Cursed be the Wicked (27 page)

Chapter 16

Old Bones

I end the call I’ve just made, frustrated when I get to about the fifteenth ring again. It’s been two days since I decided I need to confront my aunt about the past and I still can’t get a hold of her.

She’s never home when I drive by and apparently she doesn’t own an answering machine.

To keep myself preoccupied, I’ve been pouring through more of Mom’s journals and stealing away what time I can with Finn.

On more than one instance, I have found myself skimming through the pages of these diaries, looking for anything and everything referencing hearts. Ever since Finn pointed out the symbol my mother used when she wrote about me, it’s kind of become an obsession of mine.

I find quite a few.

One page was dedicated to the word ‘intelligence’. A definition followed the word in bubble letters and a single heart accompanied that one at the end. A few pages further, and I found ‘brilliance’. This one also had its definition and there were probably about fifteen or so different sizes and shapes of hearts all over this page.

A few more pages here and there have more words. More definitions. To anyone that didn’t know better, it looks as though she just randomly added them to fill space. If I was someone else, I’d have simply thought that Maggie was writing wishes down for herself.

But I’m not someone else, and I do know better now.

A small pang tugs at the inside of my chest as I think about the last entry she wrote about me.

I found it on the final page of the same journal with all the other words. I don’t know why this one should have meant any more than the others, and I don’t fully understand how, but it makes me feel like I’ve failed her.

‘Brave,’
it said.

My mother thought I was brave. I wonder what she would think of me, knowing I’ve avoided my home for over ten years.

I push thoughts of not living up to her expectations down as I slip the phone back into my jacket pocket.

“Liz is avoiding me.”

Finn, who has now rearranged the silverware on Geneva’s B&B dining table no less than ten times, stops, satisfied with her final product.

“Well did you really expect anything different after the way she acted last time you came by?”

“So, what, you think maybe she’s home?”

Finn looks up at me. “You think that woman’s really got somewhere to be gone twenty-four-seven?”

She’s got a point. “You’re absolutely right. I should go over there again.” It’s plain and simple. If I want to get in touch with her, the only way I’m going do that is to corner her like a rat.

I peck Finn on the cheek because that’s all I can allow myself to have, then I leave her to finish her job of setting up for dinner. I head back up to my room to grab some things. When I turn to go, Finn’s standing at the door with a slightly worried look on her face.

“Good luck.”

I stuff a few of the journals I’m taking with me over to my aunt’s house into a backpack. Finn is quiet. Too quiet if you ask me. So I stop, getting an odd vibe from her.

“You don’t think I should do this?”

“I didn’t say that,” she says as she pushes off of the door jam.

“But you were thinking it.”

Finn twists her mouth up.

She’s definitely thinking it, but why?

“What happened to finding the truth Finn?”

“I’m all for finding the truth here, Coop. I’m just not a hundred percent positive you’re in the right frame of mind to go demanding your aunt tell you things your brain might not be ready to handle.”

I get the impression she knows something I don’t know.

I think back to the night she told me about her parents, and then about the dream she had of me. We haven’t touched on the subject of seeing the future since that night and I’m not sure I want to now.

“I’m in the
exact
right frame of mind to do this, Finn,” I assure her as she takes a step inside the room.

“You’re sure?”

I only have to think on that for a second or two. I finish packing up the backpack while I answer.

“If you’d asked me that a couple of weeks ago, I might have answered you differently. But then I met this girl.”

I smile.

She blushes. And I like it a lot.

“Then let me go with you,” she says.

I know she just wants to help, but I shake my head at her anyway. “I don’t think so, Finn. Not this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because I . . .” I breathe out. I want her to understand and as soon as I think it, I know she will. She’s Finn.

“I don’t want Liz to feel any more on the defense than she’s already no doubt going to when I show up and ask her about all of this.” I wave my hand at the journals I brought back to the B&B with me from Mom’s place.

Finn steps closer. Her eyes look tired and worn, like she’s been up for days. Kind of how I feel right now.

When she’s within arm’s reach, I lift a hand and slide it around her waist. The other one cups her neck and I look down into those soul searching eyes of hers. The ones that told me they already knew me the first night I arrived in Salem.

The only ones that will probably
ever
know me.

“You can’t do everything for me, Finn.”

She sighs and threatens to look away but I stop her with a kiss that I can’t hold back anymore. It’s been too long.

It’s steady, this one. Not desperate. With hands and fingers, I tell her thank you for all she’s done to get me this far. Even though I wasn’t the most cooperative about it all.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” I admit with only a slight tinge of regret in my voice.

“Yes you should have,” Finn breathes.

We break apart and she makes me promise, “Let me know you’re okay after?”

I nod with a grin.

“Will do.”

Finn reaches up onto her tiptoes and lands her lips against mine one more time, like it’s her last opportunity. I let her because I’m greedy, and because maybe I feel like it’ll be
my
last opportunity.

“Rain check,” I tell her when I go to fetch the things I need for my visit with Liz.

Finn tilts her head. “For?”

“The rest of that kiss.”

I grab the backpack off of the bed and swing it over my shoulder, then I tell Finn as I’m leaving, “Lock up when you leave, I don’t trust the staff here.”

I wink and she rolls her eyes at me. I laugh because
that’s
the Finn I’ve grown to love.

My smile fades about halfway to Liz’s house. That’s when I realize Finn was right, as usual. There’s a distinct chance that I’m not up for hearing everything my aunt might have to say.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I know more about why my father died and what happened to Mom that made her so allegedly insane.

It hits me, as I drive, that as much as I’ve tried to tell myself over the years that I didn’t care, I did. To the point where I pushed everything about my family so far down, I wouldn’t have to think about any of it.

Being here again, and around Finn, finding Mom’s journals, these things have changed all that.

They’ve changed
me
.

When I pull up to Liz’s house, there’s an uneasy feeling settling inside my stomach. I don’t know if it’s just nerves or pure adrenalin, but I want to puke.

I don’t though. Instead, I swallow it all down and get out of the car with some of the written words from Mom in tow.

Liz doesn’t answer the door but I’m not leaving. I try the handle, like I did that first day I stopped by. It turns for me and I push the door open.

“Liz?” I call out but she doesn’t answer.

I’m having déjà vu here but it’s not going to stop me.

The house is dead quiet and I immediately chastise myself for using the word “dead” in the middle of wondering where she is. I set the backpack down into a chair and take a quick look around.

There’s not much to her house, so it doesn’t take me long to see she’s not here.

I sit down and shoot a quick text off to Finn to let her know the circumstances because I know it’ll drive her batty if I don’t.

I check email, no word from Bill. I check voicemail, nothing there either. Then I scroll through my recent calls and stop when I get to the local number that’s been calling me.

I figure what the hell, I’ve got nothing better to do right now, so I tap the number and listen to it ring just before a ringing sounds from somewhere in the room.

Only my eyes look up and glance around. I don’t see a phone, but I definitely hear it coming from somewhere inside Liz’s house.

I get up and walk around, searching for the source. When I find a cheap looking cell phone inside one of Liz’s kitchen cabinets, I pick it up and wait. I stare at it as I wait for someone to answer from the other end of my call but they don’t.

I end the call, and Liz’s phone stops ringing again.

I stare some more.

I tap my foot against the floor, debating. Then I dial the number again. And the cell phone rings, again.

“Son of a bitch.”

She’s been screwing with me. This whole damn time.

I pick up the cell phone I apparently just called and look it over. I try to check its recent calls but it’s locked.

Doesn’t matter. Now I know.

Liz is the person who’s been crank calling me the past couple of weeks.

I laugh at myself for a minute. At the very least, I have to appreciate the fact that everything I ever believed in has managed to slip my mind when it comes to dealing with the death of my own mother.

First Trina, the makeshift ghost, and now this?

What is wrong with me?

I try to make myself feel better by admitting that if nothing else, this is proof positive that when you
want
to believe something is real, you see it whether it’s there or not.

Even when you didn’t realize you wanted to see it in the first place.

A creek in the floorboard from another room snaps me to attention and I spin, waiting to see if I hear it again. A couple of minutes go by and I’m about to write it off as the house settling when there it is again.

I move quietly in the direction it came from, listening. When another creak sounds, I run for it.

It doesn’t take long to find my aunt, trying to make her getaway out the front door. After the briefest of scuffles with the older woman, I hold her by one arm while trying to keep the other one from clocking me over the head with her purse.

“Where are you going, Liz?” I ask her as she struggles to free herself. She’s not going anywhere.

“Get your hands off of me, Cooper,” she warns, flailing.

“Why are you hiding?”

“What are you doing in my house?”

“Why are you crank calling me, I think is the question of the hour, lady.”

I finally let her go and she straightens herself.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Really Liz?” I scoff. I push to dial the mystery number on my phone again and the other cell phone I’m holding rings. “You’ve been calling and hanging up for two weeks. Why?”

She looks to me like she might want to say something but then she waves me off.

“That’s not mine, I don’t know where that came from.”

“Bullshit.”

She gives me the evil eye.

“I want you out of my house. I’m calling the police.”

She pushes past me to get to her home phone and throw the cheap cell onto the counter when I head for the front living room to get my things. I grab the backpack I brought with me and go back into the kitchen. I drop the bag as I pull out my mother’s journal.

“Okay Liz, answer another question for me then.”

She freezes with the receiver in mid air when she sees what I’m holding in my hand. And all the color drains from her face.

“Where did you get that?” she blurts out. Her voice is strained and harsh. She recognizes the journal. She’s seen it before. Or at least, she’s seen one like it.

“Hang the phone up, Liz.”

She does, and then I tell her with a short sigh, “It was Mom’s.”

My aunt, who’s now glaring at me from across the room, says, “I know whose it is, Cooper Shaw, I asked you where it came from.”

My brow pinches. “How would you know that?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she snaps as she stomps out of the room, throwing her hands up into the air. “I want you and that journal and whatever else you brought with you out. Now.”

I snap the journal closed and follow her.

“Well I’m not going, Liz, not until I get some answers.”

She’s at the bottom of her staircase now, her hand on the railing. If I’m not mistaken, it’s shaking.

I take the opportunity of her pause to plead with her.

“I just want to understand. I don’t know why you won’t tell me. Or why
she
didn’t tell me.”

My aunt lets out a sigh and I wait. When she turns to face me, she seems angry.

“What exactly do you want to understand, Cooper?”

She asks as though it’s a challenge. Like she’s banking on the fact that I don’t even know what I want.

I give it some thought and decide on my first question. The room is silent when the words come out. I feel like they’re slicing through my chest.

“Was Mom really crazy?”

I know what I think. Now I want to hear what Liz thinks.