If Onions Could Spring Leeks (16 page)

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I'm positive. I know my train stations and I know all the stops through Missouri, at least those that were along the same route as Frankland. It's part of what people want to know about when they ask questions about Justice. Trains and their stops were very important to what he did.”

Jake thought a moment and then said, “Two stories, decorative outside, dentist's office on the second floor?”

“I don't know, Jake. Doesn't sound familiar, but I know without a doubt that there has never been a station in the location you mentioned.”

What had Jake and I come upon, and why? There had to be a reason, and the reason had to have something to do with the ghosts. Didn't it?

But which ghost? Grace, Robert, Jerome—or maybe even Justice or Derek, I supposed.

Mariah suddenly wilted a little, her small body hunching a bit more.

“We've taken up way too much of your day,” Jake said. “Let me help you back to the chair.”

Jake guided her toward the ticket booth. I followed behind, but I allowed my eyes to skim the pictures as we moved slowly through the lobby.

As I sauntered, my eyes grazed over something that seemed familiar. I had to stop and find what I thought I'd seen. I stepped closer to one picture in particular. It was Justice sitting on a high-backed chair. There was still no hint of a smile, but he was young, probably in between his two marriages.

Above a spire on the back of the chair was a whiteish pattern in the film. A swirl. A couple of swirls, that when put together looked like a cowboy hat. The pattern was something I'd seen in some pictures of Gram when she was younger. She and I had suspected the swirls had something to do with Jerome, but no one, including Jerome, could confirm or deny.

“No way,” I said quietly to myself. But no matter how many times I pulled my eyes away and then looked back at the picture, the pattern didn't go away. “Why?”

But no one answered. The distinct voice I'd heard in my head earlier was silent.

Justice had lived long before Jerome had lived. But was there a connection? The last time Jerome had visited, he'd had memories that made him think he'd been haunted when he was alive.
Was it possible? And was it possible that he was haunted by more than one ghost? It happened, to me and Gram at least. Were the ghosts all connected to each other? It was a big notion to ponder and one I didn't begin to have an answer to.

“She's asleep, out the second after she sat down,” Jake said as he appeared behind my shoulder. “We should just let her rest.”

“We know there was a connection between Justice and Grace,” I said. I silently debated pointing out the swirl on the picture, but I didn't think I needed to pull Jake even further into the ghosts' grasp.

“True,” he said, then sighed heavily. “I don't think we uncovered anything that will keep you safe, but I don't know what we should do next. Jerome proved he can still come to your rescue, even if it's by sending another ghost to help. Perhaps you're being watched over close enough. Let's go home, Betts. It's been a long day.”

“Sounds like a good plan to
me.”

“Wow, Sis, you're either upset or you need to think super hard about something,” Teddy said.

I'd been cooking. After Jake and I got back to Broken Rope, I headed straight to the school, called Teddy, and then got to work. He was right, but I was both: upset and needing to work through something. So far, I'd made spaghetti sauce, seasoned and roasted Brussels sprouts, and fried onion rings. Both the spaghetti sauce and the sprouts included onions. Yes, I needed to cook, and onions were what I'd first seen when I opened the pantry, so onions were a part of every dish I was creating.

“Want some onion rings?” I said as I slid a plate toward my brother.

“I can't think of a time I would say no to them,” Teddy said as he grabbed a few and bit into them. With a full mouth he continued, “What up, Betts?”

“I have a question for you. It's a serious one, but you're going to think I'm crazy for asking.”

“I think you're crazy anyway, so what difference does that make?”

Teddy and I had always gotten along, but we were, and had always been, very different. Teddy lived life like it was a party. I didn't really like to party, and according to him, I over-thought everything. Still, we liked each other and were, for the most part, willing to put up with each other's faults.

I cut into another onion with the plan to dice it into very small pieces. Corn, tomato, and onion salad would be my next creation.

Dicing was good and gave the pungent aroma a chance to water our eyes. Teddy saw what I was doing so he moved to a stool a little farther away, taking the plate of onion rings with him.

“Remember when I was shot?” I said.

“You didn't really get shot. It was just a flesh wound. Not that bad. You were fine.”

“Right. But you do remember it, don't you?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember telling me that shortly before all that happened a cowboy told you to tell me to meet him in the basement of the pool hall?”

“Oh. Kind of. Yes, actually I remember that. He was some actor that I hadn't seen before and he smelled like a campfire.” Teddy looked perplexed for a moment. “I don't think I ever asked. Did you meet him? What did he want?”

I wasn't as good a cook as Gram was, but I diced like a pro. Even I was impressed by my ninja skills. More than that, the
activity was giving me something to do so I wouldn't over-think what I was about to tell my brother.

“Have you seen him since then?” I said.

“I'm not sure, Betts. All the cowboys look alike around here in the summer. The hats make it hard to tell one from another.”

“How 'bout the woodsmoke? Have you smelled it in the presence of a cowboy again?”

“Yeah, but not like that time. It was strange how strong it was, but nice, too.”

“Right.”

“Betts, what's up? Who was he?”

I stopped dicing a moment and looked at my brother. On the way back to Broken Rope, I'd had a silent discussion with myself. What had happened at the mystery train station (which, by the way, hadn't been there when we'd driven by again) was scary, perhaps even wrong in some sort of spiritual way, though I didn't want to give the traumatic event that much thought. I decided I was going to let Teddy in on the ghostly secrets. I thought there might be a small chance that he had some of the paranormal juju like Gram and I, and probably my dad to some extent. The thing I'd debated with myself was whether telling Teddy was a selfish or a smart thing to do.

I didn't want to talk to my dad about it. Evidently his small taste of the otherworldly had scared him. Cliff currently didn't want to know more about it, even though he had a good sense of what was going on. And I was completely certain that Cliff had zero paranormal juju, which put him in second place when it came to choosing a new confidant. I didn't
have
to talk about it with someone else, but I thought I should. As Jake had driven us back to Broken Rope I thought about Justice and what would
happen if someday I or Gram or Jake, for that matter, just disappeared. One day we were there, but the next day something or someone from that weird ghostly realm pulled us into their world, without giving us the chance to escape.

I didn't want it to go that way, but if it did I certainly didn't want my world of living loved ones to think I'd just up and left them. I wanted someone to understand what might have happened and then tell the others I hadn't intentionally abandoned anyone.

As Jake had steered his Bug down the highway and past what was now only a hole in the ground with a school of small fish swimming in it, I realized that if we had truly been killed, crushed by the collapsing building, our bodies might never have been found. Or, if they were—if someone passing by noticed the Bug after it had become overgrown with vapid Missouri weeds and vines, what would they think happened when they found our remains? It wouldn't make any sense.

I didn't want Cliff to ever wonder. I didn't want my parents to wonder. I didn't want Teddy to wonder. I needed someone, and Teddy was the person I'd chosen. But I still hoped it wasn't a selfish move. I didn't want my telling him to significantly alter his life. I doubted it would. He wasn't one to think too deeply about anything, or let anything really bother him.

“Teddy, I need to tell someone something and you're the person for the job. However, you can't say a word to Opie about it.”

“Uh, well, okay, you know I can keep secrets, Betts, but I'd just like to know why I can't tell Opie—not that I tell her everything anyway, but I'd just like to know.”

“Because she'd dump you for me, Teddy. She'd leave your
side and stick beside me all the time, and I just can't bear the thought.” My eyes watered profusely now.

Teddy laughed. “I doubt she'd dump me for you, Sis, but whatever you say. Okay, it's a deal. I won't tell her a thing about what you're going to tell me.”

“You can't tell anyone at all, unless something happens to me. If I disappear or something really crazy happens, something that seems to defy explanation, then you can tell Mom, Dad, and Cliff. Opie, if you're still together and you feel like you really need to.”

“Betts, this is beginning to sit funny with me. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” I wiped my hands on my apron and used the back of them to brush away a couple tears from my cheeks.

“Okay, then what's going on?”

“Teddy, Gram and I have a connection to Broken Rope's past.”

“What do you mean, like Jake tells you a bunch of stuff?”

“No, I mean like we can communicate with it, talk to it.”

“Okay. What are you talking about, Betts?”

“Come on.” I stepped around the butcher block and grabbed his arm. I hadn't planned this part, but Teddy learned better with pictures. I pulled him out of the school and to the cemetery, stopping at Jerome's grave.

“This was the cowboy who told you to tell me to meet him, Teddy.”

“You mean an actor who was portraying him.”

“No, I mean him. Jerome himself. I know him.”

“Oh yeah?” He didn't sound doubtful, exactly. He just sounded like he needed a minute to process the information.

“I know him, Teddy. I know this Jerome.”

Teddy's eyebrows came together and he rubbed his chin as he looked hard at Jerome's tombstone.

The humidity had been low for most of the day but it felt like it was now rising. Missouri summers could be wonderful and they could be miserable. So far this year, we'd had a little of both. Today had started off well, but the perspiration on the back of my neck made me think we were headed for some miserable.

There wasn't a cloud in the bright blue sky. I looked up, shading my eyes with my hand, and I saw a robin dart from a tree on one side of the cemetery to the other side. I glanced around the grounds. There were no ghosts that I could see, but I wondered if any were watching us, wondering, like I was, how Teddy was going to react to this news.

“Like as a ghost?” Teddy finally said.

“Exactly like a ghost. He is a ghost—as I know him. He really did die when he was shot by the sheriff, but his—spirit, or something, can come back as a ghost. There are other ghosts from our town's past too.”

“Betts,” he said.

It wasn't a question, and it wasn't quite a simple statement, but I knew him well enough to know what he meant.

“I'm not crazy, Teddy. It's real, and it's really weird. I'm not telling you about it so that you will be scared or worried. It's real. Gram can talk to them, too.”

“Gram can do anything. She might be able to raise the dead. I'm not saying you can't do stuff, but this is a big one.”

“I know, but even if you don't want to believe it, I wanted to tell you so that if something weird happens to me, or me and Gram, or even Jake, you'll know that we didn't—well, we didn't
leave on our own, or get killed in a strange way because we wanted to, because we walked knowingly into something.”

Teddy blinked and then became so serious that he didn't even look like himself for a minute.

“Betts, are you in danger?”

“Maybe. No. But. I don't think so, Teddy. All the stuff from the ghosts is dead stuff, but Jake and I were in a weird situation today and I suddenly thought it was important to tell someone all the things I'm telling you.”

“Jake knows, then?”

“Yes. Jake is with me so often that if something ghostly happens to me, it might happen to him, too.”

Teddy nodded and still looked serious, but not the least bit doubtful.

“What's Jerome like? What do you two talk about?”

Wow, how to answer that one?

“Jerome is funny. He's a cowboy from that time, but he moved here from Boston. He doesn't act at all like a city person, though. You can tell the difference.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, he's a friend, if that can make any sense at all. I don't think it can—it doesn't always make sense to me.”

“You're in love with him.”

“What?”

“Come on, Betts, you lit up like a Christmas tree when you started to talk about him. You love him.”

“Teddy.”

“What can I say, I know all about love.” Teddy smiled and was back to looking like Teddy. “Here's a surprise for you. I'm glad to hear it. I've been wondering what's been wrong with you when it comes to Cliff. Now I know.”

“Teddy.”

“Don't deny it, Betts.”

I thought a long moment before I answered. “I won't—not completely. I love Cliff, Teddy. Very much. I'm working through the weirdness.”

“Does Cliff know?”

“Not totally. I've given him as much of the story as he wants. I'll tell him more when he wants to know more.”

“I don't think you should. I think you just need to work through it on your own.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Cliff doesn't need the details. But I also think it's cool, and awesome, and kind of brilliant. It's easy to see that Broken Rope is off-kilter slightly, but I couldn't ever understand why. This helps me understand. Cool. Very cool.”

“And you won't tell Opie?”

Teddy laughed. “No, Opie couldn't handle the truth on this one. You're right, she'd be all over you like bees on a picnic pudding. You'd probably kill her and then me. But we could both come back and talk to you, though.”

I smiled at my younger brother. I didn't give him nearly enough credit. He was a good guy. He wasn't clueless, even if he seemed like it sometimes. And, in all honesty, he was a better cook than I would ever be; he just didn't have any interest in working at Gram's school. He couldn't help it that almost every female that he came in contact with thought he should be theirs. Well, he could temper it a little, perhaps not turn up the charm sometimes (he
had
gotten better since Opie had come into his life), but he still couldn't help who he was. None of us could.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You're welcome,” Teddy said.

His attention turned back to Jerome's tombstone again. “Any chance I can meet him, or any ghost?”

“I don't know. Maybe. I'll see what I can do.”

“Sounds good, but, Betts . . . well, if you're really in danger, don't you think you ought to ask them to go away?”

“I've thought about it and I'm not sure there's a way to accomplish that. Gram was good about telling them to stay out of her way, but I don't feel the same. They all can use a little help to answer a question or solve a mystery or something from their lives. I can't seem to resist helping.”

“Even if there's potential danger?”

I laughed. “It never really seems dangerous at first. The danger sneaks up on me.”

“Huh. Well, just consider minding your own business from here on out, but whatever you do, know that I'm on your side. I'd say I've got your back, but I'm not sure I could in this case—though I would if I could.”