Page 16 of Paper Ghosts

“She found letters that were decades old. So what?”

“They weren’t decades old. They were recent. They broke up when she moved from Lumberton to Hen Town. She got married here and had my brothers, but then she went back for a high school reunion eighteen years ago and saw him again. She came home pregnant with me.”

Wills didn’t know what to say.

“She didn’t tell me until last year that the man I always thought was my dad wasn’t. He always knew, though. Apparently, my birth father’s hair is red, too. He made my mom stay, but she’s leaving when I graduate, which is why she told me I had to have a plan. If Dean finds out, he’ll call off our engagement. His grandparents are conservative. They think I’m from a good family. I’ve put too much time into this. I can’t start all over. I’ll have nowhere to go. Not everyone’s life is as easy as yours.” She looked at Wills, pleading. “If I thought for a moment Jack was permanent and you were finally taking the reins in your life, I never would have said anything. That way at least one of us would be happy. But Jack was leaving anyway. What have you really lost?”

So because Wills was unhappy before, it didn’t matter that she was unhappy now? How easily the people around her justified hurting her.

“Among other things,” Wills said, going to the door and opening it, “I lost my best friends.”

“Are you going to say anything?”

She pointed for Dorothy to get out. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Wills,” someone whispered.

She opened her eyes. The storm that had been brewing all evening had finally blown in. Rain was whooshing against the window, sounding like someone tapping against the glass. Maybe that’s what she heard.

“Wills. Wake up.”

She turned her head on her pillow to find Jack sitting on the edge of her bed. He was wearing the clothes he’d had on earlier that day, only now he had another yellow rose pinned to his shirt.

She sat up slowly and turned on her bedside light. Mrs. Orr wasn’t the best at remembering to lock the front door, not that anyone who knew better would have dared to enter uninvited. But how had he gotten past Gram’s room? This was an old house and the floorboards creaked like knee joints. You couldn’t sneak around easily in it.

Then again, Gram had been hitting the gin hard that evening.

“Come with me, Wills. We have to go,” he said, standing, and she saw he was carrying the black umbrella from his guitar case. It was still dripping. “There’s not much time.”

“Go where?” she asked, incredulous. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You took her money. You let her buy you like she buys everything else. You could have just walked away, Jack. It still would’ve hurt, because it was always going to hurt when you left, but I would have blamed her, not you. And I would’ve been able to live the rest of my life thinking there was one person who actually saw my real value. But you took that, too.”

“Oh, God, no,” he said as he sat back down and reached for her. She angled away from him. “Wills, I was about to walk away and leave your grandmother holding the check. I swear, I was. I wanted to show her, and you, how powerless she really is. But then I thought if I had money, it might make it easier for you to leave. Because she certainly wouldn’t give us a going-away gift.” He took the check out of his jeans pocket and ripped it in two in front of her. “You will always be enough. I love you, Wills. But I have nothing to offer you but my soul.”

She just stared at him, so raw and alive.

“You told me when the time came, to go out in the world and be happy,” he said, “but I can’t do that without you. I don’t know what you’ve done to me. I don’t think I can exist without you. If I left, even if I died, part of me would still be here because you are. Don’t make me live half a life. Don’t make yourself live half a life. Come with me. Please, Wills.”

Maybe she thought she’d never really had a choice in her life because she was always too scared to make one. It was easier to leave it up to other people. Making a choice, a real choice, took courage, after all. You had to be willing to give up something in order to take a chance on something else.

She suddenly leaned forward and kissed him.

He smiled against her lips and put a hand to her hair. “Hurry,” he said. “We need to get as much distance as we can before morning, when Penwell finds out I stole his car.”

Wills got up and changed out of her nightgown into jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Then she grabbed a bag from her closet and stuffed as many clothes into it as she could. She had some money in her purse, but not enough, so she took her jewelry box, as well. She had a few expensive rings and necklaces her grandmother had gifted her over the years, which she could sell later to get them started. To get them settled. There were more valuable items in the house, and Gram always kept cash in a secret drawer in her desk, but Wills wasn’t going to give any other reason for the law to come after them. Their new life together started tonight. A clean slate. Somewhere, anywhere. She didn’t care.

She finally turned to him. He was standing by the door. “I think I’m scared,” she said.

“Here, take this,” he said, handing her the umbrella. “We can get through any storm.”

They crept along the hallway, Wills showing him where to avoid the creaks in the floorboards. They’d just reached the staircase when they heard behind them, “Stay where you are, Willamena.”

They both turned to see Gram in a dressing gown, walking toward them from her bedroom. She had one hand against the wall to steady herself. Her long blond hair was down and knotted, making her look like the mad wife in the attic from Jane Eyre.

“As for you, young man, get out of my house before I call the police.”

“I’m going with him, Gram,” Wills said. “I’m sorry to do this to you, but I’ve always known I was meant for something else.”