Chapter 16
Sixteen
“Samson!”
Sam froze halfway through the kitchen, the back door still swinging shut behind him. He’d just come in from checking the Buick, seeing if there was anything he could get done before heading to Rumrunners later. How the hell did his dad always know?
He drew a steadying breath and stepped into the living room.
His father was perched forward in the recliner, one hand gripping the walker like he might haul himself up at any second. His glare cut straight through Sam.
“What is that car doing in my driveway?”
Sam frowned, the familiar sting of frustration pricking his chest. He hated what the head injury had done to his dad—not changing him so much as peeling back the layers to expose the weaknesses he’d hidden for years.
“I thought I told you? You and I are going to try to get it fixed up for Erielle.”
“Erielle.” The older man shook his head. “All I hear about is that woman. Why would we do something like that for her?”
Where would his dad have heard about her, since he didn’t leave the house? But Sam didn’t argue. “Because it would mean a lot to her, having her grandfather’s car. And you and I…we could use the work, too.”
His dad made an angry gesture toward his back. “Do I look like I should be bending under a hood, or crawling around underneath a car?”
“You don’t have to do that part. I can do it.
I just thought…it would be something we could do together.
Something to get you away from the television and living your life again.
Something like we used to do.” Sam sat across from his dad, in his mom’s recliner.
“Remember how happy you were when you got me that TransAm? Despite what terrible shape it was in?”
Of course he’d wanted a sports car, but his fantasy car had come fully loaded, without rust, and, of course, able to start when he turned the key.
But together, they’d taken the whole thing apart, rebuilt it inch by inch. And they’d talked. And worked. And just…been father and son. They’d learned a lot about each other that fall.
Temper still flared in his father’s eyes, but was tempered by the memory. The older man pressed his lips together. “I don’t need you feeling sorry for me.”
“I don’t feel sorry for anyone,” Sam retorted. “I can’t do this on my own, and I want to do it for her. Give her something.” Some reason to be happy. He didn’t add that maybe it wasn’t only for her—that maybe it was for him too, trying to grab hold of the father he used to know.
His dad snorted, the sound edged with challenge. “I’m not going to just sit in a chair and boss you around.”
“No, sir,” Sam said, though relief rippled through him at the crack in his father’s resistance.
“You’re lucky the tires haven’t rotted clean off.”
Sam huffed a laugh. He’d had the same thought. Getting that car running was going to take money he shouldn’t be spending—not on sabbatical, not for a woman he hadn’t seen in a decade.
But none of that mattered.
Because this wasn’t just about her.
It was about him.
About them.
Something he needed every bit as much as she did.
“You know, there’s a more economic way, and better-tasting way, to do that.” Erielle motioned at the stack of canned chicken soup on the counter in the diner. They may have been store brand, but still overpriced compared to what Erielle could make. “You have chicken broth?”
Hattie gave her a look—Erielle would do anything to be able to read this woman’s expressions—and turned to the cupboard for a box of broth.
Erielle accepted the box skeptically. “You don’t make your own?”
“Why would I make my own?”
“It’s easy to do. We’ll do that here in a bit, for next time.” She set down the broth and selected a whisk from the magnetic bar above the counter.
“Don’t you be forgetting whose kitchen this is.”
Erielle raised her hands in mock surrender, holding the other woman’s gaze.
“I would never. But trust me, it’s easy, and will make all the difference.
Okay, so cream of chicken soup.” She cubed up some butter and tossed it into the sauce pan.
“You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t remember you when I was here before. Did you own this place then?”
“I didn’t. I worked at the factory until it closed.”
Erielle’s heart leapt a little at a direct answer from the other woman. Progress! “Had you always wanted to have a diner?”
“What is with all the questions?”
“I was just thinking about when I was here as a kid, and I was trying to remember who owned this place before.”
“I mean, you clearly know I don’t own it.” Hattie’s spoon scraped the pan loudly. “I just run it. I rent it from your granddaddy. Well. From you, now, I guess.”
“You may not own the property, but you own the equipment and everything, don’t you?”Hattie narrowed her eyes as suspicion settled in. “Why? You wanting to take it over?”
“No, and I’ve already told you that several times,” Erielle said, exasperated, as she whisked the broth and milk into the pan.
. “I’m just trying to remember what things were like when I was here before.
” She reached for the spices and tossed them into the mixture, stirring as the liquid started to bubble.
“I don’t think I have it in me right now to run a restaurant. I just miss cooking.”
Hattie grunted, and used her finger to swipe a taste of the mixture from Erielle’s whisk. Her approving hum was the closest thing to praise yet. While she started assembling the casserole, Erielle crossed to the refrigerator.
“Okay if I use this chicken to start a stock?”
Hattie made a sound that wasn’t quite assent, but Erielle took it as such.
She carried the chicken over and started chopping it up, dropping the pieces in a stock pot she’d found under the counter.
She was making herself at home maybe more than Hattie would like, but she knew the woman would tell her if she stepped over the line.
“How long is that going to last, you using up my chicken and veggies like that?”
“In the fridge, a few days, but we can freeze leftovers for up to a year. Honestly, you will taste the difference, I promise.”
Hattie hummed as she set aside the second casserole and reached for a third. The kitchen fell into a companionable rhythm, the scrape of knives and the soft clatter of bowls filling the space.
Erielle tried to focus on chopping celery, but her thoughts kept drifting—toward Samson, and the vow he’d made to stay at her house tonight. Relief swirled in her chest at the idea of not being alone during the storm, but nerves skittered right alongside it. Him. In her house. Alone.
She yanked her thoughts back. No use letting them wander where they had no business going—not when he looked at her like she was some fragile thing that needed looking after.
“So you planning on staying, then?”
Hattie’s question made her jump, but also gave her a sense of relief. “I don’t really have a lot of options right now, so for now, yes.”
“That’s how most people end up staying here,” Hattie said.
Oof. “Including you?”
“Once the factory closed, didn’t have money to move off anywhere.
Old man Lacey wanted to get rid of this place, was getting too tired to run it, and he let me pay for the equipment over time.
Finally paid it off last year, along with my student loans.
Still have to pay rent, though.” She slid Erielle a look.
Erielle ignored the hint. Instead she chopped silently, adding vegetables to the pot. “Good for you.”
“The Lord must know—soon as I thought I’d turn a profit, business dried up. Can’t blame folks. No jobs, no money.”
“That’s why so many shops are empty?”
“Why would anyone come? Factory went down, town near did too. Your granddaddy bought up properties to help folks out when they left, but he couldn’t find new buyers.”
So he carried the losses. Erielle knew that all too well.
“Why didn’t you move?” She held her breath, pretty sure Hattie wouldn’t answer.
“I lived here most of my life. My parents worked in the factory before me. I knew your mama and your auntie.”
Erielle stopped chopping the celery and stared, agog. She would never have thought Hattie was the same age as her mom. Maybe it was her curves, or her darker complexion, but she looked easily ten years younger.
“Why are you staring?” Hattie demanded.
“Sorry.” Erielle turned back to her task at hand. “I thought you were younger.”
“I am. Just because I remember them, doesn’t mean I was friends with them. They weren’t much friends with anyone in town, anyway.”
“I can see that,” Erielle said. Everything she’d heard about them, as well as her own experience, told her the truth of that.
“So different from your grandparents, who wanted to be friends with everyone.”
“Mom says she and her sister resented being moved to the middle of nowhere.”
“Yet she was happy enough to send you here in the summers.”
Erielle sighed. “She was.”
“That going to take a long time, isn’t it?” Hattie motioned with her spoon to the stock pot.
“A few hours. Low and slow, that’s the best way.”
Hattie rolled her eyes. “I guess that means I’m stuck with you.”
“Yeah, sorry. Too hot to work in the house, and I don’t have to be at work until ten.
I’m not great with sitting around. I’m either going to bother you or Allison, but at least here I get to do something.
” And the longer she stayed here, the less time she had to worry about Samson coming to spend the night.
“Fine. Once you get that going, I’ll put you to work.”
“Here’s the main question I have,” Sam said, sitting at the bar across from Erielle that night, his forearms resting on the scarred wood. The place was pretty empty tonight, so he had the majority of her attention to himself. “Why that painting? What’s special about it?”
“I don’t know. It’s always given me the creeps, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe it’s not the picture but the location. We could test that theory out, put a different picture there, see if the same thing happens.”
He pressed his lips together, nodding. “That’s a pretty good theory.
We can try it.” He wished he had the picture in front of him right now.
At first, he’d wondered if maybe Erielle had scratched the images into the frame herself, but she wasn’t that kind of person, not seeking attention for something like that.
For her skills, yes. For her circumstances, no.
At least, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t rule out the possibility. He was surprised to find he believed in haunting a little more than he thought he had.
“Did you find any books that match those symbols?”
She shook her head. “I worked at Hattie’s this afternoon, then went home and got the living room ready for company, including stuffing holes in the walls so you don’t have any unexpected visitors overnight.
The swamp kind, not the ethereal kind. Cal and I chased a rat out the other day, but I didn’t see any evidence of any other kind of critter, thankfully.
I had to relocate a couple of spiders, that’s it. ”
“You…relocated them?” Surprise had his brow arching.
“I just put them outside on the porch. They’ll be happier there, anyway.”
He shook his head, unable to picture it. “You…caught them and carried them out to the porch?”
Her lips curved, enjoying his bemusement. “Well, one I had to catch—in a jar. I didn’t carry it out in my bare hands. The other I just opened the window and shooed out.”
“Instead of killing them.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, they have a job to do, right? They’re good for the environment and everything.”
“You’re not scared of them?”
She met his gaze. “Are you?”
“I live in the swamp. But no, they are not my favorite.”
She shrugged. “I’d just rather not have them in the house. But outside, I think they’re kind of fascinating, actually.”
“Hm.” Something in his chest tightened. He didn’t know many women who would go to the trouble of saving a spider.
And the way she leaned across the bar when she said it, so earnest, made him feel like he was learning her inch by inch, in ways that unsettled him more than any haunting.
“So. Tell me what you’ve been experiencing in the house. ”
She looked past him to the three other customers in the bar. “Did my grandfather ever talk to you about seeing anything?”
“No. But I didn’t talk to him all that much.”
“Who might have, do you know?”
“I mean.” He shrugged. “Anyone who lived here full-time?”
“Your parents, do you think?”
“I don’t think they’re the type of people he might have confided in if he was seeing ghosts.”
“What about Pete from the other night? He seemed to think Grandpa knew something.”
Sam scoffed. “He isn’t exactly a reliable witness. Just tell me what you’re experiencing, so I can be prepared.”
“I told you. I wake up, every night, because someone says my name, and when I open my eyes, there’s a column of white light beside my air mattress.”
“And does it go away? Like after you’ve been up a minute?” He couldn’t be sure, still, that what she was experiencing wasn’t a dream.
“In the time it takes me to jump up, put on pants and grab my keys, it’s still there.”
“Does it look like anything?”
“I don’t look closely. It’s scary, Sam. I’m there alone.”
The quiet between them stretched, his pulse drumming harder than it should. Finally, he leaned in again, his voice steady. “Well. You won’t be tonight.”