“I liked it better when you were invisible,” Alex said, turning away from him. “Conversation’s over.”
“What if I want to keep talking?”
“Talk your head off. I’m going home, where I’m going to drink until you disappear.”
The ghost shrugged and leaned nonchalantly against the wall. “Maybe you’ll be the one to disappear,” he said, and watched as Alex went to scrape off the caulk splatters.
Four
“Justine,” Zoë said severely, “don’t eat any more of those. I need at least two hundred for the cupcake tower.”
“I’m helping you,” Justine said around a mouthful of pink velvet cake with Chambord buttercream frosting. With her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, and her slim form clad in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, she looked more like a college student than a successful businesswoman.
Zoë glanced quizzically into her cousin’s brown-velvet eyes. “How exactly are you helping?”
“Quality control. I need to make sure these are good enough for the wedding guests.”
Smiling wryly, Zoë rolled out a yard of ice-pink fondant with an aluminum rolling pin. “Well, are they?”
“They’re terrible. Can I have one more? Please?”
“No.”
“Okay, then I’ll tell you the truth. Given the choice between eating this cupcake or watching Ryan Gosling and Jon Hamm wrestle each other for the privilege of having sex with me, I’d choose the cupcake.”
“I’m not even finished yet,” Zoë said. “I’m going to cover each one with fondant and top it with pink roses, green leaves, and clear sugar dewdrops.”
“You are the baking genius of our time.”
“I know,” Zoë said cheerfully. When the fondant was an eighth of an inch thick, she began to cover each cupcake in a smooth, perfect casing, trimming the excess with a spatula. She had worked at Justine’s bed-and-breakfast for more than two years, handling the cooking, grocery shopping, and food orders, while Justine managed the business side. Immediately after the failure of Zoë’s brief but disastrous marriage, Justine had approached her with an offer that included a share in the business. Zoë, still shell-shocked by the dissolution of her marriage, had hesitated at first.
“Say yes and you’ll never regret it,” Justine had said. “It’s everything you like to do, all the cooking and menu planning, without all the business stuff.”
Zoë had regarded her uncertainly. “After what I’ve just been through, I’m afraid to make a commitment to anything. Even an offer that sounds as nice as this one.”
“But you’d be making a commitment to me,” Justine had enthused. “Your favorite cousin.”
Zoë forbore to reply that technically they were only second cousins, and furthermore, out of all the Hoffman cousins Justine hadn’t necessarily been her favorite. In early childhood Zoë had been intimidated by Justine, who was a year younger but infinitely more daring and confident.
One of the things Zoë and Justine had in common was that they were only children being raised by single parents … Justine was being raised by her mother, and Zoë by a father.
“Did your daddy run away from home?” Zoë had asked Justine.
“No, silly. Parents don’t run away from home.”
“My mother did,” Zoë had said, glad to finally have some bit of superior knowledge over her cousin. “I don’t even remember her. My daddy says she left one day after dropping me off and never came back.”
“Maybe she got lost,” Justine had suggested.
“No, she left a good-bye letter. Where did your daddy go?”
“He’s in heaven. He’s an angel and he has big silver wings.”
“My grandmother doesn’t think angels have wings.”
“Of course they do,” Justine had said impatiently. “They have to have wings or they’d fall out of the sky. There’s no floor up there.”
In third grade, Zoë’s father had moved her to Everett, where her grandmother lived, and it had been years before she had seen Justine again. They had stayed loosely in touch by exchanging birthday and holiday cards. After graduating from culinary school, Zoë had married Chris Kelly, her best friend since high school. At that point, Zoë was busy with her job as a sous-chef at a Seattle resturant, and Justine was trying to make a success of Artist’s Point, and they had completely lost touch. Approximately a year later, however, when Zoë and Chris had filed for divorce, Justine had been an unexpected source of comfort and support, and had offered her the chance to make a new start in Friday Harbor. Tempting as the prospect was, Zoë had been more than a little apprehensive about the idea of working with her headstrong cousin. Thankfully the arrangement had worked out beautifully, playing to each of their strengths. They argued rarely, and when they did, Zoë’s quiet stubbornness usually won out over Justine’s bluster.
Artist’s Point was just a two-minute walk away from downtown Friday Harbor and the ferry landing. A previous owner had converted an old hilltop mansion into a bed-and-breakfast, but the business had never taken off, and eventually Justine had been able to buy it at a rock-bottom price. She had renamed and redecorated the inn. Each of the twelve rooms in the main house had been turned into a homage to a different artist. The Van Gogh room was painted with rich colors and furnished in a French provincial style with a sunflower bedspread. The Jackson Pollock room was decorated with modern furniture and prints of drip paintings, and over the bathtub, Justine had hung a clear plastic shower curtain that she had covered with splatters of acrylic paint.
Justine and Zoë shared a two-bedroom cottage in the back of the main building, a scant seven hundred square feet with one bathroom and a cupboard kitchen. The arrangement worked because they spent most of their time in the bed-and-breakfast, with its spacious kitchen and common areas. To Justine’s chagrin, Zoë had brought a companion to live with them: her white Persian, Byron. Admittedly, Byron was a little spoiled, but he was an affectionate and well-mannered cat. His only flaw was that he didn’t like men—they seemed to make him nervous. Zoë understood exactly how he felt.
In the past couple of years, the bed-and-breakfast had become popular with both tourists and locals. Justine and Zoë held monthly events including cooking classes and a “silent reading” party, and they also hosted weddings and receptions. The event that would take place tomorrow, on Saturday, was what Justine privately referred to as the wedding-from-hell, in which the bride’s mother was an even bigger bridezilla than the bride. “And then you’ve got a whole collection of bridesmaidzillas, and the groomzilla and the dadzilla,” Justine had complained. “This is the most dysfunctional wedding I’ve ever seen. I think they should invite a psychiatrist to the rehearsal dinner tonight, and turn it into one big group therapy session.”
“They’ll probably end up throwing the cupcakes at each other at the reception,” Zoë said.
“My God, I hope so. I’ll just stand in the middle with my mouth open.” Justine licked the last of the raspberry buttercream off her fingertip. “You saw Lucy this morning, right? How’s she doing?”
“Pretty well, all things considered. She’s on pain medication, but Sam seems to be taking good care of her.”
“I knew he would,” Justine said in satisfaction.
Their friend Lucy, a local glass artist, had been staying at Artist’s Point for the past couple of months, ever since her boyfriend had broken up with her. After Lucy’s bike accident yesterday, Justine had realized that in light of Lucy’s leg injuries, and the wedding taking place that weekend, there was no way she and Zoë could take care of her. So she had talked Sam into letting Lucy recuperate at his house.
“I told Sam how much we appreciate it,” Zoë said. “It’s incredibly nice of him, especially since he and Lucy have only gone out a couple of times before.”
“They’re already in love with each other. They just don’t know it yet.”
Zoë paused in the middle of trimming the fondant from another cupcake. “How do you know it, if
they don’t?”
“You should have seen Sam at the clinic yesterday. He was so worried about her, and she was so glad to see him, and for a few seconds, you could tell they were the only two people in the world.”
As Zoë worked with the cupcakes, she pondered what she remembered of Sam Nolan from elementary school. He had been geeky and skinny. No one would have guessed that he would have grown up into the robust, good-looking man she had seen earlier that morning. Sam had a roguish quality tempered with quiet strength … he might be exactly what Lucy needed, after her boyfriend had treated her so terribly.
“So now that Lucy’s got someone,” Justine said, “we have to find a guy for you.”
“No we don’t,” Zoë countered evenly. “I keep telling you, I’m not ready to start that kind of relationship.”
“You’ve been divorced for a couple of years now, and you’ve been a nun. Sex is good for you, you know. Relieves stress and improves cardiovascular health, and lowers the risk of prostate cancer, and besides—”
“I don’t have a prostate. Men have prostates.”
“I know, but think of how much you’ll be helping some poor guy out.”
A reluctant grin spread across Zoë’s face.
There could have been no better antidote for Zoë’s shyness and occasional self-doubt than Justine. She was like a cool, brisk September breeze that blew away the sultry heat of summer and made you think of apples and wool sweaters and planting tulip bulbs.
Before rolling out the next sheet of fondant, Zoë poured some coffee, and told Justine about a phone call she’d received that morning. The previous day, her grandmother Emma, who was living in a senior apartment at an independent living community in Everett, had been taken to a nearby medical facility. She had complained of numbness in her left arm and leg, and had seemed disoriented. It had turned out to be a ministroke, but the doctor believed that with physical therapy, she would regain most of the use of the affected limbs.
“But when they did a brain scan,” Zoë said, “they found that she’d already had a few ministrokes. It’s a condition called—oh, right now I can’t remember the word—but it basically boils down to a diagnosis of vascular dementia.”
“Oh, Zoë.” Justine reached out to put her hand on Zoë’s back, and kept it there for a moment. “I’m sorry. Is that a kind of Alzheimer’s?”
“No, but it’s similar. With vascular dementia, it’s a stair-step process … one of these ministrokes takes away some of your ability, and then you plateau for a while, and then you have another episode—” Zoë broke off and blinked against tears. “Eventually she’ll have a major stroke, and that’s that.”
Justine frowned. “When Emma came out to visit over Christmas, she was in great shape. Didn’t seem at all her age. What is she now, like, ninety?”
“Eighty-seven.”
“Do you need to go to her?” Justine asked quietly.
“Yes, I thought tomorrow after the wedding reception—”
“No, I mean right now.”
“I have a hundred and seventy-two cupcakes to cover with fondant.”
“Show me how to do it. I’ll take over.”
“You’ve got too many other things to do.” Zoë felt a rush of fond gratitude for her cousin, who could always be counted on in times of trouble. “And this isn’t as easy as it looks. You’d end up with a pile of big pink balls.”
“Then I’d put ’em on the groom’s table,” Justine said.
Zoë chuckled, and sighed. “No, I’ll stay until after the wedding, and then I’ll go to Everett.” She hesitated before continuing. “I’ll be meeting with Emma’s elder-care consultant—she helps with insurance care facilities, and knows all the options for what my grandmother will need. So I’ll be gone for a couple of days.”
“Whatever it takes.” Justine slid her a concerned glance. “You think your dad will come up from Arizona to see her?”
“I hope not.” Although Zoë hadn’t seen her father in years, they exchanged occasional brief e-mails and phone calls. And from what she knew of his relationship with Emma, it had been even more distant than that. “It would be really awkward. And he wouldn’t be any help at all.”
“Poor Zoë. I wonder if you’ve ever had a man in your life you could really count on.”
“Right now,” Zoë said, “a man is the last thing I need. Except for Byron, of course. Which reminds me … would you look after him while I’m gone?”
“Oh, jeez.” Justine scowled. “I’ll give him food and water, but that’s it. No treats, no combing, no baths or special outfits, and no cat massage.”
“It’s just a light rubdown at the end of the day,” Zoë protested. “It helps him relax.”
“Zoë, I don’t even do that for my boyfriend. Your big fat fluffball of a cat is going to have to deal with his hypertension on his own.”
Five
Darcy’s tense voice filtered through the answering machine as she left a message at nine in the morning. Hearing it, Alex dragged himself out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and staggered toward the kitchen.
“… don’t know if you’ve found another place to live yet,” Darcy was saying, “but time’s running out. I’m going to start showing the house next week, so you have to be out of there. I want it sold by Labor Day. If you want to buy it from me, you can talk to the Realtor—”
“I’m not going to pay for the same damn house twice,” Alex muttered, ignoring the rest of the message. He pressed a button on the automatic espresso machine and waited for it to heat. Through slitted eyes, he saw the ghost standing at the kitchen island with his forearms braced on the granite counter.
The ghost met his gaze. “Hiya.”
Alex didn’t reply.
Last night, he had turned on the TV and sat on the sofa with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The ghost had sat in a nearby chair, asking sardonically, “You’re not bothering with a glass now?”
Lifting the bottle to his lips, Alex had ignored him and kept his gaze glued on the television screen. The ghost had fallen obligingly silent … but he had stayed until Alex had passed out.
And this morning he was still here.
Seeing that the espresso machine was ready, Alex pressed the start button. The metallic squall of the automatic grinder filled the air. The machine clicked, clacked, pumped out a double shot of espresso, and emptied the grounds into a hidden plastic receptacle. Alex drank the coffee straight and set the empty cup in the sink.
He turned to face the ghost with grim resignation. It was pointless to keep ignoring him, since he didn’t appear to be going anywhere. And in that weird secondhand way, Alex could sense the ghost’s mood, the weary patience of a man who’d been alone for a long time. Although Alex had never been accused of having an excess of compassion, he couldn’t help feeling a flicker of sympathy.
“You got a name?” Alex eventually asked.
“I did, once. But I can’t remember it.”
“What’s with the flight jacket?”
“I don’t know,” the ghost said. “Are there squadron patches on it? A name tag?”
Alex shook his head. “Looks like an old A-2 with cargo pockets. You can’t see it?”
“I’m visible only to you.”
“Lucky me.” Alex viewed him dourly. “Listen … I can’t function with you following me everywhere. So you need to get invisible again.”
“I don’t want to be invisible. I want to be free.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Maybe if you help me figure out who I am … who I was … it might show me a way out. I might be able to break away from you then.”
“ ‘Maybe’ and ‘might’ aren’t good enough.”
“It’s all I’ve got.” The ghost began to pace in abbreviated strides. “Sometimes I remember things. Bits and pieces of my life.” He stopped at the kitchen window to stare out at the beckoning blue flat of Roche Harbor. “When I first … had awareness, I guess you’d say … I was in the
house at Rain-shadow. I think in my former life I had a connection to that place. There’s still a lot of old junk there, especially in the attic. It may be worth poking around for clues.”
“Why haven’t you done it?”
“Because I’d need a physical form to do that,” the ghost said, every word drenched in sarcasm. “I can’t open a door or move a piece of furniture. I don’t have ‘powers.’ “ He accompanied the word with a mystical waggling of all his fingers. “All I can do is watch while other people screw up their lives.” He paused. “You’re going to have to clear all that crap out of the attic eventually, anyway.”
“Sam will. It’s his house.”
“I can’t talk to Sam. And he might miss something important. I need you to do it.”
“I’m not your cleaning lady.” Alex left the kitchen, and the ghost followed. “There’s enough stuff in that attic to fill a ten-yard Dumpster,” Alex continued. “It would take me days to go through it alone. Maybe weeks.”
“But you will?” the ghost asked eagerly.
“I’ll think about it. In the meantime, I’m going to take a shower.” Alex stopped and shot him a glare. “And while I’m in there, stay the hell away from me.”
“Relax,” the ghost said acidly. “Not interested.”
By the beginning of third grade, Zoë’s father had told her that he was getting a new job in Arizona, and she would have to live with her grandmother until he sent for her. “I just have to get the house ready for you,” he had said. “What color do you want me to paint your room?”
“Blue,” Zoë had said eagerly. “Like a robin’s egg. Oh, and Daddy, can I get a kitten when I move to our new house?”
“Sure you can. As long as you take care of it.”
“Oh, I will! Thank you, Daddy.” For months Zoë had painted pictures of what her new room and her new kitten would look like, and had told all her friends she was going to live in Arizona.