The Line (Witching Savannah, #1)(14)

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. Trying to fool a telepath is no easy feat, but Oliver let me get away with it. In a few minutes, pretense turned to reality, and I drifted off.

It must have been around midnight when I woke up. My first thought was that a nurse must have come into the room, but as my eyes focused, my heart skipped a beat before hiding its head in shame. It was no nurse. Jackson was standing over me. He ran his right index finger along my cheek, and held the other up to his lips to shush me.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispered, his voice husky. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.” I marveled at how good he looked even under the dim fluorescent lighting—his blond curls gleamed and his eyes shone bright blue. It was as if he carried a patch of the summer sky with him wherever he went.

“How’d you get in here?” I asked. “It’s way past visiting hours, isn’t it? The monitor I was connected to bore witness to the effect he had on me—my pulse was racing. I knew he belonged to my sister, and I knew it was wrong. But in the end, it was harmless. I could never compete with Maisie, and Jackson adored her. Eventually the two of them would marry and make beautiful cherub babies, and my little crush on him would never amount to anything. If I kept it to myself, no one need to be the wiser. With time, I hoped that the feelings I had never invited would go away. I made a mental note to be more guarded around Uncle Oliver.

“I have my ways,” he responded, a glint in his eye. “Oliver said you were doing okay, but I wanted to see for myself.”

“What about Maisie?”

“Don’t you worry about her. She’s at home getting rested up. Your family has something big cooking, and Maisie is evidently going to be right in the thick of it. She spent most of the day with Iris and Connor, then they put her to bed early. They were all being real closed-mouthed about what was going on, and Connor invited me to leave right after dinner in his usual charming manner. Maisie told me she’d explain everything tomorrow. Something about a ‘line’ that’s been disrupted by Ginny’s death.”

“Someone’s going to need to take her place,” I realized out loud, instantly regretting my words. I didn’t know how much Maisie had already shared with him, but I did know that it wasn’t my place to do any of that sharing. “Ignore me,” I said, trying to sound more discombobulated than I was. “I think my brain still has some crossed wires.”

He smiled at me and took my hand. “I expect that I’ll get used to all of this spooky stuff your family’s into sooner or later,” he said, “but I’ve got to admit that I was feeling the need for a little bit of normal, and I started thinking about you.”

I felt myself flinch and pulled my hand out of his grasp. Normal wasn’t exactly a compliment in my family, and it unquestionably wasn’t a word I wanted to hear Jackson use to describe me.

“I’m sorry,” he said tenderly. “I shouldn’t be bothering you. I just wanted to check on you. You close your eyes now, and get back to sleep,” he said, and despite myself, I did as he asked. I felt his lips brush my forehead, the way a parent might kiss a sick child. And then quickly, tentatively his lips touched mine. My eyes popped back open, but he was already gone.





SIX


I spent another full day in bed after being released from the hospital, but at least it was my own bed. When I awoke early the following morning, I felt normal again, and was itching to get out. I made a point of abandoning my cell phone on the night table before making my escape, hoping to evade Iris’s mothering. The years I’d spent sneaking out as a teenager served me well; I climbed out the window and down the trellis, and found myself free on a fine, if humid, morning.

I started wandering around Savannah more or less on automatic pilot, without thinking about where I’d end up. I found myself near Chippewa Square, so I grabbed a coffee to go at Gallery and went into the park. The city had recently cut back the overgrown azaleas that many homeless had been using as makeshift shelters. I recognized the necessity of the work, but it still seemed like a shame. I kind of liked Chippewa in its derelict state; there was something familiar and even comforting about it.

The benches were all occupied, either by tourists doing their best Forrest Gump impersonations for the camera or by the very homeless people that the city was hoping to shoo out of the square. I deposited myself on the ground in the shade of my favorite tree. I tried to avoid thinking of Ginny, and of the violence done to her, by eavesdropping on every conversation around me. I drank my coffee and let my eyes trace the outline of the steeple on the Presbyterian church.

An angelic little girl ran past me, laughing as her father caught her and swung her up into the air. The distraction was bittersweet. Lord help me, how I envied that little girl’s relationship with her father, even now. If only my mama had revealed who our father was, maybe Maisie and I could have had days like that with him. Of course, I knew mama must have had a real good reason for not sharing, but I sure wish that she had.

“I knew you’d be here,” Aunt Ellen called out from behind me. “When you were little, and you were nowhere to be found, I could always count on finding you here, sitting in the shadow of that old gentleman.” For a second I thought she was saluting the statue of Oglethorpe, but I realized she was just shading her eyes. “That sun burns a whole lot hotter than it used to.” She made as if to join me on the grass, but then seemed to think better of it. “My dear, I’m afraid that I’m beyond the age of rising gracefully from the ground under my own steam, but not yet at that age where my pride would allow me to accept your help. Come on, get up and walk a bit with me.”