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“I was five. I know that because I’d just started kindergarten. I remember—it’s a little blurry, but I remember seeing this guy in Collin’s office. Wearing a tux. I knew it was a tuxedo because Owen—well, his parents—had a dog, and his markings looked like a tuxedo. It’s why they called him Tux. Anyway, he was sitting there with a glass in one hand and a fat cigar in the other.
“I could smell the cigar smoke. He blew smoke rings and laughed. ‘Young Oliver,’ he called me. He said I was a good boy for visiting a lonely man. And to watch out for the witch or she’d gobble me up.”
He glanced back. “I said that witches were for Halloween, and he said: ‘Not around here.’ I mostly remember because that one sent me running back to my father to tell him. And that’s how the story goes.”
“Did they check it out?”
“Apparently I wouldn’t have it otherwise. But no one was in there. I’m going to let the dogs in the mudroom. Got an old towel?”
“There’s one in there.”
She rose to go with him, grabbed a second towel so they dried off the snow-coated dogs together.
“Kids and dogs then, I guess.”
“I guess. One other time, and this I do remember.” He straightened to lay the towel over the rod. “I was about twelve, and just taking up the guitar. Dad and Collin were in the game room—the one just beyond the library—playing chess. I didn’t then nor do I now have any interest in chess.”
“He left the chess table and pieces to your father.”
“Yeah, he did.”
The dogs followed her back into the kitchen, where she got them both treats.
“I was bored, so I went down to the music room. Collin told me I could practice on the guitar in there anytime. I knew how to strum a few songs. Didn’t have any fingering down, but I could strum a couple.”
He picked up the beer. “So I’m working on it, trying to play Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin’’—an oldie, but Tom Petty, and the chords are pretty basic. I tell myself I’m jamming it, and I look up, and there she is. Really hot babe.”
He took a swig of beer.
“My twelve-year-old system’s a lot more jolted by really hot babe standing there, smiling at me, than where the hell did she come from.”
“Did you recognize her?”
“Not then.” He shook his head. “Long blond hair, waterfall long and straight. She’s wearing these jeans that ride low and tight on the hips and flare out below the knees, and this little white top, short enough that I can see—holy shit—skin.”
He grinned as he waved a hand in front of his stomach. “It’s got these flowers like embroidered up here, where it rides pretty low again, so oh my God, boobs are happening right under there. She’s got beads—lots of them—hanging where I’m trying not to look. Pale pink lips, eyes that have all that stuff—liner and all that—thick, catlike so they just sing a song to a boy’s libido.”
“That’s a lot of detail you’ve remembered on this one.”
“It imprinted on my brain and my balls in that moment. ‘My man,’ she said, and I might have drooled a little, ‘you can handle that axe.’ At twelve, I didn’t know axe meant guitar, so I think I said: ‘Huh?’ And she told me Petty was great but to try learning ‘Satisfaction’ because the Stones were gods. Then she shot me the peace sign, and she tapped those two fingers on those pale pink lips and blew me a kiss that left me a quivering puddle of hormones.”
He lifted his beer in toast. “And she was gone.”
“That’s some story.”
“I never saw her again, and Owen and I both looked. That is, until I saw her picture in Collin’s book. I had my first real crush over the ghost of Lilian Crest, who called herself Clover.”
That struck Sonya like a lightning bolt. “My father’s birth mother.”
“Don’t hold it against me. I saw a hot babe, and she’d have been about eighteen. Actually, except for the pale pink, you’ve got her mouth.”
“Oh.” Instinctively, she pressed her fingers to it. “That’s so strange to hear.”
“It’s a really nice mouth. So those are my experiences with the haunted and haunting—that I remember.”
“But did you learn to play ‘Satisfaction’?”
“Oh yeah. I like to think she heard me when I whacked away at it in the music room.”
