Chapter Twelve
Nolan
hen I told Harriet we could do whatever she wanted, I didn’t expectW her to pick ice skating.
I thought we’d watch one of her movies. Maybe make the jam she seemed so intent on when I arrived at her home. I thought— worst-case scenario— she might potentially take me to one of those tree farms she seems so fond of.
I didn’t anticipate gliding along a frozen slab of water with razor blades strapped to my feet while the overhead speakers scream at me about the twelve days of Christmas.
Harriet whizzes past me for the sixth time in as many minutes, her blonde hair flying around her. She does a graceful spin in front of me then winds her way back, circling my slow shuffle across the ice.
“If your hope was to kill me,” I say while gripping the side of the rink, “let me remind you that I’m already dead.”
She beams at me, her earlier melancholy melted away. “For a Holiday Spirit, you’re awfully grumpy about holiday things.” The song changes to the one where Mommy kisses Santa Claus. I groan.
Harriet rolls her eyes with another fond smile and zips off. Despite the music and my inability to skate, I’m glad we’re here instead of somewhere in her past. I have no desire to watch Harriet fold herself into an even smaller shape, broken down by disappointment after disappointment. Especially after the call from her mother.
I hate that I added to that feeling. I hate that I was another person who diminished her.
“Come on,” she calls from the other side of the empty rink. She does something complicated with her feet and executes another jump-spin that leaves me an odd combination of aroused and terrified. “I thought you were supposed to have sea legs, Mr. Fisherman.”
“This isn’t the sea,” I yell back. “This is a frozen death trap.”
Harriet’s laugh echoes off the backboards and I feel a reluctant smile pull across my mouth. It’s just us in the large rink, golden globe lights strung
around the perimeter, a large white canopy overhead. According to Harriet, this space is used for a family holiday skate in the evenings, but the owner lets her come whenever she wants. She struck some sort of deal involving a discount on costume jewelry at the Crow’s Nest in exchange for free skate time.
The woman who unlocked the door for us had a crooked smile and massive, blue gemstone earrings. She handed Harriet a small package, complained about a man named Darryl delivering the wrong things to the wrong places, then proceeded to talk about online auctions for seven minutes.
Harriet manages another five laps while I complete one, slowing her pace to meet my stride on her final loop. I’m getting better, steadier on my feet, but I’m no match for Harriet.
Harriet with her hair tied back in a high ponytail, curls just brushing her shoulder blades, her hands swinging loose at her sides. I feel like I can barely look at her.
I haven’t slept since I dreamed of her. I won’t let myself. I’m afraid of what my subconscious might come up with if given the opportunity, and my body doesn’t need the rest anyway. I’m embarrassed I jerked myself off to the thought of her. Frustrated I gave in to that drumbeat of desire. I’m not a man easily swayed by whims, but with Harriet, I’ve completely lost control of the situation.
“Thank you for bringing me,” she says. She’s wearing her pink coat and the mittens I gave her. “It’s been too long since I’ve skated.”
“Then I’m glad we could come,” I tell her. “I meant it when I said I was sorry, yeah? You didn’t deserve that from me.” She makes a soft sound of acknowledgment, but doesn’t say anything else as she turns to skate at my side. We move together silently for another lap, nothing but the scratch of our skates against the ice. Our hands brush between us, bumping together and then away again.
I want to hold her hand so bad my bones ache with it. Would she let me hold her hand?
My magic zips up my spine, settling between my shoulder blades.
Wait, it says. Not yet.
Her anger has melted into something softer, more malleable. While it’s what I wanted, I’m not sure it makes me feel better. I think Harriet waters her feelings down to make them easier for others to deal with.
If she’s mad, I want her to be mad. If she’s sad, I want her to be sad.
“When I became a ghost—” I hesitate, my skates tripping beneath my feet.
Harriet sets me to rights with a gentle hand at my elbow and I try again.
“When I died, it all happened so fast. I was on my boat, and then I—” Dark, heavy skies. The deck lurching beneath my feet. Salt water in my nose and something gold, just out of reach. It’s been reduced to sensations after all these years. A creeping numbness and a hand gripping the back of my coat, tugging me away.
“One moment I was on my boat, and the next I wasn’t,” I finish. “I was dead and there wasn’t time for me to come to terms with it. There was a job to do, and expectations, and it all felt like a—like a nightmare. There was an orientation, of course—”
An astonished laugh chokes out of Harriet. “Of course.”
“—but I felt trapped. I didn’t even get to choose this place. I didn’t get to choose anything. I was here and I was alone and it was—” Jarring. Horrible.
Terrifying. Lonely. “Those first few decades, I kept waiting for the next step.
I tried to do my job well and I hoped—well, I think I hoped that if I fulfilled the requirements, I’d move on to something else.”
Harriet considers that. “You thought you’d have an afterlife. Rest, instead of work.”
“Aye.” We turn another lap around the rink, Harriet quiet next to me. “But there’s never been anything else. Nothing has changed. I’ve had to let go of my expectations. It’s easier for me than the alternative.”
“The alternative?”
“That perhaps, for me, there is nothing else.” Harriet frowns. “You really believe that?”
“I don’t want to hope anymore. If I don’t bother with hope, then I can let go of the impossibility of change. Everything is more tolerable because of it.
I don’t dislike being a ghost. Not when I forget about what was before and ignore what might come after.” I give her a tight smile. “Denial suits me well.”
She gives me a matching smile. “I’m familiar with the concept,” she says
softly.
“Your mother?”
“Yes. It’s different for me, though. With her, I can’t seem to help myself
from hoping.”
“Why is she so—”
“Cold?” Harriet offers.
“Horrible,” I correct.
Harriet ducks her head, hiding. I want to touch her chin and guide her face back to mine. I meant it in her kitchen when I told her she had nothing to be embarrassed about.
“My grandfather was a difficult man,” Harriet says slowly. “My mother was the eldest, and I think she bore the brunt of his expectations. He spared his softness for my aunt Matilda, and I think my mother resented it.”
She tips her head back, staring up at the canopy above us, the golden lights twisted and swaying in the cold air. “He died young and it drove a wedge between them. They had a falling out over his will and didn’t speak for years.
Then when my mother got pregnant—first with Samantha, then with me— they attempted a reconciliation. But the damage was done. Almost like scar tissue, you know? They always seemed stuck in an argument the rest of us didn’t know anything about. And neither ever wanted to talk about it.
“But I gravitated toward my aunt.” Harriet smiles. Soft. Unfocused. Sad.
“She gave me the affection I so desperately craved and I think it hurt my mom. That I chose Matilda. I pressed on a bruise I didn’t even know was there, time and time again. So, it’s not exactly her fault.”
“She punished a child for wanting to be loved. Who else could possibly be at fault?” I ask. Harriet gives me an exasperated look. “It’s the truth,” I defend. “Between the two of us, I think I’m the expert on bad behavior.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” Harriet explains. “She just wants me to fulfill my full potential.”
I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. Harriet is very good at making
excuses for the shortcomings of others.
Even me.
“I owe you an apology,” I say, rounding back to the reason we’re here. “It seems you’re not the only one who can press on bruises.”
Harriet’s expression flickers. “I cornered you,” she says quietly. “You were right. I didn’t think it through.”
I shake my head, frustrated. “And I overreacted. I should not have lashed out the way I did. It was poor form, Harriet. It won’t happen again.”
Harriet exhales a slow breath. We skate in silence for one lap, then another.
I give her the space to consider my apology without pressing for more.
“Do you promise?” she finally asks.
“I do.”
“Good.” She nods once. “Then you’re forgiven.” I feel my eyebrows rise.
“Just like that?”
A smile curls one side of her mouth. “I’m not in the habit of holding grudges, especially with beings that have existed before I roamed the planet.”
I laugh. “Fair enough.”
She gives me a sly look, her ponytail swinging over her shoulder. “Would you rather I make you work for it?”
A slow smile tugs at one corner of my mouth. “I wouldn’t mind working for it,” I say lightly.
She holds eye contact. We’re wading into different territory now. The place where I was in that dream, with her hands in my hair and my face in her neck. Her little candy cane top around her waist, her bare breasts against my chest.
“That’s, um, th-that’s good to know,” she stutters, color appearing across her cheeks. Harriet wears everything she’s feeling on her sleeve, right where anyone can see it. I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not, but I do know I’ve never met anyone like her before.
We take another lap in silence and the string pulled tight around my chest lessens with every rhythmic push of our skates. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling settled in a while.
“C’mon,” she finally says, slowing to a stop as the music changes to something light and whimsical. “I’m hungry.”
I follow her dutifully off the ice and back to the lobby of the rink, an open area with long wooden benches. There’s a stone fireplace on one side with a fire roaring in the hearth, a string of fresh garland looped across the mantel.
Harriet dropped our boots in front of it before we put our skates on and I bend to collect them on our slow hobble across the room.
My fingertips brush against the leather and I immediately drop them.
My boots are hot.
I could feel them.
Harriet turns toward me. “Everything okay?”
I nod, still frowning at my boots. “Aye,” I answer slowly, rubbing my fingers together. They’re red. Irritated. “I’m fine.”
I’m dreaming, and now I’m feeling, but everything is fine. Denial, as always. My faithful friend.
I drop down onto the bench next to Harriet, my hip pressed to hers, still staring at my fingers. She grunts next to me, almost slicing my calf with her skate.
“And what about you? Everything all right?”
Her mittens lay abandoned at her side, her ponytail over one shoulder. She tugs at her skate some more with a frustrated grunt. “The knot is stubborn. I
can do it.”
“Give me your foot.”
“What? No. Why do you need my foot?”
“So I can help.” I bend down and grab her ankle, lifting her leg onto my thigh. I pick at the frayed laces. “Are you always so stubborn when people want to help?”
I untangle the knot, working the strings free from the front of her skate. I grab the blade at the back and wedge it off her foot, then grab her boot. It’s still warm from the fire and she watches as I tug it over her reindeer socks. I pat her ankle and set her foot on the ground, reaching for the other.
She lifts it dutifully onto my lap.
“People don’t usually offer help,” she says as I work, her voice low. I look at her face, but she’s watching my hands work at the laces. These are far less tangled, but I still take my time. My hand not working against the knots grips
her ankle, my fingers fanned wide.
“I’m offering.”
I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. She’s my assignment. I’m on a ticking clock. I’ve been sent here to reveal her worst bits.
But I can’t seem to help myself.
Fingertips brush over the back of my hand. “Maybe we could help each other?” she asks, a thin thread of apprehension in her voice. My magic pricks at the back of my neck, admonishing. I put that anxiety there. I made her
wary of asking me for things.
I want to fix it.
I finish unlacing her skate and drop it with the other. I reach for her boot.
“I’d like that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” I tell her, my useless heart hammering in my chest.
I don’t believe in her theory. There’s nothing she can do to move me forward. But if it makes her happy to try—if it chases some of the sadness off her pretty face—if I can be one person that doesn’t disappoint her or let her
down— Then I can endure it.
I’ll finish the job. Harriet will move on with her life and I’ll—I’ll be here.
She won’t ever know that her work was for naught. She’ll forget I ever existed and that hopeful heart of hers will find another lost cause to indulge in.
We can help each other. Just not in the way she thinks.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
She nods and holds out her hand. “Yup.”
I stare at it. “I meant back to your shop or your home or … whatever you have planned for the rest of your day.”
“You’re on a deadline. Let’s see what my past reveals today.” She nudges her hand against mine. “I promise not to grab any jam.”
“We don’t have to,” I offer. “We can wait another day.”
We shouldn’t. The other ghosts will likely be getting antsy. I’m shortening their timelines, making it more difficult to turn around a successful case. But I can’t be bothered. If they have issues with the way I’m operating, they can file a formal complaint with Isabella.
“Let’s go now,” Harriet says, insistent. “I’m feeling good about this one.”
“Are your secrets about to be revealed, Harriet?”
She grins. “I guess we’ll see.”
She wiggles her fingers, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
I grip both of her hands, squeezing once. Her skin is so much softer than mine. Pale. No scars over her knuckles or calluses against her palms.
My magic sparks and rolls in response, a warm wind coiling around my ankles, spinning up and out until it catches in her ponytail, the end of it brushing at her cheeks. Her smile widens until she’s laughing, her hands held tight in my own, color and sound swirling around her as we’re tugged away to somewhere else. The ice rink fades away and is replaced by flashes of other places as my magic decides where to drop us.
A candlelit dinner. A brick-lined alleyway. An overcrowded aisle and a hospital corridor. Everything passes too fast for me to hold on to while Harriet and I face each other in the storm.
Like this, she looks like she’s at the center of all of it.
Maybe she is.
When we finally slow to a stop, there’s not a soul in sight. It’s just the two of us and an open stretch of beach, waves lapping at the shore. Gray sand beneath our boots, stretching all the way to where the coast abruptly tumbles into lush, green hills, rising above us on a gentle slope. There are homes in the distance. A single lighthouse painted in thick black and white stripes.
“I don’t recognize this place,” Harriet says next to me, shielding her eyes as she looks out over the water. Her hair twists around her face as she turns back to me. “I’m not sure I know this memory.”
My stomach is in knots. A tremble starts in my hands and crawls along my spine until I feel like I’m vibrating.
“That’s because it’s not your past,” I hear myself say. It’s a wonder I can manage any words at all. “It’s mine.”
