“She knew her flowers,” Peter insisted, tighter. “Hollyhocks, black-eyed susans. She went on and on about fertilizer.”
“In other words, no.”
“No, counselor, I didn’t check her out.”
“Not with your brain anyway.”
Peter’s expression darkened, but his usual quick tongue lay flat. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen. “What does it matter? If she wanted to rob us, she’d have done it already.”
Clay threw his hands in the air. “So you’re not even going to ask her about it?”
“No. Because this is just another way of you vandalizing my room. Why can’t you…?”
Peter trailed off. And though the familiar bitterness spread through Clay’s chest like cheap tequila, he urged his father on. “What? What?”
“…just grow the fuck up.”
The words hung there. Clay nodded. Moments like this made it easier to understand their relationship, that Peter would become less and less of a fixture in his life, until their communication amounted to a few curt phone calls on holidays. The inevitability of that was difficult to take, if for no other reason than it would have broken his dead mother’s heart, and when Clay reared up from the table, it was less out of anger, more to hide his face.
He swung around and spotted Essie in the kitchen doorway, holding two plates in her hand. And a third, balanced precariously on her forearms. Father and son hurried over to help her.
When they were all seated again, dipping garlic breadsticks in Kung Pao sauce, Essie cut the silence by humming a melody, vaguely familiar, (Clay thought it might have been Cinderella’s “Nobody’s Fool”), before she said, “He was right to tell you.”
The words flattened Peter. Clay chewed in silence.
“I saw Rocket Throne in concert 32 times,” Essie confessed. “I was just another Boyle fanatic hanging outside the gate. When the Ganeks moved out, I got a crazy, crazy idea. I’ve taken care of flowers before—it’s one of the six-hundred jobs I’ve done in my life. So I figured at the very least I might get on the property to have a look around.” Essie grabbed for Peter’s hand. “I had no idea this was going to happen. And I’m so sorry to you both. Starting a relationship on a lie, it’s made me so awfully sick inside. I didn’t know how to come clean. Really Clay, you did me a favor. I”—her voice broke—“I just hope you guys don’t hate my guts now.”
Clay worked his spaghetti around his chopsticks. “Was anything you told us true?”
“Clay,” Peter warned.
“No, don’t you see, Petey—he’s protecting you.” With her free hand, she caught Clay’s wrist before he could move it off the table. “My name is Estelle Monahan. I’m originally from Phoenix, just like I said. My favorite Throne song is ‘Gray Matters’—the B-side to the ‘Face the Music’ vinyl single? I’m a Gemini free spirit, I love coffee and most dogs, and I can’t wait to see your band perform, Clay. All truth!”
A whole moment passed before Peter fell all over himself to say how much he appreciated her candor, that at times he too had lied to people—who hadn’t? Know the joke about how lawyers sleep? Haha! The important thing, going forward, was that they never be afraid to tell each other the truth.
Essie agreed and they leaned over the table and kissed, hands stroking hair, violating the three-second rule for basic consideration of others, and Clay grabbed his plate and made his exit.
In the night, his bedroom door swung inward. He was awake, lying in the dark with his earbuds cranking Faith No More, and it was awhile before he realized someone was in his room. A hand came from nowhere to reach for him and he shrank violently away. Deidre! She’d escaped the bottle!
The hand swatted out an earbud. “It’s only me,” Essie told him. She was wearing a wedding-bright nightgown, which only added to her spectral appearance.
“Essie? What the fuck!”
“I’m not your first nocturnal visitor, am I?” Without permission, she sat on the foot of his bed. “You want me to be straight with you, Clay, so I’m going to be. Over dinner I mentioned working a lot of odd jobs—and that’s true, I swear. But I was holding back what my real occupation is.”
Oh God, please don’t say prostitute, Clay thought.
“I’m a medium, Clay.”
“What does your shirt size have to do with it?”
“Don’t be a smartass.” Essie forewent the courtesy laugh. “I communicate with spirits. Ghosts who, for one reason or another, are unable to make the journey to the next world.”
“Can we put a light on?”
“You’re acting like this is a joke, but I know you know it’s not.”
“Have you mentioned any of this to my father?”
“Nope.”
“Then why are you telling me? He’s the one you shouldn’t keep secrets from.”
“Because you have the gift too.” Essie leaned dramatically forward. “Extrasensory perception.”
Clay did his best to give nothing back. “Are you serious?” he tried, but his voice fell off key and it sounded about as convincing as Charles Manson saying, What crazy family?
“After his bedroom was vandalized, your father was worried sick. He doesn’t understand the type of music we listen to. He thought you were going off the deep end, hanging with the wrong crowd, but I convinced him that wasn’t the case. I knew all that rage wasn’t your doing—but the work of a fearful apparition that was trapped here. An apparition named Deidre.”
Clay was quiet. Ambushed as he was, he knew he had to slow his heart rate if he hoped to dodge her disturbingly accurate observations. “So you mean her dead ghost did it? I like that, Es. Let’s go with that story.”
Essie cocked her head, so that all her hair spilled down one arm. “The real reason I wanted to get on the property was to see if Roc and Deidre were still in residence. I felt that poor woman’s grief the first time I entered this house. She didn’t like the idea of new. She was threatened by us. But you took care
