“We could skip the second fight this time around,” Lucas suggested. He reached out and touched Sylvie’s hair where it fell across her shoulder. It was looking coppery, Dillon noticed, as if the fake brown color was washing away.
“Good idea, Dad,” Dillon said. That was it. He needed to get his parents together. Together the way they always should have been.
*****
Sylvie stared blindly out the window.
She’d tried to do her best for her son. Leaving him had been the hardest moment of her life. A hundred times, a thousand times, she’d thought about turning around and going back for him.
Joining the military had been a way of tying her hands, a self-imposed prison sentence to limit her own freedom. She hadn’t expected to like it. But she had. She definitely hadn’t expected to be good at it. But she was.
Was that why Dillon was a ghost? Because she’d moved on to other things? Because she’d left him to spend his life wondering why his mother had rejected him?
But Lucas had promised her that Dillon was fine. Happy, healthy, thriving. She’d seen the pictures. She’d believed him.
“It’s not your fault.” Lucas’s answer should have been comforting.
She could feel him behind her. He’d gone from angry to soothing and gentle in no time, the way he could, but she still felt the lingering burn of insult.
She turned toward him, searching his eyes for traces of the boy she’d once loved beyond reason. That boy was still there, she realized, as he reached out and touched her hair. But it was too late for them.
And besides, their ghostly son could be watching even now.
“Ha.” She tugged her hair away from Lucas. “Not this time. Not when an invisible teenage boy could be watching every move we make. No, this story ends here.”
“He’s not malicious,” Lucas protested. “He’s not some angry poltergeist.”
“Not the point,” Sylvie answered. “He’s a ghost. He shouldn’t be!”
“Come back to Tassamara with me. We can talk to Akira. Maybe she’ll have some way you can help him move on.”
“Not a chance.” Sylvie glared.
Lucas sighed. Sylvie could feel him restraining his impatience. “It’s not—”
“Don’t even go there,” she interrupted him. “I’m never going back there. Never.”
“Sylvie,” he started.
“Don’t patronize me,” she snapped, before taking a deep breath and turning away again. Oh, God, wasn’t this always the way it went? “Shut up,” she added. He hadn’t said a word but she could hear the rush of thought flowing through his brain and he was feeling just as annoyed as she.
She pressed her hands together in front of her face, trying to find some patience. “Let’s just do it.”
“Do what?”
“Tell him. Talk to him.”
“Tell him what?”
“Whatever.” Sylvie turned again, letting her hands drop, still folded together, to her waist. “If he needs to know why I left, fine, I can tell him that.”
She stepped forward, brushing past Lucas, and looked out into the room. She took a breath, and then let it go. Hell. This would be harder than she imagined. Would she really have to revisit their whole past?
“I moved to Tassamara when I was seventeen,” she started, feeling stupid, even as tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked furiously. She was not going to cry, damn it. It was a long time ago. She was so over this.
“My mom was a waitress,” she continued. “Some guy had offered her a job there, and she liked the idea of a small town. We’d been living in Orlando, and it was . . .” She paused. Could she explain what it had been like? Would it mean anything to Dillon? Fifteen years old, all of them spent in Tassamara. He wouldn’t understand. “. . . rough,” she finally finished.
“So we moved to Tassamara. Frickin’ weird place.”
She swallowed hard. March of her junior year. What had she been like to them? She’d been used to working hard at being invisible, good at the skill of disappearing in the sea of trouble, but Tassamara wasn’t big enough. Instead, she’d been the new kid.
“I met your dad. Without him, I’m, maybe, empathic. I know how people feel. I don’t need to see them or hear them, I just know. But with him . . .”
She tried, so hard, not to glance at Lucas, standing behind her, but she couldn’t help herself. The sympathy she felt from him didn’t make her words come any easier, but she took another deep breath.
“With him, I can read minds. I can’t believe you wanted that. It’s really not much fun. People—even nice people—their thoughts don’t always match their words. And being a pregnant teenager . . .” She paused. Did this matter? Of course it did.
“Some people thought I was a slut. Some people felt sorry for me and even sorrier for you. And the sheriff wanted to arrest me.” Her laugh was bitter. Ignorance was no excuse under the law, but she hadn’t known how old Lucas was. And maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. What she and Lucas had was hard to resist.
“He would have been a laughingstock,” Lucas muttered.
Sylvie clenched her teeth. She hadn’t told Lucas she was leaving, but he’d known why. He’d overheard the sheriff’s thoughts, too, and he’d found her for the first time after he turned eighteen. But even if she could have, she wouldn’t have come back. The statute of limitations didn’t run out until five years after his eighteenth birthday.
“The law’s changed now,” Lucas continued. She glanced back at him, startled. “In Florida, anyway,” he added, mouth twisting in a wry smile. “It’s called the Romeo and Juliet law. Consenting teenagers are now allowed a four year age difference.”
“Ha.” She gave a puff of laughter, then turned back to the empty room. “Back then it was two, and the age of consent was sixteen. I was seventeen and your dad was fifteen. That made us, me, our—” Sylvie couldn’t believe she was explaining her sex life to her invisible child. Could this get more awkward? “I could have gone to jail. And then I would have been a registered sex offender. I didn’t want that.”
She paused and licked her lips. This part would be harder to say aloud, harder to say in front of Lucas, who took so much for granted.
“I could have taken you with me. I thought about it. My mom would have helped. She’d been a teenage mom herself and she’d raised me on her own. That meant, though, that I knew how hard it was.” She stopped. She could leave it there. It would be easier. But it wasn’t the whole story.
“And I knew what your life would be like,” she continued, voice steady. “I didn’t want that for you.”
She thought back to her childhood, the tiny apartments, the cold cereal dinners, the thrift store clothing, the regular moves for a better life always just out of reach. It hadn’t truly been unhappy. Her mom had loved her. Maybe she’d made a mistake.
“I wanted you to have your dad’s life. I wanted you to live in the big house, with a bicycle. And your own bedroom. A safe place. And Santa Claus. I wanted you to play soccer and have neighbors who knew your name.” The words were coming faster, even though her throat felt like she was choking and her face felt hot and flushed. “I wanted you to take the SATs and go to college.”
She felt Lucas’s hands come up behind her and rest on her shoulders, warm and strong, and she shivered. The room felt cool, colder with his hands on her. “I made a mistake, I guess. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Sylvie.” She could feel the rush of feeling from Lucas, the guilt and the grief and the sorrow.
But she waited for something more.
Nothing.
And then her phone buzzed.
It’s OK.
That was all the message said, but Sylvie took a deep breath.
That was it, then.
That was what he’d needed.
Now he could move on.
Chapter Eight
Dillon had no intention of going anywhere.
If St. Peter had appeared, beckoning him toward the pearly gates with flights of angels playing trumpets—or would it be harps?—floating on fluffy white clouds above him, Dillon would have ignored them.
He had to agree with his dad: his mom’s reason for leaving was stupid. His grandparents would never have let her go to jail. Except . . . well, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of that. His gran had been strict with him, always treating him like a little kid. He’d figured it was because he was so much younger than his aunts and uncles, but maybe it had something to do with his dad growing up too fast?
While he would never have said so—not to anyone—his gran’s overprotectiveness probably had a lot more to do with his death than his mom’s abandonment. Being psychic had felt like a much-needed ticket to adulthood. Still, maybe those pieces were all connected.
But none of this mattered anyway. No door had appeared, so just as he’d anticipated, learning why his mom left had nothing to do with why he was a ghost.
Did he want his parents to know that, though?
He frowned, tuning Sylvie and Lucas out as they started yet another low-voiced argument about whether or not he was still around. His mom didn’t seem to like the idea of him haunting her. Even once she was over the shock, her first thought had been how to get rid of him. She hadn’t been mean about it, but if he let her know he was still here, would he have to spend all his time fending off mediums and exorcisms?
Maybe he should just keep quiet for now. At least until he figured out how he was going to fix his parents’ lives.
It’d be simplest if Akira could help him talk to them. But he’d seen Sylvie’s reaction to that idea, and he’d seen how stubborn she could be. The direct approach was probably out. If she wouldn’t willingly come to Tassamara, though, he was going to have to get her there by stealth.
Yeah, he needed subtlety. He needed strategy.
He needed a plan.
And until he had one, he’d keep quiet. He’d talk to his parents when he was ready. Meanwhile, let them argue. Which they would. Apparently, it was what they did best. He sat back down on the table to watch them debate, but it was almost over.
“Fine.” Lucas raked his hand through his hair, scowling with frustration. “Next Friday, then. But don’t count on this being the end, Sylvie.”
“Never.” She sounded resigned.
“And will you wear the . . .” he began, stepping closer to her and starting to slide his hand around her waist. Dillon rolled his eyes. It was like being back with Akira and Zane again without the advantage of being able to retreat to hang out with Rose.
“Lucas!” It was half-laugh, half-command, as she put her hand flat on his chest and began pushing him toward the door. “I’m tired. And whether or not Dillon is gone or Chesney is working for the cartels, I’ve got to call Ty, deal with work, talk to my lawyer, and find out what that mess last night was all about. I’m not letting you sidetrack me.”
“Ah, I’ve got part of that puzzle solved for you.”
Sylvie stopped. “Yeah?”
“It hasn’t hit the news yet, but I texted a friend and asked him to find out what the police thought they had.”
Sylvie’s eyes narrowed. “The same friend who gets the cops to pull over perfectly innocent, law-abiding drivers?”
Lucas’s smile flashed. “I’ve got plenty of friends in law enforcement, but yeah, Andy’s the one I called. He knows the locals.”
“And so?”
Lucas sobered. “They’re waiting on forensics from the guy’s car, but they think he’s a serial rapist, probably a murderer. They’re looking at him for a couple of disappearances from last summer. Apparently one of the missing women was abducted from a gym parking lot in Alexandria.”
Holy shit.
If Dillon had blood, it would have all drained from his face as he realized what could have happened.
His mom could have been murdered.
Abducted, tortured, killed.
And he wouldn’t have been able to do anything but watch.
He would have been helpless to save her.
“Oh?” Sylvie let her hand drop from Lucas’s chest, and then tucked both hands behind her back, almost as if she was falling into a parade rest. “Oh.” The first word was surprised, the second thoughtful.
“You had to have known he was there. What were you thinking?”
“He wasn’t wearing a sign labeled murderer.” But then she shrugged. “I figured I could take him.”
“Jeez, Mom,” Dillon protested. Had she seen the size of that guy? Was she insane?
Lucas, though, just quirked a brow at her.
“Hey, I won,” Sylvie said, before adding, “Okay, I might have been a little over-confident.”
Lucas didn’t comment, at least not in a way that Dillon could hear, but Sylvie’s smile flickered on and off like a lightning strike.
“You’ll need to testify at his trial.” Lucas sounded calmer than Dillon liked. Why wasn’t his dad telling his mom not to take crazy risks? That guy could have killed her!
Sylvie shrugged again. “Not a problem. It might be good for business.”
“How very pragmatic.” Lucas’s voice was dry.
Dillon shook his head. Okay, he was definitely getting his mom a new life. A nice, safe life. A happy life, too. But more importantly, a life where dealing with serial killers didn’t have a positive side.
“Hey, I don’t work for some mysterious company that no one wants to talk about. ‘Close protection security consultants’ get jobs from word-of-mouth and recommendations,” Sylvie said, putting mocking air quotes around the title.
“If you need work—”
“Stop,” Sylvie interrupted him. “Don’t even go there.”
Ooh, that was a good idea. If his mom went to work for his family’s company, she wouldn’t be in danger from any Mexican drug cartels. Maybe his grandpa ought to have a bodyguard?
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Lucas.” Sylvie’s voice held a warning.
Lucas grinned at her, but didn’t answer. Turning, he said to the air as he moved toward the doorway, “Dillon? I’m sure you want to stay with your mom for a while. Thanks for the message this morning.”
“See you later, Dad,” Dillon answered absently, thinking about jobs at GD. It might be tough to convince his mom to stay in Tassamara. But he knew GD sometimes did work for insurance companies: maybe she’d be willing to do that?
“He’s not still here,” Sylvie protested. “Why would he be?”
“Notice how cold it is in here?” Lucas said.