Damien laughed, and Hattie relaxed into the couch, the sound of his laughter enveloping her, chipping away the ice that encased her.
“My mama painted and gardened and told stories. My daddy worked at a rubber factory as a manager, but he didn’t have to. They had a lot of money. When my grand-daddy died, I never met him, he left my daddy a fortune, but my daddy liked to work. He wanted a different kind of life than Gram Ruth. He believed in working for a living and taking care of his family, growing your food when you could, darning your own socks. He was real,” Hattie said lifting her fingers to the air in front of her where she could see his face and thought if she imagined him hard enough maybe she could feel the stubble on his cheek when he hadn’t shaved that morning.
“How did he die?” Damien asked, gently.
“Fell in the barn. Three weeks after my mother died. She didn’t die, I realize now, but she did, you know? To us, she died.”
“I can’t imagine that, not emotionally anyway. Life without a mom or a dad. I talk to my mom every week.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Hattie told him. “No, that’s not true. I talk to my mom every day, every night, but it’s not really her, it’s the her I made up. She’s…” Hattie touched the emptiness before her, “like a ghost.”
“Like the spirits you see?”
Hattie shook her head.
“They’re different, more solid than my mom. She’s a memory I pretend is near me. They’re like… fog early in the morning. I can see them, but if I look too hard, they’re not there at all.”
“How long have you seen them?”
Hattie looked at her lap and then chanced a glance at Damien. He didn’t look critical, not even skeptical, only curious and again she wondered at his interest in her. Why should he care who she was?
“Am I going too far? Sometimes I overstep my bounds, ask too many questions. Occupational hazard,” he told her, leaning forward and refilling their wine.
Hattie took another sip. She’d had a glass or two. Her body seemed light, fizzy, like she might float up and away. She set her glass back on the table.
“I don’t mind. No one’s ever asked. Then again, I don’t have a lot of conversations. Jude says I don’t talk about things of this world, I’m incapable of small talk.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Damien asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Jude’s good at people, talking to strangers. She knows things about the cashier or the waitress within minutes, they tell her stuff because she knows what to say. I’m not good at that. But I know things…” Hattie murmured. “I can see if people are hurt or scared or if they’re… mean.”
“Mean?” Damien asked, his breath warm as he leaned closer.
“If people are mean they’re dark, thick looking. I’m sure this sounds… weird. Does it sound weird?”
“Not weird, unusual, extraordinary. Hattie, could your mom do that? See those things?”
Hattie nodded vigorously.
“Yes, it was like our little secret. Sometimes we’d sit on a bench on the sidewalk in town and just watch people. Like practice, to see if we perceived the same thing.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, every time.”
“And your mom saw spirits?”
Hattie nodded.
“But I didn’t know about Rosemary. She never told me about her.”
“It’s amazing, Hattie. A gift.”
Hattie smiled at him, shy, but the longer she looked into his eyes the more her body seemed to reach out for him. As if their bodies spoke a similar language even when their mouths could not. The skin beneath her clothes grew warm, tingly.
He took her hand and smoothed his fingers across her palm and up over her wrist.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked, leaning towards her.
Jude
Jude stopped at PJ’s Cafe before starting the two-hour drive home. Grimmel had offered their pull-out couch, practically begged her to take it, but she refused. She didn’t sleep well in any bed but her own. Even the three years she lived with Gram Ruth after her parent’s deaths comprised sleepless nights tossing on the over-stiff mattress, forever battling an endless supply of throw pillows.
“Coffee, black,” Jude told the waitress who set a steaming mug of coffee on her table a moment later.
The diner was dead. It was going on ten pm. Night had arrived and with it the chilly temperatures of late September. Jude had sat with Grimmel and Shirley for three hours pouring over his memories of Dale, the newspaper clippings of Rosemary’s murder, and contemplating how they could get the case re-opened. Jude wondered if a message would be blinking on her answering machine from Kurt. He had to have known the most likely suspect was his own brother, but he’d said nothing. He had, however, looked ashen, just for a moment and now she understood why.
Taking out her notebook she flipped through the pages, back to the day she had interviewed Dale. It had been a short and informal meeting, he slammed beers all the while. Dale hadn’t revealed much, but that gloved hand told her all she needed to know. She finished her coffee and left a quarter next to the mug before walking into the cool night.
The stars were bright, an endless navy dome punctuated with a thousand pricks of light. She’d last truly seen the stars during her one night with Damien, reveling at their brightness. He had laughed and howled at the moon before they climbed the stairs to the little motel room he’d rented. Jude felt the familiar burst of anger at Damien, almost overshadowed by the hurt beneath it. Of all the times she’d had casual sex she’d never found the infatuation that pervaded her girlfriends’ love lives like an invasive species impossible to destroy. Unlike many of her one-night stands, which left the man in her bed heart broken and confused, the tables had turned. It had been Jude sitting around watching the phone, wondering what she had done or not done.
“Why am I still thinking of him?” she growled, flipping her finger at the stupid stars conspiring against her. Those stars had been part of the illusion she bought into that night. What she termed the love lies - little bullshit touches that tricked people into believing it was true love when it was just gaseous balls in an indifferent universe.
She thought of Kurt Bell. If he wasn’t Rosemary and Dale’s sibling, she’d invite him out for a drink. Nothing eased the discomfort of heartbreak like another man’s bed, but she couldn’t do it. She needed a clear head and the booze and sex that would accompany such a choice would destroy her momentum.
Jude pulled out of the diner and headed for highway 127, letting off the gas as she passed the road that led to her mother’s childhood home. It was late, but she had a flashlight and her mother was out there, somewhere. What if she found her way back to that rundown farmhouse where it all began?
Jude turned and sped down the road, cranking up her music. The detour was likely a wasted effort, sure, but she hated the thought of going home to her empty apartment, drinking half a bottle of wine and thinking about the message that still hadn’t appeared on her machine. As she left the few lights of town behind, the darkness swallowed her little car whole. A half-moon peered from the sky, cut with eerie horror movie clouds.
They reminded her of a hundred trips to the marquee with Peter. Years earlier, they‘d gone to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers three times. For every new horror film, they bought tickets opening night and sat in the front row scarfing popcorn, watching wide-eyed as the actors raced screaming from whatever creature of the night pursued them. It hurt to think of him, to reminisce, to miss him. Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors had just opened and each time she passed the theater, she wanted to cry.