Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (156 page)

“He believed it with all his heart and soul,” I said. “I wonder if that’s how we all are. If we block out the bad stuff and go through our lives until this dark ghost or angel or whatever shows up to remind us of the terrible things we’ve done.”

“Well, we all have moments we’d like to forget,” he said followed by a long pause where he looked up at the sky. “But we’re not all murderers like this Modine character or your old pal the good doctor. Of course, he took it to a whole other level.”

A chill passed through me. Jesse rarely mentioned Nathaniel Mortimer.

There weren’t too many days when I didn’t think of him at least once. Sometimes he came to me in my nightmares and when I woke up I could feel him all around. He was still out there somewhere. Waiting.

I let out a long sigh.

“They’re not all gonna be happy endings, you know,” Jesse said. “You are dealing with the dead after all. Remember your first ghost?”

“You mean Annabelle Harrison?”

“How quickly they forget.” He shook his head. “Here, I’ll give you a hint.”

He pointed at himself, smiling again.

“Talk about happy endings, huh?” he said.

After all this time part of me still wanted to cry.

“C’mon, Craigers. I was only joking.”

But I could see the sadness fill his eyes, too.

“Maybe we did have a happy ending, Jesse,” I said after a moment. “I mean, we were happy right there at the end. I had never been happier than I was on that day.”

“Me, too,” he whispered. “Me, too.”

He pulled me in and kissed me and I closed my eyes, and for the sweetest of moments I was back there on that day, right before the accident, when he told me he loved me and that he would never let me go.

When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

CHAPTER 64

He stood at the top of the butte in the early dawn, looking at the snow covered mountains touched by the sun rising from the east. It was a cold, blue, clear morning. Full of promise. He took it in, hoping that the beauty could ease his burden, at least in some small part, and the blackness he carried inside.

He didn’t know if they ever made it back, the fallen ones. That knowledge was not for him. All he knew for sure was that after he found them and showed them the Truth, they were sent somewhere else where they would have a chance to reclaim their lost souls. It was a hard road and, from what he had been able to piece together through the millennia, most failed. But if they could bring His love into their hearts during their long penance, they could climb their way back into the light.

He didn’t know if Charles Modine would be strong enough to make that climb, but he hoped he would. Just as he hoped the same for himself.

Samael looked down at the road winding beneath him, the cars slithering like a serpent through the center of the city.

Later, as he walked along the highway, he thought about her.

“I remember,” he whispered, the wind carrying his words. “I remember your promise long ago in the lake, when we first met, Abigail. I remember, even if you have forgotten.”

A cloud of dust rose up from the desert floor, brushing past him as he headed out of town.

CHAPTER 65

I met Miguel at Barrio, a downtown Latin fusion restaurant that I had heard good things about. There was a line of people waiting outside, but Miguel was already at a table, looking over the menu.

He stood up when he saw me.

I put the test in front of him. It had an
A
at the top.

“Not too shabby, Abby,” he said, laughing at his own joke. “And to think, a month ago I was worried you’d drop out.”

“You weren’t the only one.”

There were still 10 minutes left of happy hour and we went with the
Queso Fundido
and chips. Miguel had a margarita.

“You know, I actually miss Chef Dubois,” I said. “I learned so much from her. I wish it had turned out differently, but I still got a lot out of that class.”

“Yeah, but this cooking thing is a marathon. You’re just starting. Maybe you stumbled a little out of the gate, but you’re still in the race.”

Our food came and I told Miguel about David.

“You know my roommate, David Norton, right? He was on—”

“Of course I know him,” he said. “I mean I know of him. He played that detective on that show that got cancelled.”

“Yeah, well, he just found out that the series got picked up by another network. They start shooting again next month.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty ecstatic. I’m planning a party for him this weekend. Can you come?”

“Can I come? Hell, yeah, I can come. All right, all right, all right,” he said, pumping his fist in the air.

“McConaughey?” I said.

He nodded

It was kind of funny, Miguel impersonating an actor who seemed to specialize in looking anorexic.

“What can I bring? I mean, if you want. I don’t want to step on your toes. I can just bring wine or beer…”

“Are you kidding? I would love it if you’d help me cook, Miguel. That’s what I was hoping.”

“I’m starting to get nervous already,” he said before gulping down half the margarita. “I’m going to be cooking for a star.”

“Ty will be there, too,” I said.

“Good. I’m looking forward to finally meeting him.”

There was no resentment in his voice and I could tell from his energy that he meant it. I was glad that Miguel had gotten over his crush and I was happy that our friendship had survived it.

He was good people.

CHAPTER 66

“Where we going?”

“You’ll see,” Ty said.

He drove up the Cascades Highway and turned on Dillon Fall Road. A minute later he turned again onto a familiar dirt road. I had a pretty good idea now where we were headed.

“It’s been a while,” I said.

“Too long.”

We parked in the empty lot and got out. The ground was still wet from the spring snowmelt, but it wasn’t too bad. Above us the sun was trying to break through the gray clouds. We walked the short path to the river and a wave of nostalgia hit.

“God, I’ve missed it,” Ty said, looking out at the whitewater.

“Me, too.”

“I’ve been thinking. I’m going to see if I can get back out here this summer, maybe pick up a few days a week. Make it work out somehow. I don’t like being indoors all the time.”

“That sounds nice,” I said. “Maybe I could join you on a few runs. As a passenger, I mean. Those were good days.”

He smiled.

“I’m going to try and get back to brewing, too. Less managing the restaurant.”

“It’s more who you are.”

We walked farther along the trail, following the river down as it tumbled over boulders and ice-covered logs. A few tiny flakes fell around us, but they didn’t stick, melting as soon as they touched the ground.

“It’s a hell of a thing, what you do,” he said.

I nodded.

“It’s a hell of thing trying to make sense of it,” I said and sighed. “This Charlie Modine thing, no matter how many different ways I try to slice it, it just doesn’t sit right.”

He draped an arm on my shoulders.

“Slice it, huh? You mean like a pie?” he said. “That sounds good. I wouldn’t mind some pie right now.”

“Now that I think about it, me too,” I said. “I haven’t had anything sweet in weeks.”

He gave me a once over.

“Yeah, but you seem like you’re back down to your fighting weight, Champ. Good work. Although part of me is a little sad.”

“Why?”

“Well, there’s less of you to love.”

He smiled at me, the small flakes catching in his hair.

I knew I was lucky to have Ty in my life. Besides being in love with him, he was my rock. Solid and strong. A good man to lean on during hard times.

CHAPTER 67

I walked over to the church, hoping to see Father Grady. I wanted to thank him for his help. But he wasn’t there at his usual spot at the top of the steps. Maybe he had already gone to bed, so he wouldn’t oversleep the next morning.

I started to walk away but then turned around. I stepped inside instead.

A few women were sitting in the pews, scattered throughout the church.

I took a seat on a hard wooden bench close to the front. There were six candles on a small table to the side, their flames dancing around. A wave of sadness rushed over me as I sat there.

I was still struggling with it. Like Jesse had pointed out, in the end I had helped Charlie Modine catch his wife’s killer. But it hadn’t left me feeling good. There was no sense of accomplishment. Mostly just a gnawing emptiness.

Sometimes, I still couldn’t believe he had done it. And other times, I felt like an idiot. I had been taken for a ride. Set on a wild goose chase, when the real killer was in front of me the entire time. And for that entire time, I had no idea, no clue. I had bought into the lie so completely that I would have followed Charlie Modine anywhere.

But as I stared up at the stained glass windows, I reminded myself that I hadn’t been the only one. This murderer had also fooled the police when he was alive.

An old woman shuffled up to the row of candles, lighting one. She stepped back and kneeled for a moment, bowing her head. As she turned to leave she caught my eye and smiled.   

The part that confused me the most was that sometimes late at night, I would lie awake in bed and actually feel sorry for him. And that just didn’t seem right. Charlie Modine had brought it all on himself. He was a cold-blooded killer.

But whenever I got too comfortable in my judgment of him, those final moments in the alley would come back to me. I remembered the look on his face there at the end. The anguish of his tortured cries, his complete shock at the realization of what he had done.

Sitting there I was suddenly struck by a possibility.

What if the ghost I had met wasn’t the killer at all? What if he was the younger version of Charlie Modine, the man who was passionately in love with his wife, the man who had saved a kitten in a rainstorm, who ate bagels with Sarah on Sunday mornings?

Maybe I had it wrong when I told Ty that ghosts resembled the people they were right at the moment of death. It didn’t seem like it in this case. The ghost I had met and talked with was the best part of the man, before his heart had turned hard and cold, before it had lost its capacity for love.

I couldn’t help it. I still wanted to believe in
that
Charlie Modine.

I stood up and went over to the candles. I lit one for my mom. And one for Jesse. And another for Sarah.

Before leaving I glanced up and saw Jesus looking down at me from the cross high above the altar.

I turned back and lit a candle for Charlie Modine.

THE END

Forty-Four Book Ten

by

Jools Sinclair

Copyright © 2014 Jools Sinclair

You Come Too Publishing

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in, or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Jeff

Welcome, man

Please note: For dramatic purposes some liberties have been taken with trails and the exact location of landmarks within the Three Sisters Wilderness. Do not attempt to use this book as a travel guide. You will get lost.

Forty-Four Book Ten

by

Jools Sinclair

PROLOGUE

I stared at the bloody knife in my hand.