Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(24)

Astrid was usually kept in the dark about matters like these. When her parents were still alive, the word “bootlegging” was never spoken in the house. After they passed, Winter told Astrid enough to keep her safe, and Bo told her a little more—enough to pique her curiosity. But that afternoon was the first time Bo actually let her see things.

It was a spur-of-the-moment, grand adventure. She dressed in pants and sensible shoes, and they went hiking through the majestic old redwoods together, inhaling the clean perfume of the forest. It was a warm, sunny day, and they found a place on a hill to watch the man and his whiskey still. They ate cheese sandwiches and drank Coca-Cola. They sat together, leg against leg, and told stories. About her family. About his. The sun sank into the Pacific behind them, and sometime before dusk, she looked up at Bo’s handsome face and something peculiar happened inside her chest.

It was as though, until that moment, her heart had been settled all wrong inside her ribs. And then everything shifted around—organs and muscles and bones and sinews, they all conspired together to make room.

And she hadn’t been the same since.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said angrily, shaking away the old memory. “I’m independent now. I have college and Los Angeles, whether I like it or not.”

“You could’ve gone to school here.”

She shook her head. “I needed to know I could do it on my own, without you and Winter and everyone else watching over me and treating me like a china doll. If Mamma were alive, she’d tell me to be my own woman. ‘Be bold,’ she always told me.”

“You’re the most daring woman I know,” Bo said.

“How come I don’t feel that way?” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard to get the rest of the words out. “I messed up everything at school, Bo. Everything! You don’t even know the half of it. And I . . . God! I was supposed to get over you. All my friends said I’d find someone new—that college would change my feelings.”

After a long pause, he asked, “Did it?”

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t. The answer stuck in her throat.

“I told myself we’d grow apart, too,” Bo said softly. “I wanted to believe we could. Because I can’t keep hoping and wanting. It is killing me, Astrid. I’ve been a goddamn wreck since you’ve left, and now that you’re back . . .”

They stood in the transitional space of the pantry, so close. The dark dining room to one side, the bright kitchen on the other. And them in the middle, in the gray area between. Not dark nor light, not friends nor lovers, this betweenness wasn’t stable. Crossroads never were. The two of them must choose to go forward or remain as they’d always been. And Astrid was all at once filled with a soaring hope, and yet utterly, numbingly terrified.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, gripping the marble counter behind her as her fingers trembled. “What do we do?”

His whispered answer came seconds later along with the gentle swipe of his thumb across her cheek, where a stubborn tear was falling. “Let’s—”

A clang made her jump. Bo pulled away. They both peered into the glaring light of the kitchen, where Greta stood in her nightdress, silver hair falling down her back. She was moving the noisy teakettle off the burner.

Astrid had never even heard it whistling.

—

Bo reluctantly left Astrid and Greta alone in the kitchen. Now that the house’s resident nosey parker was up and about, he’d get no chance to finish his conversation with Astrid. And maybe that was just as well, because he’d almost gone too far. Been too greedy. Too weak. His pulse pounded like he’d been running up Lombard Street with a sack of bricks, and his head was spinning with possibilities. He prowled through the dark house with her words repeating in an endless loop.

What do we do?

He didn’t know. At least, not what they should do. He certainly knew what he wanted to do, and that was what had crouched on his tongue, ready to springboard, when Greta had interrupted.

But was it the right thing? Or did he even care what was right anymore?

He just wasn’t sure.

One thing he did know was that Astrid wasn’t safe, and that was something he could fix. Would fix. He jogged downstairs, but instead of turning right to head to his room, he took a left and stole into the community room. A black candlestick telephone stood on a table in the corner. He picked up the earpiece and waited for the operator to answer. Asked her to connect him to the Saint Francis admitting desk and prayed that a particular admissions-desk nurse he’d talked to the night of Astrid’s hospital trip was working the same late shift. He knew her outside of work, vaguely. They’d crossed paths in a small speakeasy near the hospital once before. Her boyfriend was a second cousin of Hezekiah from Gris-Gris; sometimes he thought half the people in this town were related.

And as luck would have it, she was working tonight.

“Nurse Sue, this is Bo Yeung.”

“Oh, hello, Bo,” she said, cheerful and open. “What can I do for you?”

“It has to do with those survivors of that missing yacht. I was wondering if you could tell me whether they were still at the hospital.”

“You and everyone else wants to know,” she said in lower voice. “Reporters been calling here nonstop. But no, they were discharged a few hours after we spoke. Police chief allowed them to be transferred into Mrs. Cushing’s care. The widow who was making a scene, you remember?”