“Copy that.” A muscle in his cheek jumped. Heopened his mouth to say something else, but coward that I was, I turned my back and fled to my room and quickly got ready for the day, before racing to the kitchen. My hands shook as I set up trays, the cups clinking in an accusatory way, as if they’d been following along and had notes.
By the time the tea was poured, Noah had vanished. His jacket was gone and so was the spanner. The boiler, that traitor, continued to hum.
I carried the tray into the lounge, delivered tea to the guests, smiled, joked, lied charmingly, and escaped back into the hall where nobody could see me crack.
The house breathed around me. The inn had lungs … anyone who said otherwise hadn’t slept in an old building long enough. Too wound up to do the laundry, I went upstairs and locked the door to my flat. I just needed a moment to sort my thoughts out.
“I love … I mean, loved, you.”
I couldn’t ignore how my heart had instantly responded to his words, and a part of me hated myself for how excited I’d been to hear he actually still cared. Orhadcared. Or at the very least, wanted to make some amends. What had he meant by that?
Leaning my forehead against the door, I took several deep breaths and tried to get some control of my emotions. During check-ins, I was professional, competent, and mildly amused by the chaos of human behavior. When things went wrong, I never stressed. I just got things done. Why had Noah’s arrival turned me into someone who nearly cried at a boiler and a banshee who yelled at a man for helping? I wasn’t someone who normally had wildswings of emotion, and now I felt untethered, and unsure of my footing.
I paced the tiny sitting room.
The radiator clicked. A gust of winter wind rattled the window. The air shifted.
And then my gran—dead eight years and still very much herself—cleared her throat.
“Are you done?” she asked.
My head snapped up so fast my neck made a noise. She stood by the fireplace as if she’d come out of it like Santa, in her house cardigan and her sensible skirt and her leather slippers with the little bow. She gave me the look she reserved for people who left wet towels on floors.
“You’re not real,” I told her, my chest hitching, because apparently my response to ghosts is impoliteness.
“Och, I am,” she said. “And don’t you be sassing me.”
“Bloody hell. But I must be stressed.Thishas to be a stress response.” I flapped a hand toward her. “Lack of sleep. A byproduct of being emotionally waterboarded by a man with a spanner.”
“Language,” she said mildly, which was rich coming from someone who once told a plumber to stop “faffin” about like a damp hen.
I pressed my palms to my eyes. “I am hallucinating my gran.”
“You’re avoiding the point,” she said, and crossed to sit in her chair. “You were always good at that, pet.”
“I am very busy,” I announced, unsure of what to say. “I have rooms to turn over.”
“You have a heart to unclench,” she said, like she was reading the menu and ordering for me. “Sit.”
I sat at her feet, wanting closeness, because, even if this was a stress-induced hallucination, I still missed her.
Up close, she wasn’t … see-through like I thought a ghost would be. She wasn’t a wisp. She was my gran as I remembered her. Softly weathered skin, eyes like bluebells, wrinkled hands that had done a lifetime of useful things. The only thing that betrayed the impossible was the way the air around her shivered and brightened.
“You’re not real,” I tried again, softer.
“I’ll always be real, lass,” she said, and then more softly, “your love keeps it so.”
I swallowed, tears pricking my eyes, and laid my cheek on the cushion next to her. For a moment, it felt like a light puff of air blew my hair back, as though she once again stroked my hair like she used to when I was a child.
“Why are you here? Now?” I’d silently asked for her help a hundred times through the years, and she’d never once shown me anything. But here she was, on a day that my emotions were unraveling like someone tossing a ball of yarn down the stairs.
“Because I think you need someone to be honest with.”
“Noah was in the cupboard and he shouldn’t have been,” I said, somewhat inanely, but knowing she’d understand about how odd it felt to find a guest in a non-guest space of the house.
“I saw. He looked very nice while he was in the cupboard.”
“Gran.” I rolled my eyes.
