Chapter 16
“POP,” Riley whispered, and she ran to him, her eyes red with tears and fury. He wrapped her up in his arms and kept moving, pointing at Carson with his free hand as he nodded toward the dysfunctional family scene on the ground.
“Get that idiot up and out of here,” he said, his voice gruff.
Carson grabbed his son by the shirt and half dragged him behind him to help Matty up as he stirred. A whimpering Shelby moved out of the way. Drew tried to help Micah up and she elbowed his hand away.
Matty wobbled to his feet, shoving hands aside. “You son of a bitch,” he growled, heading toward Jason. But my dad moved Riley behind him and stepped in front of Matty, making him stumble back a step. Matty pointed around him at Jason.
“You’re mine, Miller,” he croaked. “You broke my fucking nose. I’ll sue you for that.”
“I don’t think so,” Jiminy said, walking up next to Dad.
Matty gave him a look. “What?”
“You heard me,” Jiminy said, his voice flat. For a small man, there was power there.
Dad pointed at Matty. “You and your pathetic wife.” Shelby scoffed and he turned then to include anyone in his line of vision. “All you people. You’re toxic.”
My eyes burned, and I pulled Riley to me. She felt stiff. I looked at her and she looked numb.
“My family has never done a thing to any of you, but you’ve made my daughter’s life a living hell from the time she was old enough to remember.” He spun around. “Now you’re poisoning your kids to do the same thing to Riley. They have a gift. So what.”
I felt Riley suck in a breath and I was already holding mine. We were being outed. Behind an enormous ice cream cone.
“They can see people after they die.”
“Oh shit,” Riley muttered, and I closed my eyes as the murmurs hummed.
When I opened them, Jason and Grady were staring at us, questions and surprise on their faces. Dad turned to us with tears in his eyes, the white of his beard in sharp contrast to his flushed skin. He wasn’t one for the spotlight.
I felt the familiar prickle on my skin, one that I instantly knew wasn’t the redheaded girl. But I was too stunned by my dad’s expression and Jason’s eyes boring into me to look for Alex.
“Who cares?” Dad said softly. “You’ll pay to see movies about things like this, but when it’s real people, you treat them like lepers? Are you that small-minded?”
The whispers stopped. It felt like the very air stopped—heavy and thick. I couldn’t look at the faces. I couldn’t focus on anything but my dad and the shaking that I wasn’t sure came from me or from Riley. Then the droplets began, echoing on the metal roofs around us. It seemed to break the shocking quiet and even diffused the charged heat of the moment.
People started to move again. Quieter, as if sound might bring attention to them instead of us. Micah left her parents and walked away. Matty and Shelby went the other direction, not looking at each other. Everyone else wandered off, trying not to make eye contact with me.
Everyone except Dad, who looked defeated. And Jason and Grady, looking stunned. Jiminy stood with his shoulders spread and his back to us, staring everyone down as they walked away, like a guard.
The raindrops became steadier, drumming out a dance around us, causing steam to rise from the hot pavement. Riley pulled free and pivoted to face me, anger and hurt in her reddened eyes. Her face was wet with rain and tears.
“We have to leave here,” she said, her voice hoarse.
I blinked free tears that had been burning and took a couple of steadying breaths, not trusting my voice.
“It doesn’t stay in Bethany, Riley. It comes with us,” I finally said.
“The people don’t.”
She stormed off, pulling away from my grasp.
“Riley.”
But my voice was lost behind the frogs in my throat, as stuck as my feet were. I could feel eyes on me. Eyes I couldn’t meet yet. I was too afraid of what I’d see. And there were whispers in the raindrops, falling from those heavy clouds. Whispers I couldn’t make out.
“Let her go,” Dad said softly.
I looked at him as his eyes followed her. He looked all wise with rain dripping off his hat, but his shoulders gave him away, stooped and spent.
“I’ll go after her,” Grady said. I touched his arm as he tried to pass me without looking my way.
“I’m fine,” he said gruffly, then he faltered. His eyes met mine only for a second, then all the anger, hurt, and bewilderment were turned back to the pavement. “She could have told me, you know. Why didn’t she tell me?”
He cut off his words and his expression crumpled.
“Baby, she just found out herself. Cut her a little slack.”
He ran a raw-knuckled hand over his blood-spattered face and walked off quickly, away from remaining stragglers, in search of his girl. In that instant, I loved him for that.
“And your excuse?”
I closed my eyes and slowly turned back to the voice. To suck up what I deserved. But when I opened my eyes, Jason was shaking his head as though pushing that thought away. Wishing he hadn’t said it out loud. He ran fingers through his wet hair, and I flashed to the day he’d come out of his bathroom wet and half naked and bared his soul that day and night about his son.
He wiped his hand on his jeans, leaving a bloody smear. With his other hand, he touched my dad’s back.
“Sir, I’m sorry about all this.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, son,” Dad said, looking ten years older. “Thank you.”
Jason tried to walk past me but his feet failed him. He stopped in front of me.
“I didn’t know how to—” I whispered, my words falling away.
He shook his head slowly. “It’s okay, Dani.”
But I knew it wasn’t. I watched the old Jason morph back in front of me, doors and walls and locks slamming shut and sealing up tight. I could hear the clanging. My eyes burned with familiar pain. He wanted no part of this. Well hell, who did?
“So, I’m a freak now,” I said under my breath as a statement, not a question.
His expression was a mix of irritation and hurt. Tiny droplets dripped from his hair and eyelashes.
“So, I’m that shallow now,” he shot back.
With that, he walked away. I watched him go, my feet still rooted to the same spot, my mind reeling with uncertainty.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.”
I turned to face the only man who’d ever stood by me unconditionally. He hadn’t moved, either. My dad stood soaking up the falling wetness as if he weren’t aware of it. I shook my head and looked from him and Jiminy to the retreating figures of everyone else.
“No more secrets.”
Jiminy nodded, his eyes warm. “No more secrets.”
BACK at home, I made a pot of coffee and kept watching the window. The rain fell soft and steady but didn’t get bad, so I gave Grady the benefit of the doubt and resisted the urge to go all Mommy-crazed and head off on a Riley hunt. Still—my body was on fire, head to toe. This storm—this rain—it was different, somehow.
I poured a hot cup of black and set it in front of my dad, giving his shoulders a hug.
“Quit worrying.”
He slid me a look. “Hypocrite.”
“Yeah, I know.” I pulled out a chair and sat down. Then got back up and sat down again. “She’s not mad at you though, Dad. She’s mad at the situation. At me for giving it to her.”
I traced a long, deep groove in the old wooden table with my fingernail. One I’d made with a butter knife when I was eight and had lost Saturday morning cartoons for two weeks over.
“And I made it public.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” I said, poking his hand. “They caused that cluster today, not you. The same people throwing the same stones. They were ready to crucify Riley. You shut them up.”
He took off his blue fishing hat and scratched his head, causing his thin white hair to poke out in all directions before the hat plopped down and hid it all again.
“But spilling the goods wasn’t necessary. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I stared into my cup. “Maybe you were thinking that it has to stop.” I looked up and met his tired blue eyes. “This witch hunt needs to end.”
No more secrets, I’d said. That called me outside, somehow. To the rain. I got up, leaving my coffee untouched, and kissed the top of his hat.
“I’ll be on the porch for a bit.”
Bojangles came with me. He loved a good storm. I didn’t like this one; it had me antsy. It was noisier, but yet there wasn’t much movement in the trees. Nothing to match the wind that was singing steadily louder in my ears. The weather-vane plane propellers turned steadily, but nothing crazy. Something was off. I felt Alex then and pivoted to see him walking across the yard.
Bojangles sniffed the air and ran in his direction, taking on the yard as a mission as he always did when spirits were around.
Alex seemed oblivious to the water, as he stopped short of the steps that would carry him out of the rain. He stared up at me, his eyes boring deep into me as the rain pelted harder. I shook my head to clear the roaring in my ears.
“Had quite an afternoon, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I’ve had better. Riley went off upset—”
“I know.”
“So do you know where she is?”
“Not at the moment.”
He stood in the driving rain, hands in his pockets as though it were a sunny day.
“Alex, what’s going on with you?” I yelled it, feeling like my ears were stopping up. “I’m—I’m sorry you had to see that today. You have to know I never want to hurt you.”
But he was shaking his head. “It’s how it’s supposed to be, Dani. Life with the living, remember? He took care of you today.”
There was a small smile to go with that, but his eyes looked sad. My feet pulled me down the stairs into the giant raindrops that had me soaked to the skin in seconds. I didn’t have a choice; his eyes pulled me there.
“You look beautiful in the rain.”
My head spun and I shut my eyes tight to it as another image swam over the roar in my ears. Alex smiling—but different, somehow. Different clothes. Touching my face and saying, You look beautiful in the rain.
Wait—touching me? I shook my head and blinked him back into focus. The sad Alex in front of me.
“Alex, what the hell?”
“Things are waking up,” he said softly. “Coming full circle.” He closed his eyes. “God, I’m so sorry, Dani.”
“What? Waking what up?” I wanted to shake him till his teeth rattled. “Alex, enough!” I grabbed my head as the words echoed back at me. “No more secrets.”
“Sarah died first.”
“Oh God, this again.” I threw up my hands.
“No, listen to me.”
His tone caught my attention. Sharp. Painful. Things he didn’t want to say. Suddenly I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to hear them. Not if it made him look so tortured. Then the roaring stopped and all I heard was the rain.
“Sarah. Then Alyssa—” His voice cracked. “She crossed over. But Sarah—”
He stopped and drove his eyes into me, hard, as if we were taking turns and I was supposed to finish the thought. A gust of wind slapped wet strands of hair into my eyes and I yanked them away just for them to blow back again.
“What?”
“She came here.”
My focus returned for a second. “Here? With you?”
“Before me.”
He looked at me so warily. I felt obligated to try to sort the freaking puzzle. But the roar had returned, and although the wind had kicked up, flapping his jacket around him, it didn’t sound like wind. It sounded like water. I put my hands over my ears.
“Please, Alex, no more riddles.” I turned to see the river and my stomach knotted. The water had turned into a churning, boiling mess. “I’ve got to go find Riley.”
“Dani!”
I whirled back around impatiently. “What?”
“She came here—as you—were being born.”
I stared at him, oblivious to my hair whipping around my face, little bells going off somewhere but not quite reaching me. My body went hot, as if my insides were baking. Alex looked at me as though memorizing me, like the next moment might suck me away.
“You were born in this house. In your room.”
“I know that.”
“When I got here, it was chaotic. I was looking for my family, didn’t know where the hell I was, and besides that, your mother was dying.”
I sucked in a breath, ignoring the increasing sound of water and what sounded like people yelling.
“Your dad left the room and she died.”
“I know,” I croaked.
“I saw her spirit leave her, but she kept looking at you, like she didn’t want to leave.”
The hot tears fell down my face, mingling with the warm rain. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because she asked me to take care of you.”
I felt like the breath was pulled out of me. “But I didn’t meet you till—”
“Until I was ready to show myself. Until I knew I could see you as your own person.”
My head spun. “What?”
“Your mother crossed over.” Alex’s composure finally broke, and tears fell freely. “But only after she promised to take care of my little girl. She’d watch over mine if I’d watch over hers.”
I shook my head. “That’s crazy!” My voice sounded hoarse and unfamiliar to me. “Why would she think you’d stay? Why wouldn’t you cross over, too?”
Alex closed his eyes and dug angrily at his face, opening them again to give me the most gut-wrenching, tormented, please-don’t-make-me-say-this look.
“Alex?” It was more a token effort than any real sound.
“She knew I would stay.”
“Why?”
But I knew why. In that instant, with the sound of water rushing in my head, the sound of screaming over wind, with the rain now pounding nearly sideways against me, I knew. Sarah died first.
“Because Sarah did.”
The horrid reality settled on my skin with an icy cold. Sarah was— “No,” I sobbed, clutching my middle. Weird flashes danced around my brain like a slideshow. Images of a life I didn’t recognize. Of a child that wasn’t Riley.
Alex cried, too. “I’m sorry, Dani.”
“Dani?” I laughed bitterly. “Is that a joke?”
He shook his head. “You are Dani. You became your own person—”
“With your wife along for the ride?” The sound was deafening, maddening. I doubled over, grabbing my head. “God! How could you play with me like this all these years?” I yelled. “You were my best friend.”
“You’re mine.”
I stood back up. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Two for one.” Then another thought seared across my brain. “Oh my G—” I said, half laughing, half crying. “That night I dreamed about—about us—about you.” The tears burned so badly I shut my eyes tight.
“Dani.” His voice sounded choked.
“The dress, the chair—the swing.” I turned in a circle and held my head together as if it might fall apart otherwise. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” I yelled over the wind. “It was a fucking memory. It was Sarah’s mem—”
I couldn’t finish that sentence. It was too insane, even for my life.
“Parts of it, probably, but that doesn’t change what—”
“Bullshit!” I screamed hoarsely. “It changes everything.”
“Dani!”
I turned to see Jason in full run, almost busting it in the mud.
“Jason—” I trailed off, weakly. Why the hell not.
He reached me in seconds, and Alex sidestepped to avoid the collision, backing away slowly, as I continued to look at him, struggling to process what I’d learned.
Alex just nodded. “Go.”
“Dani!”
Jason’s voice pulled me back. He looked around in the direction of my stare, breathing hard, looking distracted.
“Grady just called me—they’re out in that, and in trouble.”
Jason pointed at the river. My river, that was always my solace, now looked more like the Bering Sea, rolling with rage.
“Oh my God, why?”
“I don’t know, he lost his cell in midsentence. Come on!”
I turned to follow him, never looking back at Alex. Something in me ached at that choice. But I had bigger problems.
“Wait, my dad’s boat is right here!” I yelled through the wind. I looked back at the angry white caps ripping at our dock. “Or no, it wouldn’t make it in this.”
“That’s what they’re in.”
“Oh my God.”
In the next moment I was running down the driveway, raindrops stinging my eyes, flying leaves and sticks scratching my skin. Bojangles barked in the distance, following us. I knew Jason was behind me, but I didn’t know how close till I slipped and went down and he caught me by one arm, hauling me back up and setting me in motion without ever missing a step.
“Shit!”
Jason’s expletive was nearly swallowed up by the wind. But my stomach jumped anyway when I saw what he saw. His houseboat was dancing on that water like it had legs, slamming repeatedly into the dock, sending wood chunks flying. There went our best option. There was no lassoing that thing. I focused on the evil body of water that had my Riley.
“Can you see them?” I yelled. “Did he say where they were?”
Jason swiped at his face and shook his head. “I don’t know. Something about an old dock, then I lost him.”
My dock.
I tore off to the right through the woods instead of back up the road and around. Like I wasn’t forty years old, fighting gale-force winds. Like I was eight and knew the way with my eyes closed. I jumped over logs and rocks, hurdled over downed tree limbs and vines, and slung through underbrush completely oblivious to the thorns and tree limbs that ripped at my clothes and scratched my arms and face. Bo was right on my heels, like he knew it was serious.
I slid into a slushy bog when I hit the spot. The low-lying land was taking a beating, and what was left of the dock was in and out of visibility. Light was fading, too, as the storm hovered dark.
“Shit!”
I pulled myself up from the sinkhole I landed in, and Jason and I waded to the old dock, fighting the waves that drove us back.
There it was—my dad’s boat. Hurling around the waves like a stray stick. And upside down. My breath left me. The wind and water noise was nothing compared to the crazed storm I heard in my head.
“Jason.”
“I see it.”
At that second, a head popped up as a wave slammed into a post. I sucked in my breath and strained to see.
Grady.
“Help!” he screamed, his voice tiny and nearly lost.
Jason was there, scrambling across what was left of the dock. He snatched him up in seconds, pulling him up on the stable side.
“Get her!” Grady said, fighting at Jason even as he fought for air. “Get her! I can’t find her!” He rolled over, coughing up water and crying uncontrollably. “Please, God, I can’t find her.”
I felt nothing but boiling fear and it came screaming to the surface in one violent raging wail.
“Rileeeyyyyy!”
The sound of her name filled my ears and went on forever. But the crushing sickness that threatened to overtake me wasn’t going to win. This water wasn’t going to take my baby. Not this time.
Fresh sobs overtook me at that thought, but ones churned from adrenaline. I ran to the end of the dock and jumped with everything I had, hearing Bojangles barking frantically and Jason yelling my name as I went under.
I groped in the angry water, unable to see anything but brown and bubbles. I surfaced with Riley’s name already bursting from my throat.
“Riley!”
I barely caught a breath before a wave went over my head, shoving me down, knocking that breath clean from me. My feet hit bottom, and I pushed off, letting the water’s motion spring me back up.
I came up screaming her name again. I could barely see the dock, the rain was so thick, and I’d been thrown out more than I thought. I turned to see another mean-looking wave bearing down, and I dove down to beat it.
There was nothing. I groped blindly through the blackness, praying for contact, begging for it. Trying to stay calm. Trying to hold my breath through the screaming sobs racking my body. My heart felt like it would burst through my chest. And the sounds I’d heard in my head had been this. The screaming was me. I’d been here before. I had to find her. I had to find Riley. I had to find Alyssa.
Then suction pulled at me, opposite from the direction I was trying to go. My strokes were futile. Back and upward I went, popping to the surface with a huge gulp of air, but just in time to see the dock rushing at me.
“Dani!” I heard Jason’s hoarse scream just as I slammed into the dock. My yelp was silenced as the right side of my face met wood.
The noise quieted as the same wave that drove me there rolled me down under its belly and began the pulling process all over again. The bottom came sooner in that shallower point, and I found it almost peaceful to bounce along it. Where were they? Where was my family? I saw the quiet lights and wanted to reach out to them. I’d been there before. My delirium was short-lived.
Hands grasped my waist, contact that was nothing short of putting a key in a light socket. My brain buzzed with instant energy, the peacefulness left and images of a life flashed before me. Sadness, hurt, joy, pain, happiness—it washed over me in a flood of nonsensical heat. Images of a woman at the other end of a church, making love on a beach, laughter, sorrow, and the horrible deep residing ache of losing a battle with life underneath a child that was still breathing.
I was shoved upward and popped to the surface gulping air, into another pair of hands that hauled me up.
“Shit! Dani!”
My body was still buzzing as I choked and coughed up water, still trying to call out for my daughter. I fought at their hands and struggled to get to my knees, as Jason pulled me back.
“You’ll die out there, damn it!” he screamed against the wind.
I whirled on him. “My baby is out there!” I yelled back, not much left to my voice. “Get the hell out of my way!”
A roar of unmistakable pain jerked our attention back out to the crazed river, and my heart stopped at the sight of Alex emerging from the water with Riley in his arms, just twenty feet from us.
“Holy shit!” Grady yelled.
Alex’s face was tight and he fought to keep them above water as he held my Riley limp in his arms.
“Oh my G—” I began.
“Who the hell is that?” Jason yelled as he leapt into the river toward them.
“Alex!” I finally managed. I tried to jump in, but Grady held me back. “Riley! Oh my God, is she okay?”
“Get her, she’s dying,” Alex croaked, his face twisted in pain.
“No!” I screamed, and as Jason reached them through the waves, Alex’s head dropped.
“I got her,” I heard Jason say as he took her from Alex. “I got her.”
Jason immediately floated her on her back and started rescue CPR on her as he swam her in. I was on my hands and knees on the dock, reaching out to them, praying, my whole being shaking with fear and dread. Grady positioned himself next to me, ready to haul them up.
For a moment, Alex looked up at me with effort, and we locked eyes. In that moment, all was clear. He’d done it this time. This time, he’d saved us.
He closed his eyes and sank back under the surface as hysteria and Riley reached me at the same time. Grady and I pulled her up as a wave drove them in, and Jason latched onto the post he was rammed into.
“Riley?” I yelled, pulling her limp weight into my arms. I touched her cold face. There wasn’t a scratch on her, she looked like an angel. “Baby, please breathe.”
Grady pulled Jason up and he instantly snatched her from me and laid her out, pumping serious air to her lungs. Her arms flopped to her sides like a ragdoll.
“Please, God,” I begged. I looked upward at the raging water pouring from the sky. “Please, Mom!” I sobbed. “You owe me this!”
“Breathe, damn it!” Jason yelled in between breaths. Grady cried next to me.
Then my miracle happened. My baby girl threw up.
I’d never been so relieved to see anyone hurl in all my life. Water and everything else came up as she coughed and retched and cried. I pulled her back into my arms and held her as I cried into her hair. I wasn’t aware of the storm anymore or the biting rain, or the waves beating over the dock at us. I rocked her in my lap and she clung to me as if she were six, while Jason flopped onto his back, exhausted, trying to catch his breath.
“Mom—” she choked out. “Alex—”
“I know, baby.” The realization made my head spin.
“Hey, where’d that guy go?” Grady asked.
Jason sat back up with a start, as if just remembering the man in the waves. “Shit! Did he go under?”
“Yes,” I said. “That was Alex.”
“Al—Alex. Your friend?” He jumped to his feet, looking at me as if I were a loon. “I have to go after him, he’ll die out there.”
“He’s already dead.”
I continued to rock my girl.