Out of the Pocket

3. The Ghost of Green Beach

The Ghost of Green Beach

“So it’s a compulsion that runs in the family?” I asked Mom while we waited for the second phase of the service to begin, seated around the open grave at the sprawling green cemetery, instead of around the open casket in the big, Gothic church where we’d had phase one.

The one marked improvement for phase two was the fact that my grandmother had misplaced her glasses at some point after phase one, so she was having a hard time seeing things well enough to find specific ways to complain about them.

“Or it’s a regional custom thing?” I prodded Mom.

I’d only started noticing it after a minor freakout in which I’d tried to comprehend what would cause someone to nail shut a girl’s bedroom window in a rich town on the third floor, but after a little exploring, I’d realized that it wasn’t just my window, Mom’s old window, but every single window in the Ironwright Estate.

And then every single window I got a look at on the way from the estate to the church, and from the church to the cemetery. Every house, every quaint little shop, had its windows nailed shut or barred.

“It’s a superstition,” said Mom.

“What’s supposed to happen if you open a window?”

“It’s… just bad luck,” she said.

“Don’t mess with your mom and her superstitions,” Cousin-once-removed Eddie warned me from the row behind us, a nervous edge under his laugh, but he didn’t know Mom the way I did, not who she was now, anyway.

“What superstitions?” I said. “Since when do you care about superstitions? And you do know that opening is one of the main things windows are for, right?”

“Really, don’t,” said Cousin-once-removed Eddie. “Your mom opened that window once, and-”

“Don’t start pretending to believe me now,” Mom snapped at him.

“I believe something happened to you, little sis-”

“Save it, cuz,” said Mom.

Cousin-once-removed Eddie went silent, and I stared down at my glossy program, trying not to break out in a loud, inappropriate laugh, and not because it was funny. I’d seen Mom make scenes before, and they’d certainly been bigger than this one, but I guess there’d always been some semblance of grown up dignity to them. Listening to her bicker with someone as if they were kids on the playground was weird and new and seemed to be putting my reaction impulses on a randomizer, because I had no idea what the right one was.

Laughing wouldn’t have put me too far over the top in terms of impropriety here, as far as I could tell. There had been some stifled giggles, lots of talking and lots of drinking, and apart from Cousin-once-removed Eddie and the minister, I didn’t think I’d heard anyone so much as mention Isabel.

That kept me from feeling too bad when the minister finally called for our attention for his phase two musings on ashes and dust, and I was more interested in catching Cousin-once-removed Eddie’s eye for some clue to what he and Mom were talking about.

He looked at me, glanced at Mom to make sure she was staring firmly ahead at the minister’s podium instead of at us, and then nodded his head meaningfully at a tall, marble monument some distance off, behind the minister in the more shaded and pleasant-looking part of the cemetery.

***

Cousin-once-removed Eddie didn’t glance my way for the rest of the service, and as soon as the minister released us, as Isabel’s closest living family, he was buried under the handshakes and pats on the back and condolences of people who wanted to get back to their cars as quickly as possible without being rude.

Unable to get any further hints from him, I took advantage of the milling around period to make a dash for the monument that I hoped was what he’d meant for me to see. It was the most obvious thing in the direction he’d indicated.

I stopped short a little way back from it when I realized someone had beaten me there.

It was the guy I’d noticed at the mansion, the uncomfortably gorgeous one, sitting on a semi-intentional-looking bench of marble at the base of the monument.

Not wanting to break my self-preserving streak of non-smalltalk with him, I skirted around to the other side of the monument, hoping there’d be text there that could give me some idea what it was for without being noticed.

I got lucky.

In Memory of Joshua and Sarah Thorne.

1890

For love in the next life.

The statue on top of the base was, as far as I could tell from this angle, of a young couple in each other’s arms. I thought the woman might have fainted.

That was all there was to see, at least on this side. No light shed on the barred windows or Mom and Cousin-once-removed Eddie’s squabbling, not so far. I wanted my phone back, to Google Joshua and Sarah Thorne together with Green Beach and see what would come up. Without it, I hunted down a pen in my purse and pressed my funeral program against the marble to jot down the words. Hopefully, I could steal a few minutes at Mom’s laptop later.

“Sorry about your aunt.”

I jumped, dropping both the program and the pen, and had to go fishing for them under the matching marble bench on my side of the monument.

The guy must have been standing on the one on his side. He was looking down at me through the marble couple’s legs, and in the split second I let myself look up before hiding my quickly heating face under my hair, I could see that he looked even better up close — big brown eyes, sharp chin with just the right amount of stubble on it.

Damn it.

“I didn’t know her,” I mumbled, turning to escape back into the crowd. “But thanks.”

“Then I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he said.

I braced myself and turned back. So much for avoiding smalltalk. He probably had me confused with someone else in the family.

“My grandmother’s-”

“A piece of work?” he suggested.

I opened my mouth to argue, but all that came out was an awkward chuckle, which he returned.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like it’s a secret,” he said. He flicked his eyes up at the statue between us. “You’re into local history?”

“Sort of,” I said, then quickly explained, “but I live in California, so I don’t know any.”

“Not even this?” he nodded at the monument again.

“No, that’s why I’m going to read up on it.” I held up my program.

“I can save you the trouble, if you have time,” he said.

I was about to stutter to the effect of not having that time, but something about his tone made me look back up at his face, and something about his face, other than its ideal amount of stubble, kept me from leaving.

He was looking right at me, through the statue, yes, but it couldn’t stop him from seeing most of me, and he hadn’t had that little flicker of disgust yet. He was asking for my time and looking… hopeful.

There was no one else close to our age around, no one he might be trying to entertain by tricking me.

I didn’t understand.

I didn’t leave, but I didn’t come closer. I stood frozen there, holding my program out in front of me and wishing I could hide more of myself behind it, until he nodded his head to the side, gesturing for me to come around and remove the monument from between us.

When I didn’t, he quirked one eyebrow in question — god, his eyebrows were perfect, precisely expressive without being unruly — and nodded sideways again.

For lack of another decision, I followed his suggestion around to the front of the monument.

When I came into his view, he slid down to sit sideways on the bench, his knees pulled up in front of him, leaving enough space for me to do the same across from him.

Rather than continue the awkwardness of standing while he was sitting, I did, crossing both legs to one side to make sure the skirt of my funeral dress wouldn’t ride up and show the way my thighs spread out on the marble any more obviously than necessary. His expression didn’t change with the closer look at me.

“Present,” I announced, to hold off the silence.

Without missing a beat, he said, “Then I guess I can bring class to order.”

He pointed up at the monument. The text on this side was the same as on the back, and I could see from this angle that the woman in the statue was definitely unconscious, probably dead. The man’s face was carved with an exaggerated look of anguish.

“It’s Green Beach’s favorite ghost story,” he said. “You wouldn’t guess by the way people here get quiet around outsiders, but everyone knows it.”

“You’re not quiet around outsiders,” I pointed out.

“Listen to the story,” he said, “and see if you can guess why.”

“Sorry, go on.”

He put a hand on the date carved into the monument. “Back in eighteen ninety, there was a couple named Joshua Thorne and Sarah Eidler. It was the usual sad story. They were in love. Sarah’s father forbade the marriage, so they ran away, found a minister who would marry them anyway, and lived together under false names for almost a year, before they were discovered. When Sarah’s father and the men he’d rallied to his side came to take her back home with him, Joshua and Sarah barricaded the doors of their house and set it on fire with themselves inside.”

“That is sad,” I agreed.

“Yeah,” he nodded, holding his knees and looking at the memorial, more affected than I’d expect someone to be by such a simple story, especially if he already knew it. “Well, that’s what they say happened, anyway.”

“Where does the ghost part come in?” I asked.

He shook off whatever the first part of the story had done to him, and continued.

“After the fire, people in Green Beach kept reporting seeing Joshua Thorne walking around. Sometimes, someone still does.”

“Just walking?” I asked.

“That wouldn’t be enough?”

“Fine, okay, I guess that’s pretty ghostly,” I said, coaxing a small laugh out of him.

I supposed it should have been enough, but I liked my ghost stories, and so far this one was, as he’d said, sad but usual.

“The rest of the story depends on who’s telling it,” he said. “Mostly, people love to blame things on the local ghost story once they have one, so some people say Joshua wanders Green Beach looking for his lost love, k********g girls who look like her.”

The slight roll of his eyes said he wasn’t one of those people.

“Others say he’s looking for revenge, against Sarah’s father and anyone who helped him. And of course some people say that Joshua and Sarah faked their deaths and escaped, that he let someone see him afterward, on purpose or by accident, and the rest of the stories spun out of control from there.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I asked you first,” he said.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, I meant to.”

He had possibly the cutest smirk in the world.

I looked up at the memorial, searching for any clues to help me with an insightful answer.

Even carved in marble, even with that despairing look etched into it, I found one in the face of Joshua Thorne.

“I think the resemblance is uncanny,” I said. “Family of yours?”

That cute smirk sharpened with something like confirmation.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’m the ghost of Joshua Thorne, back to search for my lost love.”

He raised his hands when he said this, wiggling his fingers like a kid telling a scary story around a campfire, and I failed at keeping my laugh delicate.

There was silence after I stifled its loudness. To break it, I asked, “So, did you know my aunt?”

I wasn’t really asking about whether they were close.

A small part of me would have liked to hear that I had tragic ghost stories in the blood, but a much bigger part wanted to make sure I wasn’t cousins with this incredibly attractive guy who’d decided to share the story with me.

He shook his head. “I’m a friend of the family, I guess, but I never met her. She was kind of a hermit toward the end.”

“Oh.” I tried to give this the solemnity it deserved while leaping about inside in celebration.

It didn’t give me the nerve to scoot closer or anything, but still, I was sitting there, talking with easily the hottest guy I’d ever seen like it was no big deal, and he still hadn’t said anything to insult or get rid of me, and we weren’t family, and-

“ANGELA!”

Mom screamed from back near Great Aunt Isabel’s grave, mad enough that she must not have cared about the way the rest of the mourners fell so suddenly silent that I could tell the difference from here. She didn’t even give me time to answer before screaming again.

“ANGELA! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

“I… have to go,” I said, with a shrug that probably didn’t come off half as cool and nonchalant as I meant it to.

He took something from his jacket pocket to fiddle with, twirling it between his fingers.

My grandmother’s glasses.

He put a conspiratorial finger to his lips.

“See you around, Angela.”

I was back in sight of Isabel’s grave, with Mom barreling toward me in full hug-scream panic mode before I realized both that I’d left my program on the bench with the guy, and that I’d never asked his name.

***

It seemed Mom and I wouldn’t be sneaking off for a beach day after all.

She glared when I suggested it under my breath, before we were loaded into the limo that would take us back to the mansion, and she didn’t speak to me the whole way there. It was only a few blocks, and Aunt Moira and Cousin-once-removed Eddie and half a dozen other relatives were all riding with us, ready to listen in, but it was long enough for the silence to feel icy.

I went along with it until I’d followed Mom all the way up the stairs and down the corridor to her room. She still didn’t say anything except to tell me to go to mine before opening her door.

I put a hand out to stop her from closing it behind her.

“You’re really going to stay this mad at me?” I asked her.

She sighed before resigning herself to talking about it.

“You scared the hell out of me.” she said. “I had no idea where you were. Anything could have happened to you.”

“Like what?” I asked. “What could have happened? We were in a cemetery, not some big city back alley. And it’s not like I left without you. You were talking to people, I was talking to people. So what if we weren’t talking to the same people every single minute?”

“You humiliated me, Angie,” she said. “Having to go looking for you like that in front of all those people! In front of your grandmother!”

“I humiliated you?” I knew I was too angry to work this out now, but I didn’t stop. “Maybe you should have waited to break out the hysterics until after checking if I was sitting twenty goddamn feet away!”

“Go to your room!” she shrieked loudly enough that I was sure my grandmother would hear it from wherever she happened to be in the house.

“Fine!”

I stormed up the last flight of stairs and, even though I know I shouldn’t in this ancient, antique-filled house where I was a guest, I slammed the door behind me hard enough to rattle the whole room.

Something rolled off the dresser and hit the wooden floor with a light clink, and I went to pick it up.

A nail.

I straightened up to find a small pile of them on the dresser, gathered on top of one of the glossy programs from the service.

Tipping the nails off onto the dresser top, I turned the program over and found my own handwriting.

Joshua and Sarah Thorne.

Below that, someone else’s.

Same place tonight, 1 o’clock, if you really want to know what happened to them.

Heart speeding up, even compared with how the argument had left it, I looked from the program to the nails.

Leaning across my reading spot, I tried the window again.

It opened easily.

4.