Granted, his palette was severely limited by my remaining food supply. I’d finished the last of the fruit and vegetables days ago.
“Want an egg?” I asked into the quiet.
“No, plain is good for now. Thank you.”
I added a fried egg and hot sauce to my bowl before sliding the other down the counter for Charlie. He wasn’t confident enough yet to hold something that might break or spill if he dropped it.
Bending over, he sipped at the hot broth and sighed. “You really don’t have to share with me, you know. You can’t have much food left.”
“Meh, I was already going through my groceries too quickly. I’ll ask if it’s ok to leave in a few days to restock early.” I leaned back against the counter next to him and slurped at my own noodles.
He peered at me, hesitant and questioning. “So you’ll come back?”
Charlie looked so normal in moments like this; sometimes, I forgot he wasn’t.That he’d been alone in this lookout for decades. Was he trapped here? Could he leave the tower if he wanted to?
Or if I wanted him to?
“Yeah, I’ll come back. I don’t really have anywhere else to live right now anyway, except for my Dad’s pull-out couch. And trust me, youdon’twant to sleep on that thing for more than a night.”
The quietly pleased look on his face made my stomach feel funny, but he didn’t press further.
I cleared my throat, swirling the bright orange yolk around the seasoned broth. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Roasted chicken, I think. When the skin gets all crispy,mmm. With mashed potatoes,” he said, eyes dreamy anddistant. “Oh, and warm peach cobbler for dessert. With vanilla ice cream.”
“Obviously,” I answered. “The ice cream is critical. The melt?—”
—The melt,” we said together.
He laughed. Charlie laughed a lot for a ghost. It made his whole body glow brighter, like for a moment, a surge of whatever energy or force kept him here ran through him a little stronger. “I always requested that for my birthday meal. Mom would make the chicken and mashed potatoes, and Frankie made the cobbler.” He had such a fond look on his face, I didn’t want to interrupt his happy memories with more questions.
I had a lot of them. Mostly about how and why he was stuck in ghost form and not wherever people went after they died.
He probably wouldn’t have the answers to those, though. Or wouldn’twantthe answers, maybe.
When he was done, he pushed his bowl toward me to finish off what he hadn’t eaten. He mostly pecked at things like a bird, afraid of what would happen if he ate too much at once, but wherever he’d go when he disappeared, and whatever happened to his corporeal form when he went there, made the food disappear.
I called it blinking.
He’d blink in and out throughout the day, chattering away at me before he left to rest again. He’d always return in the evenings, though, to watch the sunset and relax by the fire.
Later that night, when sleep crept closer and I could barely keep my eyes open, he reappeared.
Scooting his chair closer to the wood stove, he draped the blanket over his lap and settled in, like a night watchman. “Go to sleep. I’ll keep an eye on things,” he said with a smile.
I couldn’t explain why, but I trusted he would. So much so, I tucked beneath the duvet, eyes slowly blinking shut, until only the barest hint of his outline remained.
“Goodnight, Charlie,” I rumbled.
“Goodnight, Reece.”
CHAPTER NINE
Mom called the next day.
“A lookout goes missing, and you don’ttell me?”she screeched in greeting. Impossibly, her voice grew more shrill with each word.
I guess we skipped right over hello,I thought, and cringed.
