Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
It was annoying, honestly. How much the sunset reminded Cassie of Nick.
It had been a long day. Hot and humid, just another Florida day broken up by a midafternoon thunderstorm. From her place at the kitchen table, Cassie could hear the rumble of thunder outside, like a distant promise. That was followed almost immediately by the patter of the first hard raindrops against her window. It would be a perfect day for snuggling under a blanket with a cup of tea and a good book (and the air-conditioning cranked down to a polar setting to justify said blanket), but sadly, she was a grown-up with a job. Life really wasn’t fair.
By the time the rain stopped she’d uploaded the last bits of the ad campaign for the granola company, humming “Scarlet Begonias” under her breath as she closed her laptop for the day. She loved days like this, where things were buttoned up by the end of the day and she could check things off her list. To celebrate, she decided to take a glass of wine down to the beach at sunset.
But it wasn’t much of a celebration. Sure, the sunset was gorgeous—that was a no-brainer. Cassie watched the colors blaze across the sky and reflect over the water, and she knew she should be grateful. She was grateful. How amazing was it that she lived here, in this little cottage by the water? She’d never dreamed of this as she’d stumbled home to her downtown apartment after yet another girls’ night out. She’d had no idea then how much she would love the quiet of the night, the stars, the soft sound of the ocean against the shore practically in her backyard. A Shakespeare quote popped into her mind: “An honor I dream not of.” She was pretty sure he was talking about marriage, but it made sense here. Cassie had never imagined a life like this, and now she was living it.
But as she watched the sky darken and the sun disappear beneath the horizon, all she could think about was Nick. They’d watched the sunset together, not too long ago. It had been a perfect evening, and it had felt like a true beginning of something.
What the hell had happened? She took a healthy sip of wine, and her phone weighed heavy in her pocket. Calling him would be so easy, and yet it was impossible. Every passing day widened the gap that had grown between them, and Cassie didn’t know if she wanted to bridge it. His outburst hadn’t been her fault. Nick had been the one with the attitude, the one to set a match to what they’d been building. Why should she be the one to reach out?
She scowled at the last remaining daylight and turned back toward home. She’d only taken a few steps when she heard the footsteps behind her, walking when she walked and then stopping when she stopped. A cold sliver of fear slid down her back before she remembered. The Beach Bum. Ugh. The last thing she wanted at this pity party she was throwing for herself was a tagalong.
“Get lost, Casper.” She threw the words over her shoulder and picked up the pace, speed-walking the rest of the way home. The footsteps stopped before she hit her property line, and she immediately felt bad. It wasn’t the Beach Bum’s fault, was it? And that was all this guy had, following people around on the beach.
Great , she thought as she washed out her wineglass. Something else to feel like shit about.
Cassie distracted herself by opening her mail. It was a good mail day; she’d found an Etsy seller who made customized magnetic words for her refrigerator. The seller probably wondered why Cassie needed words that pertained to home improvement; there probably weren’t a lot of people wanting to stick words like “baseboards” or “linoleum” or “carpet” on their refrigerators. But this was exactly what she needed; if Sarah Hawkins wanted to have input on what the house looked like, Cassie needed to communicate with her.
It didn’t take long to swap out some of the more esoteric words in her collection, making room on the fridge for the new words. This wasn’t about poetry anymore. This was about conversation. Sarah Hawkins hadn’t had a voice for a very long time now, and Cassie was going to do her damnedest to let her use it.
“Okay, Sarah. Let’s tackle something easy first. Paint colors.” She scooped up a handful of paint chips in shades of green and pink that she’d picked up from the hardware store. They each went up on the fridge under a magnet. “Keep the ones you like and toss the rest.” Talking to absolutely no one in the middle of her kitchen was getting less weird by the day, and she didn’t know how to feel about that.
Speaking of talking to no one…before going upstairs for the night, Cassie picked her way across her backyard and to the seawall. She peered out into the darkness, but didn’t see anything other than the moon reflecting off the water. No sign of the Beach Bum who’d followed her home.
But just in case…“Here.” She plonked a bottle of water onto the low wall dividing her house from the beach. “You may not like this as much as beer, but listen. You need to hydrate.” Was that true? Did ghosts get dehydrated? She had no idea.
But the bottle of water was gone the next morning.
So were most of the paint chips. Only two remained under their magnets: a soft, barely-there pink and a dark sage green. The rest were scattered on the kitchen floor. The chosen colors coordinated beautifully, which didn’t surprise Cassie in the least.
“That works,” she said to nobody as she made a tick mark on her mental to-do list. Buster was coming over later this afternoon to talk about renovations, now that she had the magnetic words to use to consult Sarah.
To Buster’s credit, he didn’t bat an eye when Cassie told him about the ghostly input. “Makes sense” was all he said. “It was her place first.”
They made sure to discuss the renovations at her kitchen table, so all of Sarah’s contributions could be clearly seen. Cassie and Buster never saw the words on the fridge move, but they also kept themselves from looking there too often. The idea of watching Sarah form her thoughts felt too voyeuristic, too much like watching someone change their clothes. Instead, Cassie left a teaspoon sitting on the table between her and Buster while they discussed what work needed to be done to fix what the flippers had done so shoddily. If Sarah wanted to weigh in, the spoon between them would spin slowly, and they’d both look over to the fridge to see what her thoughts were. ( linoleum ugly never like. carpet go. wood floor nice .)
She had no opinions on the master bedroom. Cassie asked, more than once, but Sarah’s answers were always short and in the negative. your room now . She was letting Cassie decorate it the way she wanted, which she appreciated. But she still wasn’t sure if she was staying; she may be doing all this work on the house in order to sell it once Sarah was happy. Even so, she decided to paint this master bedroom her favorite color—soft blue and white accents that made it feel like she was falling asleep in a cloud—even if ultimately it was for someone else to enjoy. Or to paint over. She couldn’t decide which was worse.
It didn’t take long for Buster to become a fixture in the Hawkins House. During the next week he dropped by to tackle some of the smaller things himself. She could finally open her kitchen window, just in time to keep it tightly closed, because it was too damn hot outside and the air conditioner would be running nonstop until at least November. The larger things went on a separate list for him to tackle with his teenage grandsons when they came home for summer break.
“They’re great at painting,” he said. “Those kids will be able to knock out the living room, and the kitchen if you want it, before you can even blink. And if you’re wanting to change out these cabinets, I’ll get the boys to help me with all that lifting too.” He placed a weathered hand to the small of his back at the thought.
“That’ll be great,” Cassie said, already picturing the chaos of trying to attend meetings from her laptop in the kitchen while all that was going on. But she couldn’t risk unplugging and moving to another room; she didn’t have Hallowed Grounds as a backup anymore. So chaos it was.
One evening, she noticed as she took her dinner out of the microwave that there was a new message on the fridge. One thing about ghosts, they were stealthy when they wanted to be.
television island again
“Television…” Cassie swore as she peeled back the film from the plastic tray, giving herself both a steam facial and mild first-degree burns. “Island? Do you mean like a kitchen island? We don’t have one of those in here. Or a television.” She opened the fridge for some water, and when she closed it again there was a new message.
stupid television people
Now it clicked. “Oh, you mean Romance Resort ?” Great, her ghost was getting hooked on reality television. “You’re right, we’re behind, aren’t we? I think there’s a couple episodes saved up.” She carried her meal out to the living room; apparently she was eating in front of the TV tonight. “Only one at a time, though. Binge-watching can rot your brain.”
After the mediocre microwave lasagna and even more mediocre television, Cassie curled up on the sofa by the front window with Boneyard Key: A Haunted History . Reading it felt just like taking the ghost tour. When Sophie had said she’d used the book to create her tour, she hadn’t been kidding. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; a story was made that much richer, that much more immediate, when you were standing right there where said thing happened. It was a smart business model, and Sophie obviously had a good thing going here.
When she got to the story of Hawkins House, Cassie took a sip of wine and started reading aloud. Because who knew who might be listening. And who could help get the facts straight.
“The Hawkins House was built in 1899 by William Donnelly…” Cassie started reading aloud, but it didn’t take long for her voice to trail off. Like the rest of this book, it was Sophie’s ghost tour verbatim. There was nothing in here that Cassie hadn’t heard before. Therefore, there was nothing that Sarah Hawkins hadn’t heard before, either.
“Well, that was pointless.” She sighed and tossed the book down on the table. “Sorry, Sarah,” she called toward the kitchen. “I thought there might be something I didn’t already know in there, but it’s the same old shit. House was built by William Donnelly, then acquired by your husband. You two moved in, and then a few years later he died. And then…” She didn’t want to finish the story that was written in the book. How do you tell someone, You became the town’s scary lady in the old house on the corner ? It felt rude, somehow, to point it out to her non-corporeal face.
Something clattered to the floor in the kitchen, and Cassie jumped to sit up straight on the couch. She leaned forward, peering into the kitchen, but she couldn’t see anything from that angle. She wasn’t scared, she told herself as she went to investigate. Sure, it had gotten dark a little while ago, and sure, her house was confirmed to be haunted. But she and Sarah were watching reality TV together. They were friends now.
The kitchen was empty, and in the dim light from above the stove it took a minute for Cassie to find the spoon. The telltale spoon that sat on the kitchen table. Now it was in the middle of the floor, its filigree handle pointed toward the fridge.
Oh. Cassie swallowed as guilt rushed through her. Sarah had probably been spinning that spoon on the table like mad, but Cassie hadn’t seen because she’d been in the other room. She stepped closer to the fridge, to see Sarah’s message.
wrong
my house
Cassie sighed. “You said that before. I remember, because it scared the shit out of me. Can you be more specific? When was it your house?” Her mind whirled with possibilities. Had Sarah built this house? Had she bought it?
She didn’t even realize she was musing out loud until the spoon bumped lightly against the side of her foot. She looked over at the fridge again. The words my house were still there, but now they were followed with before .
Okay. Now we were getting somewhere. Maybe. “Like before you and your husband got married? Did you buy it from that Donnelly guy? Could women buy houses in those days?” Cassie wasn’t a property law girlie, but she remembered a factoid she’d read online. Something about how women couldn’t even get credit cards in their own names until around the 1970s. Was owning a house the same thing? Had Sarah’s name been erased in favor of her husband’s? Was that what she was so pissed off about for all this time? Being misrepresented in property records?
She deliberately didn’t look at the fridge, and waited till the spoon spun again to check for an answer. There were three separate lines this time; Sarah Hawkins was getting more and more verbose.
man closer friend
build house
then me
Cassie stared at those words like they were one of those old-school Magic Eye puzzles, and if she looked at them long enough, they’d make sense.
“Okay, starting with the easiest first. ‘Build house, then me . ’ So that Donnelly guy built the house, then you…bought it or whatever. But…‘man closer friend’ …” She sounded out the trio of words, as though that would help them make more sense. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault; she was limited by the words on the fridge, and could only say so much as a result. Time to go back online and order more packs of words.
There had to be a better way to go about this. Cassie had never been very good at fact-checking—at work that had always been someone else’s job. She just wrote the copy. But maybe she could handle this. Maybe she could fact-check Sarah’s life.
She had to. Right now Sarah didn’t have anyone else in her corner, and from the sounds of it, she hadn’t for a long time.
But Cassie was in her corner now. And she was going to see this through. Help the ghost in her house however she could. Thankfully, this damn town was full of ghost experts. She pulled out her phone and sent Libby a text. Only in Boneyard Key could she make an appointment at the local ghost hunter’s office for first thing in the morning.
Cassie had high hopes, but the next morning Libby shook her head with a puzzled expression. “?‘Man closer friend’? What is that supposed to mean?”
“I wish I knew.” Cassie had stayed awake far too late last night, trying to connect those words to something, but she’d come up with nothing.
Nothing except the incredible need for caffeine, and the coffee in her cardboard to-go cup was terrible. She took another sip in an act of optimism. Nope. Still awful. She’d stopped by Spooky Brew—the coffee shop next door to Libby’s office—on the way over here, and now she understood why Libby walked the extra couple of blocks to Hallowed Grounds.
Cassie sternly reminded herself that she didn’t miss Nick, or his excellent coffee. Or his vivid blue eyes, or his smile. Or his hair, that was just long enough to curl along the nape of his neck…
Anyway. Screw Nick. Cassie choked down another sip of coffee and forced her brain back on topic. “I was thinking maybe she meant ‘boyfriend’? A man that’s closer than a friend? But ‘love’ and ‘lover’ are right there on the fridge, so I’d think she would have used one of those instead.”
“That would make more sense.” Libby tapped a pencil against her bottom lip, thinking. “Maybe she meant family? Family is closer than a friend. A man who’s closer than a friend, like a brother or cousin or something.”
Cassie hadn’t considered that; she’d been so stuck on the boyfriend angle. She tried to visualize the words on the fridge—were there any terms for family? She couldn’t think of any. Libby may be onto something. She added that to her mental list of custom words to order.
“Well, besides that…” Cassie dug in her bag. “I spent the morning doing some research. Property records were a bust; her name doesn’t appear anywhere. But she died in the forties, and online searches don’t go back that far. Maybe I could go down to the county courthouse? See if there’s anything there?”
“Hmm. Maybe.” Libby’s voice was doubtful. “I’m not sure how helpful it’ll be.”
“I looked up census records too.” Had Cassie done any actual work this morning? No. No, she had not. She’d already resigned herself to catching up on projects later tonight. But this whole thing with Sarah and the house itched in her brain too hard to let it go.
“Oooh. Gimme.” Libby stretched out her hands. “Census records are a good start. We do a little genealogy research sometimes, so I could probably do some more digging if it helps.”
“That’s the 1910 census.” Cassie handed it over. “It’s got Charles and Sarah living there. And that pointed me to their marriage record.” She handed that over too.
“Oh, good. Because from there you can…” Libby looked from one document to the other with a frown. “Crap. Never mind.”
“Never mind? Never mind what?”
Libby handed the papers back to Cassie with an apologetic look. “Sarah’s maiden name is Blankenship. That’s not one of the Founding Fifteen. And neither is Hawkins, but we already knew that; Charles came to town a little after 1900.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that Sarah must have moved here after the Great Storm. If you research any further back you’re leaving Boneyard Key…”
“Which isn’t helpful.” Cassie looked at the papers with a scowl before shoving them back in her bag. “So a dead end, then.” She really noticed how many idioms were morbidly themed now that she lived in a haunted town. “I don’t suppose your grandmother can come out to the house again? See if Sarah can give her something a little more useful than her preference of wallpaper?”
Libby shook her head as she reached for her cup of coffee. Hers was in a to-go cup from Hallowed Grounds, and Cassie was insanely jealous. But she forced herself to pay attention. “It doesn’t work that way. Nan’s never able to get more than one visitation from a spirit. It’s like a recording just for her, and that’s it.”
Cassie took a swig of her own coffee; maybe it would taste better once it had cooled off? Nope: lukewarm dirt. “What about you? Maybe you can give it a shot?”
“Me?” A laugh bubbled out of Libby and she shook her head. “That whole ‘talking to the dead’ gene that the Founding Fifteen have totally skipped me. Skipped my dad too. We think Nan got the last of it, and now the ability in our family is all used up.”
Cassie clucked her tongue in sympathy. “That sucks.”
“It’s okay. That’s why I’m the office manager.” There was something slightly brittle about her cheerful expression. “I’m able to make myself plenty useful.”
“I’m sure.” Cassie turned her to-go coffee cup around and around in her hands. It was still half-full; she didn’t want to pitch it in Libby’s empty wastebasket. She’d have to carry it home with her and dump it there.
“You know what you need…” Libby picked up her pencil again, twirling it in her fingers before tapping the eraser end on her desk. “You need someone that was around when Sarah was alive.”
If that were said in any other town, it would be a joke. Hilarious. Yeah, let me just find the nearest centenarian and see what they can tell me. Florida was full of old people, but that was pushing it.
But of course, this was Boneyard Key. All she needed to find was a ghost that was easy to communicate with that had been alive back then. Cassie’s gaze drifted to Libby’s Hallowed Grounds cup as a terrible idea began to form. This was probably a mistake, but what the hell. At least she’d get a decent cup of coffee.