***
“I’ll call you.”
Damn it, Akira thought as she watched Zane’s car pull away. She hated that phrase. Not just the words, but everything they encompassed. Both the sub-textual, “Yeah, you’re a little too weird for me,” and the implied, “And don’t call me.”
Not to mention the passive-aggressive dishonesty of the lie. He wouldn’t call. She’d see him at work next week, and they’d both pretend that Friday night had never happened.
With a sigh, she picked up a box that was resting by the front door, then turned and sat down on the porch steps. The early evening was still warm, the air soft and fragrant. The orange blossoms that Meredith had promised had flowered weeks ago, but a vine twining its way around the porch had developed little white flowers. Akira was almost sure it was a weed, but the smell reminded her of jasmine and she liked it.
She was hungry. It had been a long day. She ought to go inside and make herself some dinner. But the thought of a solitary meal, probably pulled out of the freezer, nuked for five minutes in the microwave, and then eaten in front of her computer just wasn’t appealing.
“You really think my grandma is a crazy ghost?” Dillon asked, hiking himself onto the railing next to her.
“I don’t believe in theorizing ahead of the data,” Akira answered gloomily. “It’s bad science. But we can’t exactly ask for introductions, so yeah, my best guess is that your grandma is a ghost.”
“Another ghost?” Rose asked, appearing on the porch behind them. Akira barely jumped. “We should invite her over.”
“Not this one,” Akira sighed. As Dillon told Rose the story, she reflected on their ride home. Zane didn’t want to believe that his mom was a malevolent ghost. Fair enough. She couldn’t blame him for that. But he hadn’t been happy to learn that ghosts could be dangerous, either. He hadn’t been rude about it, but his silence was decidedly stubborn.
“That’s too bad.” With a careful flounce of her full skirts, Rose sat down next to Akira. With a perceptive sideways glance, she added, “That’s not why you’re sad, though. Where’d the dreamboat go?”
“He’ll be back,” Dillon said. “He just needs to talk to my family.”
Akira pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to tell Dillon he was wrong, but she didn’t think so.
“Men,” Rose’s voice filled with disgust. “Rats, every one of them. Except Henry, of course.”
“Hey,” Dillon protested. “What about me?”
Rose waved a dismissive hand in his direction. “You would have turned into a rat, too. You wouldn’t have been able to help yourself. I know your kind.”
Akira felt the corners of her mouth pulling up in an involuntary smile. Had she thought her meal would be solitary? She’d been forgetting the crowd that lived at this house. Rose would be happy to talk her ear off while she ate, with Henry and Dillon providing an alternately encouraging and protesting chorus.
“What kind is that?” Akira asked. A neighbor, passing by on the street, glanced at her, face curious. Akira nodded, bringing her hand up to her ear to tap her headset. Oh, hell. She wasn’t wearing it. She forced a smile, and the woman smiled back and walked on.
Right.
Tassamara.
The only small town in America where talking to yourself just made the neighbors think you were one of them.
“Men! They’re all just out for one thing and once they’ve got it . . .” Rose snapped her fingers scornfully. “Except for Henry,” she added again.
“Why except for Henry?” Akira began picking at the tape on the box. It was from Amazon, but she couldn’t remember ordering anything.
“Henry was a wonderful boyfriend,” Rose answered. “So sweet, so polite. Always a gentleman. My parents didn’t approve, of course, but that wasn’t Henry’s fault. And he had nothing to do with—” Rose paused, and shrugged one shoulder, “—with what happened later.”
Akira’s brows went up, her eyes widening, her mouth dropping open. Henry? Rose and Henry had been boyfriend and girlfriend?
“You and Henry?” Dillon was almost spluttering with shock. “But—but—”
Akira pulled her mouth closed and waited, wondering what Dillon was going to say. The age difference didn’t matter, of course: she could tell from the clothes that Henry had died much later than Rose had. But in the 1950’s? In the segregated south? Henry had probably been risking his life to date a white girl.
“But he’s old!” Dillon finally burst out. Akira smiled and continued working on the tape. Good for Dillon.
“He wasn’t then, of course,” Rose said impatiently. “That happened later.”
“So did Henry live in the house, too?” Akira was curious. She’d assumed that all of the ghostly residents—the boys in the backyard, Rose, and Henry—had lived in the house at different times. It was unusual to find such a concentration of ghosts in one place, but not unthinkable.
“No.” Rose looked puzzled for a minute and then thoughtful. “No, he only came to live here later. After, I mean. He never lived here when he was alive.”
Huh. That was strange, Akira thought. What was Henry’s tie to the house if he hadn’t died here?
“It must have been nice for you when he got here,” Dillon suggested. He’d obviously quickly recovered from the surprise. “You must have been lonely all by yourself.”
“Oh, I wasn’t by myself.” Rose waved that idea off. “The boys were so much more fun back then. We had such a good time right after. We used to pester my little sister like you wouldn’t believe.” Rose giggled.
That was even more interesting. Akira wasn’t surprised to find out that the boys in the backyard had been at the house longer than Rose. She was no expert on boys’ clothing, but the slightly formal cut to their shorts, the collars on the button-down shirts, and even their socks made her think that they came from an older era, maybe around the 1920s. But she’d never really talked to them. If they were more active when Rose became a ghost, though . . .
With a last quick tug, she finally managed to get the tape off the box. Rose broke off the story of tormenting her sister that she’d been telling Dillon to say, “Ooh, what did you get?”
Akira folded back the cardboard sides of the box. She recognized the packaging on the object inside before even glancing at the packing slip.
It was a new Kindle.
She bit her lip. With a hand that felt suddenly cold, she picked up the paperwork. She was wrong.
It was two Kindles.
The note read, “One for you, one for Dillon. Grace says to tell him that if he intends to keep destroying them, she’ll make it an official research project and buy them in bulk, but that he should leave yours alone. (Grace takes her reading seriously.)”
Damn it.
Akira blinked furiously. She would not cry. She would not cry. She would not cry.
But a tear overflowed anyway.
She’d really liked him.