More and more, he was recalling things about his former life, gathering memories like scattered beads from the floor. He came to remember that he liked big band jazz and comic book heroes and airplanes. He had liked listening to radio shows: Jack Benny, George and Gracie, Edgar Bergen. He hadn’t yet recovered enough of his past to have any sense of the whole, but he thought he would in time. Like those paintings in which points of color, when viewed from a distance, would form a complete image.
Mark Nolan was easygoing and dependable, the kind of man the ghost would have liked to have as a friend. Since he owned a coffee-roasting business, Mark always brought bags of whole beans and began each visit by brewing coffee—he drank it by the potful. As Mark meticulously ground the beans and measured them out, the ghost remembered coffee, its bittersweet, earthy scent, the way a spoonful of cane sugar and a dollop of cream turned it into liquid velvet.
The ghost gleaned from the Nolans’ conversations that their parents had both been alcoholics. The scars they had left on their children—three sons and a daughter named Victoria—were invisible but bone-deep. Now, even though their parents were long gone, the Nolans had little to do with each other. They were survivors of a family that no one wanted to remember.
It was ironic that Alex, with his bulletproof reserve, was the only one of the four who had married so far. He and his wife, Darcy, lived near Roche Harbor. The only sister, Victoria, was a single mother, living in Seattle with her young daughter. As for Sam and Mark, they were determined to stay bachelors. Sam was unequivocal in his opinion that no woman would ever be worth the risk of marriage. Whenever he sensed that a relationship was becoming too close, he ended it and never looked back.
After Sam confided to Mark about his latest breakup, with a woman who had wanted to move their relationship to the next level, Mark asked, “What’s the next level?”
“I don’t know. I broke up with her before I found out.” The two were sitting on the porch, applying paint remover to a row of salvaged antique balusters that would eventually be used for the front railings. “I’m a one-level guy,” Sam continued. “Sex, dinners out, the occasional impersonal gift, and no talking about the future, ever. It’s a relief now that it’s over. She’s great, but I couldn’t handle all the emotion salad.”
“What’s emotion salad?” Mark asked, amused.
“You know that thing women do. The happy-crying thing. Or the sad-mad thing. I don’t get how anyone can have more than one feeling at a time. It’s like trying to simultaneously watch TVs on different channels.”
“I’ve seen you have more than one feeling at a time.”
“When?”
“At Alex’s wedding ceremony. When he and Darcy were exchanging vows. You were smiling, but your eyes got kind of watery.”
“Oh. At that point I was thinking about the scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, when Jack Nicholson got the lobotomy and his friends smothered him with a pillow out of mercy.”
“Most of the time I wouldn’t mind smothering Alex with a pillow,” Mark said.
Sam grinned, but sobered quickly as he continued. “Someone should put him out of his misery. That Darcy is a piece of work. Remember at the rehearsal dinner when she referred to Alex as her first husband?”
“He is her first husband.”
“Yeah, but calling him the ‘first’ implies there’s going to be a second. Husbands are like cars to Darcy—she’s going to keep trading up. And what I don’t get is that Alex knew it, but he went ahead and married her anyway. I mean, if you have to get married, at least pick someone nice.”
“She’s not that bad.”
“Then why do I get the feeling when I talk to her that I’d be better off viewing her reflection from a mirrored shield?”
“Darcy’s not my type,” Mark said, “but a lot of guys would say she’s hot.”
“Not a good reason to marry someone.”
“In your opinion, Sam, is there any good reason to get married?”
Sam shook his head. “I’d rather have a painful accident with a power tool.”
“Having seen the way you handle a compound miter saw,” Mark said, “I’d say that’s entirely likely.”
A few days later, Alex came to the house at Rainshadow Road for an unexpected visit. Since the ghost had last seen him, Alex had lost weight he hadn’t needed to lose. His cheekbones were as prominent as guard rails, the ice-colored eyes under-mounted by deep shadows.
“Darcy wants to separate,” Alex said without preamble, as Sam welcomed him inside.
Sam shot him a glance of concern. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“She wouldn’t tell you?”
“I didn’t ask.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Jesus, Al. Don’t you want to know why your wife’s leaving you?”
“Not particularly.”
Sam’s tone turned gently arid. “Do you think that might be part of the problem? Like maybe she needs a husband who’s interested in her feelings?”
“One of the reasons I liked Darcy in the first place is that she and I never had to have those conversations.” Alex wandered into the parlor, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He surveyed the door casing that Sam had been hammering into place. “You’re going to split the wood. You need to predrill the holes.”
Sam surveyed him for a moment. “Want to lend a hand?”
“Sure.” Alex went to the worktable in the center of the room and picked up a cordless power drill. He checked the settings and the tightness of the chuck, and pressed the trigger experimentally. A metallic squeal tore through the air.
“Bearings are dried up,” Sam said apologetically. “I’ve been meaning to repack them with grease, but I haven’t had time.”
“It’s better to replace them completely. I’ll take care of it later. Meantime, I’ve got a good drill in the car. Four-pole motor, four hundred fifty pounds of torque.”
“Sweet.”
In the way of men, they dealt with the issue of Alex’s broken marriage by not talking about it at all, instead working together in companionable silence. Alex installed the door casings with precision and care, measuring and marking, hand-chiseling a thin edge of the plastered wall to ensure that the vertical casing was perfectly plumb.
The ghost loved good carpentry, the way it made sense of everything. Edges were neatly joined and finished, imperfections were sanded and painted, everything was level. He watched Alex’s work approvingly. Although Sam had acquitted himself well as an amateur, there had been plenty of mistakes and do-overs. Alex knew what he was doing, and it showed.
“Hot damn,” Sam said in admiration as he saw how Alex had hand-cut plinth blocks to use as decorative bases for the casing. “Well, you’re going to have to do the other door in here. Because there’s no way in hell I could make it look like that.”
“No problem.”
Sam went outside to confer with his vineyard crew, who were busy pruning and shaping the young vines in preparation for the coming flush of growth in April. Alex continued to work in the parlor. The ghost wandered around the room, singing during the lulls between hammering and sawing.
As Alex filled nail holes with wood putty and caulked around the casing edges, he began a soft, nearly inaudible humming. Gradually a melody emerged, and the realization hit like a thunderbolt: Alex was humming along to his song.
On some level, Alex could sense his presence.
Watching him intently, the ghost continued to sing.
Alex set aside the caulk gun, remaining in a kneeling position. He braced his hands on his thighs, humming absently.
The ghost broke off the song and drew closer. “Alex,” he said cautiously. When there was no response, he said in a burst of impatient hope and eagerness, “Alex, I’m here.”
Alex blinked like a man who’d just come from a dark room into blinding daylight. He looked directly at the ghost, his eyes dilating into black circles rimmed with ice.
“You can see
me?” the ghost asked in astonishment.
Scrambling backward, Alex landed on his rump. In the same momentum, he grabbed the closest tool at hand, a hammer. Drawing it back as if he meant to hurl it at the ghost, he growled, “Who the hell are you?”
Two
The stranger looked down at Alex with an expression of surprise that seemed to rival his own.
“Who are you?” Alex demanded again.
“I don’t know,” the man said slowly, staring at him without blinking.
He was about to say something else, but then he flickered … like an image on a cable channel with bad reception … and disappeared.
The room was quiet. A bee landed on one of the screen windows and walked in repeated circles.
Alex set aside the hammer and let out a taut breath. He used his thumb and forefinger to pinch the corners of his eyes, which were sore and puffy from the previous night’s drinking. Hallucination, he thought. Garbage from a wasted brain.
The craving for alcohol was so intense that he briefly considered going to the kitchen and rummaging through the pantry. But Sam rarely kept hard liquor; there would be nothing but wine.
And it wasn’t yet noon. He never let himself drink before noon.
“Hey.” Sam’s voice came from the doorway. He gave Alex an odd look. “You need something? I thought I heard you.”
Alex’s temples were throbbing painfully in time to his heartbeat. He felt vaguely nauseous. “The guys on your vineyard crew … does one of them have short black hair, wears a retro flight jacket?”
“Brian’s got dark hair, but it’s kind of longish. And I’ve never seen him in that kind of jacket. Why?”
Alex rose to his feet and went to the window. He flicked at the mesh with a snap of his fingers, jolting the bee off the screen. It flew away with a sullen buzz.
“You okay?” he heard Sam ask.
“I’m fine.”
“Because if there’s anything you want to talk about—”
“No.”
“Okay,” Sam said with a careful blandness that annoyed him. Darcy often used the same tone. Like she had to walk on eggshells around him.
“I’m going to finish up here and take off in a few minutes.” Alex went to the worktable and began to measure a length of trim.
“Right.” But Sam lingered at the doorway. “Al … you been drinking lately?”
“Not enough,” he said with vicious sincerity.
“Do you think—” “Don’t give me shit right now, Sam.”
“Got it.”
Sam stared at him without bothering to disguise his concern. Alex knew he shouldn’t have been chafed by the signs that his brother actually cared for him. But any sign of warmth or affection had always caused him to react differently from most people—it provoked an instinct to turn away, close up. People could either deal with it or get lost. It was who he was.
He kept his face expressionless and his mouth shut. For all that he and Sam were brothers, they knew practically nothing about each other. Alex preferred to keep it that way.
After Sam left the parlor, the ghost turned his attention back to Alex.
At the moment when he and Alex had been able to look at each other, the ghost had been shocked by an awareness, a connection opening, so that he could perceive everything the man felt … bitterness, a desire for numb oblivion, a seething lonely need that nothing could satisfy. It wasn’t that the ghost felt all these things himself … it was more an ability to browse through them, like titles in a bookstore. Nonetheless, the intensity of the perception had startled the ghost, and he had backed off.
And apparently he had become invisible again.
Dark-haired, wearing a flight jacket … Is that what I look like? What else had Alex seen? Do I look like someone you know? Maybe someone in an old photograph? Help me find out who I am.
Thrumming with frustration, the ghost watched Alex install the rest of the door casings. Each strike of the hammer reverberated through the air. He hovered near Alex, the connection between them fragile but palpable. He had a sense of the slow corrosion of a soul that had never stood a chance, never enough caring, never enough hope or kindness or any of the things necessary to build a decent foundation for a human being. Although Alex was certainly not someone he would have chosen to be attached to—put more plainly, to haunt—the ghost didn’t see an alternative.
Alex organized Sam’s tools and picked up the power drill that needed to be repaired. As he left, the ghost accompanied him to the threshold of the front door.
Alex walked out to the front porch. The ghost hesitated. On impulse, he moved forward. This time there was no disintegration, no fragmenting of consciousness. Instead, he was able to follow Alex.
Outside.
Walking to the drive where his car was parked, Alex felt an itchy, stinging impatience that had no identifiable source. His senses were uncomfortably heightened, the sun too strong for his eyes. The smell of cut grass and violets was nauseatingly sweet in his nostrils. Letting his gaze drop to the path in front of him, he noticed something odd. By some trick of the light, two shadows extended from his feet. Motionless, he watched the two silhouettes on the path. Was it possible that one of them had moved slightly while the other stayed still?
He forced himself to walk. Giving in to delusions, talking aloud to apparitions, was going to land his ass in lockdown rehab. Darcy would have seized on any excuse to shut him away. So would his brothers, for that matter.
Deliberately he turned his mind to the prospect of going home. Darcy had left to go apartment-hunting in Seattle, which meant the house was empty. He would be able to get loaded in peace. It sounded good. So good, in fact, that the car keys shook a little in his hand.
As Alex got into the BMW, the shadow slipped inside with him, and settled across the passenger seat like an empty pillowcase. And together they went home.
Three
This was the irony: after years of longing to escape the house at Rainshadow Road, a few weeks spent in Alex Nolan’s company had been enough to make the ghost want to go back. But there was only so far that the ghost could drift before he encountered the parameters of yet another invisible prison. He was stuck with Alex. He could occupy another room, or glide several yards away, but that was it. When Alex left his ultramodern house at Roche Harbor, the ghost found himself being towed along like a balloon on a string … or more aptly, a helpless fish caught on the end of a line.
Women often approached him, drawn by the dark glamour of his good looks. But Alex was a distant and unsentimental man. His sexual needs were occasionally satisfied by Darcy, who was now living in Seattle but sometimes came to visit even though they had agreed to a legal separation as a prelude to divorce. They had conversations in which words nicked like razor blades, followed by sex, the one form of connection they had ever managed. Darcy had told Alex that all the things that made him a terrible husband were also the things that made him great in bed. Whenever they started going at it, the ghost prudently removed himself to the farthest room in the house and tried to ignore Darcy’s ecstatic screams.
Darcy was greyhound-lean and beautiful, her hair black and straight. She radiated a diamond-hard confidence that would have made it impossible to pity her, except that the ghost had noticed signs of vulnerability … feathery sleepless lines around her mouth and eyes, brittle fractures in her laughter, all caused from the knowledge that her marriage had become less than the sum of its parts.
The ghost accompanied Alex around his on-spec residential development in Roche Harbor—something the ghost had heard him refer to as a pocket neighborhood. A grouping of well-tended houses, arranged around a green lawn commons and a cluster of mailboxes. People didn’t necessarily like Alex, but they respected his work. He was known for running a tight operation and finishing a project on schedule, even in a place where subcontractors tended to work on island time.
It was obvious to everyone on the island, however, that Alex drank too much and slept too little
, and eventually it was all going to catch up with him. Before long his health would deteriorate just like his marriage. The ghost fervently hoped that he wasn’t going to have to watch the erosion of this man’s life.
Trapped in Alex’s sphere, the ghost was impatient to visit Rainshadow Road, where big changes were happening to the rest of the Nolan family.
A few days after the ghost had left Rainshadow Road, the phone had rung at an unusually late hour. The ghost, who never slept, had gone into Alex’s room as the bedside lamp was turned on.
Rubbing his eyes, Alex had said in a sleep-thickened tone, “Sam. What is it?”
As Alex listened, his expression hadn’t changed, but his face went skull-white. He had to swallow twice before asking, “Are they sure?”
As the conversation had continued, the ghost gathered that the Nolans’ sister, Victoria, had been involved in a car wreck. She had died on the scene. Since Victoria had never married, nor had she ever revealed the father of her child, her six-year-old daughter, Holly, had just been orphaned.
Alex had hung up the phone and stared blindly at the bare wall, his eyes dry.
The ghost had felt a mixture of shock and sorrow, even though he had never met Victoria. She had died young—the cruelty of that, the unfairness of such loss, struck a chord of compassion. The ghost had wished for the luxury of tears, the relief of them. But as a soul without a body, he didn’t have the ability to cry.
Apparently neither did Alex Nolan.
Out of the tragedy of Victoria Nolan’s death, something remarkable had happened: Mark was granted custody of her daughter, Holly, and the two of them moved in with Sam. The three of them were now living together at the house on Rainshadow Road.
Prior to Holly’s arrival, the atmosphere in the house had resembled nothing so much as a football locker room. Laundry was done only when all other clothing options had been exhausted. Mealtimes were scattershot and hasty, and there was rarely anything in the fridge beyond half-empty bottles of condiments, a six-pack of beer, and the occasional leftover pizza in a grease-spotted box. Doctor’s visits were something that happened only if you needed stitches or a defibrillator.