Page 52 of Up In Smoke

“Kane and Taggart are on top of it now? You told them it’s Mario?”

Luke nodded. “It’s a matter for the police now. But RPD is tailing him. They’ll catch him.” His heart was breaking and Ivy seemed to be able to tell.

“I'm so sorry that it turned out to be one of your brothers,” she told him. They sat for a moment, staring at all the evidence. Then she asked, “Are you still making your rounds?”

Unable to really put a voice to it, he nodded again and she simply let it go. Standing up, she announced, “We should make dinner.”

For a while, they cooked together, him turning chicken breasts in a pan while she made vegetables. It felt so fully domestic, and so comfortable, that he forgot about everything else. The home he'd grown up in as a child had not felt like this and he knew Ivy's home hadn't either. But here, together, they could build something better.

He thought of all the times he'd gone into Lincoln and flirted or drank his way into a one night stand. All the times he'd walked away from it the next morning. He thought of a few girlfriends he'd had where he tried to make something work but in the end it hadn’t been worth it and he’d given up quickly.

But this—here now, with Ivy—it was everything. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why it was right. Why this felt so different … aside from the fact that this was Ivy and he knew they belonged together. She felt like home.

He had a fatalistic sense that he'd found it only to have it taken away.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Ididn't want to say this before,” Shannon whispered as she slid in close to Ivy behind the desk.

The last of their patrons had left and Ivy suddenly found herself cornered. Her coworker seemed to have something conspiratorial up her sleeve. Ivy liked Shannon. The young woman was intelligent, fun, and sadly, would leave relatively soon. Shannon was amazing in part because she was on her way to getting her own library science degree, and hopefully running her own place. Unfortunately, Ivy didn't think Redemption could support two full time librarians and that meant she would lose her best assistant. So when Shannon had something to say, Ivy did her best to make time and listen.

“I hate to bring up bad things. But now that you’re okay and everything has died down, I wanted to tell you. It’s probably stupid and just someone who was wearing clothing that you would wear … But when you were in the fire, last week, I thought I saw a ghost.”

Ivy felt her eyebrows rise and her mouth quirk. Ghosts were not a thing. Then again, when she thought about it, that was what she’d been told by her family. She always tried to stop and reevaluate, question where her beliefs had come from. She would probably spend the rest of her life questioning her childhood. “What do you mean?”

“We all heard about the fire pretty quickly. I think we heard about it maybe before it was out and I knew you were at the spa that day.” The young woman’s voice faltered.

“Oh, Shannon.” Ivy hadn't even thought of that. Jo had set the whole thing up with Shannon to be a surprise for Ivy. So as soon as Shannon had heard the spa was on fire, she hadn't even had to think about it. She'dknownIvy and Jo were there.

Ivy stepped in for a quick hug, Shannon's arms going tight around her. It had been a week that she’d been holding that in, and Ivy just stood there in the hug, the two women supporting each other for a moment.

This,she thought, this was what she'd moved here for. Friends she was allowed to commiserate with rather than just serve her time with. When she stepped back, Shannon tipped her head.

“I thought you had died. Then when I thought I saw you here, I believed it.”

“What?” Ivy asked. Though initially, she'd been ready to console her friend the last part of the statement had turned her on a dime.

“You were walking in and out of the stacks like you were looking for a book. When I called out to you, you kind of disappeared. Then I saw you leaving out the front door a moment later.” Shannon was waving her hand, motioning exactly where ghost Ivy had gone.

“You were probably really upset,” Ivy told her.

“I know. And then it seemed kind of weirder, since you didn't die. Oh my god!” Shannon's hands flew to her mouth. “Please don't take that the wrong way. I'm so glad you didn't!”

Ivy was laughing as she grabbed Shannon's hands to pull them from her face. “It's fine. I totally understand. I’m impressed you were upset enough by word of my demise to imagine you saw my ghost!”

“That’s probably it,” Shannon said. “And I’m going to miss you so much next fall! Anyway, it was a weird day all around and we were so glad to hear later that everybody made it.”

“You and me both,” Ivy said.

With no patrons in the library, the two of them headed over to the stacks. “Do you want to look up ghost sightings?” Ivy teased.

Shannon gave her a dirty look tinged with humor, but thirty minutes later she was checking out a stack of books on the subject.

Ivy tried not to laugh at her.

“Take care of yourself, Ivy,” Shannon said, as she backed out the front door, books in hand, leaving her boss to finish out the evening and lock up.

Another patron or two wandered in, but sometimes she was left alone in the building and the silence. For the first time, she understood that the entire town knew what she was going through. They probably all knew the Hernandez boys were at the heart of it—at least as targets, if not as perpetrators.

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