Grave Homecoming (A Maddie Graves Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

“Thanks for giving me a ride home,” Maddie said, shifting in the passenger seat of Nick’s truck and fixing him with a small smile as they idled. “You didn’t have to. I would’ve walked. It was only a few blocks.”

“You were a little shaken up,” Nick said. “I don’t blame you. It’s not every day that you stumble across a dead body – especially in Blackstone Bay.”

“No,” Maddie agreed, rubbing her temple to ward off an imminent headache. “You expect it in the city. You don’t expect it here.”

Nick smirked. “Did you see a lot of dead bodies when you were down south?”

“Just a few,” Maddie murmured.

Nick stilled. “Are you being serious? I can’t tell.”

Maddie shook her head. “Oh, sorry, I was just … .”

“Maddie, tell me what you were just thinking,” Nick prodded.

Maddie searched his face, fighting the urge to reach out and touch it. When they were younger, she couldn’t stop herself from touching him. Even now, that’s all she really wanted to do. “I was just thinking that my life is … a mess.”

“Why?”

“Because I made it that way,” Maddie replied, shrugging.

“How?”

Maddie averted her eyes from his. It made it easier to fight the urge to touch him. “You know, when I left Blackstone Bay, I had no intention of coming back. I thought … I thought it would be so much easier to start a new life in a place where no one knew me. I just didn’t want to be … me.”

“What was so bad about being you, Mad? I happened to like you a great deal.”

“You were the only one.”

“That’s not true,” Nick said.

“It is,” Maddie said. “All I had was you, and Mom, and Granny … and a world of people who looked down on me.”

Nick rolled his neck, cracking it as he bobbed his head. “Maddie, I’m not saying that growing up here was easy for you, but it wasn’t as hard as you seem to remember. I know there were some girls – stupid Marla Proctor – who terrorized you.  They didn’t hate you because they looked down on you, though. They hated you because they were jealous of you. You just don’t seem to realize it. That’s high school, though. You’re an adult now.”

“I don’t feel like an adult,” Maddie said, pushing the rest of his statement out of her mind so she could mull it over later.

“What made you decide to come home?” Nick asked. “Was it really just because Olivia died?”

“No,” Maddie said. “I’ve spent the past five years wanting to come home.”

“You have?” Nick seemed surprised. “Why didn’t you just come home then?”

“I was scared to,” Maddie admitted.

“What’s so scary, Mad?”

Maddie didn’t answer him, at least not head on. “When I left, I didn’t think I was running away from anything. I really didn’t. I thought I was running toward something.”

“What were you running toward?”

“Freedom.”

“And did you find that?”

“Not in the least,” Maddie said. “I found … nothing. It wasn’t what I thought it would be. Once I was out in the real world, I just wanted to … come home.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was scared to see you,” Maddie said, her voice small.

Nick shifted in his seat. “Why? Was it because of the way you left?”

“I need you to know, I never meant to hurt you,” Maddie said, lifting her tear-filled eyes so they were even with his. “I just thought it would be easier. I used to sit by the phone and wait for you to call when I was in college. It was … painful. Then we’d talk for twenty minutes, and I would be miserable the whole week waiting for you to call again.”

“I wasn’t happy either,” Nick said. “I missed you. I missed you a heck of a lot more when you stopped taking my phone calls.”

“I thought a clean break would be easier for both of us,” Maddie said. “I knew you would have no problem moving on.”

“Then you didn’t know me at all,” Nick said, his body stiffening.

Maddie took that as her cue to leave. “I really am sorry, Nicky. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything. You’re one of the only three people in my life I’ve ever … loved. I’m sorry.”

Maddie climbed out of the truck and slammed the door quickly, cutting off any response Nick might have. She didn’t want to hear it. She couldn’t hear it. She was just … overwhelmed.

Maddie raced toward the house, her mind registering the sound of Nick’s truck as it backed out of the driveway, but her heart was racing so fast she felt like she was about to pass out. It took every ounce of energy she had not to turn around and beg him to stay. He wasn’t hers, not anymore. Well, truth be told, he’d never really been hers.

That didn’t stop her from missing him – or desperately dreaming of a life where they were together.

It just wasn’t in the cards. She had to move on.

NICK
wanted to chase her. He wanted to grab her. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to … kiss her until her lips were raw.
Dammit!

Nick didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he slammed his truck into reverse and sped out of her driveway. He didn’t make it far. He pulled his truck to the side of the road about a hundred feet away – in a spot where he knew the trees would hide his vehicle should Maddie look out the windows – and then he lowered his forehead to the steering wheel.

He couldn’t take this. It was too much. Seeing her again … having her so close that he could touch her … it was driving him insane. He was still angry. No, he was furious. It was hard to stay mad, though. Her face, it broke him every time. It was like watching an angel fall. She was so sad, so miserable, so … lost. He wanted to help her find herself, but it wasn’t his job.

Knowing that, feeling it to his very core, he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t leaving. Nick had no idea. He just knew he couldn’t drive away. Not yet. Something was keeping him here, and it wasn’t just Maddie’s magnetic pull. It was something else.

So, he rested his head against the seat in his truck … and he waited.

MADDIE
couldn’t face Maude while she was so unsettled. Instead, she sank down onto the front steps of the house and rested her head against the wrought-iron banister.

She hadn’t been lying – or exaggerating – when she told Nick her life was a mess. Her life had been nothing but a mess since leaving Blackstone Bay. First up was college, where she’d been miserable for the entire run of her nursing degree. She’d kept her nose to the grindstone, held a menial job at the bookstore on the side, and graduated without making a single friend who stuck.

Once she graduated, she got a job in suburban Detroit and moved to the southeastern part of the state, where she proceeded to work sixty hours a week – every week – and pretend that it didn’t bother her that she didn’t have a life.

For a time, a very short time, she put herself out into the dating world. Doctors were always asking her out. The nursing pool was easy for them to delve into, so she accepted a few dates, even managing to engage in a sexual relationship with a handful of them. She was still miserable, though, and she ceased her dating life as fast as she started it. She just wasn’t interested.

Then something happened. A woman with catastrophic injuries came into the emergency room. She was declared brain dead, and her family refused to pull the plug, even though the woman’s spirit was trapped while they agonized over the decision. Maddie saw her every day for a week, and she ignored her every day for that week. The woman was tortured, desperate for her family to let her go, and yet her family refused to believe she was gone.

Finally, on the last day of the woman’s life, Maddie couldn’t take it anymore. The police were at the hospital to give the family an update, one that didn’t include happy news of an arrest, and Maddie inadvertently blurted out the fact that the individual who had ran her off the road was actually her estranged husband.

Maddie regretted the words the second they came out of her mouth, and Officer Dean Kincaid was utterly suspicious of her for the rest of the afternoon. When he overheard Maddie tell the family how desperate the woman was to pass on, he cornered her to ask about her abilities.

Maddie initially feigned ignorance. Her mother had instilled the need for secrecy into her at a very young age. That’s why she’d never told Nick what she could do. What would he have said if she told him? How would that conversation even go? Maddie knew, without a doubt, no matter how loyal Nick was, he would never be able to understand that not only could she see and talk to ghosts – but she also had a sixth sense that allowed her to find certain things, including missing people. He would’ve thought she was lying – and crazy – and she couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on his face. She preferred to remember the way he used to look at her, like she was fun and eccentric – and his very best friend in the world. Those were the memories she clung to.

After the woman died at the hospital, Kincaid started showing up with case files. He wasn’t sure exactly how Maddie’s “peculiarity” worked, but he was convinced he could use it to his advantage. Maddie ignored him for a long time, but when he came to her with a missing person’s case involving a small child, Maddie couldn’t turn away.

She found the eight-year-old girl chained to a radiator in the basement of an abandoned building in Detroit in less than five hours. She helped find the suspect involved in the kidnapping two hours later. After that, Kincaid was on her doorstep once a week – no matter how hard Maddie protested. That lasted for two years, until … well … it suddenly stopped.

Maddie shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not ever again.

Maddie lifted her head, her resolve strengthened enough to consider going into the house. Magicks was still a mess, and if she planned on reopening on time next week, she was going to have to get moving on the inventory and cleaning. Now was as good of a time as any.

Olivia was watching Maddie, clear blue eyes studying her, when she got to her feet.

“Mom. What’s going on?”

“I was just wondering that myself,” Olivia said. “Why are you sitting out here?”

“I was just … .”

“Collecting yourself, I know,” Olivia said. “You did it all the time when you were a kid – and especially when you were a teenager. You never wanted me to know when you were upset, so you’d sit out here for hours until you convinced yourself that I wouldn’t notice how red and puffy your eyes were.”

“You knew that?” Maddie was stunned.

“Of course I knew that. I’m your mother.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Olivia shrugged. “You didn’t want me to know. I figured you’d come to me eventually, but you never did. Do you want to tell me what’s wrong today?”

Maddie recounted her afternoon, not leaving a thing out. When she was done, Olivia was smiling. It wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. “A woman is dead. I don’t think it’s very funny.”

“Of course it’s not funny,” Olivia replied. “That’s not why I was smiling.”

“Why were you smiling?”

“I just like to see you and Nick working your way back to each other.”

“We’re not working our way back to each other,” Maddie said, annoyed. “He’s got a girlfriend. Did you miss that part of the conversation?”

“No,” Olivia said. “I’m sure she’s a lovely girl. I hope she’s not hurt too much when Nick dumps her.”

“Why is Nick going to dump her?”

“Oh, sunshine, that was set in stone the minute you stepped back into this town,” Olivia said. “Nick won’t be able to stay away from you. He never could.”

“Nick hates me, Mom.”

“He’s hurt and angry,” Olivia countered. “He doesn’t hate you. He could never hate you.”

“Are you suddenly omnipotent now that you’re dead?” Maddie challenged.

“That’s not ghost powers, sunshine,” Olivia said. “That’s mom powers. Come on. Let’s take a walk. You’ll feel better once you burn off some of this excess energy.”

“I don’t want to take a walk.”

“Well, you’re going to,” Olivia said. “I’m still your mother. Now, get your butt in gear, young lady. I don’t want to sit here and watch you mope for one more second.”

“You know, once you’re dead, you can’t boss me around anymore,” Maddie said. “That’s a rule.”

Olivia ignored her. “March!”

NICK
lifted his head when he saw Maddie trudge into the woods that surrounded the backside of her family’s property. She appeared to be talking to someone – but she was alone.

That was … odd.

It’s none of your business
, Nick told himself. If she wants to wander around the woods talking to herself, you don’t care. She’s probably going crazy. The guilt from leaving him had driven her over the edge. That should make him happy. She deserved it.

Nick was out of his truck before he realized what he was doing, and he was halfway into the woods before he acknowledged that he was following her. He just had to know who she was talking to.

After a few minutes of treading lightly – he didn’t want her to hear him, after all – he heard Maddie’s melodious voice.

“I am not pouting.”