Lily's Ghost by Cheryl Drake Harris

Author:Cheryl Drake Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307423115
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Before Callahan left that night, he told me he’d seen a car parked on the other side of the road opposite our driveway. Someone coming through our fields had crossed and gotten into the car just as Callahan had pulled in. I hadn’t a clue, I told him, who it could have been. He took a walk around the outside of the house and down the driveway. Came back to tell me he’d found nothing, but to make sure the doors and windows were locked anyway.

I slept like the dead that night. No nightmares. The next morning, at seven-thirty, I was served with divorce papers. The sheriff hadn’t wanted to miss me, apparently. I’d just made coffee. Jaime was still sleeping, and I looked out to see a big Chrysler lumbering up the driveway. Couldn’t mistake the fact it was an official vehicle, sheriff’s seal on the driver’sside door.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he’d said.

“It’s all right, Sheriff,” I said, “one of us had to do it. Get the ball rolling, I mean. It may as well be him.” He’d looked relieved. He was tall and bony and kind-eyed.

He’d tipped his hat before he left, said, “You’ll do all right, ma’am.”

As I watched the Chrysler being maneuvered like a boat out of dry dock, backing down the driveway, I felt sick to my stomach.

The moon floats above the branches of the center oak like a pale balloon caught up by its string. I sit on the porch stairs and watch it. Jaime is lying on his belly, playing with a Matchbox car, guiding its hard rubber wheels over the hill of a battered threshold.

“How about a walk?” I say.

“Just one minute, Mum,” he says, “till I get this Cobra parked.”

He maneuvers the car carefully into a space between a porch column and the balustrade, and says, “Ready to go.”

“Let me button your sweater,” I say.

“I can do it,” he says. “Thanks anyway.”

We stroll down through the fields, the grass already tall and fragrant; spreading my fingers, I hold my hand flat just above it. I feel it touch the skin of my palms like cats’ whiskers as I walk. Jaime wants to check the cemetery out first. For ghosts.

When we get there he steps in front of me and unlatches the gate, easing the metal tongue out of its rusty groove. Before we go in, he holds a finger up to his mouth, then takes my hand and leads me to the obelisk with great care, as if he were leading an ancient animal. In the moonlight, he pats the base of the monument, indicating I should sit. I settle on the smooth granite, my palms flat, my fingers spread wide, a spatter of mica twinkling between them. I look out over Browns Head and am momentarily dazzled by the foil of the sea, its crinkled surface refracting moonlight. Jaime crawls up next to me, whispers loudly, “Don’t look now, but there’s a ghost by the gate.” He puts his hands to his mouth and snorts, a kind of nasal laughter, and then says, “Now.

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