"Who would want to follow me?"
"That angel isn"t here for you." She waves me off. "I"m old. He"s just waiting on me to open the window. He thinks he"s got a chance at my body, too. Making the jump. I"ve lived in this sh.e.l.l for 92 years. No way I"m handing it over to a shadow. What you need to figure out is what that little girl wants from you." Ruth cast her faded blue eyes in my direction. I leaned over to ask her more, but the door swung open. I slid back into my seat.
Jeannie entered the room with her usual energy. "So much paperwork, but I think we"re finally done." She stopped just inside the door and took in the sight of me and Ruth mid-discussion. "Everything okay?"
Ruth looked from me to her daughter. "We"re fine, dear."
I nodded. There were few secrets between Jeannie and me, but I had no idea how to even start into this one.
"I was showing Jane the angel outside my window," Ruth said innocently.
Jeannie walked over and peered out the gla.s.s. "A raven! Very appropriate for you two."
"Angel."
"Aunt Ruth is convinced there is an angel of death outside the window," I explained. Just like that, the energy in the room shifted to awkward and tense. Jeannie hopped up and began fussing over her mother. Ignoring my comment entirely. She told us both about her last show in New York a story I had already heard but I acted as though I hadn"t. This lasted until it was time to for Ruth to have her medication and dinner.
"Bye, Mama. Sleep well tonight."
"Okay, baby girl. I will."
"Bye, Aunt Ruth, it was nice to see you."
She reached for my hand and held it tight. "Come back and see me anytime."
"I will. I promise."
Jeannie hugged her mother one more time and we left, exiting her room and going back down the hallway to the elevator. While we waited, she turned to me and said, "Okay, what happened while I was gone?"
I shrugged. "Nothing, really."
"Jane, something happened in there! You both looked guilty as a fox in a hen house when I came back in. What went on between you two?"
I laughed. "You get very Southern sounding, you know, when you spend some time down here." She fixed me with a stare. "Like I said, nothing. The angel thing freaked me out. First you and your painting and then Connor"s stuff at the Ruins," I said. "Now this? Aunt Ruth is convinced some creepy bird is really a creepier angel of death? I think I"m allowed to be a little distressed over it all. I mean, she kept talking to the bird like it could hear her, and she said stuff about him not taking her body and being a shadow."
"Of course you are, but you realize my mother isn"t completely lucid, right? Sure, ravens have always been tied to the dead. I"m sure somewhere in her confused mind she remembers this."
"You"re probably right." The elevator pinged and the double-doors slid open. I used the time it took to let the elderly couple out and for us to get in to figure out what to say. "She also saw Tonya. The little girl from next door. She told her to stop hiding and let me know why she was following me."
Jeannie frowned. "You realize that although I believe my mother has amazing gifts just like you sometimes she lives in a world confused by long-term drug use and experimental treatments, right?"
"I know."
"She"s right though, the more you find out about Tonya the sooner you can help her move along. Sounds like she"s been here a while. It may be harder to convince her to move on than other spirits."
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open to the lobby. "Great, another stubborn ghost. Just what I need."
I saw his legs the minute I turned the corner. Slim, but muscular, standing on a tall ladder. His sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his back. When I got out of my dad"s truck, I watched him wipe his face with the hem.
He had barely repainted the top section of the wall. From the looks of things, it would take several coats to cover his urban version of Charlotte, whose dark eyes looked down on me in an obnoxious, judging manner. He managed to capture her essence perfectly. I hated her.
"Hey," he said, twisting on the ladder when my door slammed. "How did you find me here?"
I nod at the mural. "Kind of hard to miss."
"I guess so."
"Ava and I came down here to see it yesterday. The guy told us he dropped the charges but you had to repair the wall." Connor climbed down the ladder and stood in front of me. "I would have told you all that yesterday or today if you returned my calls."
"My mom took my cell. Punishment."
"I"m surprised she"d let you out of her sight, much less without a phone."
"Oh," he laughs. "They have something better." He tugged down his sock to reveal a thick plastic band and a square box attached to it. "Ankle monitor. They"re tracking me 24/7."
"Oh, that sucks."
"Yeah, it does."
We stood awkwardly in the middle of the parking lot. Connor had his hands shoved in his pockets and fresh drip marks on his shoes. My thoughts were caught in my chest and lodged in my throat. I had so many things I wanted to say and so many feelings scrambled with those words. But to speak them would lay me bare in this c.r.a.ppy parking lot in the middle of the July heat. Finally, I looked up at Charlotte"s image and said, "Where do we go from here?"
"I"m trying. I really am, but I can"t get her out of my head." His words sting like a slap and I turn away. He grabbed my arm. "I"m taking my meds. I don"t want to do this stuff the drawings, the dreams but she"s all up in my head and she"s not letting go."
"I don"t even know what that means."
"It means she"s with me when I sleep and when I"m alone. Her voice echoes through my head whispering. All day long."
"But you can"t see her."
"No."
"This isn"t right, Connor."
"I guess she needs me for something right? This is how it works."
"But this isn"t how it works. They don"t take over our dreams and thoughts and make us do illegal things."
His mouth dropped and I felt his comeback before he even had the chance to say it. I held up a hand in warning. "Don"t say it."
He raised that eyebrow. The one that made me fall for him, and the one that at this very moment made me want to smack it off. "I won"t because obviously there is no need for me to comment on all the laws you broke to help Evan and the completely reckless way you risked your own life to save him. I won"t bring that up."
"It"s not the same."
"The h.e.l.l it isn"t. This time it"s about me and not you and your BFF Evan. It"s about some girl you have no reason to be jealous of dead or alive." His eyes flashed mean. "It"s about stuff you wouldn"t understand, Jane, with your quirky, supportive family and friendly ghosts."
I step back. "Is that a back-handed way of calling me naive? I"m not naive, Connor."
"Maybe not, but I have a ghost, a friend no less, in my head and in my dreams. And this girl had a s.h.i.tty life. Horrible. Obviously, she isn"t ready to let go and I don"t really have a choice. So right now, what I need is a supportive girlfriend, not one bent on jealousy and destruction." He picked up his paint brush and dipped it into the can on the ground. "Obviously, you can"t handle that."
"What does that mean?" Was he breaking up with me? I swore he was breaking up with me.
"It means I"ve got to get back to work before Mr. Brady catches me talking to you." He climbed a couple of rungs on the ladder. "And you have to decide how you"re going to handle this. It"s not all about you. Not this time."
"I..." what do you say to a guy who calls you jealous and naive and self-absorbed? I hoofed it to my truck and wrenched open the door. Halfway into my seat I found the words I was searching for. I leaned out the car and yelled, "Screw you, Connor Jacobs."
WHAT A JERK. An infuriating, mean jerk. Just a jerk. I reminded myself of this while I drove home. I refused to cry. Not anymore. My eyes landed on the plastic bead necklace hanging on my rearview mirror. Part of the tacky decorations at the spring formal. I recalled how Connor looped dozens of them around my neck and arms and legs. One ended up here, obviously intended to be a painful reminder of what a jerk he could be.
After parking, I checked the mail, but instead of walking to the mailbox, I ducked between the bushes that separated our yard and Ms. Frances".
"Tonya," I called from behind a wild azalea bush. "Tonya!"
I looked around Ms. Frances" tidy yard but did not see her. The concrete front steps were a couple of feet away. I stared at the thick layers of red paint peeling off the steps, trying to decide what to do.
"Tonya," I called one more time, to no avail. The weathered yard and house were in stark contrast to my own renovated home mere feet away. I pushed aside the awkward feeling I had about the obvious difference in our households and ran up the steps. At the top, I hesitated before marching over to the screened door, where I knocked lightly. Noise from a television filtered through the door and I knocked again, afraid my resolve would waver with each pa.s.sing second. Just before I decided to leave, the front door opened and I came face to face with my neighbor with only the screen door between us. Warm air from inside wafted out, which seemed wrong since the temperature outside was unbearable. The smell of fried food a.s.saulted my nose from somewhere deeper in the house.
"Oh, it"s you," she said with a smile. "Well, come in. I"ve got food on the stove."
She unlatched the screen from the inside and pushed it toward me. The springs creaked and I hesitated. Honestly, I was a little scared. No one knew I was here and what did I really know about Ms. Frances? My worries were cut off by the sound of her voice.
"You coming?"
"Yes, ma"am." I hurried inside, only stopping to close the door behind me. The house was dark inside but clean. The furniture old. The room was warm stifling and I realized that she probably didn"t have air conditioning.
"This way," she said, disappearing through the living room and into a door I a.s.sumed was the kitchen. I pa.s.sed photographs on the walls. Graduation pictures, babies, a black and a white wedding portrait hung prominently over the fireplace. Sure enough, once I entered the next room, Ms. Frances stood over a pan of boiling oil, dropping in pieces of flour-covered chicken. The faded yellow walls and a row of windows across the back of the room made the kitchen brighter than the rest of the house.
"I was wondering when you"d make it over here," she said, turning a piece of chicken around in the pan, which made a sizzling sound.
"You know why I"m here?" I asked. This surprised me since I wasn"t exactly sure myself.
"Oh yes. I"ve been waiting." She waved me into a seat at her kitchen table. "Took you longer than I thought."
"I"m here about..." I searched for the right words.
"Tonya. My baby girl. I know."
Ms. Frances bent over and opened the oven beneath the stove top. Heat rushed out and I could feel it across the room. She put her hand inside and pressed down on what I a.s.sumed from the smell was biscuits. Apparently satisfied, she used a pot holder to pull the tray of biscuits out of the oven and rest it on the counter. The smell of the chicken frying in the pan combined with the bread made my mouth water and I realized it had been hours since I had last eaten. The elderly woman closed the door with a bang and looked at me. "She pa.s.sed when she was 11."
"I"m sorry."
"The Lord must have needed her."
I watched her fiddle at the stove, stirring a pot, turning chicken and pulling it out before it burned. She rested the cooked pieces on a paper towel on the counter.
Since we were speaking truths here, I decided to tell her mine. "I can see dead people."
"Mmmm hmmmm."
"You know this?" I wasn"t totally surprised at this point.
Ms. Frances smoothed the front of her ap.r.o.n. "I seen you talking to them. Tonya likes you."
I was stunned. Could she see them also? "You can see them?"
"Oh no, child. I can"t see no dead people. But I"ve known Tonya has been waiting around for something. She was always a mama"s girl, but I knew she wasn"t here for me. I see now. She was waiting on you."
"Me?"
She nodded and went back to her stove.
"But I help the spirits move on cross over. She"s never asked me for help."
"I don"t expect so. Tonya don"t need your help." She leveled a dark eye at me. "You need her help."
Ruth mentioned that this girl was playing games, but even so, none of this made sense. Not only that, everyone seemed to know more than I did. "What does that mean? If she wants to help, then help me. I don"t even know what I need help with."
Ms. Frances moved slowly to the cabinet next to the sink and pulled out a cream-colored dinner plate. She carried it to the stove and began ladling food out of one of the pots. She speared a piece of chicken and dropped a golden biscuit next to the other food. After fussing a bit more, she brought the plate to me and settled it on the placemat.
"It looks wonderful," I said, eyeing the delicious food. "I think mother is waiting for me though."
"Eat," said, sitting own across from me. "I told her you would be here."
Nerves exploded in my stomach. How? How would she know this? The decision to come over here was a whim, made in a split second. "How did you know? I only decided when I got home from the hospital."
Ms. Frances smiled devilishly. "There are more gifts than yours, Jane Watts. Or your aunt"s. Some see the past. Others death. Some the future. I have my own abilities. When I realized you would be here during dinner, I called your mother and told her I needed a little help in the house."
I almost dropped the fork I had picked up. "You can see the future?"
"Something like that."
Of course, vague answers. I shouldn"t expect anything else.
She nudged the plate toward me. "Eat and I"ll tell you what I can."
So I did. I began shoveling food in my mouth. Bread and chicken and black-eyed peas. Everything tasted amazing. Fried and greasy. Real b.u.t.ter on the biscuits and pieces of bacon mixed in with the peas. I only had Southern food like this at my grandmother"s. My mother thought it was unhealthy.
"Tonya was a sweet but mischievous child. She ran me ragged. Her brother, Darius, was three years older. All she ever wanted was to be just like him." She laughed wistfully. "Darius was in and out of trouble all the time, so that wasn"t a good idea at all.
I continued eating while Ms. Frances spoke, hanging on every word. She stood and went to the refrigerator and brought out a c.o.ke and left it on the table in front of me. "I worked back then. Cleaning homes. It was just me and the kids. Tonya was either in school or with her grandmother. Sometimes she came to work with me. Things were different back then. Some things harder, others easier.
"One summer day, I had to work. School was out and Tonya"s grandmother was ill. I told Darius to keep an eye on her, but he was busy with his friends, playing ball or whatever game they was big into at the time."
"Is that when it happened?"
"On the bus ride home, I had a vision. I saw Tonya walking down the street one minute and the next poof,"" her hands made a quick movement. "She was gone. I ran home from the bus stop calling her name. Girl was nowhere to be found. We ran to the neighbors" and asked all the kids. No one had seen her. Darius said she was whining about going to the store down the block. You know that little building on the corner? It used to be a candy store. Mr. Johnson owned it."
I nodded, we pa.s.sed the boarded-up building every time we left the neighborhood.