I glanced at him in surprise. “I had no idea the two of you were that close.”
“We’re not anymore,” Ethan said. “After the accident, he cut most of his friends out of his life. I think he wanted to rid himself of all the reminders. But there was a time when he, Mariama and I were inseparable. I was Shani’s godfather.”
“I…didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He nodded, his eyes bleak. “I was with John when he got the call about the accident. We’d all been together earlier that day at their house. Mariama had planned a barbecue. She’d been looking forward to it all week and then John got called into work unexpectedly. They’d been bickering on and off all day, but that phone call was the trigger.”
“A trigger for what?”
He hesitated. “Mariama was a passionate, impulsive woman. Her unpredictability was part of her charm, and I think it was one of the reasons John fell for her so hard. She was so different from him. But she could also be jealous, vindictive and possessive, even about his career. She knew how to push his buttons and she came to enjoy it. She said some things that day, nasty things that she knew would set him off.”
“And did they?”
He ran a hand through his hair and glanced away. “Yes. The argument got pretty ugly. Nothing physical, of course, just words spoken in anger that could never be taken back. The worst part was that Shani heard everything. I remember the way she kept tapping on John’s leg to get his attention. I think she was trying to console him, but he was too angry…too caught up in the moment to notice. He stormed out of the house, and when he drove off, Shani was standing at the window waving goodbye. That was the last time he saw her alive.”
I thought of the way the little ghost clung to Devlin’s legs now and I wanted to weep.
“I can’t even imagine,” I said softly.
“Who can? I’m sure John would give his own life to go back to that one moment. If he could just hold Shani in his arms one last time…”
This was too much. I didn’t want him to go on and yet I was in too deep. I had to hear the rest.
“After he got off work, he called me and we had drinks. He needed an ear. At some point, Mariama tried to reach him on his cell phone. He saw her name on the display and ignored it. He later learned that she’d placed the call within seconds of reaching a 911 operator. Her car had gone off a bridge and she was trapped in her seat. Trapped in a sinking car, she and Shani. Maybe Mariama knew help would arrive too late. Maybe she called to give John a chance to say goodbye. And he didn’t pick up.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, shivering.
“This is what he lives with,” Ethan said. “This is what he carries with him, always. There isn’t much room in his life for anything else, I’m afraid.”
“For me, you mean.”
Ethan’s gaze was gentle. “I just thought you should know.”
Ethan’s disclosure had upset me badly and for the rest of the day, I’d avoided Devlin. I just couldn’t face him yet. Not after all that. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. I didn’t want to imagine it. And yet it was all there in his eyes and on his face and in the ghosts that clung to him.
By the time I got home, I decided it might be good for my mental well-being to immerse myself in the mundane for a change, like laundry and grocery shopping. When I returned from the store, I fixed myself a glass of iced tea and carried it out to the patio where I could sit and enjoy the garden.
The morning glories had long since wilted, but the pink four o’clocks by the house were open and swarming with honeybees and hummingbirds. I meandered out to the edge of the garden, sat for a moment in the swing where I’d seen Shani’s ghost and then bent to examine the little mound where I’d buried her ring. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but the ground was undisturbed, the heart exactly as I’d left it.
Mariama’s visit had been even more disturbing than Shani’s, so I shut out the image of those ghostly eyes peering at me through the darkness and tried to concentrate on the glorious scent drifting up from the peonies.
As I bent to pick one of the blooms, I noticed that the out side door to the basement was ajar.
That was odd.
That door was always kept locked even though nothing of value was stored there. The inside basement entrance had been bolted shut—along with the door at the top of the stair case in the entrance hall—when the space was divided into apartments.
The idea of an intruder, even in broad daylight, frightened me, especially with everything else that had happened lately. I’d left my phone inside. I’d have to go in the house to call the police, but I didn’t want to be too hasty. It was possible the lock hadn’t caught and the wind had blown open the door.
I approached just close enough to peer down the steps. I saw a light on inside and heard a series of thuds and thumps as storage boxes were shuffled around.
Then the door opened and I retreated back into the garden.
A moment later, Macon Dawes strode up the steps with a black suitcase in his hand. When he saw me standing in the yard, he stopped and waved.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” I pressed a palm to my heart. “You scared me half to death. I thought someone broke in.”
“No, just me looking for this.” He held up the bag. “Sorry to startle you. I guess you wouldn’t be expecting to see me around this time of day. Or anytime. I’ve been a phantom these past few weeks.”
“Busy schedule at the hospital?”
“Killer,” he said with a grimace. “I’m just coming off a seventy-two-hour shift.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Caffeine and desperation. I’ve amassed too much debt to turn back now.”
I nodded toward the suitcase. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yep. I have two whole weeks off and a buddy of mine is letting me stay at his family’s place on Sullivan’s Island. I don’t plan to do anything but sleep and eat. And drink. And sleep.”
“Sounds like just what you need.” The small talk was awkward seeing how we barely knew each other. I’d always found Macon Dawes a little intimidating, though I had no idea why. I hardly knew anything about him other than he was a hardworking medical student and a quiet neighbor. A phantom, like he said.
“Do you think you could keep an eye on my place while I’m gone? Not that I expect any trouble,” he added with a grin. “This neighborhood’s mind-numbingly quiet.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Thanks. Remind me to buy you a drink when I get back.”
He bounded up the outside stairs as I stood there ruminating on this latest turn of events. A drink with Macon Dawes?
I wondered if the universe was trying to tell me something.
By nine-thirty that night, the dishes were done, the laundry was folded, furniture dusted, hardwood floors swept, and still the night stretched before me as endless as the tunnels beneath Oak Grove Cemetery.
Loneliness was an old friend, but tonight that friendship was strained. I didn’t want to be alone and I hadn’t a single soul I could call. Temple was my closest friend, but our relationship was still more superior-subordinate than equals. And other than the occasional offhand remark at dinner or over drinks, I really knew very little about her personal life.
I was twenty-seven years old and I’d never had a best friend, never had a real confidant and had never once fallen in love. From the time I was nine years old, the dead that walk among us had isolated me from the living. With that first sighting, my life had been changed forever. Like my father, I’d learned to live with my secret, had even come to embrace the solitude, but there were times, like tonight, when I wondered if madness might not also wait for me behind the veil.
But the loneliness I lived with couldn’t compare to the desolation Devlin must face every time he entered his empty house. I didn’t want to dwell on his tragedy or my plight or why fate might be so cruel as to bring the one man who would always mourn another woman into my life. It had always been painfully clear that Devlin was not the man for me and yet I could imagine myself with no other.
