Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  "Come on already, Ethan," Lucy said. "I'm choking to death."

  That was another thing--she said things like I'm going to kill you, or I'll die if you don't hand over that bag of chips--all the things his mother was so careful not to say to him, just in case he was stupid enough to take it the wrong way.

  "All right." Ethan held the flashlight over the knife, dropped the flashlight, and then the knife. "Jeez. You hold this." He handed Lucy the flashlight and wiped off the blade-- no need to contract the bubonic plague--before waving it through the candle flame again. When he glanced up, Lucy seemed uncharacteristically pale. "You're not gonna faint on me, are you?"

  Scowling, she held out her wrist.

  Ethan placed his right alongside hers. "I'll help you find a ghost before it finds you," he said.

  She stared into his eyes. "I'll take you to where the sun comes up."

  "To courage," Ethan said, and he slashed the blade fast as a gasp across his wrist and hers. He pressed the open wounds together.

  Lucy sucked in her breath. "To courage." She wrapped a strip ripped from Ethan's T-shirt around their arms as they both waited and hoped that bravery might be every bit as binding as blood.

  Az woke abruptly at the sound of birds. On his cot, he lay still for a moment, trying to pick apart the threads of a junco's whine from the trill of a whippoorwill and the throaty contralto of the loon. It had been weeks since he'd heard this particular melody. It had stopped the same morning he had told the other Abenaki about the burial ground, and had helped carry a drum to the Pike property, to formally launch a protest.

  He sat up slowly, feeling the creak and snap of each vertebra. Swinging his feet over the side of the cot, he toed off his slippers and put the sole of his foot right down on the packed earth that formed the floor of his tent.

  It was warm, just like it should be in August. Not frozen, as it had been.

  Az pushed back the flap of his tent and stepped outside.

  The world seemed centered now, not off just a few degrees to the point where it would keep spinning just a little more lopsided each day until you could not help but notice. Az snapped a flower off the honeysuckle vine that grew beside his tent and watched the pearl of nectar bead at the base of its horn. He drew it onto his tongue and tasted sugar instead of tears.

  Overhead, a plane cut the sky in two, and it did not fall. Az stood very still but did not feel yesterday pressing at the base of his skull like a hammer. He closed his eyes and knew, instantaneously, which way was true north.

  Az poured water into his immersion heater for his coffee and measured out the grounds. He washed his hands and his face and dressed carefully, because one missed button on a shirt can change your fortune for months at a time. He did not do anything differently in his morning routine than when Comtosook had been under a spell. After all, you couldn't mess with physics: just as Az had known what entropy was coming, he'd also known there would be a day when it all would fall to rights again.

  Had he been a wizard, Ross would have left his sister strength. Not he-man brute force, but endurance, because that was the way to get through anything, and as someone without a shred of it, he ought to know. Instead, though, Ross found himself sorting through the meager possessions in his duffel. This softest shirt of his, he'd give Shelby, because it smelled like Ross and he knew she'd want to save that memory any way she could. His watch, that would be for Ethan, in lieu of the time Ross really wanted to give him instead. The pennies from 1932 he would take with him to lay a trail across eternity like Gretel's bread crumbs, so that Lia could find him, just in case.

  Quiz: What kind of man spent thirty-five years on earth and accumulated only enough to fit in a single canvas bag?

  Answer: One who'd never planned to stay for very long.

  After seeing Lia's ghost, he had taken Meredith home. He'd heard her on the phone to Ruby--waking her, at 5 A.M., explaining what she'd seen in words filigreed with wonder. She'd said she would return to Maryland in a couple of days, after taking care of a few things here. Like the land, Ross imagined, and Spencer Pike's funeral. He didn't know if Meredith believed what he'd said about ghosts, now, and frankly, he didn't care. What mattered to him was Lia, and she wouldn't be back. He knew this the same way he knew that every breath was like drinking in tar, that every subsequent day cut like a knife. He was tired, so very fucking tired, and all he wanted to do was sleep.

  Ross stuffed his hand into the duffel again. A razor that had been his father's; that was for Shelby. His EMF meter-- Ethan, naturally. He pulled out the old spirit photograph he'd taken with Curtis--globules over a lake--and smiled. Maybe he'd give this to Meredith.

  He wouldn't leave a note, that was for sure. Look at how his sister had read into it the last time, and he hadn't even been trying to leave one then. He deliberately shredded every last bit of paper in the desk into pieces and tossed them, confetti, into the trash.

  Then he noticed Lucy Oliver standing in the doorway of his room. "Hello," he said. Truth be told, she made Ross uncomfortable. Her eyes were nearly silver, too light for the rest of her features, and she acted as if she'd known him for months instead of days. Tonight she was wearing jean shorts and a T-shirt that said MADAME PRESIDENT. She had a Shrek Band-Aid on her wrist. "You fall down skateboarding?" Ross asked amiably.

  "No," Lucy answered, just no, and that was all. "I'm supposed to tell you we're about to eat."

  Ross tried to answer--something like All right, or I'll be right there, but what came out instead surprised them both. "Did Lia talk to you about me?"

  Lucy nodded slowly. "Sometimes."

  "What did she say?"

  But instead of responding, Lucy looked around his room at the careful piles. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm getting ready to go," Ross replied.

  "Where?"

  When he looked at her, he had the sense that Lucy knew the answer wasn't a place.

  "Not yet though," Lucy said, a confirmation.

  He tilted his head. How much could she know? "Why not?"

  "Because it's time for breakfast." Lucy took a step closer and held out her hand, the one with the Band-Aid at its base. "So come on," she said, and waited a long moment before Ross grabbed hold and put himself into her keeping.

  It was not that Meredith expected a huge outpouring of mourners at Spencer Pike's funeral, but standing alone with Eli Rochert and a bloodhound as the Congregational minister did a hasty graveside service was a little embarrassing. Then again, considering how the Abenaki picketed the development of his land, she supposed she should be grateful that there wasn't a drum banging on the other side of the fence. She hadn't brought Lucy, because Lucy didn't know the man from Adam, and the last place her impressionable daughter needed to be was a graveyard. Shelby would have come if Meredith had asked, but she needed someone to watch Lucy more than she needed moral support at the interment of a man she barely knew. And Ross, well, who knew where he was. Meredith hadn't seen him since the night Lia had appeared, and didn't want to. Then she would have to find the correct words to say, and I'm sorry and I'm here didn't seem nearly as fitting as Don't.

  "Would you?" the chaplain asked Meredith, although she'd missed the question the first time. She looked at Eli for help, and he nodded toward the earth on the ground.

  Meredith picked up a handful, which she sprinkled over Pike's coffin. Eli discreetly slipped a check to the reverend, and Meredith flushed to think she hadn't even considered this part of the ritual. From whose bank account had that money come . . . Eli's? The town's? Neither, she hoped. Spencer Pike had bled Comtosook dry enough already.

  The minister offered Meredith his condolences and walked solemnly to his VW Bug to drive off, leaving behind a faint trace of Simon and Garfunkel from the open windows. Eli's big hand touched her shoulder. "You want a lift back?"

  Meredith shrugged. "I may just stay for a minute."

  "Sure," Eli said. He started off with his dog, and then came back and unclipped his cell phon