Page 53 of Firefly Effect

He chuckles. “I know, I know. You know how it is. I never slow down long enough to think about silly things like calling home.” He pauses. “How’s everything going? You surviving without me?”

“Barely,” I tell him teasingly. “Gabe only had to kick Jimmy out once for me so far.”

Patrick mutters something under his breath that sounds like “that shithead.”

“Other than that, we’ve been keeping steady most days,” I tell him. “Business is good. Your patrons are happy. But what about you? I want to hear about the trip.”

In the back of my mind, I wonder if he knows about the recent murder, but the last thing I want to do is worry him while he’s campground-hopping around the Appalachians.

“It’s been great,” he says. “The camper’s been holding up pretty well during my great escape. I just left Elkmont last night. I think I’ll just keep trucking along until I get bored.”

Patrick has always been adventurous, always feeling restless at home. Hence all the different real estate properties he’s bought just to have something to occupy him when he wasn’t at the bar. I’m glad he finally started taking off on longer trips.

“Who are you kidding?” I grin. “You’ll never get bored. You might as well hand this bar over to me right now so I can get paid properly for running the joint.”

He chuckles. “Hey, you get the paperwork together, and you’ve got yourself a deal. I was always planning to hand it down to you anyway. Why not now?”

My mouth hangs open, baffled by the seeming ease of acquiring a bar for zero dollars. Uncle Patrick must be high or something. “Do they sell those special mushrooms over there in Tennessee, or are you for real? Firefly is your baby.”

“It’s your baby now,” he says. “I’ve been training you to run that bar since the day I bought it.”

My heart swells. It’s not the first time Patrick has told me this, but it’s the first time I can actually feel like it will come true.

Then he says, “Hey, uh, speaking of Firefly…”

My heart sinks, knowing it’s coming. “You heard?”

He lets out a heavy sigh. “I did.” A few beats of silence linger. “You okay?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, hating that we’ve had to have this conversation so many times in the last ten years, after the killings restarted. “I think so. I just want it to end. This has been going on for far too long.” I shudder.

“Fourteen years,” Patrick says grimly.

“And the last two were so close to home.” I chew on my bottom lip. “Maybe I’ll talk to Gabe about putting warning signs at the campgrounds to warn people away from catching fireflies.”

“That’s never worked, Evie. People don’t read those signs, and when they do, they don’t heed them.”

Guilt swarms my chest, knowing I was one of those people once upon a time. “It’s worth a shot.”

He’s silent for a moment. “I suppose it’s worth a shot. But it’s been fourteen years since the first murder.” He clears his throat, and I know it’s because he’s emotional. “Since Carley. Ten years since the second.”

He has his math right, though I hate that I know every detail of every killing. I know that after the fourth murder, the police began to string together the evidence that tied each of the killings to the Firefly Man.

“No matter how many murders there have been, they still think it’s nothing but an old campfire tale,” Patrick adds, sounding defeated.

We change the subject and talk for another few minutes so he can tell me about some of the interesting people he met on the road.

When we start to say our goodbyes, Patrick sounds concerned once again. “Call me if you need anything, Evie girl.”

I smile a bit. “Will do.”

After I hang up, I pick up my pace, putting the rest of the books away then rushing upstairs to change, opting for a shower once I get a whiff of stale beer after yanking off my top.

Thirty minutes later, I’m wearing my favorite yellow slip skirt with a slit that reaches the middle of my right thigh. I pair it with a matching stretch sleeveless tank with ruffle straps. As I slip into a pair of white sandals, I check my reflection, imagining what Lincoln might think when he sees me.

I would normally think myself ridiculous for fixating so much on my appearance, but I’ve never met a man who looked at me the way Lincoln does—like he sees straight past my eyes and deep into my soul. No matter how dark and empty I’ve felt on too many occasions, he doesn’t see a broken woman. To him, I’m whole.

Taking a deep breath, I tear my eyes from the mirror and push the door to my room open. An unsettling sensation blasts through me the moment I step out to the balcony that overlooks the bar. It’s been weeks since I’ve felt that nagging suspicion that someone’s watching me like that night I walked to J.D.’s office to find Lincoln in his place. At one time, I was convinced the presence could be Carley, haunting me from her grave, warning me that danger was close—but danger never came.

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