Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
Colt dreaded the discussion ahead of him. His feet didn’t exactly drag, but he didn’t hurry down the sidewalk, either. He played the coming conversation in his head, again and again. Sometimes it went well; others, not so much. He knew what he had to say, but what would Anna’s response be? Trying to guess was foolish, but he did it anyway.
Anna and her brother waited on the front porch. She sat in the rocking chair nearest the front door. Jack didn’t need a chair, so the other rocker was empty, sitting there as if it was waiting for Colt. Did she feel better talking to him outside, where others might see as they drove or walked by? She was afraid, as others had been. She didn’t want to be alone with him. Another explanation might be that her mother was indoors, and this wasn’t going to be a conversation for Nina Miller’s ears.
He’d delayed long enough. Might as well not bother with niceties. Let’s go…
“Do you really want to know everything?” he asked as he walked up the steps.
“I do,” she said, more calmly than he’d expected.
“Once I tell all, there’s no going back.”
“I get that.”
“Where do you want me to start?” His ability, coming back to Seawolf Beach, finding out Jack had been murdered…
Anna gestured to the chair beside hers, which was close but not too close. “Start at the beginning.”
He did. The accident, Lizzie, trying to ignore the ghosts around him and failing, coming home. He even told her about Maude, Gerald, the pirate. He did not tell her about the woman and child who’d once haunted this house. That bit of information might spook her more than she already was, and it wasn’t relevant.
Anna might think they were alone, but they weren’t. Jack stood behind her chair, looking out instead of at either of the living persons present, obviously thinking hard. He stared at the empty street, either listening to the living or lost in thoughts of something else entirely. If it was possible for a ghost to be pensive, this was the expression Colt would expect.
It didn’t take long to share the basic details of how he’d come to be who and what he was. Funny, how twelve years of his life could be summed up in such a short time. That was true of everyone’s story, he supposed, but explaining the events of his life, recounting the past twelve years, should be more time consuming.
The tale could’ve been even shorter. I died a little. I came back seeing ghosts. I don’t know how it works, exactly. Every time I think I understand the rules they change. Big cities are horrifying. Even Seawolf Beach… on some days…
“I found something today,” he said, wondering if it was safe to include Anna. How could he not? She might know something, even if she didn’t understand that an old, seemingly irrelevant detail might be important. “I was cleaning some of the albums, getting them ready to sell, and in the 3 Doors Down sleeve…”
The porch shook. Jack no longer stared out at the street, he glared at Colt. For the first time since Colt had discovered the ghost of his old friend, Jack looked scared. More than scared, there was horror in his dark eyes, a new tenseness to his shoulders, a fisting of his ghostly hands.
Colt stayed quiet for a few seconds, waiting for more that didn’t come.
“That was Jack?” Anna asked.
Colt nodded, then he stood, his focus on the ghost. Something was wrong.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. Get in the house.”
She did, without question.
Colt shifted his focus to the ghost. “Jack, why did you have those pictures? Why did you hide them?”
Jack was no longer solid. He shimmered. He shook. For a moment the ghost in nothing but running shorts and tennis shoes was as grainy and unclear as the pictures Colt had locked in the depot safe.
“I did a bad thing,” the spirit whispered. “I’d forgotten. How could I forget? What else did I forget? Why did I…”
Jack shuddered one more time, and then he was gone.
Anna couldn’t concentrate on the pretty things that surrounded her, but her mom surely did. Dawn’s Radiance was one of several shops in downtown Seawolf Beach that catered to both locals and tourists. The shop was located in one of the small strip centers rather than in an old house, as many were. Anna preferred it this way. No separate rooms, no creaking floors. Just a square space filled with shelves of knick-knacks, hanging racks of clothes, and jewelry displays. Candles, scented creams and soaps, and a few locally made ceramic pieces were displayed on a shelf near the front counter.
The entire store smelled like lavender. A couple of times Anna held her hand over her nose to stifle the odor, but the strong scent didn’t appear to bother anyone else.
Dawn herself was bubbly, helpful, and very pregnant. She had a couple months to go, Anna guessed, not that she was an expert.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do some shopping for herself while she was here, but instead she stood back, watched her mother, and pondered the ridiculousness of her current situation.
Colt couldn’t see… It was impossible… And yet…
Impossibility aside, she couldn’t deny what she’d seen and felt in the past few days. That last conversation hadn’t helped. Just when she’d thought things couldn’t get any weirder, the porch had shimmied. Colt jumped to his feet and called Jack’s name, and then he’d told her to get inside and stay there.
As if . She and her mom had planned to shop and come hell or high water they would shop. Well, Nina Miller would shop. Anna couldn’t concentrate enough to even browse properly.
Something was up in Colt’s ghostly world. In her dead brother’s world.
Jack . She hadn’t even properly mourned her brother. It was hard to believe what she’d been told, hard to accept that Jack had been dead five years, that his ghost had been haunting their parents all that time. Colt said Jack was attached to their mother. What about Dad? Had he tried to get his father’s attention before his death? Where was Donnie Miller? Had he known his son was dead, that his ghost…
No. He wouldn’t have let his wife and daughter wait and wonder if he knew . But she had to admit, her father hadn’t waited for, looked for, Jack the way Nina had. He hadn’t talked about him much, not the way his wife did. What had he ever said about his missing son? Good riddance. If he’s smart he’ll stay away. He’s no son of mine, not anymore. Were those memories clear, or was she embellishing? Memory was funny.
It was true Jack and his father, their father, had never gotten along well. The last straw had been some kind of investment that hadn’t panned out. Money. Why would a man turn his back on his own child over money?
Had Donnie Miller known all along that Jack was dead? The question gave Anna chills. If he’d known, why didn’t he tell?
Anna almost jumped when her mother plopped her treasures on the counter and asked, in a too loud voice, “When are you due?”
Dawn smiled. “This little boy might be a Christmas baby.” She rested a hand over her stomach. Closer to three months than the two Anna had guessed, but then what did she know about being pregnant? Nothing. “Mike is over the moon. After two little girls, he’s thrilled to have a son coming along. I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought a baseball glove to the hospital.”
Nina jumped into a spiel about how boys and girls were different, how Jack had been constantly on the move, how he’d been a trial at times, but she’d adored him… and then she stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. Her little boy was gone, and she didn’t know how or why.
One day, somehow, Anna was going to have to tell her mother that Jack was dead. Since she hadn’t entirely accepted it herself, she couldn’t imagine how she’d share the news with a heartbroken mother.
They said goodbye to Dawn, and Anna helped her mom carry the purchases to the car. It was a good thing they hadn’t walked! Even a few blocks with this load would’ve been a challenge. Nina was quiet in the car, she stared out the window and sighed, on occasion. The conversation about baby boys had her thinking about Jack, Anna imagined.
There was nothing she could say to make things better. No, anything she said now would only make matters worse.
After helping her mother inside, into Colt’s house, Anna put the bags in the main bedroom, left them for her mom to organize, decided they also needed to buy a couple of suitcases, and said, “Lock the door behind me. I’m going to see Colt.” Might as well be honest. She looked her mother in the eye. “I might not be back until late. I might not be back until tomorrow, so don’t wait up. There are leftovers in the fridge.”