Chapter 10
Chapter
When I show up at the park, I’m surprised to find Greg already there, waiting for me. Sitting on the swing, pushing himself lazily back and forth with his feet.
Mom used to joke about how he’d be late to everything. He and Wendy are on Filipino time. But my mother lived for business advice books, and somewhere along the line, she picked up the maxim that on time is already late.
As if enough things weren’t out of joint already. Greg could at least do me the courtesy of keeping to his usual patterns.
I stop in front of him, breeze ruffling my hair. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Greg nods up at me, pupils big in the fading light.
Nerves roil my stomach, and I take a deep breath. I’m older and wiser. I’m in control here; there’s nothing to be scared of.
I plop myself down on the swing next to him, flipping through a few different ways I could start.
The park sits on a hill, and in the distance you can see the buildings of TKCORP and the blue shimmer of the pool I used to work at. The sun is sliding down below the horizon, turning the shaggy palm trees into silhouettes.
Greg glances at me uneasily. “So, uh…what’s going on?”
You have to tell him. You need help.
I close my eyes and grit out: “Have you noticed anything…weird lately, at work?”
I’m hoping against hope, maybe, that he’ll say he heard about a very sophisticated computer virus going around, impersonating people’s dead relatives.
“Besides you having lunch with the new executive?”
“No, that’s—” My eyes snap open. All the things I wanted to say to him the other night kick up like a dust storm in my head. “Why is it your business who I have lunch with?”
“Oh, okay!” An unhappy chuckle, hard as rocks, shakes his shoulders. “Guess it’s not.”
I let out a deep sigh—this conversation is exhausting already. Maybe I’ll change tack. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Greg gives me a long, appraising look. “Yeah. Why?”
It makes sense, given his mom’s line of work. I worried he’d gotten more skeptical over the years, with all the big books he reads.
“Good.” I twist on my swing, metal chains digging into my palms. “That makes this story slightly easier to tell.”
Then I launch into it—the whole thing, blow by blow, until I run out of steam and trail off. “So…what do you think?”
Greg’s staring at me, eyebrows raised. “Well, that is…definitely not what I expected you to say, when I got your text.”
Part of me wants to ask, What did you expect me to say? But instead I settle on: “Do you think it’s really her?”
“Do you?” The patient, steady way Greg’s looking at me, like there’s not actually a wrong answer, is kind of unnerving. Like he would sit here all night waiting for me to make up my mind.
The sky has slid into cobalt dusk, and the lights in the school parking lot have switched on across the field.
I pull out my phone and show him the messages—briefly enough that he can get a general sense, but I snatch the phone away before he can read too much. After all, it’s private. And I don’t want him to see that we’ve talked about him.
“It actually seems more likely than someone trying to scam me, at this point,” I add. “I mean—the money in the desk.”
“If you really think it’s her…I think we need to tell my mom.” His eyes meet mine, like he can sense I’m scared to tell her. That old psychic link, again. “She’d probably know what to do. More than anyone.”
“Do you actually think she could help?”
Greg stares at the ground, considering it. “I think we have to ask.”
But I do feel comforted that he said we.