Page 58 of Giving Up The Ghost
“Go to London,” I suggested. “Like we’d planned.”
Oscar smiled thinly. “London sounds lovely. I miss home.”
Ezra eyed him a shade warily. “After they’re done here, then. I’ll drive us.”
Oscar nodded. “After I’m done, though. I have some things I need to do first.”
The officers let us gather our things—none of Nadine’s rampage had taken place on the floor our rooms were on—and we were told to stay put, to wait for them to be done before we left, just in case they had any questions. Oscar sat on the hood of the rental car, staring up at the house quietly as the techs and cops worked. Ezra stretched out in the back seat, texting Harrison as if it were going out of style. And really, I couldn’t blame him. I’d be texting my partner, too, if he wasn’t sitting right beside me. “Talk to me,” I whispered.
“I think… I think this is my fault,” he murmured, not diverting his gaze from the house. “If I hadn’t let Charlotte play to my ego, to my desires, she never would’ve had an excuse to come here.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I said, startling him. “She would have tried something no matter what. If you hadn’t come here, maybe she’d have come to you. Or tried another property. God knows your family has a dozen.”
“Twenty, actually,” he mumbled. “But only ten have homes on them. Some are just parkland.”
“Oh, well. That makes a huge difference,” I teased, and he gave me the slightest of smiles. “The thing is you’re not wrong for wanting these answers. But before you look for them, you need to know what the questions are.”
He sagged against me, a fine tremor running through him as his adrenaline kept dropping. “I thought I did. But I realized too late that I was asking the wrong thing. Or really, just throwing angst at the wall and hoping something stuck.”
I kissed the top of his head and we sat quietly for some time, watching the police and techs come and go. One of the officers approached us as things were winding down and the ambulance with Nadine in the back departed. “Seriously, though, we need to talk to the woman who called. That one says it wasn’t her, and the three of you didn’t call.”
“Might have been a neighbor,” I suggested. “Have you checked with them?”
The cop gave me anare you kidding melook and gestured to the expansive lawn and the farmland beyond. “How loud was this, then? Nearest neighbor’s half a mile away and not home. The other side, just an old man who lives there and didn’t hear a damn thing.”
Oscar shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. None of us called from here.”
He sighed and threw up his hands in frustration. “She said her son was in trouble.”
Oscar sat bolt upright. My stomach executed a lazy roll and my heart kicked into turbo drive. “Her son? She said those exact words? Her son was in trouble?”
He shot me a wary look and nodded slowly. “Yeah. The dispatch played it through for us.Help, my son’s in trouble. She’s going to kill him!That was it. Just that.” He looked between us. “What?”
Oscar blinked rapidly, eyes bright and damp. When he spoke, his voice was shaking. “My mother’s been dead for over twenty years. It couldn’t have been her.”
“Mine’s in Texas,” I offered.
From the back seat, Ezra called out, “Mine’s a bitch and would help a murderer do me in.”
The cop shook his head. “Whatever, man. I’ll say she fled the scene.” He gave us one more annoyed, disbelieving glare and headed back for his car and partner.
“Oscar.”
He held up a finger, silencing me. We waited until the last car left. Until the nosy neighbor who kept walking his dog back and forth on the lane packed it in. And until the hum of traffic from people who suddenly needed to go down this road and drive slowly past the house finally died off. Then, he spoke. “The crying woman. Describe her to me.”
I did my best, pulling up my notes app and reading him my in-the-moment description of her face, her hair, her clothes, and even her gestures. “I thought she looked a little familiar but…”
Ezra hopped onto the hood to sit next to him on his other side. “Oz, do you want to go inside? See if she’s there?”
He nodded. “Just… in a minute,” he said, closing his eyes. “It might not be her but maybe? Why wouldn’t she be in the cellar with the others?”
“Nadine said it was designed to hold the Fellowes ghosts,” I reminded him.
“And she was not a Fellowes. Not by birth,” he said slowly. “Ah, Mum. Always the clever one. I remember Grandfather telling me about how she used to love getting around Grandmere’s pain-in-the-ass rules about things, especially during readings and séances.” His smile grew sad but fond. “I can barely remember her. Dad, too. I’m not sure if what I’m remembering is real or just what I’d hoped for. Just pictures I’ve seen and a few stories I’ve heard, mashed together to make this fantasy memory.”
“Does it matter?” Ezra asked gently. “If it’s yours, does it matter?”
“A bit,” Oscar admitted. “I want it to be real. I don’t want the only thing I know of my parents to be make-believe.”
