She giggled. You’d think we were the very best of friends. “Oh, thank you!”
I flashed a little teeth. She wouldn’t be so pleased if she knew what I wanted to do with those chocolate-colored little orbs. But the thought gave me “a happy,” as Lark would say, so I took my book and left the library. I could have read it there, but if I had to spend another moment in the same room as that woman—no matter if it was one of infinite space—I was going to make some violence that someone would notice.
When people already knew more about you than they ought, attracting notice wasn’t wise.
I went back to the little house that had been mine for as long as I could remember. The thing about being dead—being a ghost—meant that I never really needed care. And what little I did need, Iloana had been kind enough to offer. My link to Lark had enabled me to drift between her world and this one, and I learned everything at the same rate at which she did—how to talk, how to walk. Thankfully I avoided the whole potty-training fiasco. That was just a lesson in humiliation, if you asked me.
We helped each other, taught each other. We took our first steps together, holding each other’s hand. My mother used to laugh at how Lark always walked, ran—even danced—with one arm out farther than the other. She never saw me holding on to that hand, no matter how hard I wished she would.
My mother never once realized I was there. My father, on the other hand... There had been a couple of times that I think he felt my presence, and maybe even saw me. Emily was his ancestor, so it made sense that he would have a bit of sensitivity like his mother—my grandmother. Those times that I thought he’d been aware of me, he’d had a little too much to drink, so my mother accused him of being drunk. I don’t know if he ever had a sense of me again, because he never mentioned it—at least not to my mother. Not when Lark or I were around.
I called them my mother and my father. Lark at least called him Dad, but neither of us felt much motherly love toward the woman who couldn’t see me and then punished Lark because she could.
Anyway, I had my little house. It wasn’t even that we needed shelter. There wasn’t any weather or temperature change in the Shadow Lands. And it was never night or even day—just perpetual twilight. Still, I guess the human mind clung to the idea of shelter, even a human who had never lived.
I had my little box of treasures, but I didn’t look at it right now. There was a big, deep armchair in front of a fireplace that I had added after seeing one someplace else. That’s where I sat with my library loan, reading by the firelight. Not like I could ever develop eyestrain.
I flipped through the Haven Crest book. I found the girl who had given me Emily’s message at Haven Crest. She was admitted in 1901, born in 1885. She would have been the same age as Emily, so her story rang of truth thus far. She had been admitted for hysteria—whatever that was. There was nothing in her record that would lead me to believe that she’d been lying about Emily’s message. There was nothing linking her to Emily at all. Didn’t they have a visitors log back then? They must have, but it wasn’t here.
I kept turning the pages, nervously studying the grainy photos of patient after patient. Then I found it.
Noah Andrew McCrae? I stared at the name written in faded cursive. I had to be wrong. It was McCain or something else, and it was just the handwriting that made me imagine Noah’s last name was the same as Kevin’s. But no, there it was. The penmanship was perfect, as were my eyes.
Maybe they weren’t related. They couldn’t be, because I’d told Noah what Kevin’s name was, and he’d made that remark about being Irish, and that he was English.
But England had controlled part of Ireland for centuries, and a family that started out in England could have moved to Ireland. Maybe it was a huge coincidence, but as I looked at Noah’s face, so young and alive, I could see a resemblance to Kevin that went beyond their dark hair and blue eyes.
That would explain why I had been so instantly drawn to Noah. Just when I thought I was over Kevin I went and fell for his ancestor. Not a direct ancestor, of course, because Noah would have been too young to have had children. Wouldn’t he?
I was jumping to conclusions. There was no reason for Noah to keep this from me, so either he didn’t know they were related, or they weren’t. It was that simple. His surname wasn’t what I wanted to look at anyway.
Lark had accused me of not knowing anything about him. And she was right. It didn’t matter to me what he’d done, but given recent events, it would be wrong of me not to at least be curious.