Lucky and Scout met gazes over the dinner table, and Scout winked. Lucky’s scowl couldn’t hold up against that; it just couldn’t. He was too… toohappyright now to snap at Helen, and Scout’s wink seemed to indicate that it would all come out in the end.
“You’ll tell me, right?” he asked anxiously. “When it’s time.”
Helen gave a thoughtful nod, as though she knew how many times Lucky had found out the shitty thing at a shittier moment.
“Lucky, I’ve got flaws, and one of them is keeping things too close to my vest. I’ve got some amends to make from keeping too many secrets and leaving people to clean up my mess. Don’t worry. Right now, I just want to enjoy my dinner and hear about everybody’s day. Eventually, we’ll talk more magic, I promise.” She turned to Kayleigh with a smile. “Now, my dear, please tell me you have some gossip about the Morgensterns. I need to know old Garth Morgenstern is still as much of an asshole as he’s always been.”
Kayleigh harrumphed. “Suchan asshole,” she muttered. “I mean, his son, Callan, seems to be trying to fix things. I know it was Callan’s doing that I could get off today to try to make Scout’s show. But Garth had a big board meeting there today, and I got stuck clearing dishes and food away while they all smoked cigars and talked about ruining the planet.” She scowled. “I mean, seriously. They had plans to decimate this protected wildlife refuge in Florida, and not one of them felt bad about bribing the contractor. I’m pretty sure they put the guy in so much debt his family would have lost their house if he didn’t break the law for them. It was gross.”
Incongruously, Scout chuckled. “Uhm,hadplans?” he asked slyly.
Kayleigh gave a smile that was all teeth. “Hadplans,” she replied and all but licked her whiskers.
“Oh, Kayleigh,” Marcus admonished. “You must be careful.”
“Don’t worry, I was,” she said, not at all contrite. “It was a very subtle spell. They probably all got a little talky after lunch, and by the time they went back to their hotel rooms, they were calling their wives and confessing to all the times they cheated or grabbed ass or something, and by the time they wake up tomorrow, they’ll all be absolutely unable to do anything they know is wrong without holding a press conference about it.”
“You’re so good,” Scout said with admiration. “I never would have thought that deviously. I would have done something dumb and gotten caught.”
The look Kayleigh sent him was fond. “Naw. You would have tried to cast the same spell I did, and it would have gotten twisted somehow, and by tomorrow, all of the same guys who are going to be sweating through their suits tomorrow would be all sloppy happy instead. They’d all have a bro hug, cancel the deal, go snorkeling together, and resolve never to destroy the environment again. It would be beautiful, big brother. I have no doubts. It just wouldn’t be….”
Her pause indicated this was a long-standing script they read from.
“What I planned,” Scout said, laughing.
They talked some more, and Lucky got to tell his version of what happened with the table and then hear that Kayleigh had tried to seize control of it when Scout started the trick.
“You were so good,” Kayleigh said, nodding. “I was all high from my little success with those numb-brained assholes at Morgenstern’s, and then you—you didn’t just get control back, you played with me. We played tug of war with it, and I had all the slender kids who loved math, and you had the three-hundred-pound bruisers who lifted their houses in the morning as exercise.”
Scout rolled his eyes. “It was a table, Kayleigh, not world peace.”
“But I’m saying,” she responded, nodding her head sagely, “someday itcouldbe.”
There was general laughter around the table, and when it was time for dessert, Kayleigh and Lucky cleared the table in grudging concert while Scout went to the refrigerator and got the berry shortcake from the fridge and whipped up some heavy cream with sugar and vanilla in the time it took them to do the dishes.
Then they all sat down with a heaping bowl of whipped cream, berries, and a cake so light it practically floated, and Helen and Marcus met eyes.
“Okay, for starters,” Marcus said, looking at Scout and Lucky, “tell us what happened today. Don’t leave any detail out, no matter how small.”
Lucky looked over at Scout. “Okay, so I’ll start. I saw the table thing today, and it hit me that I might not be the only one on the island with a secret. And I felt like a douche, because I should have been nicer to you guys, but, you know, I didn’t want to get attached. So I took Scout to that bench—”
“Tom’s bench,” Helen said softly.
“Yeah. His bench. Anyway, I’ve always liked the place. I felt like… like something there understood me. And it was private. Not many people go there. So I took Scout, and we had a talk, and… I don’t know. I thought it went pretty good.” He looked at Scout and willed him to agree, because as much as he wanted to talk about Tom’s bench and the soul trap, the things they’d said to each other, the way they’d said them—that felt private.
“I was happy,” Scout agreed. “And we did that thing kids do when they’re sealing a pact? Spit on our hands to shake on not being dicks.”
“Yeah, that,” Lucky said. “And then our palms connected and shit got… weird.”
“Describe weird,” Marcus said ruminatively.
Scout took over, and boy, did he remember everything. From the color of the light when their palms connected to the spell he’d cast to keep the window open so they could memorize what they saw. He remembered every ghost, from the expression on their faces to the clothing they wore to the grief that brought them to that place, and he gave a detailed accounting from beginning to end. When he was finished, he looked at Lucky.
“Did I forget anything?”
Lucky shook his head. “Not that I can remember.” He took a breath. “But… but I think there was a, you know, a connecting emotion between all the ghosts there. It’s not like you left it out. It’s like, you know, you didn’t notice it. There was… I mean, all of them were stuck there for one reason or another. Those kids—the couple—getting beat there. I think they got beat todeaththere. Or at least one of them did. The woman scrubbing the bench? Her life stopped when Tom, whoever he was to her, went away. The little girl crying was watching the horizon for the beginning and end of her world. And the guy sitting on the bench—it was the same thing. Everybody we saw, their hearts stopped somehow because of something that happened in that clearing.”
There was silence around the table then, and Helen spoke next.
