Seeing the Light (A Marie Jenner Mystery Book 1) (31 page)

“Jesus!” we both yelped at the same time, and I scowled at him as I tried to regain my balance.

“Everything okay?” helpful James bellowed from his position of safety by the coffee pot.

“Yeah. Took a bad step.” I stared Farley out of the way until I finally got to the door of James’ room. He did have the decency to look chagrined. And scared. I wondered what it had been like for him, inside me. Probably not great.

I opened the door and walked into James’ room. I think a monk would’ve had more in his cell than James had in that room. A single bed, carefully made, if we’d tried the bouncing the quarter trick I’m sure it would’ve worked, and a small wooden crate as a bedside table. On it was a light, a book, old, heavy looking, with the title
Sherlock Holmes
emblazoned in gold across the front, and the phone.

I hobbled over to the bed and sank down, gratefully. Then, I turned to Farley.

“You have to leave. I’m not calling my mom in front of you.”

“Oh. Okay, sorry.” Farley pulled back. “Thought maybe you needed some moral support, you know. I’ll go stand in the—” He glanced around the room. There were two doors, the one we had entered, and one for the closet. “How about if I stand in the closet?”

“Go out in the living room.”

“What if you need—”

“You are not listening to this conversation.”

“Oh.”

“I mean it, Farley. Go out with James. I’ll be there in a minute. You’re not going to miss a thing. Really.”

“Okay.” He tried looking humble, but came across as sneaky. And he didn’t move. I was too tired to fight with him anymore, so I waved him away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Thank you.”

When he finally disappeared, with many a forlorn glance back at me, I picked up the phone and called my mom.

The call started off okay. All that, “Oh yes, I’m fine, no it wasn’t as bad as it looked on TV, yes it was scary” stuff a person says when she is trying to keep someone who couldn’t help anyhow out of fear. Then, I did a truly stupid thing. I asked about Dad.

I don’t know why I did that. Maybe it was the flowers in my room, and the lie I’d told. Maybe it was the explosion. Maybe I wanted to pretend that in spite of how screwed up my life was, things would be close to normal back home. I should have known better.

“What do you mean, you haven’t heard from him in a month?” I heard myself getting loud, wondered whether Farley and James could hear me through the door, and tried to lower my voice. “I thought you told me he was helping out.”

I listened as Mom explained that she hadn’t mentioned it because she didn’t want to worry me. This cut a bit. I didn’t like the idea of her pulling the same trick as me. She tried to appease me by telling me that Ramona was helping out.

“Isn’t that nice of her,” I said. That set my mom off a bit, because I’m not so good with hiding sarcasm—not that I was trying so hard.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m glad she’s helping. It must be hard.”

I managed to sneak around that potential bombshell, and straight into another one. I knew it was there, of course. A girl can’t talk to her mother about either a living or a dead man without some questions. I got them—both barrels.

“I need to talk to you about Farley.” I whispered the ghost’s name in case James had finally become unglued from his safe spot in the kitchen and was listening at the door. Of course, Mom didn’t hear me, so I had to repeat his name. Twice.

“Yes,” I finally said, when she got it. “The dead guy. He’s with me now.” I glanced around the room, to make sure he wasn’t actually with me at that very moment. “He followed me out of the Palais to here.”

Mom asked me where I was.

“At James’ place.” Then I hunkered down and waited for the interrogation to begin. It didn’t take long. I went through James’ stats as though I was talking about a second string catcher for the Mets, and got her back to the topic at hand. Farley.

As I told her what had happened, and listened to what she had to say, I felt my heart drop into the basement of my soul. I thought it had already found bottom, but apparently attempted murder and an explosion isn’t enough. Apparently, hitting bottom involved my mother confirming what I already knew. The reason Farley was able to follow me everywhere but couldn’t leave my side was because he’d attached to me.

So I did what I do when I get to that black place. I blamed my mom and picked a fight with her.

“Good grief, can’t you help me at all with this?” I cried. “I thought you were supposed to be the professional. Now you’re telling me that he’s attached to me—and it’s what, my fault or something?” My voice broke for a second. It
was
my fault. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t.”

I heard her voice go cold, the way it always did when I struck out at her like that, and I felt like a jerk, as she gave me more information about what I could do about Farley. She talked about the attachment and about conflict, and that she felt that it was possibly unfinished business with his family that was still holding him here.

“Like his daughter?” I asked, then listened to dead air for a full fifteen seconds before she sighed, and said maybe. Children can be a factor.

“So, I should push for him to see her?” I hoped, I hoped, but Mom said it wasn’t a good idea. He had to want to see her, to make amends or whatever, if this is what needed to happen. Didn’t help with my mood one little bit, but I tried to sound appreciative when she told me to keep talking about her, keep working at finding out what had gone on between the two of them, to make sure this was really the thing holding him here. Yeah, just what I want to do. Dig around in Farley’s memories, to find out why he believes his daughter thinks he’s an asshole. Thanks Mom.

All I said was, “That makes a lot of sense.” I did remember to thank her before I hung up the phone. Then I sat on James’ neat as a pin bed, and gnashed my teeth. She hadn’t helped, and all I’d done was pick another fight with her.

I thought about stretching out for a minute—or an hour—but knew Farley was dying to know what she’d said. So I got up, muscles screaming mightily, and hobbled back out to the living room.

James was gone and Farley was on the balcony, staring at the skyline. I thought it was funny when he nearly jumped out of his skin as I pushed the patio door open to join him.

“Finally got you back, did I?” I joked. He didn’t laugh. He just stood, staring out at the sky.

“So where’s James?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When did he leave?”

“I don’t know.”

He’d listened to my phone call. I could tell. “You listened, didn’t you?”

He stared out at the sky, looking absolutely devastated.

“You’re not talking to my daughter,” he said. “Understand?”

I didn’t answer. There was no point. He’d listened to me piss and moan to my mother about him. I should have realized he’d do that. That he’d hear me.

“You didn’t tell her about Carruthers,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

And again, I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to think about Carruthers, because Carruthers wasn’t the biggest problem in my life. There was also my stupid ex-boyfriend who had somehow found me at the hospital. He was higher on my “crap to be dealt with list” than Carruthers. However, Farley didn’t need to know about any of that, not if I wanted him to detach from me.

If he thought he needed to continue to save me, he would never leave. And that would be on me.

I wished, for a second, I could put an arm around his shoulder and comfort him, but I couldn’t do anything like that. So, I offered him stupid platitudes instead.

“Don’t worry about me, Farley. Mom and I will both be fine.”

He didn’t respond. Just stared out at the skyline.

“Mom will work out what’s going on with you,” I said, a little bit desperately. “She’s been at this a long time. You’ll get where you need to go.”

“But you’re still in danger.”

I sighed. “Right now, yeah.”

“So I guess we’re both stuck.”

We stood and stared out at the blue of the sky until James came back from putting on a load of laundry. I left Farley there, wishing I could do more, and knowing I couldn’t. He was as alone as I was.

Marie:
Time to Go

James looked after me like a nursemaid, never leaving my side unless I told him to. I didn’t tell him to leave too often. My nightmares were horrible, and I wanted someone living around me. He was good, and never mentioned me working for him, or anything. It was like he knew I needed to heal before I made any decisions like that. And I appreciated it. I really did.

However, I could tell by Monday that I was pushing the limits of his niceness. I thought I was being good, but Farley dourly kept pointing out to me when I slid over into bitch mode. Apparently it was a lot.

It was whenever Farley mentioned me taking Carruthers’ money, and he mentioned it all the time.

I didn’t tell him he was right, but I realized I couldn’t take that money and live with myself. I was going to fix it when I got away from James. I didn’t want James to know I’d almost done something like that. I couldn’t. It was too horrible to contemplate.

Hence the bitch mode.

James had washed and patched my explosion clothes. When I put them on, they fit perfectly, and you could barely tell I’d been in an explosion. Except for the bruises and cuts all over my face and arms, of course.

“Thank you,” I said, twirling like a crippled ballerina so he could see his handiwork. “They look great.”

“Glad I could help,” he replied. “You don’t have to go, you know.”

“I know, but you know what they say about house guests. They don’t know when the heck to leave, or something.”

“So you’re going to Jasmine’s?”

“Yes.”

“She’s okay with that?”

“Oh yeah, she’s great. She has an extra bed for me to use and everything.” That was a lie. I was couch surfing again, but he didn’t need to know that. “I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” He glanced down at his hands, then back up at me. “If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back here. You know?”

“I know. Thank you.”

He really was being sweet about the whole thing, but I needed to get away from him. I wanted to deal with Carruthers and the money issue, but it was more than that. In all honesty, I was afraid that if I didn’t move soon, I never would.

Yes, I had gotten to that stage. He was a good man. A genuinely good man, and it would have been so easy. I was glad Farley was still hanging around with that woebegone look on his face. If he hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably something stupid like trying to live happily ever after.

I didn’t have my bus pass anymore, so James offered to drive me.

I leaned back in the leather seat, tired by the short walk to the car. Farley curled up in the back seat, looking surprised at how nice the car was. I could feel the questions percolating, but I ignored him. I didn’t have the energy for him, either.

“Want to warm the seat?” James asked. “It might make you feel better.”

That sounded wonderful, so I said sure, and he touched a button, and I was in heaven, the ache in my bones slowly easing. He drove to Jasmine’s place without another word.

I’d given him the address when we left his building, then sat and soaked in the warmth radiating from the seat. I jumped a bit when he shifted, impatiently, and asked, “Are we close to your friend’s place yet?”

I glanced out the window. “Just down the street.”

Farley glanced out the window. “Your friend sure picked a shit hole of a neighbourhood to live in, didn’t she?”

I looked around. I thought it was nice enough. Maybe it was a bit rundown and close to some of the seedier parts of town, but most of the houses in the area had been “gentrified”, and Jasmine’s place fit right in. I decided to ignore him again, wishing he’d go back with James, even though I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I was the one he was attached to.

Lucky me.

“That’s her place,” I said, pointing at Jasmine’s neat little bungalow. The drapes were still pulled tight, and I wondered if she ever let any natural light in at all. I didn’t think she did. She only had silk plants, and she did worry about her couch fading.

“Looks fine,” James said. He stopped the car in front of the house, and turned to me. “You going to be okay?”

“Yes. It’ll be fine.”

“You got a key?”

I smiled. “The next door neighbour is keeping it for me.”

“Do you know the guy?” James frowned. “Maybe I should come with you. Just to make sure.”

“No, it’ll be okay. He’s a nice old guy. Don’t worry about it.”

I turned to the door, and worked at getting it open. I still felt as weak as a kitten, in spite of the warmth of the seat and everything, but I knew if I didn’t open that door on my own, he’d end up staying here and helping me until Jasmine got home—and the last thing in the world I wanted was Jasmine meeting him, and maybe mentioning some of the truly embarrassing things I’d said to her about him, the last time I was here. I didn’t need that at all, and finally, desperately, managed to open the door.