Chapter 13 Ellis
ELLIS
Iwas in awe when we rolled into Red Oak II, my eyes drinking in the restored buildings like they’d been thirsting to put reality to the history I’d aggressively read online. It looked like a painting and it was almost too perfect to be real.
A reconstructed ghost town, built in honor of the artist’s actual hometown of Red Oak.
Dove was standing in front of what appeared to be the jail, her phone out as she snapped photos. I knew she meant to sketch them later. Liv had vanished in a flurry, claiming she was off to see if there were other ghosts around.
I wandered alone, taking in the full-scale reconstructed town, my mind boggling at the idea that one man’s death grip on the past had been so strong, he’d dragged it into his future.
Everything had been uprooted and torn from where it belonged and transplanted, arranged carefully to give the illusion that it had always been here. That it fit. That it was real.
But it wasn’t.
The lengths he’d gone to... was he trying to fill a hole? Patch a missing piece?
Absentmindedly, I ran my hand down my chest to where I knew the slightly raised, pink scar sat as a constant proof that I’d been rebuilt, too.
The heart inside me wasn’t mine. It didn’t belong to me.
Yet it had been taken and placed inside me, and it beat just the same as it had in Liv’s chest. And like this town—these old, restored buildings—it pulsed with a life that had already been lived.
My stomach knotted.
The rebuilt town was beautiful, but it was also a lie. A fabrication of something great that had once existed. What would happen when it inevitably fell into disrepair again? When it was abandoned again? Would someone else show up to take care of it?
How many chances could something have?
“How cool is that service station!”
Dove’s voice broke through my thoughts, and I startled, dropping my hand from my chest as I turned to look at her.
The old Phillips 66 station looked like it had been plucked from a Route 66 nostalgia Pinterest board—frozen in time since the 1940s.
The teal green walls and bright orange roof and trim were a little loud on the eyes, but it was undeniably charming.
Two gas pumps stood proudly out front, both restored, polished, long disconnected.
I made sure to capture as much content as possible as we made our way around the town—filming on my phone, snapping pictures when I could. Another tourist took a Polaroid of Dove and me under the Red Oak II sign, and I added it to the growing collection in the pocket of my bag.
Liv had wandered off toward the jail long ago, and Dove and I headed in the direction of the general store.
I let my eyes fall on Dove as she wandered a few steps ahead, looking around with gleaming eyes as if truly interested in the stop. I had to admit, it was one of our better ones.
Her oversized shirt hung off one shoulder, and her black Converse were scuffed to all hell. At this point, she looked like someone who’d stumbled out of a punk band’s tour van and fallen into some kind of Technicolor Western.
It unsettled me, a little, how fully she seemed to exist in this world.
And yet I—I felt like I’d been fading for years.
“How weird is it?” Dove asked, turning to look at me, the sun catching in her brown eyes, giving them a hazel glow.
That familiar loose strand of hair had fallen from her space bun, and my hand dared to twitch on its own accord, as if I could reach out and tuck it away.
“Like, this place isn’t the original, yet it still feels so real.
Like, the fact that it’s all rebuilt and restored to its former glory—maybe even better than what it originally was—none of it is where it started, and yet someone still cared enough to put it back together. ”
“Like being in a memory,” I murmured, trying to stop myself from thinking about my rebuilt body. My body that had been cared for, patched together by strangers. Yet the past always lingered. The way my scar would sometimes itch. How my lungs would seize now and then, haunted by the memory of chemo.
“This place is hella haunted!” Liv’s voice came from the porch of the general store. We looked up as she stood on the railing. “It’s crazy! Can you feel the energy?”
“Sure,” Dove said with a shrug. I wondered if she meant it or if she was just placating our overly enthusiastic pain-in-the-ass ghost.
Liv disappeared back inside.
“Want to hear a secret?” Dove asked, her voice a little quieter. I glanced at her. “I scattered some of Margaret here.”
I looked around and nodded. “It’s an appropriate location.”
Dove’s eyes searched mine. “Are you okay?”
It took me a second to find my voice.
“Yeah,” I said quickly—too quickly. “I’m good.”
She didn’t push, as was her way. She just gave me a long, searching look for a moment, then smiled softly and headed up the steps of the general store.
Watching without prying. Feeling without asking. It was both infuriating and oddly comforting, and I was trying to figure out if it was just who she was, or if she actually had some kind of psychic ability.
When I’d broken down in the field and lost it, she’d been there.
Kind. Patient. Understanding. She hadn’t pushed me to reveal my deepest emotions.
She didn’t make fun of me or scoff. She’d just let me be—placing that steadying hand on my back in a way that made me catch my breath, offering calm conversation and compromise like it was second nature.
She had just been so solid without being a force.
I’d been filled with a warmth I’d long since forgotten, and when I leaned into her and her hand relaxed... it had been all but a breath of a moment. Barely anything.
But it had happened.
And I’d felt it deeply enough that I was still thinking about it now.
The warmth that continued to flare up in my chest every time she looked at me with that thoughtful, casually interested expression? It simmered inside me like a pot coming to a boil, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
It wasn’t like I was unfamiliar with attraction. I’d experienced it long ago with Alexis. It was just inconvenient, after all the vows and promises I’d made to myself. Promises not to allow those feelings again. Not to get close enough to anyone to hurt them the way I had hurt—
I sucked in a sharp breath and rubbed my temple.
And yet I kept looking at her. Kept... waiting for her to look at me.
I stood outside the general store, trying to pull myself together under the warm Missouri sun, pretending I couldn’t remember what it felt like to wake up beside Dove this morning with her face turned toward me, eyes closed, long dark lashes casting shadows.
But this was all too up in the air. Too untrustworthy.
What I could trust were maps. Laminated binders. Itineraries. I could trust knowing how much time I had left in this life, so I didn’t waste it on false starts and doomed hopes, or on tearing apart people I cared about.
“Hey!” Dove’s voice called from inside the store as her head popped around the doorframe. “You coming in? Liv lied. It’s totally not haunted.”
I blinked and swallowed, taking an unsteady step forward. “Right. Yes. I’m coming.”
Her grin widened before she disappeared back inside.
My palms itched. My mouth was dry.
I was a goddamn lesbian cliché. Four and a half days on the road—according to Liv—and I was crushing on Dove like a schoolgirl finding the only other lesbian in her year. I was wanting something.
And that scared me more than any ghost that hated me, or any eternal haunting she threatened.
I’d booked us a motel in Joplin while Dove took the wheel. She hummed along to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” drumming her fingers on the wheel while Liv sang in the back, running her hands through her hair and, once again, demanding we put the roof down, which I hard no’d.
I didn’t even know why I said no. It just felt good to deny her. In some sick way that I’d probably need to unpack in therapy... Yeah, try explaining this to Dr. Morgan.
The motel rating was decent enough. The photos didn’t scream serial killer, and I was putting a lot of faith in the 3.9-star Google review.
Joplin had been my compromise.
We could still go to the drive-in, but we were closer to Tulsa.
When Dove pulled into the motel lot, I decided it looked acceptable enough.
Off-white stucco with blue trim—well, some blue trim.
It kind of looked like someone had gone for coastal chic and just given up halfway through, because half the trim was missing.
A neon V_C_NCY sign blinked in what appeared to be exhausted intervals, and honestly, I couldn’t blame it.
I was fried.
“Yes,” Liv said with a dreamy sigh. “Yes, definitely no murders here.”
“Great,” Dove chirped as she parked. “That’s what we want to hear, hey?”
“Sure,” I murmured with a nod, getting out of the car and groaning as I stretched my legs before arching my back until it cracked in that sickeningly satisfying way.
“You go get the keys,” Dove told me, heading around to the trunk, her cheeks a little red. “I’ll get the bags.”
Liv pranced behind her like a backup dancer.
I gave Dove a nod and walked toward the office, my muscles a little less tense as I pulled open the door, only to immediately gasp at the colder-than-necessary air and the unmistakable scent of pine and disinfectant. Two horrible smells, even worse together.
“Hi there,” I greeted.
The woman didn’t look up.
“I have a booking for Ellis Langley.”
She sighed softly and clicked around on her screen for a moment before nodding once and turning to pull a key from the wall.
“Two doubles,” she said thinly. “Wi-Fi password’s stuck to the lamp.”
“Cool,” I replied, voice flat. “Thanks.”