Dream Lake

Alex gave him a short nod.

“Don’t screw this up,” the ghost said.

“Okay,” Alex muttered, wanting him to shut up.

Zoë gave him a questioning glance.

“It’s okay,” Alex revised hastily, “if you want to bring her to Rainshadow Road for a visit. She might get a kick out of seeing it restored.”

“Thank you. I think she would. I’m going to visit her this weekend, and I’ll let her know. It’ll give her something to look forward to.”

“Good.” Alex watched her as she continued to look over the renderings. It struck him that she was doing something remarkably selfless in sacrificing a year or more of her life to take care of an ailing grandparent. Was she going to have some help? Who was going to watch over Zoë? “Hey,” he said softly. “You got someone to give you a hand with this? Taking care of your grandmother, I mean.”

“I have Justine. And a lot of friends.”

“What about your parents?”

Zoë shrugged in the way people did when they were trying to gloss over something unpleasant. “My father lives in Arizona. He and I aren’t close. And I don’t even remember my mother. She bailed on us when I was still pretty young. So my dad gave me to my grandmother to raise.”

“What’s her name?” the ghost asked in wonder.

“What’s your grandmother’s name?” Alex asked Zoë, feeling like he was playing the old telephone game in which a sentence was repeated until it no longer made sense.

“Emma. Actually, it’s Emmaline.” Zoë pronounced the last syllable “lin,” as if there were no e at the end. “She took me in when my dad moved to Arizona. She was a widow at the time. I remember the day Dad dropped me off at her house in Everett—I was crying, and Upsie was so sweet to me—”

“Upsie?”

“When I was little,” Zoë explained sheepishly, “she would always say, ‘Upsie-daisy,’ when she picked me up … so I started calling her that. Anyway, when my dad left me with her, she took me into the kitchen and stood me on a chair at the counter, and we made biscuits together. She showed me how to dip the biscuit cutter in flour, so the circles of dough would come out perfectly.”

“My mother made biscuits sometimes,” Alex said, before he thought better of it. He wasn’t in the habit of revealing anything about his past to anyone.

“From scratch or from a mix?”

“From a can. I liked to watch her hit it against the countertop until it split open.” Zoë looked so horrified that he was privately amused. “They weren’t bad biscuits,” he told her.

“I’ll make you some buttermilk biscuits right now,” she said. “I could whip them up in no time.”

He shook his head as he stood from the table.

Standing in the fragrant kitchen with its cherry-print wallpaper, Alex watched as Zoë went to retrieve her apron from where it had landed on the floor earlier. She bent over, her denim capris stretching over a perfect heart-shaped bottom. That was all it took to make him want her again. He had the insane urge to go to her, take her in his arms, and hold her, just hold her and breathe her soft fragrance while the minutes bit through a long quiet hour.

He was tired of denying himself the things he wanted, and of being haunted, and most of all he was tired of picking up the pieces of his life and discovering that most of them were pieces he didn’t even want. He’d learned nothing from his failed marriage with Darcy. They had always done what was necessary to satisfy their own selfish needs, taking without giving, knowing it was impossible to hurt each other because the worst hurts had already been inflicted.

“Take a few days to look at this stuff,” he told Zoë as she returned to the table. “Talk it over with Justine. You’ve got my e-mail and phone numbers if you need to ask something. Otherwise I’ll be in touch at the beginning of next week.” He glanced at the bandage on her arm. “Keep an eye on that. If it starts to look infected—” He stopped abruptly.

Zoë smiled slightly as she looked up at him. “You’ll put another Band-Aid on it?”

Alex didn’t smile back.

He needed to numb out. He needed to drink until there were a half-dozen layers of smoked glass between him and the rest of the world.

Turning away from her, he picked up his keys and wallet. “See you,” he said curtly, and left without looking back.

Twelve

“Well, that was fun,” the ghost said, as Alex took a right on Spring Street and headed to San Juan Valley Road. “Where are we going now?”

“Sam’s place.”

“We’re going to clear out more of the attic?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

Exasperated by the constant necessity of having to explain his every move, Alex said, “I want to catch up with my brother. I haven’t talked to him in a while. That okay with you?”

“Are you going to tell him about doing the remodeling for Zoë?”

“Justine may have mentioned it to him already. But if she hasn’t, then no, I’m not going to say anything.”

“How come? It’s not like it’s a big secret.”

“It’s not a done deal,” Alex said tersely. “I may back out.”

“You can’t.”

“Watch me.” Alex found perverse satisfaction in riling the ghost.

He expected all kinds of arguments and insults. But the ghost was silent as the truck headed out of the commercial district.

Alex visited Rainshadow Road to help Sam install a pair of carriage lantern sconces on a fireplace wall paved with antique handmade bricks. As they worked, an English bulldog named Renfield sat on a cushion in the corner and watched them with bulging eyes and an open drooling mouth. Renfield had been a rescue dog, with such abundant health problems that no one had wanted him. Somehow Mark’s girlfriend, Maggie, had sweet-talked him into taking in the dog, and although Sam had initially protested, he had eventually caved as well.

It was hardly a surprise that Renfield paid no attention to the presence of a ghost in the room. “I thought dogs were supposed to have a sixth sense about supernatural beings,” the ghost had once remarked to Alex.

“On his best day,” Alex had replied, “he’s only got about three senses working right.”

As they worked together on the installation, it was clear that Sam was in the kind of relaxed good mood that could only have come from recently getting laid. As the ghost had predicted, Sam was falling for Lucy Marinn in a major way, although Sam was determined to view it as one of his usual no-commitment deals. “I hit the jackpot with this girl,” Sam told Alex. “She is sweet, sexy, smart, and she’s fine with having a casual relationship.”

It had been a long time since Alex had seen his brother as preoccupied with a woman as he was with Lucy Marinn. Maybe never. Sam always played it cool, never letting his feelings—or anyone else’s—get the better of him.

“This casual relationship involves sex?”

“It involves great sex. Like, an hour after we’re done, my body is still saying ‘thank you.’ And Lucy doesn’t want commitment any more than I do.”

“Good luck with that,” Alex said. Leveling a light fixture against the wall, he used a chalk pencil to mark the screw hole locations.

Sam’s enthusiasm dimmed visibly. “What do you mean?”

“Ninety-nine percent of the women who say they don’t want commitment either secretly do want it, or at least they want you to want it.”

“Are you saying Lucy’s playing me?”

“It could be even worse than that. She could be sincere in thinking she can handle being a jump-off, when in reality she’s not equipped for it. In which case—”

“What’s a jump-off?”

“A woman you’re having a no-strings relationship with. As in, you have sex with her, and then—”

“You jump off.” Sam scowled. “Don’t call Lucy that. And the next time you ask me how my life is going, remind me not to tell you.”

“I didn’t ask you how your life was going. I asked you to pass me the half-inch masonry bit.”

“Here,” Sam said in annoyance, giving him the drill bit.

For the next couple of minutes, Alex drilled pilot holes in the brick and vacuumed the dust out of them. Sam held the light fixture in place as Alex connected the wiring, inserted sleeve anchors into the carriage lantern, and tapped them into the pilot holes. He tightened it with a few deft twists of a wrench.

“Looks good,” Sam said. “Let me try the other one.”

Alex nodded and picked up the second lantern to hold it against the brick.

“There’s something I wanted to mention,” Sam said casually. “Mark and Maggie set the wedding date for mid-August. And Mark just asked me to be the best man. Hope that’s okay with you.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, he could only ask one of us. And I guess since I’m the next oldest—”

“You think I might have wanted to be the best man?”Alex interrupted with a brief, sardonic laugh. “You and Mark have been raising Holly together. Of course you should be the best man. It’ll be a miracle if I show up at all.”

“You have to,” Sam said in concern. “For Mark’s sake.”

“I know. But I hate weddings.”

“Because of Darcy?”

“Because a wedding is a ceremony where a symbolic virgin surrounded by women in ugly dresses marries a hungover groom accompanied by friends he hasn’t seen in years but made them show up anyway. After that, there’s a reception where the guests are held hostage for two hours with nothing to eat except lukewarm chicken winglets or those weird coated almonds, and the DJ tries to brainwash everyone into doing the electric slide and the Macarena, which some drunk idiots always go for. The only good part about a wedding is the free booze.”

“Can you say that again?” Sam asked. “Because I might want to write it down and use it as part of my speech.”

The ghost, who was in the corner of the room, sat with his head resting on his bent knees.

Finishing the wiring for the second sconce, Sam attached it to the brick, tightened the anchor sleeves, and stood back to view his handiwork. “Thanks, Al. You want some lunch? I’ve got some sandwich stuff in the fridge.”

Alex shook his head. “I’m going up to the attic, doing a little more clearing out.”

“Oh, that reminds me … Holly loves that old typewriter you found. I gave it a couple of shots of WD-40 and re-inked the ribbon with a stamp pad. She’s been having a blast with it.”

“Great,” Alex said indifferently.

“Yeah, but here’s the interesting thing. Holly noticed the liner of the tweed case was loose, and there was a little corner of something sticking out. So she pulls it out, and it’s a weird piece of cloth with a flag and some Chinese characters on it. And there’s a letter, too.”

The ghost lifted his head.

“Where is it?” Alex asked. “Can I take a look?”

Sam nodded toward the sofa. “It’s in the side table drawer.”

While Sam put away the tools and vacuumed the remaining dust, Alex went to the table. The ghost was at his side instantly. “Personal space,” Alex warned under his breath, but the ghost didn’t budge.

A feeling of apprehension crawled down the back of Alex’s neck as he opened the drawer and picked up a piece of thin silky fabric, yellowed with age, about eight by ten inches. It was stained in places, the corners dark. A Chinese Nationalist flag dominated the top. Six columns of Chinese characters had been printed under the flag.

“What is it?” Alex wondered aloud, his voice drowned out by the vacuum.

Even so, the ghost heard him, and his reply was soft but audible. “It’s a blood chit.” The term was unfamiliar to Alex. Before he could ask what it meant, the ghost added quietly, “It’s mine.”

The ghost was remembering something, emotions emanating like smoke, and Alex couldn’t help but catch the edge of them.

The world was smoke and fire and panic. He was falling faster than gravity, ricocheting through blue and cirrus-white, the metal skin of his aircraft twisting like a licorice whip as the forces of heaven and hell wrenched at it. His knees pulled up and his elbows cinched into a fetal position, the last thing every fighter pilot did before dying. It wasn’t training, it was the body’s primal recognition that it was about to go through more pain and damage than it could endure.

His heart beat out the syllables of a woman’s name, over and over.

Alex shook his head to clear it, and looked at the ghost.

“What do you make of it?” he heard Sam ask.

The ghost stared at the silk in Alex’s hand. “They gave them to American flyers to carry on missions over China,” he said. “In case the plane went down. The writing says, ‘This foreigner has come to help in the war effort. Soldiers and civilians should rescue, protect, and provide him with medical care.’ We kept them in our jackets—some people sewed ’em in.”

In a monotone, Alex heard himself explaining the blood chit to Sam.

“Interesting,” Sam said. “I wonder whose it was. I’d like to find out who owned that typewriter, but there’s no name in the case.”

Alex began to reach for the letter. He hesitated as if he were about to put his hand into an open flame. He didn’t want to read what was on that piece of paper. He had a feeling it had never been meant to be seen.

“Do it,” the ghost whispered, his face grim.

The paper was stationery-sized and brittle. It wasn’t signed. It was addressed to no one.

I hate you for all the years I’ll have to live without you. How can a heart hurt this much and still go on beating? How can I feel this bad without dying from it?

I’ve bruised my knees with praying to have you back. None of my prayers have been answered. I tried to send them up to heaven but they’re trapped here on earth, like bobwhites beneath the snow. I try to sleep and it’s like I’m suffocating.

Where have you gone?

Once you said that if I wasn’t with you, it wouldn’t be heaven.

I can’t let go of you. Come back and haunt me. Come back.

Alex couldn’t bring himself to look at the ghost. It was bad enough to stand at the outer edge of what the ghost felt, trapped in the nimbus of a grief that felt worse than anything he’d ever experienced. It was like being injected with a slow-acting poison.