Page 9 of Halloween Haunting
“So,” Anna chimed, taking a stance beside her. “What do you think?”
Grace breathed it in. For the first time since her divorce, she felt sure of herself. She felt sure and certain and firm. This was it. This was it and it felt right, whatever right even meant for Grace.She let an easy smile stretch across her face. It was a beginning and it was better than she ever could have imagined.
“I think it's perfect. It’s allperfect.”
5
Grace woke up long before the sun did.
She was sure that she only managed to get a handful of hours of sleep in, but that didn’t stop her from feeling wide awake. A short stack of boxes sat in the living area, just waiting to be opened and unpacked. Before there was even light streaming through the trees, when the forest still lingered in a misty darkness, Grace was sitting on the floor with a box cutter, ripping into her new life with greedy fingers. It didn’t take long for her to consider herself fully moved into the Lantern House, with not many things to actually call her own. Chuck managed to slip away with most of the things she once considered her belongings, and though it bothered her far more than it should’ve before, Grace didn’t mind it too much anymore.
All of the Lantern House was her own after all, and Chuck’s grubby little fingers had never touched it. The woman he had an affair with never stepped beyond the threshold, and she never would. There was something gratifying about that, far more meaningful than signing a stack of documents and changing her name. So Grace stacked her precious cookbooks in the kitchen proudly, sliding her empty blue vase beside it. She put themtogether and smiled with a nod of her chin. It was small, but it was hers.
Grace walked barefooted through the house as she waited for the sun to rise. The cold hardwood floor melded to her touch, learning her as much as she was learning it. The cracks in the floor, the splintering in the floors, the creaking in the steps – she listened to every sound, felt every groove, and memorized it. Every one of those things belonged to her, and that was more than enough to be grateful for.
As the sun cracked across the lake’s misty surface, Grace eagerly brewed a pot of coffee. The bitter scent traveled through the entire house till the machine let out a sharp beep. Somehow, she was coursing through the kitchen as though she had been there all her life, plucking the bottle of vanilla creamer from the fridge and letting its creamy contents spill into her dark brew. The drink came together in seconds and was warming her from the inside out in no time. Grace slipped on a pair of fuzzy slippers and tightened her long cardigan around her torso before stepping out onto the quiet porch, instantly greeted by the sound of quiet birdsong.
Grace stepped further into the backyard, watching a slow moving fog crawl across the lake’s surface from the comfort of her wide porch. The sweetened coffee filled her belly as she took small sips, an eagerness to conquer the first day in her new life slowly festering, growing as bright as the rising sun.
“Mornin’.”
She jerked back, almost spilling the hot coffee across her vulnerable fingers. To the right of the Lantern House’s back porch was another backyard, where a house with only one floor opened up into a more narrow sitting area. There were a pair of simple chairs set up on that porch, with a rectangular table set up between them. But the furniture was absolutely thelastthing that Grace was paying attention to.
Leaning forward in one of the wooden chairs was Bryant Paulsen. The quiet and mysterious Sheriff’s Deputy who barely uttered more than five words during their first interaction perched at the edge of his chair with a dark guitar resting on his lap. He had one hand hovering over the tuning pegs, while the other lazily flicked the strings tightly wound over the sound hole. Quiet music curled into the air, though Grace wasn’t entirely sure if it could be considered music. They were singular notes, echoing into the early morning long before another followed. He played like he was testing the waters, like he was waiting for the instrument to tell him what to do next.
Say something, Gracie!She cleared her throat, her eyes taking their time in dragging across his plaid button up and low hanging denim jeans with fraying edges. Dark skin tanned by constant exposure to the sun seemed to glow as the growing light reflected off the surface of the misty lake. She was entirely entranced, only distracted by the growing sound of her inner consciousness.You’re embarrassing the hell out of yourself!
Grace stretched a smile across her face. “Good morning. I didn’t realize we were neighbors.”
Bryant nodded slowly, his attention drifting back to his guitar. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he murmured. A sharp chord followed, making him flinch before he went back to messing with the tuning pegs.
“Do you play?”
He pressed his lips together. “Not at all.”
“It’s not too hard, if you want to learn,” Grace continued. She crossed the porch till she was at the edge, her feet slightly hanging off. “I took classes growing up. I still remember some things, even if I haven’t played in a bit.”
Bryant’s head was angled up at her, watching closely as she spoke. “Why don’t you play anymore?”
Her mouth opened and closed a few times. “Well, I wouldn’t say there’s an outright reason.”
“Really?” The corner of his lip tugged into a smirk.
Grace felt a similar expression trying to nudge its way onto her face and forced herself to look away, a rush of nervous heat flooding to her cheeks. When was the last time she was nervous when talking to a man? Chuck had been at her side for so long that she forgot what it was like to get to know a stranger, to feel a sort of pull that couldn’t be explained by words, to be overcome with something innate, something like fate. She gulped down the rising panic and met his gaze, almost flinching at how easy it was for him to stare, like she was a perching bird.
“It wasn’t a pastime that was worth my while,” Grace finally said.
“Are those your words?”
She shrugged. “No, I suppose they aren’t.” She considered it before she spoke again. Was divorce something normal enough these days to be brought up in aimless conversation? Grace eyed the sun that was beginning to press over the treetops. It seemed like she was just doing things she had never done before on that morning. “My ex-husband thought I should learn a different kind of hobby. One that could benefit us in the future, though I think it’s too early for me to try and explain what that even meant.”
Bryant’s low chuckle only made Grace’s blush flourish. He let his fingers brush over the strings and they released a delicate sound, not at all out of tune. He patted the wood and lowered the guitar onto the nearby chair. “Excuse me for assumin’,” Bryant murmured, his voice as dark as the morning before the sunrise, “but is that why you came to Holiday Hollow? Your divorce?”
“I don’t see the point in keeping it a secret,” Grace said. “So yes, that is why I’m here. Almost twenty years of marriage, wiped away with the flourish of signing a paper.”
He was quiet for a moment or two, letting the words sink into the air around them. It got to a point where Grace was about to succumb to her embarrassment and run back into the confines of the Lantern House. But eventually, Bryant raised his own steaming cup to his lips and took a long drawl before talking again.
“I was married,” Bryant murmured. “About eleven years ago now. In my thirties.”
