After about fifteen minutes, Lucy joined us, waddling into the room in a t-shirt with the wordsIt’s all fun and games until someone gets pregnantscrawled across it. As usual, she only had eyes for her husband. Rubbing her large, rounded belly, she walked straight into Branwell’s arms, burying her face in his chest.
Something squeezed my phantom heart. It was difficult to watch them together. Given how Tennyson looked away, he felt the same. I knew he had moved past his emotions for Lucy, but that didn’t mean all the pain and longing had faded entirely.
“You good?” Branwell asked, rubbing Lucy’s back.
She nodded. “Yeah, but your children are starving.”
She turned her head and opened her eyes, staring straight at me. Delight washed her face.
“Gruncle Jack! I had no idea you were here! Come give me a ghost-kiss.”
Smiling, I walked to her and pressed my lips to her cheek, sinking in a good inch, regretting for the thousandth time that I couldn’t feel anything.
Lucy shivered and then giggled. “I got nothing. Someday, I’m going to feel that.”
Lucy made it impossible not to love her.
“What brings my favorite gruncle for a visit?” she asked.
Gruncle was a mix ofgreatanduncle. Lucy was my niece. My brother’s great-whatever granddaughter. Having family around was nice. Missing out on two hundred years of your own history . . . not so nice.
That ever-present grief punched through, loss momentarily swamping me. I pushed back thoughts of my brother and sisters, nieces and nephews now lost to me.
Forever. I had forever to deal with their loss.
Tennyson caught Lucy up to date. Branwell asked some follow-up questions about the scar.
In the middle of the discussion, Chiara’s phone rang. My eyes followed her as she left the room, answering the call.
Why had she looked so lost when we talked about lightning? Her expression in that moment had brought out every deep-rooted protective instinct in me. I wanted to keep her safe.
Well . . . truth be known, I wouldn’t mind doing a lot more than just that . . .
But . . . my emotions were irrelevant. I wasn’t fully in her world. I had nothing to offer Chiara in my ghost-like state. I couldn’t court her. Hold a door open for her. Drive her in a car. Bring her flowers.
Nothing.
I was a non-entity. Quite literally. I couldn’t even touch her, dash it all. My only skills were walking through walls and delivering pithy rejoinders. What kind of relationship could I offer? And more to the point, given the sparks that flew between us, would a relationship even work?
Lucy was good-naturedly teasing me over the photo making the rounds on social media when Chiara walked slowly back into the room.
We all instantly went on high alert. Chiara never simply walked. She bounced or power walked or ran or . . . something.
Her expression withdrawn, she tapped her phone against her cheek.
“So . . . that was the police.”
Not a sound.
“I . . . uhm . . . sent them some information I stumbled across. Turns out, the information is exactly what they’ve been looking for in a high profile case.”
“That’s . . . great?” Tennyson offered.
“Eh.” Chiara collapsed onto a couch. “The Tempeste family is involved. This gives the police enough ammunition to indict multiple members of the family.” Her expression was doom and gloom.
“I guess I’m missing something here,” Branwell said. “Why isn’t this good news?”
A heavy sigh. “There’s a chance the evidence could be traced back to me.”
