As usual on the weekends, the streets of Blystone were fairly busy. It was Saturday, and Ian was on his way to do some shopping. He was in no rush. Mrs. Astor was playing cards with his dad.
Going into McMillan's Grocery, Ian grabbed a basket and walked the isles slowly. When he looked away from a shelf, he couldn't believe his eyes. Seeing him was so unexpected, Ian just gaped. There was Jacob with a shopping basket of his own. As he went up to him, Ian was dying to throw himself into his arms.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Shopping. Since we are back I need to stock the fridge," Jacob said like it was no big deal.
It might not be a big deal to him, but Ian was overjoyed. To keep himself from bursting into tears or doing anything else stupid, he looked at Jacob's basket. He saw eggs, milk and bread.
"You're back," Ian said, still trying to get over the shock. He looked up at him again. Seeing Jacob's grim face, he tried not to show how happy he was.
"It's not for a good reason," Jacob told him with a sigh. "While we were gone, I found out she isn't haunting the house. She's haunting Toby."
"What do you mean?"
"She followed us to Heather's apartment. Toby saw her, and I kind of did too. I saw a shadow standing over Toby's bed. At that point I wanted to take him even further away. But I'm afraid quitting my job and moving to the other side of the country wouldn't do any good either. She told Toby that she would always be with him."
"You heard that?" Ian asked.
"No. Toby was talking to her. He told me." As Jacob shook his head and rubbed his eyes, Ian noticed how tired he looked. "I thought we could get away, but I guess it doesn't matter where we go."
"That doesn't mean you had to come here. This is where it started," Ian pointed out though this was exactly where he wanted them to be.
"Didn't see a good reason to stay away," Jacob said and looked away from Ian. That was weird. When he turned back to him, he looked kind of embarrassed. "Going away did no good, but maybe I can do some good here. I think you were on the right track. This is the place where I have the best chance of figuring this out. We're better off here anyway. She never comes inside the house. At the apartment, she was in Toby's bedroom, standing right over his bed. Unless I imagined her."
"You said Toby was talking to her," Ian said reasonably, not letting Jacob sink into denial.
"It's still hard for me to believe in something like that."
"Even after seeing her for yourself?"
"Yes. Even after that."
"Your reasons might not be good, but I'm glad you're back," Ian confessed.
"Toby is too. I dropped him off at Ruth's. He and the puppies had a happy reunion. I still want him out of the house as much as possible, so I signed him up for daycare on Saturdays too."
As they made their way to the register, Ian noticed how gloomy Jacob looked.
"Don't look so down. Remember you're not alone. I want to help you figure this out."
"Your plate is pretty full," Jacob said. "How is your dad?"
"Not great. But he's hanging in there. I was just getting him some fresh lemons for his tea," Ian said holding up a shopping basket with a half dozen of them. "Dad always gives me credit for getting him to live right. He stopped drinking and smoking when he and my mom adopted me. But I guess I was too late."
"Don't tell me you blame yourself for that?" Jacob asked him archly.
"I guess that's stupid. My dad was always terrible at taking care of himself. Now I feel like I never know how he's really doing. He's always trying to hide what he's going through."
"He's a dad," Jacob said evenly.
"Listen to you, taking his side."
"Us dads have to stick together," Jacob said with a smile.
Ian waited for Jacob to check out then they walked together toward his house. Once they were standing in front of it, they both stopped and stared. Ian could tell that Jacob was dreading going through his own front gate.
"Are you afraid to go in there?" Ian asked him.
"Not exactly. I just don't know how to fix this," he said as he stepped into his front yard and Ian followed.
"When you saw her, are you sure she didn't give you any clues about what she wanted?" Ian asked as they walked up the path to the front door.
"We didn't have a conversation," Jacob said flatly. As they went into the house, he stopped just inside. He frowned deeply. "Something I didn't tell you about. That wasn't the first time I've seen someone who was dead."
He didn't say more for a while. Then while they were in the kitchen, and Jacob was putting away groceries, he told him about it.
"Something happened to me when I was a kid. Since then, I've pretty much put it out of my mind. Until a few days ago, I wasn't sure that any of that was real. I thought maybe I was remembering something I imagined as a kid," Jacob said. "Everything that happened back then seems so unreal to me, like I dreamed it. What's happening now forced me to remember."
Jacob grabbed two beers from the fridge and handed one to Ian. They sat at the kitchen table as Jacob told him more.
"I was about the same age as Toby when I started coming across pools of water around our house. I could see water dripping and rippling, but it wasn't coming from anywhere. When I went closer, the water disappeared. Then one day, I saw a pair of bare feet standing in the water."
"That must have been terrifying," Ian said.
Jacob shook his head. "Not really. I remember I was puzzled, not afraid. After a while, I saw who the feet belonged to. It was a boy. His clothes were dirty, and he was always dripping wet. He seemed a little older than me. He just wanted to talk to me, but I had trouble making out what he was saying. I used to ask him, 'Why are you all wet? It's not raining.' I didn't really understand that this was something I wasn't supposed to see. Not until I told my parents. At first they dismissed it as just my overactive imagination. But when I kept insisting I saw him, they took me to a child psychologist. It didn't take me long to figure out that I shouldn't talk about what I saw. After a few months, there was nothing to talk about. I stopped seeing the boy. He started to fade away then he disappeared completely. After that, I never saw any kind of spirit or whatever you want to call it."
"What about that boy you saw? Did he tell you his name? Was he someone who lived in the house?"
"I asked his name, but I'm not sure if he knew it. Toby asked Lorna her name too, but she never told him. From what I remember about that boy, he never answered any of my questions directly. Whenever I had to leave, I can remember him saying, 'Don't go.' But most of what he said didn't make much sense."
"Did you do any research on who the boy might be?"
"I didn't, but there was a well known case. A boy who used to live in our house twenty years before. He disappeared, then days later, his body was pulled from the river wrapped in a sheet. The case was never solved."
"Did he give you any clues or..." Ian asked.
"What? You want to try and solve a murder four decades old?"
"Maybe," Ian admitted.
"He only told me it was dark and that he was cold. I remember trying to give him my jacket. He told me to watch out for the bad man, but nothing specific." Jacob shook his head. "It makes me so sad now. When I was little, I didn't understand how terrible his fate was. Not that I understand much now. God, I feel so lost. How am I supposed to help Toby?" Jacob ran his hands through his hair in frustration.
"Think back," Ian told him. "You didn't have a bad experience with your ghost, right? It was the way your parents reacted that spooked you."
"True. So you're saying I shouldn't spook Toby?"
"I don't think it's necessarily a good thing for him to be talking to dead people," Ian admitted. "But he isn't upset. He doesn't seem to be in any danger."
"So far."
"This might be a problem that will solve itself. She might fade away like your little friend," Ian said optimistically. "And I'll keep digging and try to figure out why she's here."
"You think there is an answer? Like finding the killer or something?" Jacob asked.
"Or her kid. He was sent off to live with relatives, but I can't find out where. No one seems to know. There's a good chance that kid is the reason she's here, and that's why she's so focused on Toby. I'll keep digging. But you should try to communicate with her, find out what she wants."
Jacob wasn't optimistic about that idea. "My experience with her was nothing like what happened to me when I was a kid. It might be an ability I lost."
"You saw her in the garden. You saw her standing over Toby in his room."
"I saw something but mostly I felt her presence or whatever that was. And there was only a shadow at the apartment."
"I think you should try harder to see and hear her," Ian told him.
"I don't know that I want to. I still want to believe this isn't real." Jacob rubbed his eyes. Once again Ian noticed that he looked tired.
"Try anyway. We need more clues."
"And what if she's simply after Toby?" Jacob asked.
Ian dismissed the idea. "She was haunting the place before he was even born. Something else is keeping her around."
Ian got up from the table, ready to go home with his bag of lemons. As he stood up, Jacob grabbed him. His hands on Ian's shoulders, he pulled him close and kissed him. One of his hands shifted to the back of Ian's head, grabbing a handful of his hair to draw him in even closer. It was a good, hard kiss that told Ian that Jacob missed him.
When he kissed back, Ian wasn't gentle and sweet either. His kiss pushed back. It was needy and rough, trying to smother the fear of almost losing him.
Ian didn't want to let him go, but somehow Jacob still pulled away from him. "I have to go pick up Toby soon," Jacob said, out of breath.
Ian nodded, just as breathless. As they looked at each other, neither one of them wanted to move. A moment ago, Ian was ready to leave, but now it seemed so impossible. Wordlessly, he tried to tell Jacob how much he wanted him and everything else he felt.
*
Walking down the front path, Ian looked back one last time before turning onto the sidewalk. Maybe he was making sure that Jacob was still staring after him. And he was.
Jacob was only able to close the door once Ian was out of sight. It was ridiculous. He felt like he was in high school and completely at the mercy of his feelings.
Now that he had sent him away, Jacob was almost painfully hard for Ian. They had shared another hard, grappling embrace. His fault again. He wondered if they would ever share a gentle kiss. Maybe when they had more time. But there was something wild and uninhibited about Ian. Every time they touched, Jacob felt as if he was leading him down a dark path.
He had to wonder if he was just using Ian to take his mind off what was happening. Ian might be with him for the same reason. Jacob wouldn't blame him. It wouldn't do Ian any good to dwell on how sick his father was. Both Fran James and Ruth had told him that the cancer had spread too much and the chemo wasn't working. Jacob hated to think of all the pain that was going to come crashing down on Ian.
Jacob understood the need for distraction from problems one couldn’t solve. At night, Jacob couldn't sleep for more than a few hours. He was restless and checked on Toby constantly. Now that he had seen that shadow over Toby's bed, he might never be able to rest easy again.
Thinking about Ian occupied the sleepless hours of the night. His stormy, dark blue eyes always seem to speak to Jacob. He felt like he needed a lifetime to take in everything that was in them. That was a frightening thought, but if he could, he would never look away from Ian's eyes.
Jacob's mind dwelled on each part of Ian in turn. His mouth came back to him – yielding to Jacob's, his tongue probing, his moans muffled but tasting so sweet in Jacob's mouth.
Outside his window, the hard wind through the branches made a clattering noise. Jacob's eyes opened to the darkness of his bedroom. The sound reminded him of what was out there and snapped him out of his fantasies.
As he watched the trees cast shifting shadows on the walls, Jacob didn't know how they could stay in this house. He didn't know where they could hide. For now, he was willing to go along with Ian's approach to the problem. Instead of running from her, he would try to figure out Lorna Hayes as if she were a puzzle.
Looking for clues, he thought back to his own childhood experience. All that taught him was that ghosts fade away either from an individual's perception or from reality. If his own experience was anything to go by, Toby might just grow out of it or choose not to see what isn't supposed to be there. Until then, Jacob had to do his best to protect him.