Beyond The Grave

When we were halfway up the hill, Dante came to an abrupt stop. He sniffed the air, then whimpered.

“What is it? You smell a bigger dog? A squirrel?” He was looking at the street. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I won’t let a squirrel get you.”

Dante responded by crouching down. His eyes were still focused on the street, trained toward the top of the hill, but I didn’t see anything unusual.

“Come on, there’s nothing there.” I tugged at the leash, and Dante whimpered again. “I can see my house from here. If you walk with me, we’ll stop there and I’ll give you a treat.”

As I was debating whether to drag him up the hill or carry him, a car came into view. Sunlight glared off the windshield, so I couldn’t see the driver. The car crawled forward slowly, as if the driver was searching for a particular address and was afraid he’d go too far and miss it. The car stopped in front of my house. A camera emerged from the side window and the driver snapped some pictures.

I angrily scooped up Dante and stomped up the hill. If some guy was going to take pictures of my house, I wanted to know who he was and what he wanted. But as I got closer to the burgundy-colored vehicle, its driver noticed me. Suddenly, the car lurched forward and sped past me. Dante burrowed in my arms as I watched the car reach the bottom of the street, turn around too quickly and speed back up the hill. Its tires squealed as it flew past me. The darkly tinted windows made it impossible to see anything inside, and the space where the license plate should have been was occupied by a paper temporary tag.

It took only a second for the car to vanish. I stood there, petting Dante’s coarse fur in an effort to calm him down. He was shaking as I carried him into my house and placed him gingerly on a kitchen chair while I searched the fridge for a treat that he would like. My own hands were shaking a little as I sifted through the drawer where we kept the cold cuts. What was going on? Maybe it was a curious fan, but if so, would he have sped away as soon as he saw me?

It’s not the Watcher, I told myself. He’s not driving around in a car. Calm down.

“Oh, good. There you are.” Dad walked into the kitchen and tossed a pile of mail onto the counter. He saw the plastic deli bag I’d retrieved from the fridge. “Making a sandwich?”

“Sort of. But it’s not for me.” I motioned toward Dante, who was still curled up in a quivering ball of rattled nerves. “He got scared by a car,” I explained. There was no reason to tell Dad anything. He had enough to worry about, and if the demented driver was simply an embarrassed fan, I would be causing him unnecessary stress.

Dad sat in a chair across from Dante while I placed a pile of smoked turkey on a napkin. “So, I’ve decided to go see Mom,” he said. “I’m leaving in an hour. Can you be ready by then?”

A trip to see Mom took hours. We wouldn’t return until close to midnight. “I start school tomorrow, remember?”

Dad nodded. “Right. Of course. Your first day of college.”

He had forgotten. I placed the meat in front of Dante, who sniffed at it, then began to lick it. “I guess I could go. If you think we can be back by dinner.”

There was no way that would happen, and we both knew it, but I didn’t want Dad to think I was trying to get out of the visit. We were quiet, both of us watching Dante eat as if it were the most interesting event in the world.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Dad asked.

The question felt like a shove to the chest. I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t prepared. “Couple weeks ago. I went with Annalise.”

It had been a brief visit, one that my sister had insisted on. While she made a consistent effort to see Mom twice a week, I often found reasons why I couldn’t go. During the first month after she had been hurt, I went to the hospital every day. I spent hours in her room, feeling the rhythm of the machines that kept her alive. Her heart monitor was a drum, softly tapping out a beat. Nurses checked her vitals every hour. They would smile at me before reaching for Mom’s limp wrist. She was so pale, so still. She would look exactly the same if we laid her in a coffin, I thought.

Days passed, then weeks. The hopeful doctors decided that they’d done all they could and said Mom would be better off in a long-term care facility. Long-term. The suggestion behind the word terrified me. Would she remain in this motionless state for months? Years? Forever? The doctors didn’t know. She had survived the critical first twenty-four hours. Only time would tell, they said. Head trauma took time to heal. But no one could tell us how much time. And after months of minuscule success—her finger twitched once when I held her hand—a part of me gave up.

How long can a person cling to hope before it becomes too much? I wanted to remember Mom as the laughing, determined person she had been, not the helpless body she had become. Seeing her lying in the crisp white bed, the monitors beeping steadily, reminded me that she was not the person I had always known. It hurt. And I was tired of hurting. I wouldn’t give up on her, but it was easier to hold on to hope when I didn’t have to look at her.

“I know it can be difficult,” Dad said, his voice soft. “But I also know that it matters. Us being there matters. I believe that.”

Did he? Before the attack, Dad had never trusted anything that wasn’t based purely in science. When had he transformed? I almost wished that he hadn’t. Everyone was changing without me.

“I’ll go next time,” I said. “I promise.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.” Dad crossed the room and kissed my forehead. “See you tomorrow, Charlotte.”

“Have a good trip, Dad.”

After he left, I flipped through the mail. A thick white envelope had already been opened. I checked the return address. It was from the insurance company. I stole a glance at the bill enclosed and gasped when I saw the amount due. Dad’s car didn’t cost that much. I resolved to assist Shane more. The looming DVD deadline had to be met.

Dante finished scarfing down his turkey and I walked him back down the hill. Avery’s mom was away for the weekend, so I made sure Dante had fresh water and added some kibble to his dish. Then I took him upstairs and put him on Avery’s bed. He liked to be petted as he fell asleep, a job I hated at first but now found somewhat soothing. As the little dog drifted off into sleep, I looked around at the bare room. Avery had left behind so little. Just pink walls and a depressed pet.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed her number. It went straight to voice mail, but I didn’t leave a message. Before I allowed myself to plunge deeper into pity, I called Noah. He picked up on the second ring, and before he even said a word, I felt better.

“Rough day?” he asked.

“You could say that.” I told him all about the strange burgundy car. Noah was one of the few people I trusted completely, and he was the only one who knew my biggest secret: I had seen the other side, and that brief experience had triggered the Watcher.

“If you see it again, you let me know, okay?” Noah shifted into protective mode, something he seemed to do a lot lately.

“I will.” I looked out Avery’s window. There wasn’t much of a view, just the side yard and part of her neighbor’s house. “What about you?” I asked. “How was your day?”

“Interesting. I spoke to Jeff.”

“Your brother?” Noah didn’t talk about his older brothers much. I knew that they had both left home as soon as they’d graduated high school and enlisted in the army. Noah rarely saw them.

“Yeah. He called from someplace near Kandahar. I don’t think I’m supposed to know that, though.” He chuckled. “Everything with him is always so top secret.”

“What did you guys talk about?”

He paused. “Our dad.”

Noah had mentioned his father to me only once. He had left the family when Noah was very young and moved to parts unknown, randomly contacting his sons with a card every few years. The last time his father had reached out was with a postcard, sent a week after Noah’s eleventh birthday.

“Why did Jeff want to talk about your dad?” I asked cautiously.

“Because he found Jeff.” He sighed. “He Googled him, can you believe that? Found out about Jeff being in the army and got in touch with him. Jeff was always his favorite.”

“Wow.” I wasn’t sure what to say. Noah’s voice didn’t reveal any clear emotion, but I knew he must be struggling with this new development.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said, and I could hear a fierce determination in his words. “I’ll never be that guy. I’ll never have to search for my kids on a computer, and they won’t ever have to search for me.”

“You’re not him,” I said. “You could never be like that.”

Noah didn’t respond. His silence was a sign that he was angrily mulling things over. “I could come over,” I offered. “We could hang out.”

“Sorry, I have some things to do. Thanks, though.”

It was rare for Noah to not want to get together. He was really upset, and I felt helpless. I didn’t know how to make him feel better, and I hated the idea of him sitting alone with his angry thoughts.

“Maybe later, then. I can swing by for a few—”

“No,” he interrupted. I was taken aback by the force of his refusal, but then he softened. “I appreciate the offer, Charlotte, I do. But I want to be alone, and I have a ton of work to do tonight. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Sure. Okay.”

We hung up. I remained sitting on Avery’s bed, watching Dante and twisting my bracelet around my wrist. I knew Noah wasn’t mad at me, and there was nothing I could really do for him except give him the space he needed. But he was holding back with me, not telling me what he was feeling or what he was doing, exactly.

Dante whined in his sleep and I reached over to give him a reassuring pat. “Everything’s fine,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

After all, I thought, there was no place to go. I was settling into limbo, but as long as everyone else was there with me, I would be fine.

I hoped.

four

Like any normal person, I dreaded the first day at a new school. I told myself that this time was different because it was college, but I still felt the uncomfortably familiar clenching of my stomach as I parked the car, glanced over the campus map and gathered up my purse and backpack. I was marching into unfamiliar territory. Again. When was it going to get easier? I could picture myself at eighty, pushing a metal walker across the floral carpeting of a nursing home for the first time and feeling the exact same way I did now.

Better sleep would have helped my nervous mood. I had gone to bed early the night before after spending an exasperating hour working with my secret stash of equipment. My attempts to contact something had been unsuccessful, though, so I’d given up and gone to bed, only to be awakened at two in the morning by a strange sound coming from downstairs.

I had listened to the rumbling noise for a while before figuring out that it was Shane, who could snore loud enough to drown out power tools. If Shane was spending the night on our sofa, it meant that Dad had decided to stay with Mom.

Shane had made me an omelet when I’d woken up. I’d told him about the burgundy car from the day before, and he’d listened with serious interest. “I’ll keep an eye out,” he’d promised. “You let me know if you see it again, okay?”

“Absolutely.” I’d remembered the medical bill from yesterday. “Are you working on the DVD today?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Need help?”

He’d beamed. “That would be great.”

I’d finished my breakfast and headed out for the first day of school. Now I was on campus, trying to locate the Yerian Building on a wrinkled map so I could make it on time for my first class of the day. My first college class, I mentally corrected as I hurried across the crowded walkways. It wasn’t that I was in a rush to get to English 101, but the late-August sun, combined with South Carolina’s thick humidity, was already causing my T-shirt to cling to my back. I hoped the classrooms were equipped with intense air-conditioning.

I was in luck. As soon as I pushed through the glass door of the Yerian Building, I felt air so cold I was sure the school sponsored a penguin breeding program.

The building’s lobby reminded me of a decent hotel. Clusters of beige sofas surrounded wide coffee tables and potted plants too green to be real. I pretended to look for Room 107, but in reality, I was stealthily checking out the other students.

An interesting mix of people roamed the large lobby. Silver-haired women mingled with tattooed guys. A boy about my age nodded as he talked to a man who was old enough to be his grandfather. There were more than a few pregnant women and fortysomething guys. There was no one type, I realized. Everyone was so different that everyone was normal. Including me.

My stomach began to unclench. This was good, I decided. No obnoxious frat boys, no glittery cliques. I could be whoever I wanted to be. It was a clean slate, devoid of rumors or speculation or pity.

Then I spotted a girl near the back of the lobby, gazing out the tall windows. I wouldn’t have noticed her at all, but she was dressed head to toe in sky-blue. She turned her face slightly, and I immediately recognized her.

“Bliss!” My voice echoed throughout the two-story room. A few people turned their heads, and I blushed. I strode over to the windows, trying to appear confident instead of completely mortified.

“Charlotte, hi.” Bliss fidgeted with her purse—a tiny satchel also sky-blue in color—and cleared her throat. “What are you doing here?”

Bliss Reynolds and I did not share a positive history. We’d both spent the previous school year as seniors at Lincoln High School, where she’d worked hard as the school news anchor and I’d edited her stories with Noah. She viewed me as a constant threat to her position as lead anchor, while I saw her as merely annoying. When her grandfather had died in March and she was out of school for a week, I had taken over her job. It wasn’t something I’d wanted to do, but our teacher had insisted. Despite my best efforts to be mediocre, I had won rave reviews from the student body—and jealous anger from Bliss. I had thought she would never let it go, but Bliss had proved to be a better person than I’d given her credit for. After my mother’s injury, she’d stayed late every day to make sure my work got done. And when I’d returned to school two weeks later, she was nothing but nice to me. I almost missed her snarky comments. Almost.

“I’m taking classes here this year,” I told her now. It was crazy how happy I was to see a former classmate, even if it was one I didn’t get along with well.

“Me, too.” She snapped the clasp on her purse. “I was supposed to go out of state, but then my grandfather died, and my mom needs me right now. I’m helping her out and earning some credits here so they’ll transfer next semester, maybe.”

I nodded. “Same with me. Although I’ll probably be here all year.”

“Oh.” Bliss smiled hesitantly. “So, is it a long commute for you?”

“Not really. You?”

“Not at all. We live over on Woodlyn. It’s my grandfather’s house, actually.” She got a kind of faraway look in her eyes.

“We still have all his garden gnomes in the front yard, even though my mom hates them.”

I thought of Mom’s blue slippers sitting under the computer desk. Would she ever wear them again? Or would they remain there forever, a curious monument to remind us of how she used to be?

Bliss and I chatted a little longer. “Maybe we could have lunch sometime,” I suggested. “That is, if the cafeteria here isn’t like the one at Lincoln.”

She laughed. “I already checked it out. Not sure about the hot food, but they have an impressive salad bar.”

“Sounds good. We should do that sometime.”

“Sure.”

I waited for her to suggest a day we could meet, but she didn’t say anything more. She was being polite, I realized, but had no intention of actually hanging out with me.

“It was nice to see you, Bliss.”

She nodded. “See you around, Charlotte.”

We went in opposite directions to our classrooms. I was right on time for my first class, which I enjoyed simply because all I had to do was sit back, listen to the lecture and take notes. It wasn’t high school. There were no late passes or slamming lockers or people whispering rumors to each other about who did what behind the bleachers last Friday. I had entered into a drama-free zone, where everyone was too occupied with real, adult life to worry about the eighteen-year-old girl sitting in the middle of the room. I was wonderfully anonymous, and as long as I completed my work and didn’t bother anyone, I would stay that way.

The only person who knew me was Bliss, and I guessed she was as alone here as I was. And maybe she was reluctant to be friends with a former high school classmate she barely knew, but that could change. I really did want to have lunch with her. Noah was at school every day until three-thirty and Dad was usually with Mom. It would be good not to have to eat alone every single day.

Class ended and I shut my notebook. My momentary good mood had faded with the thought of Dad sitting by Mom’s bedside. He was still asking me when I was going to visit. It would need to be soon—I was running out of valid excuses.

I was typing a quick text to Avery—survived first class, will check on Dante later—when I became aware that someone else was still in the classroom. I glanced to my left, where a tall, lanky guy was gathering up his books. He appeared to be about twenty and was dressed in khaki pants and a white T-shirt. He looked up, and our eyes met.

“Hey.” His voice was deep but friendly. I nodded, put my phone away and checked my schedule.

“Need help?” the guy asked. “Finding your next class, I mean.”

“No, thanks.” I held up my schedule. “There’s a very informative map on the back of this thing.”

“Yeah, well, if you need anything …” His voice trailed off. Was this guy hitting on me? Avery had told me all about the perils a freshman coed faced. She said the upper classmen referred to them as “fresh meat.” Luckily, she had Jared by her side at every party, so she didn’t have to worry too much about being a target for drunk and disorderly frat boys.

“I’m good,” I assured the guy. “Thanks anyways.”

He nodded and walked out of the room. I waited a moment before following. As I approached the door, something on the floor caught my eye. It was a business card. A very familiar one. I knelt down and picked it up. Potion was typed across the cream-colored front in swirly purple letters.

“Weird.” Potion was a store I knew well, but it was located about an hour away. It seemed strange that Beth’s business card had found its way here, to my classroom.

I flipped the card over, hoping to find a message, but it was blank. Had the too-helpful guy dropped it? Or did it belong to someone else? It was an odd coincidence.

When I returned home after my day of classes, I found Trisha sitting at the kitchen counter with over a dozen plates arranged in front of her. On each plate sat a single piece of cake.

“I was planning on having an apple,” I said, pulling up a stool. “But this looks good, too.”

Trisha gave me a weary smile. “I’m trying to decide on the wedding cake.” She glanced toward the living room and raised her voice. “But someone is refusing to help me even though it’s his wedding, too!”

I heard a chair push back. Shane appeared in the doorway a moment later. “I told you, I’m not a cake person. Whatever you decide will be fine with me.”

“We’re supposed to be doing this together!” Trisha seemed genuinely upset. “We need to make a decision.”

I hated to see Trisha stressed, and not just because she was Noah’s mother and Shane’s fiancée. She had been a comforting presence in my life after the attack, handling everything we were too numb to remember. She had answered our phone—which never seemed to stop ringing—responded to an avalanche of email messages, and still found time to make dinner for everyone. She had stepped in long after the initial wave of concerned friends and neighbors had returned to their lives, leaving behind half-eaten casseroles and promises to check in on us.

When Shane had announced that he had proposed and Trisha held out her hand to reveal a single sparkly diamond, it was the first time in months that everyone in my family felt a real moment of happiness. Annalise and I hugged her, Dad shook Shane’s hand, and we all sipped champagne from coffee mugs because we didn’t have wineglasses. The wedding preparations had begun the very next day, with Trisha bringing over a stack of thick bridal magazines that she and Annalise flipped through, circling everything they thought was pretty or elegant or festive.

Noah had rolled his eyes. “She’s gone insane,” he’d told me as we watched a movie in the next room. “She’s already picked out my cummerbund.”

I had giggled, and he had pointed a finger at me. “She’s picking out a dress for you, so don’t laugh.”

Terrifying visions of puffy taffeta had filled my mind as I heard Annalise squeal over a veil. I had stopped giggling.

I understood Trisha’s enthusiasm—she had eloped with Noah’s father at age eighteen wearing jeans and a T-shirt—but I didn’t understand the rush to get everything done. They had months and months before the big day, a date picked because it would coincide with Ryan’s leave from the army, but also because it would allow time for Mom to heal.

I turned my attention back to the slabs of wedding cake. “How about this? Trish and I will narrow the cakes down to three. Then you can pick your favorite.”

Shane beamed. “Great! That okay with you, hon?”

Trisha considered it, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, that would work.”

Shane gave me a thumbs-up and went back to editing footage.

“Where’s my dad?” I asked Trisha.

She handed me a fork. “Taking a nap. Shane is supposed to wake him before dinner.”

I wanted to tell him all about my first day at school, but it could wait.

“So, I think we should take a bite from each piece and rate them on a scale of one to ten.” Trish pulled out a notepad. “I’ll keep score.”

We spent the next half hour stuffing ourselves with the sweet samples. We agreed that the slices covered with fondant were out. They looked nice, but neither one of us could stomach the fondant, which was a tasteless, rubbery skin stretched across a thin layer of frosting. We also agreed to eliminate chocolate and anything with a fruity filling. Finally we had it down to three samples and called Shane in to taste.

Trisha watched her fiancée with anxious eyes. She had a favorite and was hoping it would be his, as well. Shane took his time, and I couldn’t decide if he was torturing us or really trying to take the task seriously. He put down his fork.

“This one.” He held up the remains of a white slice.

Trisha squealed. “That’s my favorite, too!” She jumped up from her chair and hugged him, then grabbed her phone to call the bakery.

Shane smiled at me. “Thanks, kid. I owe you one.”

“Yeah, well, I owe you about a thousand.” I looked at the kitchen clock. It was after three. “Will you tell Trish I’ll pick up Noah from school?” I grabbed my keys and purse off the counter. “We’ll see you for dinner and maybe we can work on the DVD afterwards.”

“Sounds good. Do you have a minute, though? I need to talk to you about something.”

I glanced at the clock again. “Sure. I have a minute.” I sat back down and braced myself for an onslaught of wedding details.

“I got a call today,” Shane began. “You remember Pate?” “The prison guy?”

“Yeah. His lawyer contacted me. Seems our favorite prison historian is suffering from emotional distress since our visit and is demanding compensation.”

“Great. A lawsuit.” It had happened before, and usually didn’t go anywhere. People thought we were loaded and they were looking for easy money. “Can’t we threaten to sue him for menacing me?”