Die Job(13)

Hank’s jealousy, despite our divorce, which happened largely due to his infidelities, got on my nerves. I was sure he’d deliberately mispronounced Glen’s name. “It was a field trip,” I said. “Surely Mr. Spaatz”—I emphasized the pronunciation—“told you that.”

“Yeah. But it still sounds like a stupid-ass idea to me,” he said, shaking his head. “Ghost hunting? What’s the point of that? I can’t see where it matters if there’s ghosts or not. What were they going to do if one showed up? Put it in a zoo?”

Maybe it was because I was sleep-deprived and worried, but what Hank said made a certain amount of sense. Scary. “I don’t know,” I said. “It was for science.” I propped my elbows on the table and let my head fall into my hands.

Hank snorted. “So, what were you doing there?”

“Chaperoning.”

“Damn fine chaperone you are.”

His words scraped my raw emotions. I’d already been beating myself up for agreeing to chaperone in the first place and for failing so miserably at it. It was at least partially my fault that Braden McCullers was in the hospital. “Thanks a lot,” I muttered.

“Not that it sounds like you could have prevented the accident,” he added graciously. “The fireworks, now . . . We’re going to have to ticket the kid who set those off when we catch up with him. All the other kids say it was”—he checked his notebook—“an Alonso Farber.”

I was concerned that Lonnie still hadn’t turned up, but it was Hank’s first words that caught my attention. “Accident? You’re sure it was an accident?”

Hank worked his lips in and out. “Of course. What else would it be? You certainly don’t believe that ghost—Cyrus or whatever—”

“Cyril.”

“—shoved him off the landing?” He guffawed. “You need more than caffeine, Grace—you need some shut eye. Let me take you home.”

Riding home with Hank was not high on my list of things I wanted to do, but neither was sleeping in the hospital waiting room. “Okay, thanks. Just let me see if there’s any news on Braden,” I said.

When we got back to the ICU, a tall woman in surgical scrubs was talking to Braden’s parents. “A coma?” his mother said in a horrified tone, and slumped forward in a faint. The doctor and Mr. McCullers caught her before she hit the floor. A line of plum-sized plastic jack-o’-lanterns strung over the doorway wavered.

“Guess we won’t be able to talk to the kid any time soon,” Hank said, hooking his thumbs in his utility belt. He approached his partner to tell her he was running me home. She looked over, suspicion in her dark eyes, and I remembered that she’d seemed interested in Hank the last time we met. I couldn’t think of a good way to tell her she was welcome to him, so I gave a little wave and tried to look nonthreatening. After the night’s adventures, I felt about as glamorous as a manatee and was sure I had circles under my green eyes and a pasty complexion from lack of sleep. My light brown hair was a tangled mess and my shirt had blood on it from when I’d tended to Braden. Apparently, I looked as bad as I felt because Officer Qualls smiled, said something to Hank, and turned back to the family member she was interviewing.

Hank and I rode home in the patrol car in silence. The loblolly pines lining both sides of I-95 turned the highway into a dark tunnel, and traffic was light at this hour. Hank pulled into my landlady’s driveway and got out when I did. “It feels just like old times, Grace,” Hank said. “Like when we’d come home from a date and I’d walk you to the door. Remember how your mom used to flash the porch light when we were ki—”

“It’s late and I’m beat,” I said, not wanting to encourage his romantic reminiscences. I had all those memories locked in a corner of my mind labeled: “Big Mistake. Keep Closed.” I started briskly toward my apartment, a former carriage house slightly offset from my landlady’s Victorian home.

“Maybe I could come in for a cup of joe,” Hank hinted, catching up to me easily.

“No.” I stopped at my door, unwilling to open it while he was there.

He looked taken aback but recovered quickly, giving me a broad smile. “Sure. You’re tired. Another time.”

Before I could tell him there wasn’t going to be another time, not in this life or any other where I had free will, he leaned close enough so I could smell the coffee on his breath. “Then how about a good-night kiss, for old time’s sake?”

I stared up at him, incredulity and anger fizzing through me. “What part of ‘divorced’ don’t you get?” I asked. “Not married. Not related. Not interested.”