The Last to See Me (The Last Ghost #1) - M Dressler Page 0,61

you. I was depressed. I felt … dead. I thought maybe I even really was. But then I got better. I decided to give myself a new life. And here I am. That’s it. That’s all of it.”

Pratt sits back. Watching her closely.

“You thought you were dead.”

“I had my moments.”

“And now?”

“I’m fine. I have my life. Everything was looking up, until— Shit.” She reaches for her telephone. “We should call the hospital. To see how Manoel’s doing.”

“He passed. At four this morning. I called before you came down.”

Poor man. May he rest in peace. Poor, unlucky Manoel.

Ellen’s face unfolds all at once. “He’s … dead?”

“Yes.” Pratt blinks up at the ceiling, as if he might find the Portuguese there, still high up on his ladder.

“I can’t … feel anything. Philip. What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re overwhelmed, maybe. Or you feel gutted, like me. Or you’ve just gone all hollow.” He pushes some cold toast and jelly toward her. “Eat something.”

“No.”

“You don’t eat, Ellen.”

“Because I can’t.”

“Then we should get out of here.” He signals to the waiter.

“Where? Where are we going?”

“To shake the past off. And whatever nightmares, for now, we can. Go somewhere pleasant. Beautiful.” He says this strangely.

“Thanks, but …” She looks at him, her turn to be uncertain.

“I want you to go with me to the Botanical Garden. Remember? To see Mrs. Fanoli.” He lifts the death certificate from the tablecloth and drops it, deliberately, back into her bag.

“Oh.” She blinks. “Mrs. Fanoli.”

“We have someone now who needs the truth. His name is Manoel Cristo. He deserves it. And he deserves justice. And the very best of us, I think.”

“Of course, of course.”

“It’s time for us to actually work together, agreed?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, earlier. I guess … all I can say is I didn’t know how.”

“Do you want to go upstairs and change your clothes?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. What matters is we have to stop whatever this is, Philip, that’s doing all of this to us! Monstrous, indecent things are happening to decent people.”

I don’t like this sudden, emotional, dramatic Ellen. Trying to make Pratt think she’s decent, after all, is that it? Her voice seems false and forced.

“Yes, they are.” Pratt watches her carefully as she stands. “Monsters all around us. All the time.”

I watch them as they leave the hotel. They don’t walk as closely together as they did before. Pratt, especially, seems to tuck his bulk into himself as Ellen walks a little behind him on their way to his car. Something’s different, it’s plain, between them. It’s loneliness that’s come to them, I see. Loneliness with its sudden cold feeling of deadness in your mouth and all around you, though you still breathe, and another breathes beside you. One moment you think you have a friend you can count on. The next you’re in a world full of sea and sound, but one voice is missing, the one you trusted, and you can’t have it back again.

It was Quint who told me my beloved Franny had died. He brought the news from town, and gave it to me as we sat on a blanket on the beach. She’d died in her cabin by the Russian River before the doctor could get to her. The baby half out of her. Franny. My good, good, loving Franny.

I dug my hands into the sand. He put his arm around me but nothing could warm the surf, the world.

“A week ago. I didn’t know if I should tell you.”

“Her—husband?”

“They say he’s mad with grief.” He stroked my cheek.

No. I turned away from his hand. It wasn’t right, being touched in that way, not then. It didn’t feel right. To feel my living skin coddled while my beloved friend lay cold, far from me. My beloved Franny. I pulled away. I made myself go still and cold, apart from Quint. I wanted to be alone, in my heart, with my friend. Is it love when you say no to what you love, even though you love it? Because you love—loved—someone else, too.

The New Year had just turned over, 1915. Time wasn’t doing what Franny had said it would do for us. The future felt as though it were slipping like a seal into the fog. The war news had reached our strip of coast. The men and boys in the logging camps all wanted to join up, but Quint’s mother and father wouldn’t give him permission to go. I let him rave and sulk,