“It’s Joe,” she said.
“I see.”
“I think something’s wrong with him.”
“What has he said to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then…?”
“I can see it.”
“What is it that you see?”
“He’s…strange. It’s as if…I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain any of it. But it all started…” She hesitated, thinking back. “It all started when he was supposed to meet me at the museum. It was a fund-raiser in Leslie’s honor, actually,” she told him.
He nodded, and she went on.
“He didn’t show up. When I called him, he was down at O’Malley’s. He said that he hadn’t been able to get to the museum because of the traffic. There was this really bad accident on the FDR. He pulled a little girl out of a car. And Sam Latham, another Raven—another member of the board—was hurt.”
“Was anyone killed in the accident?”
“Yes. The little girl’s uncle.”
“Hmm,” Adam said thoughtfully.
“Then…last night he was at Hastings House.”
“Oh?” Adam said, his attention sharpening.
“He said he was just in the area and the house was open. So he went in and found a teenage girl hiding inside.”
“Living, I hope?” Adam said.
“Yes, but she was strange, too. She said the house saved her. She was being chased by some thugs, and she said the house…let her in. That it saved her. And then Joe was so strange after that. I kept thinking he must have been remembering Leslie. I tried to leave him alone, even later, when—Even later.”
A slight smile played across his lips. “So…you and Joe are together?”
She was surprised at how easily she blushed. “For now, anyway,” she said. “I’m afraid that maybe he just feels overly protective of me.”
“When you’re overly protective,” Adam said gently, “you sleep on a sofa. And that wasn’t a sleeping-on-the-sofa blush.”
“Well…” she mumbled.
“You’re afraid that he’s in love with a ghost, aren’t you?” Adam asked her.
She wasn’t ready to accept that there really were ghosts, so she said, “I think a man can easily be in love with a memory.”
“Memories tend to be golden,” he pointed out.
“Adam, Joe isn’t the type to admit he sees ghosts,” she said. “But from the way he reacted to what that girl said, I think maybe that’s what’s happening. Or what he thinks is happening, anyway.”
“He doesn’t know that you’ve called me, does he?”
She flushed again, shaking her head.
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Well, I think he’ll see me anyway. Out of respect, if nothing else. I was a close friend of Leslie’s, and he knows it.”
“Can you…can you help, do you think?”
She was surprised when he was quiet for a long moment.
“I think that if Joe is seeing ghosts, one of them—maybe Leslie—is trying to tell him something,” he said.
She was surprised at the misery she felt. They needed all the help they could get, so this was hardly the time to be jealous.
Especially of a ghost.
“Is, um, that the way it usually works?” she asked, and she could tell that her voice sounded distant.
“Look, you hired Joe because you were worried, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And,” he continued, “you also hired him because you wanted him around.”
She lowered her head.
He touched her hand again. “That’s a good thing. I’m pretty sure Joe wanted to be around.”
“Thanks,” she said, and looked at Adam curiously. “So how does it usually work? Do you…just walk down the street and see ghosts?”
“Actually, no,” he told her. “I don’t have a gift of any kind.”
“But…you’re the Harrison in Harrison Investigations,” she said.
He stood, hands behind his back, and wandered to the window to look down at the street. “I had a son…who is gone now.”
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s fine. He’s been gone a long time. But before he died, he did have a gift. He knew what was going to happen. And he knew he wasn’t long for this world. He actually told me when he would die, what would happen.”
“I’m so sorry,” she repeated.
“He didn’t really leave,” he told her softly.
She kept smiling, but Adam Harrison could see right through her.
“The souls of those we love do linger sometimes. When they need to,” he told her.
“When they need to?” she repeated questioningly.
“Sometimes they just need to understand what happened to them. Sometimes they’re lost. And other times it’s as if they have a mission, something they have to do, someone they have to save.” He paused, looking at her. “Leslie MacIntyre had an exceptional gift. She helped so many of them.”
“So many of the dead?” Genevieve asked. She had always liked to believe that her mind was open. She had even liked to believe that the souls of the departed were real, that in giving up her own life, Leslie MacIntyre had found eternity with her beloved Matt.
But now…