackness above.

  I tilted my head all the way back, breathing in the night.

  CHAPTER 18

  The howl of the train whistle in my ears was deafening.

  I fell into the cold, dark water and sank down, down, down past the bubbles that were rising up all around me. I tried to reach for the surface, tried to get to the air but couldn’t. It kept getting farther and farther away. I was being pulled down
to the bottom and I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer.

  But suddenly, I was out of the water, breathing again, down in an even deeper darkness, the train still loud in my ears.

  I didn’t know where I was. I was walking in the dark, my bare feet on the cold ground. Fear surged through me. There was a faint glow up ahead and I moved slowly toward it, one foot in front of the other.

  I came to a door and pushed against it, but it wouldn’t open more than a few inches. It was bright in there, but I couldn’t see much. It was a room, with furniture and a long table pushed up against the wall. A television was on in the background and I could hear the sound of drums.

  Someone was there. A shadow moved past the open crack as I looked inside.

  I tried again to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The shadow swayed and danced across the room. I couldn’t see who it was, couldn’t make out a face. Suddenly a strong smell, a chemical of some sort, filled my nostrils and then smoke started filling the room. It was hard to breathe.

  I backed away, away from the light, and then I was suddenly swimming. Up, up, up to the surface, leaving the shadow figure far behind, buried somewhere at the bottom of the lake. I moved my arms through the water in hard, furious strokes, faster and faster, finally breaking the surface just before my lungs exploded.

  And then I started screaming, the train still howling.

  ***

  “Abby!” Kate said, shaking me. “Abby. Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

  I sat up. My heart pounded and tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “It’s okay,” she said over and over again until I finally heard it.

  Until I believed it.

  She wrapped both arms around me and held me for a long time, stroking my hair.

  “You’re safe, Abby. You’re here at home. I’m here with you. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  I ran to the bathroom, feeling like I was going to throw up. Kate followed me and rubbed my back as I leaned over the toilet. Staring down at the water just made it worse and I backed away, managing to hold it down. I washed my face and sobbed and she handed me a towel. She helped me put on my robe and slippers.