I gave him a quick kiss and headed out. The rain poured down from a dark sky, heavy and hard enough to make the eaves spill over. I raced for the car and dived inside. I wiped water from my face. Serge appeared in the backseat. Buckled up. Man, this guy had fewer brains than a skeleton. What did he think the belt was going to protect him from? I ignored him, started the car. The streets were quiet and I looped the town. After half an hour, I figured Nancy was done and I headed to Amber’s house.
When we pulled into her driveway, the glower on Serge’s face lightened. “Finally.”
I went up the porch steps and rang the bell. Amber’s mom opened the door. The smell of stale cigarettes and fabric softener wafted past. Like her daughter she was curvy and had red hair. She frowned.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I shivered and pulled my jacket closer. The overhang protected me from the rain’s bite, but the wind still nibbled.
“Hello May. I need to talk to Amber.”
Her brown eyes narrowed. She took a step back, pulled the collar on her velour robe. “Is she in trouble?”
“No, no.” I was quick to soothe. “Nothing like that. Just some stuff I wanted to talk to her about in person.”
May watched me for a moment. She stepped back and opened the door wide. “Come on in. She’s sleeping, but I’ll get her. Go in the living room. Or kitchen—there’s coffee in the pot.”
“She’s sleeping? Wasn’t Nancy here?”
May shot me an incredulous look. “What would she be doing here?” Her soft features tightened. “What’s going on?”
Before I could answer, the doorbell rang.
Oh, crap. I followed May to the door.
Nancy stood on the porch. “Mornin’ May, I—” Her gaze flicked to me.
I gulped. If she’d been my mom, I’d have been grounded, for sure. But she wasn’t my mom. She was a cop. And that meant—“I’m unarmed.”
She snorted. “Hardly.” She stepped inside. “Get out.”
“I thought you’d be done by now!”
“What did I tell you?”
“Yeah, and Amber’s going to need someone—”
May cussed, loud and sharp. “What’s going on?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “No one’s getting near my kid until I get some answers.”
Nancy smiled. “Be happy to give you all the answers you need, May. Soon as Maggie’s gone.”
May laid a restraining hand on my arm. “The kid’s staying.” She tossed a dirty look in Nancy’s direction. “I don’t trust pigs.”
The cop didn’t react to the slur.
“I want witnesses.” May turned. “Don’t touch anything. You don’t have warrants and I have a right to remain silent.”
“I wish you would,” muttered Nancy. After she watched May walk down the hall, she turned to me. “Seriously uncool, kiddo.”
“I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. I really thought you’d be done and Amber would need a friend and—”
Nancy held up her hand. “Stay out of my way. I’m going to talk to Amber in the kitchen. You stay in the living room. Clear?”
I nodded.
She sighed. “I’ll never admit to saying this, but it’s probably good you’re here.” She snorted. “Right to stay silent? Only in America.”
I went down the two steps into the carpeted area and took a seat on a worn, dark blue couch. Nancy took a position by the window. I looked around for Serge, but I didn’t see him.
May returned with Amber.
I stood. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
“No. I told you. Stay.”
“Nancy wants to talk to Amber alone—”
“She talks with witnesses,” May sneered, “or she doesn’t talk at all.”
Amber blinked, sleepy, and asked, “What’s going on?”
I moved towards her, stepped through a cloud of cold air, and realized Serge was here. Invisible but present.
Nancy made eye contact with me and nodded to the kitchen.
“Where do you think you’re going, bean pole?” May asked.
I sighed. Why are adults such idiots? Stay. Go. Go. Stay. “Uh, I’m just giving everyone space. I’ll be right here.” I took a spot at the edge of the living room. Smiling, I gave May a thumb’s up. And avoided the death stare coming from Nancy.
She nodded. “Amber, I’m here about Serge.”
“Huh?” Then the reality of a cop standing in her living room seemed to wake her up in a way caffeine never could. She whipped around to look at her mom, then her gaze went to Nancy. Protectively, Amber wrapped her arms around her bubble-pink flannel pyjamas. “What about him?”
Serge materialized beside me.
“He died last night,” I blurted.
“Oh!” She jerked back.
“I’m so sorry—” I wanted to do something to comfort her, but didn’t know what to do. I stepped back. “I’m so sorry. There was—” I caught Nancy’s glare. “Nancy will tell you.” I edged to the kitchen.
Serge remained in the living room.
Trust him to be the difficult dead. I moved out of Nancy’s line of sight, took a spot behind the kitchen wall, and started eavesdropping.
“What happened?”
I crouched and peered around the edge of the wall.
May came up behind her daughter and put her arms around her shoulder.
“He was found at the lumber mill.” She took a breath. “I’m sorry Amber, he’s gone. First glance, looks like it was alcohol poisoning.”
The blood fled from May’s face. Then she made a contemptuous sound. “Figures. That boy had no brains.”
Serge’s nostrils flared and I felt a hit of anger. May should talk. When it came to alcohol, there wasn’t a brand or kind she didn’t like.
She seemed to catch herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t mean—” She brushed her daughter’s hair with her fingers. “It’s a horrible shame.”
“Thanks for telling me,” said Amber.
I didn’t know much about how people reacted when given tragic news, but something was off about Amber. It was like I’d told her that the lawnmower was broken or we’d had to do an extra chapter for English class. The reality of her boyfriend’s death didn’t seem to sink in. I glanced at Nancy. She, too, was watching the teen, but she was doing it with cop eyes and that didn’t bode well.
“You know, May,” Nancy stood, “I think I will take that coffee.”
I scrambled to my feet and got my butt in the chair just as they came into the kitchen. My plan was to stay there but then I heard Serge’s voice. Nancy was focused on May, asking her about Amber. I snuck back to the living room.
“It’s okay,” crooned Serge. He reached out but couldn’t make himself solid to touch her. “I’m here, I’ll always be here.”
“Amber?” I asked. “Do you want to sit?”
She nodded and shuffled to the couch. I sat beside her. “Um, I’m really sorry.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared ahead with an unfocused gaze.
“You guys were together for a long time,” I said, trying to get any kind of emotional response from her.
“Yeah. Long.”
Tentatively, I touched her hand. When she didn’t move, I took her fingers. “You must have really loved him.”
That broke her shock. Her eyes filled with tears and spilled down her face.
Serge crouched in front of her. “She did love me,” he said. “Deep down, we were soul mates.”
Amber started sobbing.
I patted her on the back and felt completely inadequate. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know it’s hard to hear, but I didn’t want Reverend Popov telling you.”
She clutched me tighter and heaved a breath. “No.” It came out as a moan. “You don’t understand.”
I rubbed her back. “What don’t I understand?”
Beneath my fingers, her body tightened. She pulled away, yanked her sleeve over her fingers and used the material to rub her face.
“Amber?”
Contempt curled Serge’s lip. “Geez, give her a minute. The only person who ever understood her just died.”
She sighed.
The wind pelted rain against the window.
Serge rubbed her knees. “You’re crying for the lost future, right, babe? ’Cause we never made up?”
“I’m crying because he’s gone,” Amber said.
I frowned at the way she spoke the words.
So did Serge.
She glanced at me, a dull flush crept up her cheeks. “He’s gone. I’m finally rid of him.”
“What?” I jerked back in surprise.
Serge did the same.
Amber started to cry again. “The past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about how to break up with him. Now he’s dead and I’m so happy, and I feel horrible about it.”
Serge bolted upright. He stumbled backwards, toward the window. “Happy? She’s happy I’m dead?” The air turned heavy, charged with electricity.
The hair on my arms rose, my teeth vibrated. A low humming filled my ears, followed by a sharp, crackling sound punching the air. The glass in the living room window cracked.
Amber recoiled.
So did Serge.
“It’s the wind,” I told her. “It’s really bad outside—it probably tossed a pebble.”
She nodded and I hoped none of them would notice that the crack was on the inside.
“Tell me about being happy.”
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” She curled her feet under her body. “I should be sad or something, but I couldn’t stand him.”
“But—you were together since junior high. You never seemed—well, I mean, sometimes you seemed embarrassed, but never out of love.”
She huddled into herself. “I did love him.” She looked at me. “But he was horrible. You know he was.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I never dated him or kept dating him after I’d stopped loving him.”
She shook her head. “You don’t know Serge.” She laughed, the sound dark and heavy. “Not true, you did know him. He could be cruel and heartless.”
“But I supported you!” He kicked the rocking chair, but only ended up losing his balance and falling on his butt.
“Back in the summer of grade ten—” She blanched. “I let him videotape us—y’know—”
Serge froze. He pressed his lips together until the edges turned white. His limbs rigid, his body tight, he stood.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I was afraid if I broke up with him, he’d post it on the Internet.” She looked at me, grabbed my hand. “You saw what he did with you and the car. Do you know what would have happened to me if he’d posted it?”
Yeah, she’d be town slut and the running punchline for years.
“My mom works as the church secretary, I’m there all the time—” Amber’s eyes went wide with horror. “Can you imagine what Mrs. Popov and the women’s circle would have done to her—to me?”
I didn’t even want to think about it.
“Work’s hard to find right now.” She gestured to the worn furniture and scuffed wood floors. “We’re barely making it. If she lost her job—”
“I would never have done that to her. Never,” Serge said through clenched teeth.
Amber shook her head. “He cheated on me all the time—”
“You knew?”
She shot me a cutting glare. “I may not be smart, Maggie, but I’m not stupid.”
“Okay, um”—God, this was awkward—“uh, it looks like he was with someone the night he died—”
She snorted.
“So…you don’t know who it would have been?”
She shook her head. “He liked to do anything in panties.”
“I didn’t—” Serge stopped, a look of misery on his face. “I wasn’t that bad.”
And then I realized he’d never told her that he loved her. Had probably never shown her, either. In a weird way, I was getting what I wanted: the ultimate revenge on Serge. He was finding out no one gave a rat’s ass about him. But instead of feeling gleeful, I felt bad for him, and guilty that I’d ever wished this on him.
“He was mean to everybody—I barely had any friends.” Her face contorted with anger and pain. “And the ones I did have, he just screwed when he thought I wasn’t looking.”
“But surely,” I said, not quite believing I was actually defending him, “there must have been some good times.”
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Maybe. In the beginning. But lately, all we did was fight. He was really angry—”
“Wasn’t that just his natural state?” I caught myself. “Sorry—”
“No, it’s fine. He was always angry, but lately, it was worse. Something was setting him off—”
I waited to see if Serge would say anything, but he remained hunched by the chair, and said nothing.
“Do you know what made him so mad?”
She shook her head. “Every time I asked, it just caused a fight.” The words rushed out her mouth as tears fell down her cheeks. “Everything caused a fight.”
One of the outcomes when you deal with the dead is learning to spot a liar, and the acid churning in my gut said Amber was lying.
Serge got to his feet and stormed to the window, but remained silent.
“He always made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right,” she sniffed.
More tears fell. Instead of making me feel sympathetic, I got the gross vibe that she was trying to manipulate me.
“What about you?” He whirled to face her. “What about your pissy attitudes and screwed up crap? If I took you to a movie, you wanted to go for pizza. If we went for pizza, you wanted to go for a drive. You wanted more time together, less time together!” He jerked his hands through his hair. “At least your friends didn’t bitch at me or complain!” Serge was crying. Twin tracks of dirty red tears—blood and betrayal—left gritty trails on his skin.
I turned from him, the sight of his raw pain too much to bear.
“Why don’t you tell the Deadhead about all the ways you screwed up this relationship!”
The air started to crackle and made the hair on my skin rise.
“Amber, he didn’t have a shirt on. Do you know who he would have been with?”
She snorted. “Who wasn’t he with?”
“And what about your mom!” He paced to where the television stood. “Why don’t you tell Deadhead about all the times she made you cry and I was there for you! I was the only one who was there for you!” Rage mottled his face.
My teeth vibrated, a high-pitched ringing sounded in my ears. Crap. “Amber, seriously, who do you think he was with last night?”
“Why don’t you talk about that night—all the times I took it from him because of you! No! Of course not! Poor, innocent Amber. It’s all big, bad Serge’s fault. Right? Mine! Not you, not your whore of a mother!”
The window exploded. Shards of glass, rain, and wind blew across the chairs and floor.
Amber screamed and pressed herself against the couch.
I twisted one way, then the other, looking for the ghost, but all I saw was pelting rain and dark skies.
May and Nancy ran into the room. The cop shot me a look.
Oh, crap. I was in so much trouble.