Chapter Twelve #2
We take another lap in silence and the string pulled tight around my chest lessens with every rhythmic push of our skates. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling settled in a while.
“C’mon,” she finally says, slowing to a stop as the music changes to something light and whimsical. “I’m hungry.”
I follow her dutifully off the ice and back to the lobby of the rink, an open area with long wooden benches.
There’s a stone fireplace on one side with a fire roaring in the hearth, a string of fresh garland looped across the mantel.
Harriet dropped our boots in front of it before we put our skates on and I bend to collect them on our slow hobble across the room.
My fingertips brush against the leather and I immediately drop them.
My boots are hot.
I could feel them.
Harriet turns toward me. “Everything okay?”
I nod, still frowning at my boots. “Aye,” I answer slowly, rubbing my fingers together. They’re red. Irritated. “I’m fine.”
I’m dreaming, and now I’m feeling, but everything is fine. Denial, as always. My faithful friend.
I drop down onto the bench next to Harriet, my hip pressed to hers, still staring at my fingers. She grunts next to me, almost slicing my calf with her skate.
“And what about you? Everything all right?”
Her mittens lay abandoned at her side, her ponytail over one shoulder. She tugs at her skate some more with a frustrated grunt. “The knot is stubborn. I can do it.”
“Give me your foot.”
“What? No. Why do you need my foot?”
“So I can help.” I bend down and grab her ankle, lifting her leg onto my thigh. I pick at the frayed laces. “Are you always so stubborn when people want to help?”
I untangle the knot, working the strings free from the front of her skate.
I grab the blade at the back and wedge it off her foot, then grab her boot.
It’s still warm from the fire and she watches as I tug it over her reindeer socks.
I pat her ankle and set her foot on the ground, reaching for the other.
She lifts it dutifully onto my lap.
“People don’t usually offer help,” she says as I work, her voice low. I look at her face, but she’s watching my hands work at the laces. These are far less tangled, but I still take my time. My hand not working against the knots grips her ankle, my fingers fanned wide.
“I’m offering.”
I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. She’s my assignment. I’m on a ticking clock. I’ve been sent here to reveal her worst bits.
But I can’t seem to help myself.
Fingertips brush over the back of my hand. “Maybe we could help each other?” she asks, a thin thread of apprehension in her voice. My magic pricks at the back of my neck, admonishing. I put that anxiety there. I made her wary of asking me for things.
I want to fix it.
I finish unlacing her skate and drop it with the other. I reach for her boot. “I’d like that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” I tell her, my useless heart hammering in my chest.
I don’t believe in her theory. There’s nothing she can do to move me forward. But if it makes her happy to try—if it chases some of the sadness off her pretty face—if I can be one person that doesn’t disappoint her or let her down—
Then I can endure it.
I’ll finish the job. Harriet will move on with her life and I’ll—I’ll be here. She won’t ever know that her work was for naught. She’ll forget I ever existed and that hopeful heart of hers will find another lost cause to indulge in.
We can help each other. Just not in the way she thinks.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
She nods and holds out her hand. “Yup.”
I stare at it. “I meant back to your shop or your home or … whatever you have planned for the rest of your day.”
“You’re on a deadline. Let’s see what my past reveals today.” She nudges her hand against mine. “I promise not to grab any jam.”
“We don’t have to,” I offer. “We can wait another day.”
We shouldn’t. The other ghosts will likely be getting antsy. I’m shortening their timelines, making it more difficult to turn around a successful case. But I can’t be bothered. If they have issues with the way I’m operating, they can file a formal complaint with Isabella.
“Let’s go now,” Harriet says, insistent. “I’m feeling good about this one.”
“Are your secrets about to be revealed, Harriet?”
She grins. “I guess we’ll see.”
She wiggles her fingers, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
I grip both of her hands, squeezing once. Her skin is so much softer than mine. Pale. No scars over her knuckles or calluses against her palms.
My magic sparks and rolls in response, a warm wind coiling around my ankles, spinning up and out until it catches in her ponytail, the end of it brushing at her cheeks.
Her smile widens until she’s laughing, her hands held tight in my own, color and sound swirling around her as we’re tugged away to somewhere else.
The ice rink fades away and is replaced by flashes of other places as my magic decides where to drop us.
A candlelit dinner. A brick-lined alleyway. An overcrowded aisle and a hospital corridor. Everything passes too fast for me to hold on to while Harriet and I face each other in the storm.
Like this, she looks like she’s at the center of all of it.
Maybe she is.
When we finally slow to a stop, there’s not a soul in sight.
It’s just the two of us and an open stretch of beach, waves lapping at the shore.
Gray sand beneath our boots, stretching all the way to where the coast abruptly tumbles into lush, green hills, rising above us on a gentle slope.
There are homes in the distance. A single lighthouse painted in thick black and white stripes.
“I don’t recognize this place,” Harriet says next to me, shielding her eyes as she looks out over the water. Her hair twists around her face as she turns back to me. “I’m not sure I know this memory.”
My stomach is in knots. A tremble starts in my hands and crawls along my spine until I feel like I’m vibrating.
“That’s because it’s not your past,” I hear myself say. It’s a wonder I can manage any words at all. “It’s mine.”