“Good,” I said.
“All right. Next—you’d like to know what Astin Reagal looked like?” Jake said, making it clear that he’d offered all the date details he was currently willing to give.
“I would. Do you have a picture, or a description or something? Anything?”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t have a picture, and, no, I’ve never heard details of how he looked. Why are you curious?”
“We have another ghost, who happens to have been a Pony Express rider, and who seems to not know everything that happened to him when he was alive, and who showed up about the same time that Esther showed up. His name is Joe and . . . well, I’ll tell you more about why he’s here in a second. It all seems so coincidental and I wondered if maybe he was really Astin showing up at the same time his great-great-granddaughter has. Or maybe it’s his son, Charlie, but that seems less likely, because this ghost rides a horse, and Charlie was a general store owner. However, if you can find anything with just ‘Joe, Pony Express rider,’ that’d be great. Oh, and Jerome’s back, too, or was.” I took a breath.
“That’s all truly very interesting, Betts. I’ll try to get more information one way or another. It’ll be difficult to work with Joe, Pony Express Rider but I’ll try. And Astin wasn’t one of our more famous legends—in fact, I’m not sure he was much of a legend; an interesting story, maybe, but not a full legend. His disappearance was an unsolved mystery that must have created some buzz, but since he wasn’t famous or infamous before he disappeared, I imagine he was forgotten about fairly quickly. Remember, it was a very different time—people disappeared, people died. It’s just what happened, though it happened a little more often around Broken Rope.”
“I know. And thanks for checking.”
“And Jerome’s here?”
“Well, he was. I haven’t seen him since yesterday. He thinks he now comes here to protect me. Maybe I don’t need protecting any longer.”
Jake nodded and remained loudly silent for a moment. Any words of advice or wisdom regarding my crush on the dead cowboy had already been said, more than once.
Ultimately—and Jake hadn’t told me this part; I’d come to this conclusion myself—it was ridiculous that I harbored any sort of romantic feelings for a long-dead ghost. Jake had made plenty of jokes about Jerome’s inability to produce pheromones, and about what a bad date he’d make to social events, since no one else could see him. Jake had played out a full scenario that included me turning into that old crazy woman who lived out in the woods and was never seen with anyone else, but was always happily talking to herself. He pointed out that that old crazy woman would also lose her teeth, which for some reason had been the bothersome picture that had stuck with me the most.
He’d been bold when talking about Cliff and the amazing possibilities I had with him. He’d firmly but kindly pointed out that I’d screwed that one up already once before and it might be good to learn from that mistake.
And then he’d made it perfectly clear that it didn’t matter that no one else could see Jerome; I was simply not allowed to have strong romantic feelings for both Cliff and Jerome. It wouldn’t be fair to Cliff to split my affections in any way.
I’d lied and told him I was moving quickly beyond Jerome. Okay, it wasn’t a complete lie. I was working to move past him, but the work was slow and tedious. At least I was doing it. Mostly.
Besides, is it really a lie when the person you’re telling it to knows you aren’t being truthful in the first place?
“Well, there has to be something more about Astin somewhere. I just have to dig deep, but I can do that,” Jake said.
“Thank you.”