CHAPTER SIX
Five turns of the crown, and the ghost appeared next to the picnic table.
“Hey there.” It was the first real greeting I’d ever given him. “You’re back,” I added unnecessarily. As if I weren’t the one who’d brought him there.
Penn glanced left, then right, taking in the surroundings. “Thanks for the invite,” he said, nodding toward the watch. The words were more playful than snarky, matching his smirk.
I felt my face blush. “You’re, um, welcome.” Ghosts aside, was I really this bad at talking to new people? “It was three days ago, the last time you were here,” I said, figuring he should know and trying desperately to cover up my awkwardness.
He had on the same jeans, but the top half of him was different. Today he wore a black T-shirt layered under a thick tan button-down. “Being a ghost doesn’t seem to stop you from changing your clothes. Last visit you had on a blue shirt.”
“With black checks,” Penn said immediately. He looked himself over.
“Is this like a genie-in-a-bottle situation? Do you have a plush room with a full wardrobe inside the watch?” I teased.
“Oh, well, my secret’s out now,” he replied, playing along. “Looks like you have three wishes I need to make good on.”
I couldn’t resist a smile. “You’re saying you could deliver a pastelito de guayaba right now?” The flaky, guava-filled pastry from Porto’s was one of the things I missed most about LA.
His brow shot up. “All the things in the world, and that’s what you’d want?”
“I don’t ask for much.”
“Noted. And as for the pastry, I will if I can,” Penn offered. “Still no clue how any of that works, or how I even work. I can’t picture anything about where I go.” He stepped closer. “You said the watch hasn’t ticked for three days?”
“I, er, wouldn’t know. I took it off,” I said, sheepish.
“I get that. I’m not sure I’d have wanted to talk to me again either.”
Were all ghosts this self-deprecating? Either way, the trembling in my fingertips eased. My heart rate dipped, in perfect step with the gentle dribble of the creek water. “I needed some time to come to terms with all this.”
“And have you?”
Would I ever?
I lifted my wrist. “I did learn that hiding this thing away doesn’t work out so well. It’s like the watch wants me to wear it. It’s hard to explain.”
“No need. Me standing here is hard enough to explain, yeah?”
Self-deprecating and understanding. I scooted forward, the bench wood scraping the backs of my legs. “Understatement of the year.”
He gave a soft chuckle, and I continued. “I think you were right. This watch has something to do with us”—my face heated at the word—“but I wanted to test something. Would you be up for an experiment?”
“Consider me your test subject.”
“Follow me.”
I stood, and we strolled away from the cottage.
Unlike our previous frantic dash for cover on Cedar Street, Penn walked beside me this time.
He matched my stride, his body reacting like mine to the stirrings of this secluded hideaway.
We both startled as a squirrel dashed across our path and shimmied up a tree trunk.
When a majestic bird swooped in, gliding just above the webbed canopy of foliage, we levered our necks backward.
“A red-tailed hawk,” Penn said, knowing this small, great thing.
We reached Tía Vivian’s work shed. Now the anxious dread was back, glazing my stomach.
Even though Penn had appeared in front of plenty of people in town, the farmers market could’ve been too busy for him to stand out.
If Viv didn’t see him now, that meant only I did.
What that said about my connection to the watch—or Penn, for that matter—I couldn’t be sure.
But I could be sure about this one thing.
With a wry “This should be fun,” I pulled the doorknob, stepped in, and moved aside for Penn. Just like that first day in my room, one fragment of a second later, he was simply inside.
“Nice party trick,” I said, but the machinery killed it. Penn grinned anyway. Either he had supernatural hearing in this half mortality, or he read lips.
But he didn’t comment. He immediately zeroed in on Vivian as she turned a skinny, notched peg at her lathe.
Nearby, two single panels of reddish-tan cherrywood stood with beveled trim already fitted.
She would carve out the piece, inlay metal and blips of stained glass to make detailed scenes or swirls of bold color. Whatever the client envisioned.
A row of squat, chunky logs—freshly cleaved—waited nearby. Penn’s brow furrowed, and his mouth slipped open as he tracked these and the violent array of tools on the wall.
I waited, my head tossing and turning over what would happen next. I never wanted to startle Tía Viv in her shop. Much of the work she did was as precise as fitting vessels to a new heart. One slip could kill a vision, or she could injure herself.
I held a finger to Penn to keep waiting.
I hoped it wouldn’t be long, as I had no idea how long today’s visit would last. But I did something I rarely took the time to do anymore.
I watched my tía. Even sheathed with a heavy protective apron, and headphones, and futuristic goggles, she was never more beautiful than when she was creating.
Long limbs, another kind of chiseled. Her topknot messy and lips rosy.
She was a viral social-media post for skin care.
What would Penn say when I told him she was pushing sixty-three?
My parents weren’t far behind her at sixty and sixty-one, even though I was barely eighteen. They’d waited forever to have me. Or, rather, they’d tried, but no babies came while my dad climbed the ranks that peaked with four golden epaulets on his uniform. Captain.
But then I showed up in their mid-forties.
My mom and dad were elated—I’d thumbed through albums that proved it.
Beaming smiles, a cacophony of pink. Pages showed Cuban mementos and the handmade treasures that poured in from my Miami tíos and primos.
Crocheted bonnets and blankets from Abuela Rojas, the family ivory linen baptismal gown, and the miniature diamond earrings I rocked at three months old. I still wore them in my second holes.
I landed into my parents’ world as something inherited and treasured like Abuela’s good porcelain plates. I was carefully housed and admired and polished, but rarely used. Every summer, I was boxed up and sent away.
My time with Tía Viv was the most unwanted aspect of my world, but her love was messy and riotous.
It was late-night trash TV and sticky ice cream and beach sand.
It enveloped me in a way that made my summers feel like a different life, because my parents weren’t like her and rarely tried to be.
Because she was almost too good at reading me. Predicting me.
But like the wooden spindle she turned and honed, Tía Viv had done more than see me. She’d shaped me. Had I told her enough how much I loved her? Ever?
I wrapped some words to save for later. Penn was there, and I didn’t want him to hear them. I just needed to know if Viv could see him or not.
My gut fizzed when the lathe rolled to a stop, and she removed half her gear.
“Tía,” I called.
In slow motion, Vivian turned, eyes flicking wide. She dabbed at her nose with her gloved hand. “Oh!” she said.
Oh, as in, Who is the cute, dark-haired teen boy in my shop? I wondered.
Instinctively, I pivoted toward Penn. He shrugged and walked five steps toward the table saw.
I released a pent-up breath as I studied my aunt, who hadn’t shifted at all. “You look a little off. Is it your head again?” she asked, brows dipping.
Her eyes never strayed from me.
“Er,” I managed, my hand flying up to my left temple.
Pain battered the spot, but I couldn’t let her know.
That wasn’t what I was here for. “Actually, I’m good.
Just wanted to check in and see what you’ve been working on.
” I forced a smile. “You were right. The forest was pretty.” But it wasn’t at all uneventful, I thought as Penn tested the space even more by circling the stand holding Vivian’s lathe.
“I finished all the salad, so should I go back to that booth for more corn?”
“Isn’t the farmers market only on Saturday?” Viv asked, stepping away from her machine, narrowing her gaze with concern.
Because it was Tuesday. And I was saying stuff I never did.
Lingering around for small talk was about as anti-Sylvie as it came.
I needed to exit before my tía drew something from the Rojas arsenal of Cuban superstitious cures.
Two more minutes of me like this, and I’d have Vicks VapoRub smeared on my body—somewhere. Location rarely mattered.
I backed up, motioning for Penn to follow. “Right. Saturday. It’s easy to lose your sense of time here,” I said, and waved, quitting while I was anything but ahead.
The door barely shut behind us when Penn asked, “What was your plan if she’d been able to see me?”
I exhaled a small universe. “I probably would’ve said you got lost in the woods and needed water and wanted to know what the racket was about, or your dad was a woodworker and you were interested in her pieces, or maybe your family used to live here years ago and you wanted to see the place.”
“Are you that good of a liar?”
“Only when I have to be.”
We moved toward the cabin, fallen leaves crunching under my sneakers. I didn’t know if I was going to try to bring him back inside, maybe to the living room. I hadn’t thought that far. Where did one typically entertain visiting ghosts? Or a particular ghost that was only mine to see.
Only mine. I swallowed hard as this fantastical truth rooted into my limbs.
“I remembered something else,” Penn said. “In the workshop.”
The words snapped me back. I sank onto the nearest place available: the wide porch steps. “You didn’t want to lead with that?”