Page 25 of The Forgotten Boy

Not that ghosts are real, she shot back at herself.

Anxious to change the subject, Juliet asked abruptly, “Did you need to look at the furnace? Water heater? Or whatever it is you’re here for. I don’t really know what a surveyor does.”

A different man—Duncan—would have taken offense. At her words, at her tone, at something only he could discern that was wrong in her.

Noah just laughed. “I wouldn’t say heating and plumbing make up the bulk of my work, but having grown up in an old farmhouse I have plenty of experience troubleshooting. I’ll be glad to take a look at the furnace.”

Although she wanted nothing more than to flee, Juliet tagged along when Noah invited her. Maybe pretending to be fascinated by heating systems would shake her into normal behavior.

In the end she admitted that it was more interesting than she would have guessed. (She would have guessed she’d have less than a zero-percent interest, so it was a pretty low bar to clear.) The heating system hadn’t been updated yet, and the Edwardian boiler that squatted in the cellar could have been an alien species from some sci-fi movie. Noah talked her through the basics of how it operated and showed her how to restart it if necessary.

“Of course, the advantage to old houses is that you have an abundance of fireplaces,” Noah added. “I’ll get Rachel’s boys to help me bring a load of firewood to stack in the scullery. Worse comes to worst, do you know how to start a fire?”

“Uhhh …”

“I’ll teach you.”

She eyed him skeptically. “That can’t possibly be part of your surveying job.”

“No, but if I let you freeze to death, then I can’t ever get you to go out with me.”

Wait … what?

The only reason Juliet didn’t instantly combust was that Noah didn’t stop to judge the effect of his words. He just kept on with what he was doing. “Let’s take a look at the electrical while we’re down here. That’s something you’re very likely to lose in a bad storm.”

He flashed a grin at her over his shoulder. “And yes, I am going to make sure you have plenty of torches and batteries and candles at hand. It’s simply logical to make all the preparations you can.”

Logic. Duncan hadn’t been much for logic. He’d had the ability to completely contradict himself within two minutes without the slightest acknowledgment that he’d done so. And when Juliet pointed out such a lapse in his logic—usually having to do with her behavior—he’d either fly into a fury and accuse her of undermining him, or look at her blankly and flat-out deny one or the other of his statements. There’d been times Juliet had wanted to record him for later proof, but she figured even that wouldn’t help. It would just hand Duncan one more weapon to use against her.

And the sad part was, Juliet had begun to doubt her own instincts.

Also unlike Duncan, Noah didn’t seem anxious to press her for a response. Not that he’d actually asked her anything. Yet. What would she say if and when he did? By the time Noah had showed her how to reset the electricity (much simpler, since even she could recognize a fuse box) her nerves had settled and Noah had her talking about her career.

As they climbed up from the cellar, she even felt comfortable enough to say, “An adjunct professor isn’t much of a career. You’re the lowest of the low in academic departments, although no university could teach its students without adjuncts.”

“I get that—but don’t tell me it’s adjunct teaching or academic infighting that you care about. You didn’t come to the farm and charm Aunt Winnie and drag boxes from our attic just because it will make you look better in a job interview. I saw your face. Whatever it is about Havencross that’s caught your attention, it shines out of your eyes. That’s what I want to hear about.”

When was the last time anyone had asked her what she loved? Almost shyly, Juliet said, “It’s people that I like, knowing about people in the past. How they lived, what they talked about, the things that frightened them and made them happy. History is just people. We’ve organized it into dates and politics and wars and governments, but in the end it’s all just people making choices, making mistakes, hating and loving just like we do.” She caught herself and cleared her throat. “Anyway, Havencross is a beautiful building, but I want to know about the people who lived in it. Especially the boys and staff who were here in 1918. The war is dragging to an end, life is supposed to be getting back to normal, and bam! Out of nowhere a virus explodes and rocks their whole world. That’s the story I thought I’d write. Except …”

She hesitated. Tell him about the ghostly links or not?

“Except what?” Noah prodded.

“Except, just like all history, the 1918 flu isn’t a discrete event. It had influences from the past woven in. One of them seems to be the disappearance of Thomas Somersby in 1907. And the stories of his disappearance talk a lot about the ghost boy of Havencross.”

He shot her a sharp and knowing look. “You’ve been listening to Aunt Winnie. What did she tell you about me and the ghost boy?”

“Just that I should ask you about him. Sometime.”

With a wry smile—how many different smiles did he have?—Noah said, “No time like the present, I suppose.” He cast a look around the cellar and blew out his breath in a way that made Juliet’s throat catch. “If I’m going to tell you a ghost story, this isn’t the place for it. Can we go to the medieval part of the house?”

Where her bedroom was. Where she’d seen … whatever it was she’d seen last night. “Sure.”

Something about traipsing through the vast ground floor and up the dramatic Gothic staircase made Juliet very aware of the house’s size and emptiness. She’d managed thus far to keep her attention focused only on her immediate surroundings in Havencross, and wondered if she’d be able to sleep at night if this new awareness stayed with her. All of that space—with only her own breath and heartbeat for company.

When they crossed into the thicker-walled corridor of the medieval core, Noah saw the open door that led to her bedroom. “You chose to sleep up here?”

She thought she understood his subtext. “You’re wondering why?”

---