Hitchers

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I held up my hands. Summer was shaking hers as if she’d just touched some horrible bug. “I was holding my wife. I thought I’d lost her forever, and I had a chance to hold her. How could I not?”

“This is not your wife’s body. Don’t you ever—” She made a fist, raised it to punch my shoulder, then lowered it to her lap, gasping for breath.

I thought of Grandpa kissing Grandma, how violated it made me feel. “You’re right. I really am sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Can you see how you could forget, if someone you loved suddenly came to life right in front of you?”

Summer rubbed her face with both hands. “It feels like being buried alive.”

“That’s a good way to put it.”

“God, I don’t want this to happen any more. I can’t.”

I was stinging from the disappointment of Lorena leaving so quickly. I wanted to see her again. At the same time, I knew what it felt like, and I didn’t want Summer to have to suffer it again. Somehow I was able to separate those two desires and wish for both.

“She’s come back because of you,” Summer said.

“What?”

“‘I waited for you. The wind kept blowing but I tried to hold on.’” Summer was staring off toward the staircase, her tone listless, almost plaintive. “The ones coming back are the ones who don’t want to be dead. The ones who find it most intolerable. Ghosts haunt because they’re not at peace. They desperately don’t want to be dead. Or they have unfinished business, like Gilly.”

I thought of Lorena. If there was a way to get back to the world of the living Lorena would be the first in line. Grandpa had been drawing the day he died, clinging to this world. Not even death would snuff that much ambition. And Gilly—as soon as Gilly came out, he started working on The Album, the one that was going to relaunch Mick’s career and make them friends again.

“Yeah. That sounds right.” And it seemed important. “What was it Krishnapuma said? Under the right conditions, the dead might get pulled back into the world of the living. Maybe if enough dead in one place wanted back in, they could storm the gate, so to speak.”

Summer didn’t look like she was in the mood to muse on the motives of the dead. She nodded absently, hugging herself and rubbing her upper arms as if she was freezing.

It made me uneasy that we’d be running with a conclusion based on so little evidence, though. If we wanted to drive the hitchers back to where they came from, it seemed important to be sure we knew why they were here. We should hunt down other people who knew who was haunting them, see if they were all restless souls, not ready for that wind to take them up. If Annie were back, for instance, we were on the wrong track. She’d wanted to die.

“Hang on,” I said.

Before I could voice my idea, I was gone again.

CHAPTER 26

Grandpa drove right back to Grandma’s house. On the way he tried to consult with his attorney about getting an injunction to block the publication of Toy Shop. His attorney had died in the anthrax attack. When Grandpa tried to explain to another member of his attorney’s firm that he had been dead for two years, the attorney hung up on him.

“Ah, ya stinking rotten—” Grandpa pounded the dashboard with my phone. “You think it bothers me, what you did, don’t you? Well, it doesn’t. Little Joe doesn’t go away just because you put it in a strip. How many times did Tina run him over with a bicycle and leave him all bent up? He doesn’t spend a month in a cartoon hospital after that, now does he? He’s back the next day. It’s not a story. It’s not a book. It’s a God damned cartoon, for God’s sake.”

I glowered inside, feeling cheated. It had been less than eleven hours since I’d regained control, and I was already back in my prison, forced to listen to his rants. If I’d had another hour I could have set up my plan.

“And another thing—I want you off my property,” Grandpa said as he hung a left onto his block. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, living there.” There was a car I didn’t recognize in Grandma’s driveway. “Now who is this?”

The front door swung open; Mom stepped out. She folded her arms, waiting. Grandpa’s hands tensed on the wheel; for a moment I thought he would cut and run. He turned off the ignition.

“Hello, Jenny gal,” Grandpa said as he stepped out of the Maserati.

Mom looked him up and down, her arms still folded. She looked exhausted. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m your father, Jenny. I’ve come back to you.” He opened his arms as if waiting for her to run into his embrace. “I don’t know how it’s happened.”

“You’ve come back.” Mom yanked her hair out of her face, shook her head violently. “No. You don’t come back. That’s not how it works.” I couldn’t have said it better. “What the hell is going on? Tell me what’s going on.”

Grandpa closed the distance between them, put his hands on her shoulders. “Jenny, I don’t know. It’s a miracle.”

“It’s not a miracle. It’s an abomination.” She shrugged his hands off of her. “Where is Finn? Where’s my son?”

Grandpa pinched his lips together, studied Mom. Or maybe he was buying time while he thought of how to phrase it.

“He’s here. We got stuck together somehow; I don’t understand it any better than you. It’s a miracle, is what it is.”

I wished I had eyes to roll. Suddenly he was a victim in all this; an innocent rube, a confused old man. What was it about my mother that led him to rein in all of his venom?

“I want to talk to him,” Mom said.

Grandpa shook his head sadly. “It isn’t up to me who gets to talk when.”

She pierced Grandpa with a look that made me flinch. It was a very familiar look from when I was a boy and I was misbehaving. “I want you to leave Finn alone. You had your life. You can’t have Finn’s. I won’t let you.”

Grandpa held his open palms in the air. “I told you, I had nothing to do with it. I just found meself here, like I was dropped from the sky.”

Mom put her hands on top of her head. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. You died. I was there; I saw you die.”

“Come inside and sit down.” Grandpa tried to steer her through the door, but Mom didn’t budge.

“This isn’t your house. You don’t live here and you have no right to invite me in.”

Grandpa held up the key. “I paid for this house. Every penny, with my sweat and blood. Don’t you tell me it isn’t mine.”

Mom didn’t respond; she just glared.

Grandpa huffed. “Well, I’m going in. If you want to come in and have a cup of tea, you’re welcome.” As he unlocked the door with the spare key Grandma had given me to replace the one I’d lost at the bottom of the reservoir, he turned, held the screen door open. Mom stood with arms folded, staring toward the street. I heard her sniff back tears as the screen door swung closed.

CHAPTER 27

Within hours, Lorena and I were on CNN.

“You can clearly hear Finn Darby call ‘Lorena,’ although the woman he’s addressing is Summer Locker, a waitress who lives in northwest Atlanta. Lorena is the name of Darby’s late wife, who died two years ago in a boating accident…”

They played a tape of Grandpa’s phone call and covered that angle as well. There were probably a half-dozen