Chapter 7
After locking the door and blowing out the candles, Ingrid practically floated upstairs. On the main level of the town house, she stopped in the narrow front hall, Litha twisting around her ankles, rubbing her silky white pelt against Ingrid’s skin.
Just like that, Ingrid was living in a new life. Looking at a new beginning. Sailor Loeffler was sending her work. She had said she needed her. Ingrid had done it.
Well, she and Edie together.
Now she surveyed the front hall of her home with new eyes.
She saw the mauve and blue striped wallpaper in the cramped entryway, installed back in the sixties when Edie first moved in.
It still looked pretty good, in spite of the occasional water stain and peeling strip.
The chandelier, original to the house and made of brass and crystal, was missing a few bulbs.
The small rug at the door needed a good deep clean.
The hall tree resembled a small gothic throne.
What would Sailor think of the place if Ingrid were to bring her up here?
If Ingrid were to have a party, something small and intimate and invite just a few people?
Even though now these row houses went for millions, they had been built for simple, middle-class workers.
The rooms were small and serviceable. A sitting room, dining room, and small kitchen.
Upstairs, two rooms and a tiny bath. Third floors, if you were lucky enough to have one like Ingrid, held maybe two more bedrooms. Rarely another bathroom.
She pictured throwing a party at her house. Sailor and her friends, mingling, drinking, listening to music …
Stupid. What was she even thinking? Ingrid didn’t throw parties. She mostly hung out with Miles’s friends. Miles’s work friend, Boney. Mari, who cleaned rooms at a couple of B and Bs and led the occasional pub crawl. Fran was a server at Common Thread; Louella drove an Uber.
Anyway, when would it ever be appropriate for Ingrid to have Sailor in her house?
She couldn’t think of a single instance.
Sailor might’ve gotten carried away because Ingrid had called out a supposed friend for sexting someone she shouldn’t have, but that didn’t make her and Ingrid friends.
Not yet anyway, said a little voice inside Ingrid.
Not yet …
She felt arms encircle her from behind, tightening bands of muscle, hairy arms, the press of sweat against her back. The smell of tar, sunshine, and sweaty male body.
“Budgie,” Miles said in a singsong voice. Her grandmother’s nickname for her. She wished she’d never told him about it. He acted like it belonged to him.
Miles was an ambush hugger, a lot like an overeager, poorly trained puppy. She usually didn’t mind the hugging and cheek kissing and nickname-appropriating, but right now, his affectionate behavior was getting on her nerves.
Gingerly, she extricated herself from the hug and put enough distance between them that Miles couldn’t spring another one on her. “How much longer for the roof?” she asked.
“I think you’ve got a couple of months. As long as it’s done raining.”
It was never done raining in Savannah. She let out a growl of frustration. Why couldn’t this house just work with her? Just hang in there until business got better and all Sailor’s friends started coming around?
“Want me to fix ramen?” Miles was walking back toward the kitchen. “I can put an egg on it and some chili oil. We have scallions, too.”
“I’m going out.”
He stopped and spun a slow one-eighty. She couldn’t see his expression in the shadows of the long hall, but she could feel his curiosity.
She could feel him studying her. She briefly considered lying about it all—Sailor, the fantastically successful reading, the engagement party she’d been invited to that night.
She could tell the story in a different way, and he wouldn’t push. He wasn’t the type to push.
But in the next instant, she saw how knotty that could get. The work it would take to keep Miles from finding out she’d gone to the party. To keep him in the dark about Sailor.
“Sailor Loeffler invited me to her engagement party tonight,” she said, forcing herself to sound nonchalant.
“Oh yeah?” He emerged from the shadow and into a pale circle of light cast by the brass sconce between them. Now she could see his face. He simply looked interested, that was all.
She summarized the events of the past few hours. The reading, Sailor’s reaction, everything. The whole time she was speaking, his face remained pleasantly blank, his eyes unfocused and looking past her.
When she was finished, he nodded once, vaguely. “You’ll eat there, then.”
“Miles.”
“What?” Now he was focused on her.
“Are you mad?”
“Why would I be mad?” It was impossible to read him, and that worried her.
“You know. Those people …”
He pursed his lips and started nodding. “I mean, yeah—”
“… they’re so …” She made a face.
He nodded and made the same face. That’s what all of their friends thought about people like the Loefflers. The richies. Standoffish, entitled, annoying. They lived inside the mansions. On a different planet, never mixing with the workers. The poors.
“Right.” He dropped his hands in the pockets of his dingy, paint-spattered chinos. “They’re probably not that different from us, though. Really.”
She knew neither one of them believed that for a second. They’d both grown up in Savannah, where the line between in and out was very clearly marked. The richies were as different from them as they could possibly be.
“I probably won’t stay long.”
He finally looked directly at her. His bright blue eyes did not hold any malice. If anything, he looked sad. Sad and far younger than his twenty-six years. “It’s okay if you do. Litha and I won’t watch ahead.”
He was talking about The Twilight Zone. All one hundred and fifty-six episodes were on YouTube, and they’d made it all the way to number seventy-three.
Her heart ached a little. Miles was alone in the world, too.
His real mother, a runaway like hers. They’d bonded over that one.
There weren’t that many people who got dropped off by their mothers for other people to raise.
His adoptive father was a drunk who lost his shrimping boat for violations of harvest regulations.
The boat Miles would’ve inherited at some point.
His mother was dead, and he had no siblings or extended family.
All Miles had was Ingrid … and vice versa.
How many times had she told him that since they’d first met?
And she’d meant it. Now she felt like she was somehow backing out of some kind of promise she’d made to him.
She touched his hand. “Thank you for taking care of the roof.”
He shrugged. “No problem. Didn’t have much else going on today.”
“You don’t have a tour tonight?”
“I gave Boney all my groups.”
Miles had been looking forward to eating ramen in front of The Twilight Zone with her and Litha.
Boney, or “Bone Man,” would be who Miles meant.
He was called that by everyone around Savannah on account of his shockingly good facial bone structure but also how he supposedly had, in his travels around town, come across the delicate digits of what he claimed was a portion of a human hand from the early 1700s.
He carried the hand around in a leather pouch, producing it for his tour groups and telling them it belonged to the famous Yamacraw Indian chief Tomochichi, who worked with General James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony of Georgia and architect of Savannah (which it did not).
So far, the owner of the ghost tour company had received numerous complaints from customers alleging ghoulish and unseemly behavior on Boney’s part, as well as misrepresentation, cultural appropriation, and outright illegal possession of human remains.
But with his good looks and theatrical talents, Boney wasn’t about to get fired.
Women adored him and he brought in a lot of business.
Ingrid peered up the narrow staircase. “I should go shower. I’ve got to find something to wear that’s not filthy.” Or torn or cheap looking or that didn’t smell like mothballs. Which eliminated practically every article of clothing in this house.
“I’ll help you pick something out,” Miles offered. “We should look in Edie’s closet. You should wear something of hers. It’ll be like she’s going to the party with you.”
She smiled at him, understanding this was his version of a peace offering. He wasn’t mad after all. Everything was going to be fine.