He’d arrived the previous night. I awakened briefly and thought I smelled wood smoke, but he hadn’t appeared in my bedroom like he had the last time he’d visited. When I smelled the smoke and didn’t see the ghost attached to it, I attributed the scent to my slightly open window and someone’s fireplace. April in southern Missouri was somewhat unpredictable, weather-wise, but lately the nights had been comfortable enough to either open the windows a crack or light a fire, depending upon your temperature preference.
Instead of the awkward bedroom appearance of his previous visit, he’d waited until I left the house and then joined me in my old blue Nova—he’d simply appeared and said hello. He’d startled me, but at least I’d been fully dressed this time.
We’d sat in front of my house for a few minutes and caught up in the awkward way of catching up that we’d become accustomed to. If any of my neighbors had been watching, they would have wondered why I was sitting in my car talking to myself, but that sort of scene isn’t too strange anymore, considering cell phones’ hands-free features. After a few minutes of initial greetings, I called Jake and Gram to confirm that neither of them truly needed me until later in the day, changed into my favorite overalls, grabbed my tackle box, and drove us out to the woods.
“So, you think you’re here to save me?” I said, repeating a question I’d asked when we were in the Nova. The question had been one of many, and I didn’t think it had been answered yet to my satisfaction.
“I think so, Isabelle. I’m still fairly certain that’s why I come back now, to keep you safe from harm.”
“But you don’t know why I’m in danger?”
“No.”
It looked like that question, among others, might never be answered to my satisfaction.
“So maybe you’re just here for a visit? Maybe you were only meant to save me the last time or two you showed up. The rules do keep changing.”
Jerome thought a long minute and then said, “S’pose that’s possible.”
I smiled, but it wasn’t a totally happy smile. I appreciated his seeming raison d’être, of course. Even though there was a healthy-sized part of me that thought I was pretty good at saving myself, who wouldn’t want to be rescued by a handsome, long-dead cowboy? However, the ability to communicate with ghosts had made me somewhat less effective when it came to protecting myself from dangerous situations that included one or more of the spectral beings. I thought it commensurate that one should be able to save me every now and then.
The ghosts of Broken Rope’s past were now a solid part of my life. I’d never been much into history, but my fairly new, and apparently inherited from my gram, awareness of their existence had changed everything, including my interest in our Old West legends, as well as my personal definition of safe. The ghosts had certain uncanny and unpredictable abilities that had put me and people that I loved in harm’s way more than once. And, more than once, Jerome had saved me from a grim outcome.
Unfortunately, I also felt things for him that might be defined as unsavory and were most definitely strange. I liked him a lot; I’d talked myself out of being in “love” with him, but, truthfully, I wasn’t sure yet. I was one hundred percent sure that I loved my alive and still-breathing-oxygen boyfriend, Cliff (who didn’t know about and couldn’t communicate with the ghosts), so I’d decided that that love should trump my uncertainty about Jerome. It was a stupid thing to feel anyway—love for a ghost I’d only recently met. But, even though we hadn’t known each other long and even if he was technically not alive, no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t quite ignore those stupid and confusing emotions. I was working on it, though.
“But I don’t seem to be in much danger. Even the river’s not running too quickly. If I fell in, I could probably get out just fine. And I haven’t seen a ghost since the last time you were here, when Gent visited.”