Chapter Thirty-One
Gabriel
Friday, Late Afternoon
“Across the stream, safe and sound,” Sommer said as Whiskey snuffled the ground then turned them back to rejoin the trail, following Sommer’s scent from the day before at a fast clip.
“Let me put you back in our conversation.” There was an edge to her voice.
“You were going to tell me the origin story of how you met my sister.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“Couldn’t have been that long ago,” Sommer said. “You met her this morning. Start there.”
“Actually, this story started in March.”
“March,” Sommer said as her voice wandered off.
“In March, I found out that my brother Daniel left Whiskey to me in his will. No,” Gabriel paused. “Let me start at a different place. I told you that I grew up around the corner from your house. As an adult, I moved back to my childhood home after my parents died.”
Sommer came to an abrupt halt. “Stop it.”
Gabriel waited for her to figure this out. Time to think would be what he’d want under such circumstances.
“It was you.” Her face flamed red, and Gabriel wasn’t sure how to interpret the change.
Sommer looked up at the sky where the sun was, looked up the trail, and started walking again.
“So the story, from my perspective, of Whiskey singing by the graveyard goes like this—I inherited Whiskey from my brother. After I left the lawyer’s office, I had to go in to work, because there was an emergency case.
I came home pretty late, but because there was a full moon, and Whiskey was pulling on her lead, I decided to let her go for a walk and sniff her new neighborhood.
She walked straight to the graveyard. That church across from you is where I went as a kid.
And my family, including Mom and Dad, are buried there with my brother Daniel. ”
“In the graveyard, across from my house,” Sommer whispered.
“I thought Whiskey might remember the smells from Daniel’s funeral, and maybe she thought if she went to the graveyard, my brother would be there waiting for her.”
“Oh no,” she whispered, then reached for his hand and gripped it tightly.
The trail was too thin for them to walk side by side, so Gabriel let his elbow rest on his pack pocket so he could keep a grip on her hand.
He wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture but decided that Sommer was exhausted and probably holding on by a thread.
Maybe a little human touch was important here.
Gabriel would admit that he liked that she’d reached for him. This wasn’t the easiest story to tell. And his instinct said it was important, in this moment, to share all of it.
He hoped he was right.
“And you walk up there all the time?” she asked.
“Whiskey does. For the longest time, up until Tuesday, to be exact, I thought that Whiskey remembered us burying Daniel and that she went there because she was mourning him.” He looked back.
“Crap.” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Sorry. Keep going.”
Gabriel turned back to the trail.
“You were following Whiskey to the graveyard; you were going to be near your brother, and she’d stop and howl.” She squeezed his hand. “Goose flesh, hair prickling. I’m trying to imagine what that was like for you when Whiskey howled.”
“She didn’t just howl. She sang opera.”
“Ish.” Sommer countered.
“Here’s another piece you should understand. Daniel and I, when we were little kids, made a solemn pact between us that whoever died first had to stick around and haunt the other, and we’d cross into Heaven together.” He looked back to see how she received that.
Her brows pulled together. “Is this your idea of a joke?”
“Joke was on me, it seems,” Gabriel said.
“You should know—because I sure didn’t— that at the end of my brother’s illness when he was in hospice, he listened to opera.
My sister, Cathy, told me how Daniel listened to music and tried to get Whiskey to howl along.
Whiskey would only howl to certain songs, not to the radio, only to live singing, from what I can tell.
So that’s how Daniel entertained himself. ”
“And you thought that Whiskey was remembering the songs and singing to your brother? Can dogs do that?”
“According to Whiskey’s trainer? No. Did her trainer have an explanation for what I had on my video that I took to ask Cathy if she understood what was going on? No.”
“That’s how Whiskey knows my songs. For my part, I choose them because I find them easier to manage, and I like how they feel in my body.”
“Mournful.”
“Maybe. Or maybe just an expression of the human experience. Since I’ve started singing again, I find those songs help me process difficult days in the emergency department.”
“High adrenaline all day every day.”
Sommer turned to continue up the trail. “Can be, yes. But I’m trying to figure this out. Did you think it was cute that she was singing with me?”
“From where I stood, outside of the graveyard, I didn’t hear you sing. Not at all. I just found out that Whiskey was howling along with someone a couple days ago.”
There was a long silence between them.
“So Whiskey walked to the graveyard,” Sommer said. “She started howling a song of death, and—” Sommer took the next several steps in silence. “You just told me your brother had sworn that he would haunt you. Shit.” The conversation hung in the air between them. “I would have freaked the hell out.”
“Yup.”
“And you kept coming back at different times when I was singing.”
“Yup.”
“Because Whiskey wanted to go for a walk.”
“She’d get her lead and go stand by the door.”
“It’s been going on for three months.”
“Yup.”
“This lens that I’m now seeing through … Gabriel, it’s painful to hear. All this time, you thought …”
“I didn’t know what to think. I’ve had some really odd things happen to me in my life—things that don’t have an explanation. I’ve had my brothers in arms tell me stories that raised the hair on the nape of my neck. There are things that defy logic.”
“Did you hope it was your Daniel?” she asked quietly.
“I didn’t not hope it. If that makes any sense. My sister, though—”
“No, your mourning sister was privy to all that? Crap. This feels bad.”
“She was obsessed with the idea. Daniel’s death has hit her hard. She’s the eldest sibling and was the nurturer in an emotionally austere household. My mom called Cathy Little Mommy somewhat derisively, as in ‘Go get Little Mommy if you want someone to cry to.’”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to have to tell her,” Gabriel said.
“Yes.”
“I honestly think Whiskey’s mourning my brother and your songs were soothing.
Possibly they reminded Whiskey of Daniel, and she wanted to hear them.
Meanwhile, I was recording the songs for my sister and sending them to her, and she would look at Daniel’s playlist and figure out what Whiskey was singing. ”
“Putting this together, Cathy thought Daniel was making contact with you through his dog because he—"
“Pinky swore that he’d stick around as a ghost and keep me company until I died.”
They walked in silence.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said, “it’s a stretch. You didn’t know my brother, though. It’s his sense of humor. I would have bet cash money that it was him. And even under this scenario, I’m not convinced that my brother didn’t have a hand in it.”
“Want to hear something that might freak you out just a little bit?” Sommer asked in hushed tones that barely drifted up to Gabriel.
Did he?
“No.” Gabriel took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“A couple of weeks before Whiskey started singing outside my house, I saw a funeral from my bedroom window. It was the first funeral I’ve seen over at the church.
Not clearly, it was kind of around the bend, but I knew it was happening.
They had a military honor guard, and they fired the rifles off. ”
“That was my brother Daniel’s funeral. He’s the only one who’s been buried in their graveyard in quite a while. We have a family plot there, my grandparents and my parents’ generation of Atworth siblings. Daniel starts the third generation of burials.”
“It must be comforting to have everyone together—one place to visit and reminisce. I have no idea where my family members are buried. They’re in other states.
But what I was going to tell you is that after the funeral, I was thinking about life and how people need to lean into the things that speak to their souls. ”
“Shit,” Gabriel murmured.
“Yeah. And I thought I used to love singing opera, but people around me didn’t like listening, so I gave it up.
Since I’d always lived in an apartment until I bought my own place, it felt mean to force people to listen to me.
But now that I can’t bother anyone in my little cottage in the woods, I thought I could indulge. ”
“But that thought came to you during the funeral?”
“After everyone had gone. But yes, it was right after the last car drove away.”
“Shit.”
“Spooky.”
“Like I said, I couldn’t hear you at all. Bend in the road? Distance? I don’t know, I didn’t hear you.”
“That’s right, you figured it out Tuesday. How did you figure it out?”
Gabriel stopped and turned to her when Sommer released his hand. “Someone recognized Whiskey and me in one of your viral videos. I went over to your place this morning to ask you to take it down. That’s when I met your sister.”
“You came pretty far to have that conversation,” Sommer said softly, her face pink. Was that embarrassment?
She leaned over and put her hands on her knees.
“You okay? You’ve been pushing pretty hard. Do you need to rest?”
She picked a hand off her knee and reached forward.
He caught her hand and stepped closer, lifting her and tucking her against his chest. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re shaking. You must be desperate for your friends and your sister. But we’ll take this one step at a time. Breathe. Shhh-shhh-shhh. I’ve got you. Breathe.”
“I’m sorry.” She flicked her hands at her tears. “It’s a lot.”
“You’ve been through it for days now. Emotions are normal.”
Whiskey wandered back and pressed against Sommer’s leg until Sommer squatted down to rub Whiskey’s soft ears.
Dog medicine.
“It’s time for Whiskey to take her break,” Gabriel said, moving over to sit by a tree. “Rest a bit, Sommer.”
They were quiet.
Amongst the trees, there was peaceful stillness.
It was hard to believe that a few hours up the trail, two women were in life-or-death straits.
“Listen, there’s another piece of this I need to discuss with you when we get down,” Gabriel said as he handed her a bag of trail mix.
“Just do it now.” She reached in and took a fistful. “I’d rather not wonder.”
“I know the videos were monetized and making some money.” He’d take baby steps. “Listen, I work for the FBI.”
“Right, you showed me your badge.”
“You don’t include your face in the video. But you do include mine.”
“I—”
“Most of my work is with two groups within the FBI: terror and human trafficking. The problem with these two groups is that they are incredibly bright people with significant mental health issues—sociopaths, psychopaths, malignant narcissists. They don’t have a lot of boundaries, and they most definitely are survivalists. ”
“Good thing I set out those witch pots to keep the ghoulies away.” She slid her gaze up to catch his.
“Yeah, good thing.” He looked down at her; she was much more petite than she seemed in the video, much more athletic.
And he’d imagine that in her day-to-day life, she was the captain of her ship, sailing skillfully along.
But right now, with the list of shit that had been hitting her, he could sense some self-protection, some vulnerability.
He had to tread carefully, so she didn’t feel threatened or attacked.
Either one was the farthest from the truth.
But he had a duty to Reaper and Iniquus. “I can’t make you do anything. You’re perfectly within your rights to film the street.”
“But you’re asking me to take them down. That’s good enough. I don’t mind.” She reached out and touched Whiskey’s lead, then let it go. “And now that I’ve met you, I feel differently about the project.”
“How did you feel before?” Gabriel asked. Since he didn’t know that Whiskey was howling with someone’s singing until now, he didn’t consider that anyone had been impacted.
“This is going to sound childish, but that first night, I felt like you were being mean to me and trying to get me to stop singing.”
“You thought Whiskey was a punishment?”
“Passive-aggressive.” She scratched her cheek and stuck a piece of her silky, dark brown hair behind her ear. “I stopped singing opera when my long-ago boyfriend got shitty about it. And I’ve just now taken it back up. I’m terrible at it. But dog-howl terrible?”
“It’s amazing how two people can have such different experiences. I’ve seen your videos, and I thought you were a professional performer.”
Sommer squinted at him. “I’m comfortable around you as Gabriel,” she said. “I wasn’t as comfortable around you as Graves.”
“Yeah, you’re going to have to explain that to me. I know in the video you labeled me as Graves and Whiskey was Goth-hound. I assumed it was to match the cemetery aesthetic.”
“Yes. Well, I didn’t know Abbie actually used that.
It was a conversation back when we were gabbing on the Sweet Gum search.
Abbie put the videos together. I have no idea how to do that.
And I never wanted to see them. Not true, I saw the first one, and that was that.
Abbie promised me that she didn’t show my face.
And you were so far away, I knew your face wasn’t recognizable. ”
“In all but the last one.”
“When you walked up to my house, and the lights flashed on?” Sommer scowled. “It’s coming down as soon as I get home. I apologize.”
“But you didn’t watch them?” Gabriel asked.
He had.
So many times.
The graceful turn of her head, the softness of her cheek, the silken curls that draped her shoulder. The rich power of her voice. The bravery to face the emotions she seemed to draw from deep within her.
When Gabriel realized that she was the one living in the witch’s cottage, it was like his boyhood imagination had been personified in her.
“Watch them?” Sommer asked. “No. I felt … there was this wall that stopped me. I can’t explain it.
But when I met you as Gabriel this morning, I felt an instant trust between us—a sense of being on the same team.
” She paused to look at Whiskey. After a moment she turned back.
“I’m definitely not finding the words I want to here.
Because it’s more than that. It’s bigger.
Like—A lot of it is sheer gratitude. But I also have the sense that I’m a piece in someone’s game, and I’m being moved around the board. ”
“And the outcome?” Gabriel asked and held his breath because that was exactly what he’d been feeling.
“It’s a matter of rolling the dice.”