Chapter Seven
“Wills,” someone whispered.
She opened her eyes. The storm that had been brewing all evening had finally blown in. Rain was whooshing against the window, sounding like someone tapping against the glass. Maybe that’s what she heard.
“Wills. Wake up.”
She turned her head on her pillow to find Jack sitting on the edge of her bed. He was wearing the clothes he’d had on earlier that day, only now he had another yellow rose pinned to his shirt.
She sat up slowly and turned on her bedside light.
Mrs. Orr wasn’t the best at remembering to lock the front door, not that anyone who knew better would have dared to enter uninvited.
But how had he gotten past Gram’s room? This was an old house and the floorboards creaked like knee joints. You couldn’t sneak around easily in it.
Then again, Gram had been hitting the gin hard that evening.
“Come with me, Wills. We have to go,” he said, standing, and she saw he was carrying the black umbrella from his guitar case. It was still dripping. “There’s not much time.”
“Go where?” she asked, incredulous. “I’m not going anywhere with you.
You took her money. You let her buy you like she buys everything else.
You could have just walked away, Jack. It still would’ve hurt, because it was always going to hurt when you left, but I would have blamed her, not you.
And I would’ve been able to live the rest of my life thinking there was one person who actually saw my real value. But you took that, too.”
“Oh, God, no,” he said as he sat back down and reached for her.
She angled away from him. “Wills, I was about to walk away and leave your grandmother holding the check. I swear, I was. I wanted to show her, and you, how powerless she really is. But then I thought if I had money, it might make it easier for you to leave. Because she certainly wouldn’t give us a going-away gift.
” He took the check out of his jeans pocket and ripped it in two in front of her.
“You will always be enough. I love you, Wills. But I have nothing to offer you but my soul.”
She just stared at him, so raw and alive.
“You told me when the time came, to go out in the world and be happy,” he said, “but I can’t do that without you.
I don’t know what you’ve done to me. I don’t think I can exist without you.
If I left, even if I died, part of me would still be here because you are.
Don’t make me live half a life. Don’t make yourself live half a life. Come with me. Please, Wills.”
Maybe she thought she’d never really had a choice in her life because she was always too scared to make one. It was easier to leave it up to other people. Making a choice, a real choice, took courage, after all. You had to be willing to give up something in order to take a chance on something else.
She suddenly leaned forward and kissed him.
He smiled against her lips and put a hand to her hair. “Hurry,” he said. “We need to get as much distance as we can before morning, when Penwell finds out I stole his car.”
Wills got up and changed out of her nightgown into jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes.
Then she grabbed a bag from her closet and stuffed as many clothes into it as she could.
She had some money in her purse, but not enough, so she took her jewelry box, as well.
She had a few expensive rings and necklaces her grandmother had gifted her over the years, which she could sell later to get them started.
To get them settled. There were more valuable items in the house, and Gram always kept cash in a secret drawer in her desk, but Wills wasn’t going to give any other reason for the law to come after them.
Their new life together started tonight.
A clean slate. Somewhere, anywhere. She didn’t care.
She finally turned to him. He was standing by the door. “I think I’m scared,” she said.
“Here, take this,” he said, handing her the umbrella. “We can get through any storm.”
They crept along the hallway, Wills showing him where to avoid the creaks in the floorboards. They’d just reached the staircase when they heard behind them, “Stay where you are, Willamena.”
They both turned to see Gram in a dressing gown, walking toward them from her bedroom. She had one hand against the wall to steady herself. Her long blond hair was down and knotted, making her look like the mad wife in the attic from Jane Eyre.
“As for you, young man, get out of my house before I call the police.”
“I’m going with him, Gram,” Wills said. “I’m sorry to do this to you, but I’ve always known I was meant for something else.”
“Willamena, give him his umbrella and let him go, or this won’t end well.”
“No.”
Gram suddenly put herself between Wills and Jack and tried to take the umbrella herself.
Wills automatically tugged back and they struggled for a moment.
Her grandmother had the wet canopy end, so when she pulled sharply, the umbrella suddenly slid out of her hands with a zipping sound, throwing Gram off balance and right into Jack behind her at the top of the staircase.
Everything seemed in slow motion after that.
Her grandmother turned, her voluminous floor-length dressing gown spinning.
Jack was waving his arms, trying to regain his balance as the heel of his boot slid on the top step.
Wills lurched forward so she could grab him.
Her grandmother’s eyes darted to Wills, then back to Jack.
Wills would never be sure what happened next.
She only knew there was movement. Did her grandmother reach out to save Jack, and she was too late?
Or did she push him?
Jack hit the stairs, tumbling down the long staircase until he landed on the floor.
Everything went quiet; then Wills said without any breath, “Jack.”
She ran to him and went to her knees. The umbrella she’d still been holding skittered across the foyer and fell with almost perfect precision into the narrow, three-foot-long floor vent by the door, the brass cover of which Mrs. Orr had forgotten to replace after she’d vacuumed inside it earlier that day.
The commotion caused Mrs. Orr to poke her head out of her bedroom down the foyer hall. She stepped out and approached with some trepidation, one hand clenching the lapels of her terry cloth robe, the other holding a baseball bat.
“Call an ambulance!” Wills said as Gram came down the stairs and knelt on the other side of Jack, putting two fingers to the side of his neck.
“Stay where you are, Mrs. Orr.”
Wills was about to stand and run to the kitchen to do it herself, but her grandmother grabbed her arm and said, “Willamena, it’s too late.”
“No!” she said. Then she screamed it over and over, grabbing Jack’s shirt and shaking him.
“Willamena, stop. Stop this right now!” Gram stood and tried to make Wills do the same, but Wills pushed her away. She finally hoisted Wills to her feet. “Listen to me! He’ll stay if you mourn him this much! He’ll stay if he thinks there is unfinished business!”
“What?” Wills said, stunned. She ran her hand across her face, hot with tears. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about ghosts, Willamena,” Gram said. “Mrs. Orr, we’re going to need your discretion.”
“Why would I do anything for you now?” Mrs. Orr said with a short laugh.
“You know exactly why,” Gram snapped. “Because you convinced everyone that your husband died in an accident, but he told me what you did to him. I will agree never to say a word about that, if you do the same about this.”
“I’m not working for you anymore,” Mrs. Orr said.
“Very well.”
“I expect severance pay.”
“Then I expect a little help with this situation before you go. We can go on like this forever, Mrs. Orr. Either we stop here, or it’s mutually assured destruction.”
“She’ll be quiet, as well?”
“Yes,” Gram said, leading Wills to the living room.
“No.” Wills started struggling against her again. “No, I won’t! I’m telling everyone what happened tonight!”
“Could I trouble you for one of your Seconals, Mrs. Orr?” Gram said over her shoulder as she forced Wills onto the couch.
She took Wills’s face in her hands and made her look at her.
“Willamena, listen to me. This isn’t the end.
This is where it all begins. I have so much to tell you.
I was too young when I found out what I could see.
I deserved a childhood, and I didn’t get it.
I wanted you to have one first. But now you’ll understand the power you hold.
Everything I am, everything my own grandmother was, you are, as well.
And you will be amazed. It’s all going to make sense.
I promise you, it’s all going to make sense. ”
Mrs. Orr came back with a glass of water and a pill and handed them both to Gram.
“Take this,” Gram said, and Wills did as she said.
Mrs. Orr went to the living room window and lifted the curtain. “It looks like he brought Principal Penwell’s car. We’ll have to get it out of the neighborhood before the rain stops and we lose our cover. But what do we do with him? We can’t carry him.”
Gram shook her head. “The basement is our only option.”
Wills was now staring into the foyer in a daze. Her tears made Jack blurry. It was almost as if there were two of him—one lying, one standing and looking back at her. Maybe this was just a bad dream. Maybe she would wake and find that he wasn’t really gone.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said to Jack.
“In the morning,” Gram said gently. “I will tell you.”