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I’m surprised by that. “You know him?”
She nods.
Shit. I’m careful with what I say next, because George is an odd duck. “I talked him into it,” I say finally. I paid George Klister, the acting CEO, a bunch of money out of my own pocket is what I did.
“It’s about Eleanor Cleary, right?”
My stomach twists. Eleanor Cleary is a little-known local legend—a ghost who’s said to haunt the hotel that looms above the town of Quince Valley. She was the first thing Cora and I talked about when we were kids, beyond perfunctory hellos I gave her as my best friend’s little sister.
“Don’t you think it’s magical?” she’d asked at the dinner table.
“Magical?” Sam had said, always the practical one. “She was murdered.”
“She was in love,” Cora’s eleven-year-old eyes were dreamy. “She chose love over her evil husband.”
“And look where it got her!” Sam had exclaimed.
“You don’t believe in that nonsense, do you Samuel?” Sam’s dad said. He was a nice man, but blunt.
“No,” Sam scoffed. “Course not.”
“Cora I can understand, with her head in the clouds. But not you, Sam,” their father had said.
I hadn’t said anything at the table, but later that night, I ran into Cora when I was leaving. I’d been coming up the stairs from the rec room, head down, and had smashed right into Sam’s bewildered little sister.
“Sorry,” I said, kneeling to pick up the notebook I’d knocked out of her hands.
But the book had spilled open. I didn’t see much, but I did see what looked like a poem, and the title scrawled across the top which said “The Tragic Love Story of the Doomed Eleanor Cleary.”
Cora snatched the notebook away and quickly stood up again, her eyes big and red-rimmed. She’d been crying. “You going to make fun of me too?”
I frowned, standing up. “Why would I? I believe in Eleanor.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. I believed in Eleanor for different reasons than Cora. I knew that love was unstable. It showed up in bursts, like on the odd night my mom was sober and she’d come into my room and pull my head against her shoulder, promising she was going to leave Randy soon, always soon. Then it would vanish, like Mom the next night, yelling at me topull my weight around the house goddammit, while Randy snored on the La-Z-boy.
“Maybe one day I’ll get a picture of her for you,” I said. I’d just been getting into photography then. “So you can show them she was real.”
It was learning that the new CEO there was going to finally renovate the abandoned east wing—where Eleanor Cleary was said to haunt—that had drawn me home.
It might be my only chance to photograph the place I would always associate with Cora. I wondered if she still wrote poetry about her.
Cora sticks her chin out now. “So, what are you, a travel photographer?”
“Freelancer.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“I take photos of places people only want to see at a distance.” I shrug. “War zones, mostly. The aftermath of natural disasters.”
“Hotels going bankrupt?”
“Haunted hotels across North America. That’s the working title of this piece.”
“How long are you here?”
“A week.” I tuck my hands under my arms. I’m still shirtless, and I feel ridiculous. “Then I’m flying to Borneo.”
