Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
“Oh, I meant to say…” Libby handed Nick her debit card to pay for her lunch order. “Thanks for the referral.”
“You mean Cassie?” Nick kept his eyes on the card reader machine and tried his damnedest to sound casual, but the smile that played around his lips probably gave him away. He couldn’t help but smile when Cassie’s name came up.
Libby noticed. She clucked her tongue at him. “Of course I mean Cassie. You’ve been sending a lot of referrals our way that I don’t know about?”
“Nope, just the one.” He chanced meeting her eyes as he handed her card back, but the amusement in her expression only made his smile widen.
“Well, thanks again. Nan loved getting into the Hawkins House.” Libby tucked her card away. “She said the activity there was off the chain.”
“Your grandmother did not say ‘off the chain.’?”
A laugh bubbled out of her. “Okay, you got me there. In any case, she couldn’t stop talking about it last night.”
“So Cassie’s got ghosts?”
“Oh, she’s definitely got ghosts,” she said in the matter-of-fact tone that someone who didn’t live in Boneyard Key might use to say a house had termites. Though around here the ghosts were definitely more welcome. “But get this.” She leaned her elbows on the counter, and even though Nick had at least three tables of customers waiting for their lunch orders, they could wait. Ghost gossip was the best gossip.
“Mean Mrs. Hawkins isn’t mean.” Libby raised her eyebrows. “Can you believe that?”
“Huh.” Nick wasn’t expecting that. “You sure it was her, then?”
“Nan was pretty sure. There were a lot of details about the house—the way it used to look inside, stuff like that. Who else could it be?” Libby straightened up again. “But Nan said the presence was gentle. Kind, even. She apparently talked about her roses, and that she misses them. That was like the main theme. Weird, huh?”
“Really weird.” Nick was taken aback. All his life he’d heard about Mean Mrs. Hawkins. How could all those stories be wrong?
Libby shook her head. “Sounded more like she was lonely. Happy to finally be able to communicate with someone. Kind of sad, you know?”
“Yeah.” The word lonely echoed in Nick’s head. A relatable notion. He thought about Mrs. Hawkins rattling around in that house, abandoned for however many years. About someone finally hearing her after all this time. He suddenly had a little more sympathy for Elmer and his incessant texting.
From behind Nick came Ramon’s voice calling “Order up!” along with the clatter of plates being deposited into the window. He really did need to get back to work.
“How did Cassie take the news?” He tossed the question over his shoulder on his way to delivering the roast beef sandwich to the guy in the far corner and a Cobb salad to the woman at the table by the window. More and more tourists every day, and it wasn’t even Memorial Day yet. It was shaping up to be a busy summer.
“She was kinda mad at first, Nan said.” Libby waited till he was back by the counter to pick up the conversation string. He grabbed the last plate—roast beef sandwiches sure were popular today—and practically threw it at the customer at the other end of the counter. All these lunch orders were interrupting this very important conversation. “She was more focused on getting Mrs. H out of her house as opposed to understanding why she’s there. Which…I guess that makes sense. I try and remember that not everyone grows up with this stuff. It’s a lot to take in when you haven’t been tapped into it all your life.”
“No, I get that.” He thought that Cassie had been making progress. Sure, he still remembered her stricken face when Sarah Hawkins had first made herself known, when Cassie had said she wasn’t cut out for this. But he also remembered her face as they watched the sunset together and talked about ghostly roommates. He thought she’d been coming around to the idea. Maybe he’d been mistaken. “I’m glad she’s okay, at least,” he finally said. “She was pretty freaked out when it first happened.”
Libby narrowed her eyes, studying him. “You like her!” She practically crowed the words.
Nick narrowed his eyes back, mocking her. “I like her fine.”
“Yeah, he does.” Ramon walked through the swinging door to the kitchen, take-out box in hand. He usually just threw them up on the ledge with the regular orders, but Libby ordered a BLT with extra crispy fries every time, and Ramon had a crush on Libby. Hence the personal delivery.
“I knew it!” Libby sounded triumphant as she took the box from Ramon, but she made no move to leave. Nick wished she would; he didn’t need his love life dissected in public like this. “This is great! Cassie seems really nice. I’m thrilled for you—”
“Don’t start.” He didn’t mean to interrupt her, but it was time to quash that line of thinking. “We don’t even know if she’s sticking around.”
“Well, of course she is.” Libby popped open the take-out box and selected a fry. “She just bought a house.” She said the words slowly, as though explaining a complex concept. “People who buy houses generally stick around.”
“Right,” Nick said. “But she didn’t know she was buying a haunted house. That changes things.”
“He’s just being a chickenshit,” Ramon said. “You know how he is. Scared to let people in.”
Nick whipped his head around and glared at his cook. When the hell had Ramon become his therapist? “I let people in.”
But Libby nodded sagely. “He’s right,” she said while Ramon glowed at the praise. Traitor.
“Just let her in, Nick.” Libby continued munching on her fries.
“You know, if you were gonna eat it here you could have just said.” Nick passed her a plate, but Libby kept eating out of the take-out box.
“Not every girl is gonna be like Madison, you know.”
“Libby…” He tried to put as much warning into his voice as possible, but once again, Libby was immune.
“Nick.” Libby leveled a look at him. “Your best friend is a guy who died a couple decades ago.”
Nick leveled a look right back. “I don’t exactly have a choice. It’s not like Elmer’s gonna go away.” He sent a quick glance up toward the ceiling. Sorry, man. You know what I mean.
But Libby wasn’t done. “Have you had a real relationship since Madison left? It’s been years since you two broke up.”
He threw up his hands. Libby meant well, but even though he had moved on from his ex, hearing her name still felt like needles on his skin. “Who the hell am I gonna date around here?”
Libby’s smile was slow and sly. Checkmate , it said. “There’s Cassie. You could date her.”
Nick opened his mouth to argue, but Libby had him there. While his ex’s name was needles, Cassie’s was like a drink of water on a hot day.
Libby took advantage of his silence. “You know what I think?” She picked up one half of the BLT, inspecting the quality of the bacon. “You should go check on her. Maybe see if she’s feeling better about Mrs. H today.”
“Sure,” Nick said slowly. “I could do that. Maybe after closing, I’ll…”
Libby waved a hand, the one not holding the sandwich she was still theoretically not eating here, as she took a bite. “Or you could go now.”
“Now?” he repeated. “We’re in the middle of lunch.”
“Technically it’s the end of lunch,” Ramon said, and he wasn’t wrong. The three orders Nick had just delivered were working on their food, and no one new had come in. The lunch rush was indeed over.
That didn’t mean he didn’t have work to do. Once the café closed he still had to clean up. Start on the next day’s batch of banana bread. There was also this chocolate chip cookie recipe he wanted to try that had the tiniest sprinkling of sea salt over the top…
But he was already untying his apron. “There are a couple pieces of cinnamon banana bread left over. She might like them.”
Ramon nodded sagely while Libby polished off the first half of her sandwich. “Don’t want ’em to go stale,” he said.
It didn’t take long to bag them up. “You sure you’re okay handling things for a little bit?” But Nick was already halfway to the door.
Ramon made a shooing motion. “I know how to work a cash register. Go say hi to your girl. Just don’t fuck it up.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” He glanced over his shoulder one more time to see Libby starting on the second half of her sandwich.
“Do you think I could get a Diet Coke here?”
Nick scoffed as Ramon all but dashed for the soda fountain. Ramon had been nursing that low-key crush on Libby since eighth grade. But hell, who wasn’t. Just about everyone had a crush on Libby back in those days. Except Nick. He’d chosen her cousin, which had turned out to be a terrible idea.
But Madison was the past. The future was just up the street.
···
Cassie didn’t answer the door at first. Nick rang the bell a second time and stood there just long enough to feel desperate. He glanced around the porch, then back down the street. Maybe she wasn’t home? Maybe—
The door swung inward with a speed and ferocity that had Nick falling back a step.
“Sorry!” Cassie said. “Sorry. Were you there long?” She gestured at the massive pair of black headphones hanging around her neck. “I thought I heard the doorbell, but I couldn’t tell if it was part of the music or not.”
“You listen to doorbell music?”
She smirked and rolled her eyes, gesturing him inside. “I listen to lo-fi mood music. You know, while I’m working. Helps me get in the zone. They just put me on this new ad campaign, some hippie granola company, and they want us to completely redo their social media. I have permission to make as many Grateful Dead puns as I want.”
“Groovy.” Warmth bloomed in his chest in response to her smile. Ugh, Libby was right. He liked her. Like, liked her. Nick closed the door behind him and held out the bag. “There was some leftover—”
“Oh my god, is that banana bread?” Cassie snatched the bag and peered inside. “You are a lifesaver. I’m just now realizing that I forgot to eat lunch.” She cocked her head. “Actually, I’m not sure I had breakfast. Does coffee count?” she asked as she led him toward the kitchen.
“No.” So much for freaked-out Cassie. She was either taking this whole ghost thing much easier than anyone suspected, or she was pushing it down in favor of her job. “I think maybe you work too much.” That wasn’t something he usually said, at least not out loud. He started work at the crack of dawn, after all. Who was he to criticize anyone’s work habits? Then again, he usually remembered to eat.
“Probably,” she agreed easily. “But it’s either that or obsess about my haunted house, right? Speaking of which, check this out!” She dug among the papers on the table for a moment, emerging with a scrap of paper that she pushed into his hand.
At first he thought it was a torn receipt, but it felt thicker. “Wallpaper?” He ran a thumb over the surface before holding it up to the light. He could almost make out the pattern, but it had been painted over with white paint.
“Wallpaper,” Cassie confirmed with a nod. “But she doesn’t want new wallpaper. It’s the color she misses. Which, thank God, because repainting a room is so much easier.”
Nick shook his head, as though that would jar a thought loose. He knew the words she was saying, but not the context. “What…?”
“The wallpaper ,” she repeated, as though that would make it clearer. She opened the fridge and took out two bottles of soda, offering him one. “Nan Simpson came by yesterday, right?” She bumped the fridge closed with her hip. “And she kept talking about cabbage roses and wallpaper. But I didn’t find this”—she indicated the scrap of wallpaper in his hand—“till after she left. They missed it when they were remodeling. Looks like they painted over it instead of getting it off the wall.”
“Sounds about right.” Nick had gotten a few quotes from contractors when he’d first bought the café, and he knew all about ones that cut corners.
“But then. Then! I asked her. Does she want the pink and green colors back? Or does she want the cabbage rose print? And she answered me! Look!” She pointed to the mess of words on her fridge, and sure enough the word color was in the center. The word flower lay on the floor in front of the fridge, obviously rejected.
“Damn.” Nick was impressed. “She answered you. That’s…” He couldn’t put into words what he was feeling. And he really wished he could, because the feeling swelled something in his chest. It was like pride, but warmer than that. Deeper than joy. But there was something buzzing in his chest too. Like the aftermath of a swarm of bees. Something that felt tight. Felt like panic. “Cassie, this is huge. There are people that have lived here their whole lives—Founding Fifteen and everything—and haven’t been able to communicate like this.”
“What?” Her forehead furrowed. “I thought it was normal around here to talk to ghosts. Isn’t that this place’s whole…thing?” Her gesture encompassed not just her kitchen, her house, but the entire town.
Nick shook his head. “It depends. I think of it as more like a talent. Like drawing or being good at tennis. It can be trained, for sure, but natural ability helps a lot. Family members in the Founding Fifteen can have the talent in spades, but it’s still going to vary from person to person. And then, of course, not everyone cares or wants to develop it.”
“Ah.” She looked at the fridge for a long moment. “And your family’s part of the Founding Fifteen?”
He nodded. “Neither of my parents have the ability, therefore they think it’s a load of crap. They live over in The Villages now. And my sister Courtney left for college when she turned eighteen and never came back.”
Cassie gave a low whistle. “So you’re the last Royer standing, huh?”
Nick tried to give a casual shrug, but his jaw had suddenly clenched tight. “Something like that.” It was a sore subject, and not one he’d meant to bring up. It was weird sometimes, to be the only one in the family who took the legacy seriously. Sure, Boneyard Key had become a cheesy tourist destination, but it was also their ancestral home. As much as anything in Florida settled barely at the end of the nineteenth century could be called “ancestral.” People in Europe would probably laugh themselves into hysterics at the notion.
Anyway, he felt possessive of the town. In a way that no one else in his family did.
If Cassie noticed any of this inner turmoil, she didn’t let it show. “Nan thought it might have to do with the magnetic poetry. Makes it easy for her to communicate.”
“She’d know better than I would, for sure.” He followed her gaze to the scattered words on the fridge. “Not all ghosts communicate the same. Elmer’s never moved stuff around. He talks to me in my head. Or on my phone.”
“In your head?” Cassie’s eyes widened. “That sounds creepy.”
She had a point. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. I guess I got used to it.”
“I think I’d prefer the words on the fridge.”
He chuckled. “You’re in luck then. Looks like she can move things, and you have things that she can move. Who knows, maybe it really is as simple as that.”
Cassie considered that while Nick turned his attention back to the wallpaper scrap in his hand. “So she wants you to paint, huh?” He scraped at the white paint with his thumbnail, trying to get to the…what did she call them? Cabbage roses? He didn’t know the difference between that and a regular rose.
“Yep. Pink and green. I’ve already called Buster, and he’s got a few weeks free. He’s going to come by soon, and we’re going to put a list together.”
“A list of what?”
“Other stuff that needs fixing.” She started ticking them off on her fingers. “The shower upstairs has a leak. They never put baseboards in the second bedroom upstairs, and one of the windows is painted shut. This window in the kitchen doesn’t close properly; learned that the hard way the first couple days, so I can’t even open it now. And of course that electricity thing that never resolved itself; we’re gonna need to take another crack at that.” She gestured to her laptop. There was something about the sight of it, open on her kitchen table, papers and notes scattered all around, that made Nick feel like he was intruding on her life. Like she was a professional, and he was just some guy who owned a diner. Inferior.
But he pushed down the feeling and focused on Cassie. Because she was right there , warm and soft, and it was the easiest thing in the world to slip an arm around her waist and tug her closer. “You’re going to make this house beautiful,” he murmured into her hair. She made a soft humming sound in response, leaning into him, and his blood stirred. What other rooms in this house needed fixing? Maybe her bedroom? Because he wouldn’t mind taking a look right about now.
Cassie sighed, her dark eyes still slowly scanning the room. Probably making to-do lists in her head; she was that type of person. “I do want to make it beautiful,” she said, her voice low, talking more to herself than to him. “And maybe I could…I don’t know…recoup some of what I put into the place.”
His blood cooled fast. “What do you mean?”
“You know, when it’s time to sell. Improvements build equity. Increase the value.”
Nick let his arm fall limply to his side as realization dawned. “You’re selling?” Of course. She wasn’t sticking around, either. Let her in , they’d said. What bullshit.
“Not tomorrow or anything, but at some point.” Her dark eyes scanned the kitchen. “You have to admit, this house is a lot to take on. More than I thought it would be. The listing should have said ‘two bedroom, one and a half bath, renovated in a half-assed manner, free ghost with purchase.’?” Her laugh sounded mocking. To Nick, to Sarah Hawkins, to all of Boneyard Key. “I probably would have thought twice before putting in an offer then.”
“Right. So you’re…” Nick couldn’t finish the sentence because the buzzing sensation in his chest had gotten stronger and moved upward, like his head was suddenly full of bees.
Cassie must have noticed the change in his tone, because she turned back to him. “I don’t know.” Her voice was soft, almost gentle. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Nick. I want to just start with painting the living room and see how it goes.”
“See how it goes?” His voice was harsh in his ears, and he didn’t like how it sounded.
“Yeah. I mean, I still have work to consider.” She gestured to her laptop setup, and the sight of it made him even angrier. Cassie’s overly patient tone felt condescending. Dismissive. It all made the buzzing in his head louder. “How am I going to keep my job if I have to come down to the café every day just to power up my laptop?”
“You’re welcome there anytime. You know that.” It was like his electricity wasn’t good enough for her or something.
“I know that.” Her calm voice just made him angrier. Why was she placating him? “But it’s not exactly convenient, is it?”
“So you’re saying you don’t want to see me?” He was picking a stupid fight. There was a part of his mind that was fully aware of that. But the rest was filled with buzzing, growing even louder now. The buzzing said that she was wrong. That he had to put her in her place.
What? said the sane part of his mind. But that part wasn’t in charge anymore.
“No, I get it,” he said, even as Cassie opened her mouth to answer him. “Work comes first for you, right? What’s going to happen when you get married? Aren’t you going to want to give your husband children? Shouldn’t that be the priority, not a career?”
“When I what ?” Cassie looked stricken and she fell back a step, away from him. “Who the hell is talking about having kids?”
“Are you saying you don’t want a family? What the hell is wrong with women these days?”
What the hell was wrong with him ? Why had he just said that? He didn’t mean that.
Yes, he did.
No, he didn’t .
Silence stretched between them. Cassie’s eyes were wide and her face had gone white, except for two bright spots of red on her cheeks. Her mouth was open in a little O as she stared at him, stunned. Nick didn’t blame her. He sounded like a raging asshole, and that wasn’t like him at all. But the buzzing in his head had grown so loud that he couldn’t think straight. Red crept into the edges of his vision, the rage making his chest so tight that he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to yell. He wanted to cry. He wanted to…
He wanted Cassie to stop looking at him like she had no idea who he was. Though she had every right to; Nick had no idea who he was, either.
But Cassie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking past him, and when he turned around he realized her attention had been caught by the refrigerator. The words in the middle, where Sarah left her messages, had changed.
get him out
The buzzing faded as he stared at the fridge, the words burning their way into his brain. Even the goddamn ghost wanted him out.
“I think…” Cassie’s voice behind him was shaky. He looked back at her, taking in her tight expression. Those warm brown eyes had gone cold. “I think maybe you should go.”
“Yeah, I can tell I’ve overstayed my welcome.” What had he been thinking, dropping everything to run over here like a lovesick puppy?
He wasted no time getting the hell out of there. He practically leapt down the front porch steps, and the buzzing in his head stopped the moment he crossed through the front gate and his feet hit the sidewalk. The farther he walked, the quieter everything got, and by the time he made it to the café it had faded completely, along with his anger. His heart raced from more than just the walk as he paused at the door. He felt like he was waking up from the worst dream he’d ever had.
What had he said? And why had he said it? He turned to look back at the Hawkins House—Cassie’s house. That whole conversation—no, call it what it was, a fight—felt like it had happened to someone else.
But it hadn’t. It had happened to him. He’d said some pretty shitty things to the girl he was trying to date.
Inside Hallowed Grounds, Libby lingered at the counter, chatting with Ramon and sipping on her Diet Coke. Her take-out box was long gone. She and Ramon looked up at him with matching gleeful smiles, which faded as they got a good look at him.
“What happened?” Libby asked.
Nick didn’t know how to answer that.
“I think I fucked up.”