Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (92 page)

I smiled.

“Gotcha. He liked the CD. And the biscotti,” I said. “I don’t know about the drinking, but he seems better than he used to. He says he’s thinking of selling the business and retiring. Just getting out on the road with his bike and never coming back. Nothing is keeping him here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jesse said. “He’s had that plan since I was a kid helping him in that old garage. He loves that place.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He seemed sincere about it. Not like he was just making small talk.”

“Well, tell him I say to go,” he said. “It’s not like any of us have all the time in the world. If nothing else, I’m a good reminder of that.”

I wondered if Jesse saw something, if he knew things, but I let it go. He started spinning the ball on his finger, the way he always used to do when we were in high school. After a minute, I tried grabbing it, but he kept it going, and just lifted it above his head and I had no chance.

“Anyway, it’s good to go after your dreams,” he said. “There’s probably a lesson for you in there somewhere. Or not.”

“Deep,” I said, knocking into his ghostly body and sending him off balance. He lost control of the ball and I picked it up and secured it firmly under my arm. We stopped at the bridge under the large tree with the bare branches reaching up toward the sky. Two ducks landed on the thin sheet of ice covering the river.

“So I hear you’re heading back up to the mountain,” he said.

“Where did you hear that?”

“I have my sources.”

I wondered if the ghost world was populated by dead Davids, phantoms with big mouths sitting around spilling the latest gossip to anyone who would listen.

“You can’t read my mind, can you?” I said. “Because I think it’s only fair to warn me, so I can stop thinking bad things about you.”

He laughed.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Anyway, remember to take your time and hook your boots in right. You were always lazy about that. Remember when your board flew off that time and you kept going?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, remembering the incident vividly. I had hit a bump, sending the board in one direction while I careened down the slope before flipping head first into the snow.

We crossed the bridge and turned left, toward the concrete amphitheater.

“So, what do you think about the visions?” I asked.

I had filled him in when we first met. He told me he needed to think about it.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t seen any of these things you’ve described, Craigers. But now that I know about them, I’ll look into it. You say it’s over at Tin Pan Alley, where the murder is going to take place?”

“Yeah. At least I’m pretty sure it’s a murder. It doesn’t feel like an accident.”

“Well, you should know what an accident feels like.”

I didn’t understand how he could joke about it. But that was Jesse. He didn’t take too many things seriously. Not even death.

“But don’t you think that’s weird. Seeing something that might happen?”

“Hey, five years ago I wouldn’t have thought this was possible. Me dead and still walking around talking to you. So, yeah, I think so. Just roll with it and do your best. Try to help but remember to protect yourself. I don’t sense any darkness around you like other times. But you should have a talisman just the same.”

“A what?”

“You know, a small something that you carry around that helps protect you. Something that you wear all the time. Like a photo of me.” He smiled. “Well, that couldn’t hurt. But, no, you know, like Native Americans do. A lot of cultures have those kinds of things. It’s an extra layer of protection. Look into it.”

I nodded.

“All right,” I said.

“Because I think this, Craigers. I think this is what you’re supposed to do. I don’t like it, but it’s bigger than both of us. I think when people come to you for help, even in visions, even as ghosts, you are tied to them somehow. I’m not saying to help every ghost you pass on the street. But the things that show up in your visions are important. That’s all I can say. That’s my advice.”

“Thanks, Jesse.”

We stopped, watching the sunset, listening to the silence of the late afternoon.

“One more thing,” I said. “Do you still see my mom sometimes? I really miss her, Jesse. And it seems really unfair that I see all these ghosts and not her. I don’t even dream about her much. And she’s never in a vision. She’s nowhere.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “She’s with you. I see her light. I don’t see her, but her energy is in your house. You really don’t feel her?”

I thought I felt her sometimes. But I wanted more.

“At least a dream,” I said. “Something.”

“I don’t know, Craigers,” he said. “There’s a lot I don’t understand about where I am. Just like there’s a lot you don’t understand about your world. But, like I say, she’s around you. I’m sure of that. And me sometimes too. I don’t see her either, but I feel her. She has this warm glow, this feeling that everything is going to be okay or something. It’s like the way she made me feel when I walked into your house after school when we were kids and she was making those chocolate chip cookies. Remember?”

I nodded and closed my eyes. I could almost smell them. I missed those cookies.

“So think of that feeling. That’s her.”

“Okay,” I said.

But it left me feeling sad. I always seemed to find myself separated from the people I loved most. My mom. Jesse. And now Ty.

I squeezed his hand, and we stood quietly at the edge of the Deschutes, watching the last of the daylight as it gave way to the briefest of twilights.

CHAPTER 25

I pulled out another box from under our old canoe.

“It has to be in here,” Kate said. “I remember packing your snow gear up after the accident.”

She was opening the plastic bin at her feet. We were both in the garage, trying to find my old ski equipment.

“Are you sure you didn’t give it away to Goodwill or something?”

“No, Abby, I didn’t get rid of it. See that row back there? Have you gone through those?”

“Now who’s seeing things? I don’t see any rows in here,” I said. “I’m going to make it one of my New Year’s resolutions to get this place in shape.”

“That should pretty much take you through Labor Day I would think.”

I was always suspicious of people with tidy, well-organized garages. Sometimes I thought they bordered on being terrorists.

Kate and I were clearly not terrorists.

“The problem is we’ve let this garage go over the years,” she said. “It’s a mess, filled with tons of crap we don’t need.  Look at the wall back there. I still have all my old college books in those boxes that are outdated and useless. I also came across broken snowshoes that I had planned to have fixed, not too far from the new ones that I finally bought. We are total hoarders.”

“Just in the garage,” I said. “The rest of the house looks great.”

“Well, maybe so. But I’m in on your resolution. We are going through this crap and getting rid of at least half of it. This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, here,” Kate said five minutes later. “Found it.”

She lifted the bin over the bikes and handed it to me.

“Thanks.”

I opened it up, a flood of memories rushing back. My goggles were in there along with my long underwear, three pairs of old ski pants, an old parka I wore all the time in high school that was bright blue as I recalled, and five pairs of ski gloves. Ski hats. A bunch of thick wool socks. Two pairs of boots.

“Perfect,” I said. “Thanks for helping.”

“I still can’t believe he’s going skiing,” Kate said. “Not in a million years would I have thought of that.”

A giant spider suddenly crawled out of the box. I jumped back, but then smashed it with the boot I was still holding.

“It’s what love is all about,” I said. “That’s what he keeps telling me anyway. When you love somebody, you reach out to them. Try and do some of the things that the other person does.”

I sighed at the realization. It hit me that David was just saying that as a reference to Ty. Like Ty should try ghost hunting or something.

“So how did his second audition go?”

“He said it went well.”

We spent a few minutes putting back all the boxes. My old skis were in the corner. I thought about attaching the rack to the top of the Jeep but figured it would be too much trouble. I put the back seat down and threw the skis inside.

“Be careful up there, Abby,” Kate said. “Driving too.”

“I will.”

CHAPTER 26

I pulled into the Christmas tree lot and waited for Kate. I was on my way home from work. We had agreed to meet at six. It had been a long day and I was tired. I wouldn’t have minded doing it in the morning. But tradition was tradition. We always got our tree on December 15
^th
.

I saw Kate’s car drive up next to me. She talked on the phone for a minute before getting out.

It was cold and clear, the stars bright even with the lights of the city.

“Hey, Abby,” she said. “Sorry I’m late. They’ve got me covering another beat in addition to my own now that we’re shorthanded.”

“No problem,” I said. “So how are things at the paper?”

“It’s pretty sad. It feels like a skeleton crew on a sinking ship. People don’t talk too much about it, but everyone’s kind of scared. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

I didn’t sense that in her energy. She seemed almost normal.

“So, what are you thinking this year?” I said. “The usual?”

“The grand firs are the best,” she said. “Let’s go see.”

Ever since our mom died, that’s what we had gotten.

“Hey, remember when Mom used to get a permit and took us out to the forest so we could chop down our own tree?” I said.

“How could I forget?”

Having grown up in Los Angeles, she had always gotten her tree from a supermarket lot. So when she moved to Oregon and heard that you could cut down your own tree, she couldn’t resist. She loved everything about it. Even the silly Charlie Brown trees we always seemed to end up with.

We wandered around. I inhaled the rich smoke billowing from a wood stove they had set up in one corner of the lot. It was atmospheric. All that was missing was the snow. A guy in a beanie told us to let him know when we were ready and he would help tie the tree on top of the car.

Kate strolled away down one of the aisles, looking critically at each tree like she always did. She was picky and wanted it perfect. Somehow, by the time December rolled around, I had forgotten how long the whole process took. At least I was dressed warmly. And I told myself that if things got too bad I could always hang out by the stove.

I stared at the Christmas lights strung up on the little shack by the parking lot. I stared at them, hoping to see a color. Maybe red. Something. Thinking that if I focused on them long and hard enough it just might happen.

Then I heard the whisper.

“Abby,” a voice said, sounding like the wind.

It took me completely off guard. I shivered and tried to steady my breathing. It was the ghost of the woman. It had to be.

But when I turned around, I didn’t see her. I didn’t see anyone.

I walked slowly down the aisles, hoping she wouldn’t just jump out at me.

I looked between the trees, one by one. Between the branches.

“I’m waiting…”

There it was again. It rushed over me. It couldn’t just be the wind. There was no wind.

But there was no ghost either.

“So what do you think?” Kate said when I caught up to her.

“That one’s perfect,” I said. “Really. It’s the best one I’ve seen.”

I helped her drag it out into the middle of the aisle, where she circled it three times, eyeing every branch.

“Yeah,” she said. “This is it.”

As the kid secured the tree to the roof of the Jeep a few minutes later, I looked back one more time toward the lot.

I knew her ghost was in there somewhere. But I couldn’t understand why she was playing hide and seek all of a sudden. There had always been an urgency connected to her. She wanted me to save someone. We were running out of time. And now she was playing games. It didn’t make sense.

I told myself driving home that maybe I had just imagined it. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time I had been wrong about something.

CHAPTER 27

I filled David in on everything as we drove up to the mountain. I started with that night when I saw the ghost out in the middle of the road.

“Yuck!” he said when I told him about the blood. “Scary. I’m sure glad I’m not you, Abby Craig.”

It was good to see David again and I was glad he was back in town. He was happy when I picked him up at his house. He still felt good about the audition and that would keep his spirits high until the waiting began to take its toll.

He sat there, the tips of my skis between us, wearing his new North Face parka with what he told me were salmon-colored goggles around his neck.

“You sure they’re not pink?” I said.

“Well, maybe just a smidge.”

I smiled.

“So what are you going to do?” he said, a serious tone in his voice.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I said.

The Cascades Highway that led up to Mt. Bachelor was a sheet of ice, but the snow plow had been by, a fresh coating of large pebbles covering the road. I turned up the heat and turned down the music, dropping my speed. We drove in a slow line of cars up the mountain. It was cold and clear, but not too windy. A beautiful day for skiing. I had heard on the news that the mountain had picked up four inches overnight. Down in Bend, however, it had just come down as rain with some ice pellets mixed in.

I described the woman in as much detail as I could, hoping that David, who seemed to know just about everybody under 25 in Bend, might know her.

“No, sorry, Abby Craig,” he said. “She doesn’t ring a bell. That’s tough. It seems like you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. But you’ll make it work. You always do.”