Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(5)

The ghost loved good carpentry, the way it made sense of everything. Edges were neatly joined and finished, imperfections were sanded and painted, everything was level. He watched Alex’s work approvingly. Although Sam had acquitted himself well as an amateur, there had been plenty of mistakes and do-overs. Alex knew what he was doing, and it showed.

“Hot damn,” Sam said in admiration as he saw how Alex had hand-cut plinth blocks to use as decorative bases for the casing. “Well, you’re going to have to do the other door in here. Because there’s no way in hell I could make it look like that.”

“No problem.”

Sam went outside to confer with his vineyard crew, who were busy pruning and shaping the young vines in preparation for the coming flush of growth in April. Alex continued to work in the parlor. The ghost wandered around the room, singing during the lulls between hammering and sawing.

As Alex filled nail holes with wood putty and caulked around the casing edges, he began a soft, nearly inaudible humming. Gradually a melody emerged, and the realization hit like a thunderbolt: Alex was humming along to his song.

On some level, Alex could sense his presence.

Watching him intently, the ghost continued to sing.

Alex set aside the caulk gun, remaining in a kneeling position. He braced his hands on his thighs, humming absently.

The ghost broke off the song and drew closer. “Alex,” he said cautiously. When there was no response, he said in a burst of impatient hope and eagerness, “Alex, I’m here.”

Alex blinked like a man who’d just come from a dark room into blinding daylight. He looked directly at the ghost, his eyes dilating into black circles rimmed with ice.

“You can see me?” the ghost asked in astonishment.

Scrambling backward, Alex landed on his rump. In the same momentum, he grabbed the closest tool at hand, a hammer. Drawing it back as if he meant to hurl it at the ghost, he growled, “Who the hell are you?”

Two

The stranger looked down at Alex with an expression of surprise that seemed to rival his own.

“Who are you?” Alex demanded again.

“I don’t know,” the man said slowly, staring at him without blinking.

He was about to say something else, but then he flickered … like an image on a cable channel with bad reception … and disappeared.

The room was quiet. A bee landed on one of the screen windows and walked in repeated circles.

Alex set aside the hammer and let out a taut breath. He used his thumb and forefinger to pinch the corners of his eyes, which were sore and puffy from the previous night’s drinking. Hallucination, he thought. Garbage from a wasted brain.

The craving for alcohol was so intense that he briefly considered going to the kitchen and rummaging through the pantry. But Sam rarely kept hard liquor; there would be nothing but wine.

And it wasn’t yet noon. He never let himself drink before noon.

“Hey.” Sam’s voice came from the doorway. He gave Alex an odd look. “You need something? I thought I heard you.”

Alex’s temples were throbbing painfully in time to his heartbeat. He felt vaguely nauseous. “The guys on your vineyard crew … does one of them have short black hair, wears a retro flight jacket?”

“Brian’s got dark hair, but it’s kind of longish. And I’ve never seen him in that kind of jacket. Why?”

Alex rose to his feet and went to the window. He flicked at the mesh with a snap of his fingers, jolting the bee off the screen. It flew away with a sullen buzz.

“You okay?” he heard Sam ask.

“I’m fine.”

“Because if there’s anything you want to talk about—”

“No.”

“Okay,” Sam said with a careful blandness that annoyed him. Darcy often used the same tone. Like she had to walk on eggshells around him.

“I’m going to finish up here and take off in a few minutes.” Alex went to the worktable and began to measure a length of trim.

“Right.” But Sam lingered at the doorway. “Al … you been drinking lately?”

“Not enough,” he said with vicious sincerity.

“Do you think—” “Don’t give me shit right now, Sam.”

“Got it.”

Sam stared at him without bothering to disguise his concern. Alex knew he shouldn’t have been chafed by the signs that his brother actually cared for him. But any sign of warmth or affection had always caused him to react differently from most people—it provoked an instinct to turn away, close up. People could either deal with it or get lost. It was who he was.

He kept his face expressionless and his mouth shut. For all that he and Sam were brothers, they knew practically nothing about each other. Alex preferred to keep it that way.

After Sam left the parlor, the ghost turned his attention back to Alex.

At the moment when he and Alex had been able to look at each other, the ghost had been shocked by an awareness, a connection opening, so that he could perceive everything the man felt … bitterness, a desire for numb oblivion, a seething lonely need that nothing could satisfy. It wasn’t that the ghost felt all these things himself … it was more an ability to browse through them, like titles in a bookstore. Nonetheless, the intensity of the perception had startled the ghost, and he had backed off.