Page 51 of Paper Ghosts

“Was your grandmother really psychic?”

Mim shook her head and lowered her cup to her lap. “She couldn’t see the future. Her skill was in knowing who to ask. There were rumors her own grandmother was the same way.”

“You were both known as the Witch of Wester House. But you’re not psychic, either?” On the surface it was ridiculous. But with twenty-four hours to think of nothing else, it had started to make a weird kind of sense. Mim had always known things.

“If I had been able to see the future, I would have done things very differently. My skill was also in knowing who to ask. But I don’t, anymore.”

“Why didn’t you want to teach me? Not that I want to know now, to be clear,” Bailey said. “But you had to know that all I wanted when I was a child was to be like you.”

“There’s only one good thing I would ever want you to take from my life.”

Now she was finally getting to it. “Jack?”

Mim took a deep breath, as if going underwater. “Jack Eugene Vaughn was his full name. He was born in Los Angeles, and disappeared in 1976 when he was twenty-three. No one looked for him because he had no family. He was one of the Silks in Andy Smooth’s band, but he was only on the road with them for about five months when he got left behind in Hen Town after he and Andy had an argument. He was resourceful, though. To make money to leave, he gave guitar lessons in the auditorium after school to boys who were eager to be around a real musician. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been a surprise how drawn I was to him, too. I loved music. I would listen to these records here over and over, until they were worn thin. Meeting Jack was like meeting music itself to me. We would have long, secret conversations after his lessons, which progressed into secret liaisons my grandmother knew nothing about. Being with him made me feel like I wasn’t just dust floating around in the universe anymore. But I was still going to stay and marry Tug’s father like my grandmother wanted, and Jack was still going to leave as soon as he could. But then he asked me to run away with him. To my own surprise, I said yes. I decided to give up everything I’d ever known, because I didn’t want to be the me I was before him anymore. It’s a fallacy that real love changes you, Bailey. Real love destroys you. And it makes you grateful to be destroyed, because the new person you become is the person you were always meant to be. There’s nothing unclear about it.”

Bailey sat back in her chair, stunned. “You ran away with him?”

Mim looked down into her cup as if she was reading leaves. “This is the most difficult part to tell.”

When she didn’t say anything else, Bailey began to connect the dots. “Did Jani find out? Is that how she betrayed you?”

Mim nodded.

“What happened?”

The answer to that question seemed too much for her to say, so she went to her default position—not saying anything at all. “I’m sorry, Bailey.” She set her cup on the table, and then used her umbrella to help her stand. “This will have to wait until tomorrow.”

Bailey would have been disappointed if she hadn’t had a lifetime of experience with Mim’s reluctance to tell her anything. But she gave her credit for trying. “Mim?”

She looked down at Bailey.

“Did you ever mention Jack to me when I was a little girl?”

“Yes, I did. Once.”

“Daddy reminded me yesterday that I had an invisible friend when we first moved here. I called him Jack, the piano man.”

“He liked that,” she said as she walked away. She stopped for a beat. “I mean he would have liked that.”

That night, Bailey couldn’t sleep. After hours of trying, she finally kicked the covers off and got out of bed. Once downstairs, she went to the dining room and switched on the backyard floodlights, then turned one of the chairs from the dining room table to face the French doors. She sat and stared outside.

As much as she appreciated this new version of Mim forming from the ether, something real and solid she could finally hold on to, she couldn’t help but wonder if her tale was a little too late. Unlike Jack, Clutch had destroyed Bailey in all the wrong ways. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to be destroyed again, even if it was the right way, and as exquisite as Mim said it would be.

She pulled her knees to her chest. It had been two days since she thought she’d seen the man in the backyard. But she could still feel him here, feel his familiar trouble.

He felt like Clutch.

“She’s still looking for him, Wills,” Jack said minutes later as he sauntered into Willamena’s bedroom. He always walked as if moving to the beat of music.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, taking the nighttime meds Tug always left on the nightstand. Sometimes he added a little flower arrangement, sometimes cookies. Once he’d inexplicably left her a yo-yo. It was like he was a crow. “He’s not concerned with her. And he won’t be a problem for much longer. When I’m gone, he’ll have no reason to stay. No one will.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Jack said, snapping his fingers, jittery. When you don’t fear the great beyond, waiting to go is like the days just before a vacation. You create lists and tick boxes, making sure you’re ready. Jack had stayed in Hen Town for so long, much longer than he’d ever intended, but he had never lost his wanderlust. There had been a level of excitement to him lately at the thought of a new adventure, one they would finally embark on together.

But unlike him, until that happened, she required sleep. She got under the covers and said, “Do it a little more quietly.”

“No, listen. While you’re telling Bailey things she should know—and again I express my frustration that you’re doing it in the sunroom, where I can’t listen to my own story—I think you should talk to Tug, too. Tell him what’s going to happen with the house.”

“We’ve been over this.” She, her grandmother, and Mrs. Orr were the only three people who knew of Jack’s final resting place in the basement. Willamena wanted to protect Tug and Bailey from any speculation if they sold the house and Jack was discovered. So, long ago, she had made plans for the house to be demolished after she died.