Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(39)

“Sure, I’ve got no—” Sam broke off and looked at him closely. “Holy crap. Are you misting up?”

With horror, Alex became aware that his eyes were watering. He was about to start bawling. “Dust,” he managed to say. Turning away, he added in a muffled voice, “I’m going upstairs. Work on the attic.”

“I’ll come up and help you.”

“No, I’m on it. You sweep up down here. I need some private time.”

“You get a lot of private time already,” Sam said. “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have some company.”

That almost provoked a laugh from Alex. “I haven’t been alone for months,” he wanted to tell his brother. “I’m being haunted.”

He could feel the weight of Sam’s gaze.

“Al … you okay?” his brother asked.

“I’m just great,” Alex said viciously, heading out of the room.

The ghost’s mood hadn’t eased by the time they reached the attic. Alex reflected grimly that there was something worse than being followed everywhere by a spook, and that was being followed by a spook who had gone full emo on him.

“It may have escaped your notice,” Alex said in a murderous tone, “that I suck at dealing with my own baggage. I’m damned if I can deal with yours.”

“At least you know what your baggage is,” the ghost said, glaring at him.

“Yeah, which is why I spend half my time drinking to forget it.”

“Only half?” came the sarcastic rejoinder.

Alex brandished the handful of printed silk in one hand. “You really think this was yours?”

“Take it easy with that. Yes, it’s mine.”

Alex held up the letter in his other hand. “And you think this was about you.”

The ghost responded with a single nod. His eyes were midnight-dark, his features grim. “I think Emma wrote it.”

“Emma.” Alex blinked in astonishment, his fury fading. “Zoë’s grandmother? You think you and she …” Slowly he made his way to the staircase and lowered to the top step. “That’s a hell of a leap to take,” he said, “with nothing to back it up.”

“She was a writer for the Herald—”

“I know. And she lived here, and maybe there’s some minuscule chance that typewriter might have been hers. But there’s no proof of anything.”

“I don’t need proof. I’m remembering things. I remember her. And I know that piece of cloth in your hand was mine.”

Alex unfolded the blood chit and looked at it again. “There’s no name on this. So you can’t be sure it’s yours.”

“Is there a serial number?”

Alex scrutinized the cloth and nodded. “On the left side.”

“Is it W17101?”

As Alex read the serial number … W17101 … his eyes widened.

The ghost gave him a superior look.

“You can remember that but you can’t remember your own name?” Alex asked.

The ghost glanced over the heaps of boxes and objects in the attic, the packed-away memories shrouded by dust and years. “I remember that I was once a man who loved someone.” He began to pace, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his bomber jacket. “I need to find out what happened. If Emma and I got married. If—”

“If you what? You died.”

“Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I came back.”

“From a plane crash?” Alex asked sarcastically. “From what I could tell, it was a hell of a lot more than a bumpy landing.”

The ghost seemed determined to invent some kind of happy ending for his story. “When you love someone that much, you wouldn’t let anything stop you from going back to her. You would survive no matter what.”

“Maybe it was all on her side. Maybe to you it was just a fling.”

“I still love her,” the ghost said with quiet ferocity. “I still feel it. Locked up in here.” The ghost put a fist on his own chest. “And it f**king hurts.”

Alex believed that. Because it hurt just to be near it.

He watched the ghost resume pacing.

If the ghost’s image accurately reflected what he had been in life, he’d had the build for a pilot, lean and supple, with enough developed muscle mass to counteract blackouts from the punishing maneuvers of a dogfight. “Kind of tall to be a pilot back in your time,” Alex said.

“I could fit in a P-40,” the ghost said distantly.

“You flew a warhawk?” Alex asked, fascinated. In his boyhood, he had once built a model of the distinctive shark-toothed World War II plane. “You sure?”

“Pretty sure.” The ghost was lost in thought. “I remember being shot at,” he eventually said, “and pulling so much g-force that I’d feel the blood leaving my head and everything would get blurry. But I’d hold it until the guy on my tail either gave up or passed out.”

Alex fished his phone from his pocket and opened the mobile browser.

“Who are you calling?”

“No one. I’m trying to find out if there’s some way to identify a pilot with the serial number on this thing.” After a minute or two of searching, Alex found a page of information. He frowned as he read.