Firefly Rain (31 page)

“Is Officer Hanratty there?” I asked politely.

“Hang on just a minute. Lemme see if she’s still here.” I heard a click as the phone hit the tabletop, and then faintly, the same man’s voice calling, “Hey, Jerry, is Hanratty still here?” There was a pause, and then, “Well, damn. Who’d have thought?”

There was a moment’s fumbling on the other end of the line, and then the helpful officer picked back up. “Nope, she’s gone for the night.”

“Oh, well.” I did my best to sound disappointed, and did a fair job of pulling it off proper. “Do you know when she left?”

“’Bout an hour ago, I think. Something about a date, if’n you can believe that.” The man sounded frankly disbelieving, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. It would take a brave man to tame Officer Hanratty.

“Well, thank you,” I said, hoping to end the conversation.

“Can I take a message?”

I could feel my polite demeanor starting to crack. “No, that’s all right. I’ll just call back tomorrow.”

The officer on the other end of the line was just determined to be helpful. “She ain’t going to be in then, either. Try Sunday after church.”

“I will,” I told him through gritted teeth. “Thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Not at all, sir,” he said, and hung up. I blinked and did the same. It was a hell of a change from my first call to that station, and I wondered why. Maybe I just got a different officer this time, or maybe something else had changed.

Another mystery. I was getting kind of weary of them, truth be told. A man can only handle so many unanswered questions at a time before he decides to stop looking for answers.

I looked at the clock. Jenna’s arrival hadn’t gotten much closer,
so I made myself a sandwich. I washed it down with a cold beer, then tidied up and sat at the kitchen table to wait. Outside, the rain poured down, steady and dull. Even the thunder had settled in to a quiet rumble.

My eyes closed on their own.
Just a little nap
, I thought.
It’s raining out.
I’d hear the dog if it came ’round. No sign of Mother for hours. Everything’s fine.

I jerked bolt upright to the sound of fists hammering on the kitchen door. My back and neck were both wound tight in all the wrong places, so when I stood to get the door it felt like someone had run a wire down my spine and plugged it in.

“Coming,” I shouted, and I stumbled toward the door. Faintly through the wood, I could hear Jenna. She was using her lovely voice to curse a blue streak, a series of words I did not think Mother would have approved of coming from a young lady.

I fumbled with the latch and pulled the door open. Jenna stood there, soaking wet, with her bags in her hands and murder in her eyes.

“About goddamned time, Logan,” she said by way of greeting, and she shook her head so that water flew everywhere. Her hair, which had hung well past her shoulders the last time I’d seen her, was now cut short, and that, along with the weariness from her travel, lent her expression a severity I hadn’t often seen in her.

“Good to see you, too,” I said. “Want to come in?”

“Do I want to…” She sputtered for a moment, stopped, and laughed. “No, I think I’ll stand out here and enjoy some more fine Carolina weather. Jesus, Logan, get the hell out of my way already.”

I grinned and did just that. “Welcome to my home,” I said
as she did a most unladylike stomp inside. “Can I help you with those?”

She dropped her bags on the floor and shrugged out of her jacket. It landed with a wet slap and immediately started leaking water in all directions. “Not unless you want to toss them in the dryer. Good God, you live way out in the middle of nowhere. Another few miles and I’d be in Tennessee.”

“You’ve got a ways to go before that, I promise,” I said, smiling. “Come here. It’s good to see you.”

“Careful, I’m soaking,” she replied, but she gave me a soggy hug anyway. “God, it’s good to see you, too.”

Neither of us said anything for a moment, her head resting against my shoulder. I could feel the water soaking through my shirt, but I didn’t mind. It
was
a fine thing to see her. Even wan from the road and pissed off, there was an energy to her that I hadn’t felt in a while, something alien to this place but which part of me recognized and responded to. It felt good.

Finally, we broke apart and each took a step back. I looked her up and down, and she did the same to me. She spoke first, though.

“Jesus, Logan, you’ve gone native. T-shirt, jeans, minimal work with the razor—when’s the mullet going to be done growing out?”

“Thursday next,” I told her. “I’ll go put on some Skynyrd and you can make yourself right at home. Or”—and I paused dramatically—“I can take this stuff down to the guest room, and you can dry off and change.”

“I thought I’d do that here instead,” she said with a wicked look. My jaw must have dropped, because she burst out laughing. “Oh, Logan. You are so adorable when you’re trying to deal with women. Don’t worry, I was just kidding, honest. Now where are you hiding me?”

“Right this way,” I said, and I picked up her bags. They were both wheeled carry-ons, flat black and packed to the gills. Each of them weighed far more than they had any right to. “Unh. You know, you’re supposed to pack light clothes to come down here, it being hot and all.”

“I did,” she said with a smirk. “It’s the shoes that are heavy. Now lead on, or I’ll just stand here and drip.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I started down the hall. “I can give you the grand tour later, or just point stuff out now.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, following behind. “I’ll just poke around to find what I need. Besides, it’s not that big a house. I can probably figure out where everything is.”

“More or less,” I admitted, though something in her tone stung. “There are a few things you might not want to figure out on your own.”

“Like what?” she asked as I stopped at the guest room door and put her bags down.

“Like where I’ve got the shotgun.” I opened the door. “This is your room for the duration. The bed’s comfortable, the sheets are clean, and the drawer space might be sufficient unto your needs.”

She wriggled past me and into the room. “It’ll do,” she said after a quick scan. “Very rustic.”

I looked around at the decoration like I was seeing it for the first time. Tan walls with a floral border up top, wooden furniture, which Father had helped his father make, a handmade quilt on the bed, and a lamp on the nightstand that had been old when I was a child. “Rustic,” I said quietly. “That’s one word for it.”

“Relax,” she said. “It’s fine. I love it. Now scoot. I’m going to get out of these wet things, and if you wanted to watch, you had your chance in the kitchen.” She shooed me out, then seized her bags and shut the door behind her.

I shook my head and headed back to the kitchen. It was, after all, where I kept the beer.

Jenna joined me maybe half an hour later, dressed in a red blouse and black skirt that matched her lipstick and her hair, respectively. Outside, the evening had come down hard. We’d gone from afternoon to night without any warning, and as the rain kept hammering down, it just got darker and darker. Lightning zipped and zapped off in the distance, little flashes of light instead of the big bolts a storm like this usually sent racing across the sky.

“Nice weather you got here,” she said dryly, pulling up a chair. “Got any more beer?”

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “In the fridge.”

She gave me a look. “You’re not going to be a Southern gentleman and get it for me?”

“I figured you’re one of them liberated Yankee women and can get your own damn beer.” I gave her a smile to show I didn’t mean it. “Besides, you can get me another one while you’re up.”

“There’s no football game on, you know,” she said in a tone that read
Warning
, but she got up and went to the refrigerator anyway. She snagged a couple of longnecks, twisted the lid off hers, and sat mine down in front of me.

“Thank you,” I told her, and I opened it. “Sorry it’s not micro-brew.”

Jenna shrugged and sat down. “Contrary to their marketing department’s belief, Sam Adams is not the water of life. I have been known to drink a Bud or two in my time.” To prove it, she took a long swallow and set the bottle down expertly. “So,” she said. “What the hell is going on?”

I stared at my beer without touching it. “You want the whole
thing, or just the stuff that’s happened since the last time we talked?”

She gnawed on her lip as she thought about it. “Just the new stuff, and anything I might have missed.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath, let myself have one sip of beer. “The short version is that I’m pretty sure that Mother’s ghost is haunting this place. Father’s, too, though he’s a lot less obvious about it. Carl’s mixed up with them somehow. He’s mentioned rather prominently in Father’s journal, which I found up in the attic. So are a lot of things.”

“Like what?” she prompted.

“Like the fact that he left home for college. Came back a few years later with no intention of staying for more than a couple of days.”

“Sort of like you?”

“A lot like me,” I admitted. “Anyway, he met Mother and stayed. Moved back into the house, got married, and stayed. There’s more in there, but I’m still figuring it out.”

Jenna nodded. “Anything else?”

“Well, let’s see.” I started ticking things off on my fingers. “There’s a dog of some sort out there that comes by every night, and I think it’s trying to kill me. Damn near clawed through the mudroom door the other night. There’s my stolen car, which I saw driving past the house again this afternoon. There’s Officer Hanratty, who’s acting weirder and weirder. The fireflies are still acting pretty weird themselves.” I paused.

“And the librarian you promised I could meet?” Jenna’s eyes met mine.

“She’s about the one thing in this that isn’t screwed up,” I said, but I looked away as I did.

“Uh-huh. We’ll tackle that later.” She drummed her fingers on
the tabletop. “That’s an awful lot to be going on for little old you, don’t you think?”

I gave a halfhearted shrug. “I guess. Like you said, I’ve been running from one thing to another so fast I haven’t really had time to try to put it all together. I mean, if I’d come home and no one had liked me because I was an outsider, fine. I could deal with that. Take stock, make plans, move on—I would have been out of their hair in a few weeks at most. But this…” I shook my head. “There’s something Carl told me that’s making a scary amount of sense right now.”

“What is it?” she asked, patting my hand reassuringly. “I thought Carl wanted your guts on a stick.”

“He’s warming up to me,” I admitted. “Now he occasionally calls me ‘son’ instead of ‘boy.’ It’s a big deal. But anyway, he told me that the town, or something in it, wanted me to stay, and that if I didn’t quite fit, it would, well, it would make me fit.”

“That sounds ominous.” She didn’t move her hand, but she stopped patting mine. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve got a few ideas.” I looked around, struck by a sudden feeling that something was watching. The spot between my shoulder blades started itching, and I lowered my voice without thinking. “It’s like there’s too much Boston in me, you know what I mean? Too much for me to fit in here. And whatever this thing is, it’ll do what it takes to get that out. So far, I think it’s just been trying to beat it out of me. All stick, no carrot.”

Jenna leaned back and killed half the beer left in the bottle. “Interesting. And where do your mom and the fireflies fit into this?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” I held up my hands, helpless. “She always wanted me to come back and stay, but this…” I trailed off. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re not lying about that, at least.” I started to
protest, but she held up her hand. “Uh-uh. I know you better than that. You’re not telling me everything, and I’m guessing most of the stuff you’re leaving out involves your librarian.”

“Adrienne,” I corrected.

“The prosecution rests,” she said with a smirk. “I’m sure you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

“Whatever.” I took a swig of beer. It tasted like water. “So what do you think?”

“I think,” she answered carefully, “that there is in fact an awful lot going on here, and you’ve got more of the pieces than I do. I will tell you that you sound and look different than you did a week and a half ago. If this place is working on you, it’s working fast. I also think that you were right before you started overthinking this, and that your groundskeeper—”

“Caretaker,” I interrupted.

“Hired help,” she swept on, “is behind whatever the hell is going on. Come on, Logan. Do you really think the whole town is all about you? That’s the big city in you talking. These people have their own lives. They weren’t just waiting for you to come back so they could hide in your attic and play boogedy-boo.”

“Maybe,” I said grudgingly. Now that I’d accepted Doctor Trotter’s idea about ghosts, I was holding tight to it. And Jenna, well, she hadn’t read Father’s journal.

She leaned forward. “And I’ve been thinking about your Officer Hanratty. We should go see her tomorrow.”

“She won’t be at the station,” I responded. “Called today to check.”

“My dear Jacob.” She shook her head in that condescending way I’d gotten in too many meetings. “If you’re there, she’s somehow going to find an excuse to check her voice mail or do some paperwork or something. Oh, she’ll be there. I’ll bet a dinner at the No-Name on it.”

“No bet. I know better.”

“Good boy.” She killed her beer, then looked across the table at mine. “Are you going to finish that?”

“Depends.” I shrugged. “Do you want it?”

She reached for it. “No, but I’ll drink it anyway. After the landing and the drive out here, I’m ready for straight Jack if you’ve got it.”

“I think I gave away the hard stuff after Mother died, but you’re welcome to check to see if I missed anything.” I wrapped her fingers around the bottle and shoved it toward her. “Go ahead. Price of the beer? Tell me about your trip.”

Jenna looked at me, then pulled the bottle to her like I might decide to take it back. “Bad weather means delays and a rough landing. That was a pain in the ass, but I could deal with it. The drive out here was what really beat me with a stick.”