Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6) (5 page)

There’s nothing to do, really, except agree. Until I can find a way to make Mama Lottie appear to me, I have no reason to come out here again, anyway.

So I nod.

She frowns, unappeased. “I can’t hear you.”

Oh, if only I had my father’s powers to make the ghosts do my bidding instead of the other way around. This woman would never get a good night’s sleep the rest of her life, and I’d come up with something even better for my lying, cheating ex-fiancé.

“I won’t come here again,” I grind out, my jaw clenched.

She laughs at the sound, at the anger she must see in my face. I have never been closer to slapping another human being.

Officer Dunleavy frowns, reaching out for my arm as if he reads that in my posture. “I’ll take Miss Harper to her car and make sure she understands the implications of breaking that promise.”

“Fine. I wouldn’t sleep with her, though. Nothing but trouble, that one.”

“I swear to God,” I snap. “I—”

“Come on, Miss Harper. That’ll do.” Dunleavy drags me forcibly for a few steps before I give in and walk nicely at his side.

He has no idea where we’re going and stops by the reflecting pond in front of the house. It’s beautiful, and the house is framed between a pair of giant oaks—I can’t remember off the top of my head which Drayton built it for his wife, but it’s a better gift than anyone ever bought me.

“I parked on the other side of the marsh. You don’t have to walk me.” I shift away and he lets go of my arm.

He seems surprised to find he was still holding on to it. The sun has peeked over the horizon and there’s not a cloud in the sky. The sweet scent of a crisp, clean winter morning wafts lazily under my nose, and I think about what a nice day it’s going to be after the storm.

Nice, except for having to explain to Amelia that the curse on the Draytons still exists, and our guilt along with it. But I don’t know how we could have lived with ourselves had we made different choices.

“I really hate that woman.” The sun makes him squint, but it doesn’t make him less good-looking. Officer Dunleavy is one of those men of ambiguous race and ethnicity. His light eyes play against his smooth, almond skin in a way that would send the most chaste of women in search of a clean pair of underwear.

The memory of Daria asking if he’s single makes me smile. Almost as much as his declaration of the moment before.

“Yeah, well. Hating her doesn’t seem to be all that uncommon around these parts, but it doesn’t do anything to make her less powerful. Or rich or awful.” I shrug. “She seems to hate me more than most.”

“She hates any woman she senses is at least as strong as she is. Mrs. Drayton enjoys being the only big fish, no matter the size of the pond.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “How is it you know so much about her?”

“Trust me, Miss Harper. There isn’t a cop in Charleston who hasn’t been briefed on how to handle that family. Among others.”

It sounds like the truth but also like he’s not telling me everything. But it’s a mystery that will have to wait for another day, because I’m about to drop dead.

“Gracie,” I say through my exhaustion.

“What?”

“You can call me Gracie. I think we’re sufficiently acquainted.” Indeed, him doing me a marginally legal favor last month should have cemented the fact.

“Robert. And even though I don’t enjoy being kept out of the loop, I’m here if you need to talk.” His grin reveals a set of killer dimples. “I’ll keep waiting for you to invite me in. To the loop, I mean.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” My smile is half-hearted as I turn to leave, but it doesn’t stop him from laughing.

I like that. At least someone in this world still has faith.

Chapter Three

A
melia had already crashed when I got home last night, and when I wake up late in the morning, she still hasn’t disturbed me. Worry crashes through me, speeding up my heart before my feet hit the cold floor, and I scramble through the house in my pajamas. Relief wheezes out of me in a sigh at the sight of her in the kitchen, primly reading the newspaper as she huddles over a steaming mug of herbal tea. She looks better this morning, but when her eyes find mine, they’re bloodshot and rimmed with purple.

She needs more sleep—for her sake and the baby’s.

“Morning,” I mumble.

She grunts. “Travis is on the porch again.”

“What?” My brain hurts at the thought of talking to him right now. At thinking, period. “Why is he on the porch, Millie? Let him in the blasted house.”

“No. He’s pissing me off, acting like he’s got some sort of right to bother us at all hours.” She sips her tea too forcibly, slopping some onto her hand. “Ow. Dammit.”

“You know, the baby can hear you.”

“Yeah, well, he’s my kid and your cousin. He’ll hear a lot worse before he can even hold his head up on his own, I’m sure.” She gets up and goes to the sink, running cold water over her hand and wincing.

There’s no point in avoiding telling her why Travis is here, not to mention why he’s been so pushy and distraught. But I’m so tired still. I want to sleep until the world somehow rights itself without my help.

I let out a long sigh. “He thinks he’s my half-brother.”

She whirls around so fast that water splashes out of the sink and onto the floor, a few droplets flying far enough to hit me in the face. “What? Why on earth would he think that? Is he Frank’s?”

Trust Amelia to realize in a heartbeat what it took me five to ten panicked minutes to conclude on my own: if he is my brother, he’s not Felicia’s. The curse is real, and it’s intact. The fact is, even if she was the one who took him to the Travis family, it doesn’t mean he’s related to me at all. My mother wasn’t exactly known for her reliability or honesty.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why does
he
think it?” She swipes at the floor with a towel, but she can’t bend down far enough to dry it properly.

I watch her attempt to do it with her swollen toes for a few seconds before grabbing the towel and drying the spots myself.

“I could do it.” Her tone is annoyed, even though we both know I’m helping.

“Whatever.” I toss the towel in the sink. “I didn’t have all day.”

“Neither do I, Grace. We both have to be at work inside the hour. Out with it.”

“He thinks he’s Felicia’s son because she’s the one who gave him up for adoption.”

That takes longer to sink in, and my cousin makes her way to the table and into a chair, despite her being right that we need to get going for work. “Holy shit.”

“I know. It’s obviously not true, because the curse and everything, but Jesus. Where did my mother get a baby to give away?”

Her eyes fill with fear. “What if it
is
true? What if we’ve been imagining all of this, and in reality Jake was just an asshole, I’m just a depressed, sleepwalking freak show and you helped a vengeful voodoo lady curse Beau’s family for no reason?” Her voice is loud, so loud that Travis might be able to hear it from the porch, which makes my skin crawl. He’s got enough reason to think I’m a kook without hearing about curses and voodoo.

“Amelia, calm your tits. You know that’s not true, not any of it. Anne Bonny hasn’t been wandering around Heron Creek for two hundred years trying to get one of us to listen for no reason.” That seems to shake her out of her panic, and even though her eyes are still wide, her lips press together. “He’s not Felicia’s kid. I don’t know if he’s Frank’s or not related to me at all, but unless there’s some magical way to figure out what the blazes my mother was thinking over twenty years ago or Frank starts talking, I don’t know if we’ll ever find out.”

“You could do a DNA test.”

“I probably will, if that’s what he wants. I feel bad for the guy, no matter what a pain in the ass he’s been.”

She eyes me, suspicion on her reddened cheeks. “You don’t care at all that he’s been in town for months and never told you he thinks you’re his sister? I don’t buy that.”

I shrug. “I only have so much emotional capacity, Millie. I’m tapped out, so Travis is getting a pass on that front. I’ll let him grovel it out, though. For you.”

“I don’t want him to grovel, necessarily,” she grouses.
 

“Right. Says the woman who relegated a grown man to the porch like she’s practicing for sending her kid into time out.”

“Oh, shut your beak and go talk to him, then. I’m getting ready for work.”

She gets up and lumbers out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with my thoughts. It’s the last place I want to be, and even if what I said about my brain being chock-full of my own problems is true, I don’t have a problem letting Travis stew a little longer.

Might as well go ahead and get ready for work. It will buy me some time to figure out what in the hell I’m supposed to say to a man who thinks he’s found part of his birth family, plus I’ll have an excuse to cut the conversation short, too. I peer out the blinds on my way past and see him pacing the creaking boards of the front porch. The twisted pain on his face attacks my heart and almost forces me to pull open the door.

Then I realize I’m not wearing a bra and my clothes are basically see-through, and I scoot upstairs to get ready as I planned. For some reason, the sight of my bedroom, where Mayor Beauregard Drayton and I spent so many hours snuggled tight—and the place where it all started to fall apart—slaps me in the face with unexpected grief. The excitement of the past twenty-four hours has allowed me to not think about how losing him makes me want to fall to pieces. About how our relationship is…sort of on hold, I guess.
 

After he found out I’d not only cursed his family but hid it from him, he’d said that he needs time. It’s impossible to blame him and even harder to believe there could come a day when he could forgive me. I can’t go to him, can’t make his life harder no matter how my own feels torn to shreds over losing him. He said he needs space and time to think, so I’ll wait for him to come to me. If it never happens, I’ll only be getting what I deserve for being such a selfish, miserable person.

Except I’m not being selfish. Millie and the baby are my reason for everything. I love them. I love Beau, too, but it’s different. It’s new, it’s sexy, and it’s not tied to the very soul at the center of my being.
 

There’s no way to hide from the grief under the hot shower spray. No way to stop the tears, or
 
quit thinking of all the things I could have done differently. I should have been honest from the start. I didn’t believe that he could love me, could want to be with a woman hell-bent on sacrificing his family to save her own. He says he wanted me to be honest but he hadn’t been. Not about Lucy.

A frown pulls at my lips at the thought of her. The woman who had stolen Beau’s heart before me, then disappeared when she found out he had money and status and everything she despised. It’s not fair to compare his transgressions to mine. I know that. He hadn’t even lied, not really, and what happened in his past is really none of my business.

The fact that I’m helping curse his family for all eternity definitely counts as his business, and I avoided telling him about it for weeks.

Still, that he kept her—and therefore his whole heart—from me for all these months feels like a betrayal. It stings as though the omission deposited poison under my skin. Nothing I rationalize will suck it out so I suppose I’ll have to live with it, the way I’m living with not knowing what will become of us.

Like Beau’s living with the knowledge that
I
kept things from
him.

I sigh, turning off the water and grabbing a towel that smells like it’s a few days past needing to be relegated to the hamper. I use it anyway, knowing the slight odor of mildew will follow me around all day but unable to summon much concern about it. It’s Monday, which means no kids will be at the library for story time. Which means hardly anyone will show up all day, and I don’t have to worry about Beau popping in, so why bother?

Leo might stop by, but he’s used to my slovenly ways. I make a mental note to call him later as I pull on black pants and a light green sweater, then slide flats onto my feet. There’s plenty going on in my life, but the fact that we’ve got to find a way to get Mel and Leo off the hook for helping me is right up near the top.

After my hair is mostly dry and wrestled into some semblance of a style, I grab a cup of coffee to go, feeling enough like a hermit that even stopping at Westies rubs me the wrong way, and I snag my dried rain jacket from the back of a chair. Travis jumps three feet when I let the screen door slam behind me, but it’s me who’s taken aback at the sight of his face.

There are lines around his eyes and mouth that weren’t there last night—or maybe they weren’t visible in the near-darkness. The whites of his eyes are cracked through with jagged red lines, and his hair needs a wash worse than mine had before this morning’s shower.

“Jesus, Travis. Don’t get all dolled up on my account.”

“Graciela, I’m so sorry.” He sounds so desperate it’s hard to look at him. “I should have told you straight away that the reason I took the job in Heron Creek was to meet you, but we didn’t get off on the best foot and then things were contentious between us, and I thought… I don’t know. There wasn’t a right time.”