Ghost on the Shore (Blackbird Book 3), page 1
Ghost on the Shore
Lily Foster
Contents
Ghost on the Shore
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Two
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Part Three
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Also by Lily Foster
Free Bonus: Let Me Be the One
Ghost on the Shore
How many times have I stood on the bank of this river feeling the weight of the things I’ve done?
After all these years, I don’t know if I come here for you, if I come here looking for forgiveness, or if I come here trying to find myself.
I’ve told so many lies, kept so much of myself hidden that I feel like an imposter in this life I’ve built. I’ve got my dream job, I’ve got family—even got myself a good man. But it’s all wrong. It’s like living in a house of cards with a hurricane bearing down on you.
Without you, I’m nothing more than a ghost on the shore.
The January wind whips my hair and freezes the stray tears on my cheeks. The rock I’m standing on is icy, and this isn’t the first time I’ve been tempted to let myself go, to slip in and sink under. But I won’t do that because someday you might come looking for me.
Reaching up to touch that spot on the back of my neck, I know I’ll never forget you.
I made sure of that, little blackbird.
Part One
All You Left Behind
Chapter One
Grace
Grace Dawson is a liar.
And that is the gospel truth.
That I’m so good at it is no consolation. You’d think that as the days turned into weeks, then months and then years, it would get easier to stand in front of the mirror and look myself in the eye, but that’s not the case.
I do it. I tell that woman with the sad eyes looking back at me that she did the right thing, the only thing she could have done at the time. It was another lifetime, I tell her. Move on, for God’s sake.
Then I swipe on some lipstick and paste on a smile. Greet the day.
I pop into my aunt’s house on my way to work. Make her some tea and sit with her for a few minutes until her home health aide comes in for her shift. Auntie Viv is not long for this world, but still I won’t tell. And if I won’t tell her, which would be as good as putting those words into a vault, then I suppose that I am planning on taking this secret to my own grave.
Settling back behind the wheel again, the bright morning sun catches on that diamond. It’s heavy on my finger and glitters in a way that’s garish. I have to remind myself that a normal person would see that sparkle as a promise of good things to come.
I didn’t want to say yes when Jack asked me. I wanted to tell him the truth, give him an out, let him know exactly who I am, but the words died on my lips. I couldn’t believe my own ears when I heard myself say yes.
Yes, I’ll marry you, Jack.
My teeth clench as I pull into my spot in the faculty parking lot thinking back on it. It was another Hallmark movie-worthy performance on my part. Have I become so good at faking it that people can’t see even the slightest trace of sadness in my eyes? Given that despair is my default mode nowadays, it’s hard to believe that I’m still capable of keeping up this charade.
To everyone in this town I am Grace Dawson, beloved high school teacher. I’m the plucky, optimistic educator amid a sea of ready to retire cranks. The one who spouts positivity until I’m blue in the face. The one who always gives her students a safe haven, a shoulder to cry on, or tough love when it’s called for. To my adoring fans I march to the beat of my own drummer. I look on the bright side and I dream big.
Not everyone is a fan. No, the few remaining members of the old guard on the school board would like to see me gone. They’re all fire and brimstone, spouting nonsense about how I promote reckless and promiscuous behavior among our town’s youth. Do my students see me at Church on Sundays? Rarely. But I’m not working the pole at the local strip club either. The school district’s teenage pregnancy and high school drop-out rates were far above the national average long before I came onto the scene, but some people are always looking for a scapegoat.
They don’t approve of the books I pick to read in class, they don’t approve of the uniforms I signed off on for the dance team, they don’t approve of the way I dress, the way I teach—the complaints they’ve lodged are too many to list. Let’s just say that they’ve tried to bully me into leaving for years but I’m not going anywhere.
It’s not that I want to stay here. This isn’t exactly some cosmopolitan mecca. It’s a small town without the small-town charm and appeal you read about in those cozy romance books.
When you’re born and bred somewhere you get used to it, you stop seeing your surroundings with fresh eyes. But I’m not from here so I see it all. I see the unkempt front yards, littered with boats that haven’t been out on the river in years and rusted-out cars that will never be fixed. I see the storefronts that were shuttered years ago on Main Street with the faded For Lease signs still taped in their dirty windows. I see the same look of desperation that I wear mirrored in the eyes of the working-class people of this town. From their appearance you can tell that some of them have given up entirely. Not Grace Dawson, though. I’m an outsider. I’m not like them.
Jack thinks this ring will lure me up to Pittsburgh, that I’ll give up my job in this underperforming school for the greener pastures of a better district. That’s what being married to him means, doesn’t it? That I’ll leave this place, free myself from the ties that bind me to this town.
Standing on the bank of the river, I pick up a rock and toss it in. She’s not here and neither is he, so why do I stay? It’s not like I can’t be found. A few keystrokes on a computer, that’s all it would take in this day and age. I don’t need to stay close to the address I wrote on those forms so many years ago.
This isn’t even the same river.
It looks just like it, though. When I lay back on the grass I can remember what it felt like to be there with him. When I wade in up to my ankles I can imagine those nights spent swimming, taking risks for the first time in my life. When I feel the freezing rain and the wind biting my skin in the dead of winter, I remember what it felt like to mourn, the devastating physical power of grief.
“Will you wait for me?” he used to ask.
“You know I will. How can you even ask me that question?”
With both of my hands in his that last time, he took a step back and raised his arms out to the side. “Look at you. You’ll have guys beating a path to your door once I’m gone.”
I pulled out of his grasp and wrapped my arms around my middle. “Don’t say that. It’s not true.”
He came closer, turned me around so I was facing the water and wrapped me up in his arms. “You don’t see what I see, Gracie. I don’t know why that is, but I’m going to make it my life’s mission to change what you see when you look in the mirror.”
It’s not like I thought I was an ogre or something. I knew I was pretty, knew men looked at me. But I was never comfortable in that skin.
I decided way back when that pretty girls come in two varieties. There were the girls who owned it, the ones who flaunted their beauty and might even use it as a weapon. They were the queen bees, the ones who slayed men and left them battered and bruised in their wake. And then there were girls like me. The ones who couldn’t get a handle on it, who never learned how to harness the power their beauty could wield. It brought me unwanted attention when I was a kid, so I grew up viewing it as a weapon that men could use against me.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
He rested his chin on my shoulder. “Believe me, no one’s rethinking their life choices more than I am at the moment.”
“How soon can you get back? I mean for a visit or leave, or whatever they call it.”
“I wish I knew that, but you know I don’t. I don’t even know when I’ll be able to call.”
I nodded with tears in my eyes because I did know, he told me all of this before.
He kissed my head, and it’s as if I can still feel it right now, can still feel the warmth of his breath and that feeling of security I had when I was in his arms.
“Remember what I told you to do?”
“Write to you.”
“Every damn day, Gracie. I don’t care if you write just to tell me what you had for lunch.”
“Really? You’d be happy hearing about a ham sandwich?”
“Yep. Especially if you slipped in a picture of you with your mouth wrapped around it ready to take a bite.” I elbowed him and he laughed. “Seriously, the days and weeks can drag when you’re over there. No one understands how boring it can get. When you’re in the middle of a shitty stretch, especially when you’re in-country, mail call is the highlight of the week for most of us...or the month.”
I turn to face him. “You get your mail once a month sometimes?”
“Only when we’re off the grid. Most of the time it’s not like that. But still write to me because a big stack of letters will get me through it when I’m missing you.”
I did write to him, more times than I’d care to admit. They started out upbeat. I told him every interesting thing my professors said, told him about the parties my roommates dragged me to, and I did tell him about the fabulous new gyro place that opened up off campus, so I did relay what I was eating for lunch. I got one letter back to every seven or eight I wrote. He warned me, but it’s hard not to feel ridiculous when you get little to nothing in return.
I tore that first envelope open, excited and nervous at once. He was grateful for my letters, he told me. He thanked me for the pictures I sent, told me he missed my beautiful face so much that it physically hurt him.
The second letter came weeks later. He loved me, he wrote, and I cried when I read those words. Was I sure, he asked me, still sure that I’d wait for him? I shook my head, smiling. I didn’t even need to think about it. Of course I would wait.
I got one more letter, and it was of the short and sweet variety. I still wasn’t sure what it was that he saw in me, so his quick, impersonal note left me feeling unsettled.
I was still that girl, not even twenty years old, who didn’t have the confidence to see myself objectively, let alone in a positive light.
I kept writing long after his letters stopped, but the tone of my letters changed too. They went from sounding like they were penned by an upbeat cheerleader, to concerned, and then when I heard nothing back, my letters turned matter of fact and then sterile.
I need to speak with you, are you allowed to call me?
It’s really important. Please call.
My last letter was one single line: I’m due in the middle of August.
I never got a response.
“Do you think I’m making a mistake?” I ask him now as I look down at the ring. “I’m thirty-three…Not getting any younger.”
It comforts me to talk to him this way. I’m free on the bank of the river, speaking to a ghost, spilling my secrets. Because it’s true what they say: dead men can’t tell tales.
“I still haven’t told Jack.” I can practically see him shaking his head. “He won’t understand. Now? No, I can’t tell him now.”
The wind picks up, rustling the leaves. I imagine the sound is his voice telling me: There will never be a right time, Gracie.
“She turned fourteen this past August. Fourteen. Can you believe it’s been that long?”
The wind, the leaves—no one has an answer for that one.
And that’s when I wrap my sweater tight around my shoulders, back away from the water and make my way to the car.
I don’t trust myself sometimes.
I used to tell myself that I had to stay strong. For what reason, I still don’t know. The weak voice inside of my head assures me that I have so much to live for: my students, my family, Jack and the future he has mapped out for us. But I’m so tired.
Lying wears you out. Living a false life, presenting some persona to the world that’s practiced and phony? It feels like struggling against the current in chest-deep water every damn day.
It’s a bone-weary kind of tired, and it’s enough to pull you under if you let it.
Chapter Two
Fifteen Years Ago…
Grace
Mr. Brightside is blaring over the speakers, so I have to ask him to repeat himself when he says, “You’re popular.”
“What?”
“I said,” he leans in, “you’re popular. I’ve been trying to talk to you for the past hour, but some guy always cuts in right before I can get to you.”
He points to his ear and then gestures to move away from the speakers, and for some reason I follow. My roommates abandoned me a while ago, left me to fend off the last two guys who offered to buy me drinks in a way that left me feeling borderline harassed, so I don’t feel the need to check in with them now.
We’re down at the other end of the bar now, and while it’s never quiet in this off-campus dive, we don’t have to scream over the music to be heard back here.
“What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” I shoot back, feeling uncharacteristically ballsy.
He smiles and shakes his head. “Damien.”
“Like the kid in the movie?”
“Oh, I don’t get that one too often,” he deadpans. “Have you seen it?”
“Before my time.”
“Then take my word for it, it’s disturbing. I’m named after my uncle, otherwise I’d ask what my parents were thinking.”
“It’s actually a nice name. It suits you.”
“I look devilish?”
I reach up to touch the dimple on his left cheek. “Maybe a little. But I mean it, Damien is a nice name.”
“So?”
I don’t even know this person, and I usually get all stiff and uncomfortable when unfamiliar guys approach me, but for some reason I can’t help but smile when I answer, “Grace.”
“That’s a beautiful name.” He looks genuine when he repeats my words back to me, “It suits you.”
I look behind me to see what’s causing all the commotion, and figure that the team everyone is rooting for must have scored or won or something. I have to get up on my tip toes so he can hear me when I say, “I’ve never seen you here before.”
“I’ve never been here before so that makes sense.”
“You’re a comedian, huh?”
He shakes his head. “No, ma’am. Never been accused of being the slightest bit funny.” He leans in to be heard above the noise when a group of guys start cheering again. “I’m just thanking my lucky stars that you’re even talking to me right now. I watched you turn down one guy after another before. Thought maybe I was just lining up for a smack down.”
I’ve been told that I come off like a cold fish on more than one occasion. What, you’re too good to talk to me? Or the words that cut like barbed wire tonight: Just asked if you wanted a drink, didn’t ask for your hand in marriage, bitch.
I look away from Damien. “I’m not like that.”
“I’m just saying that I’m flattered.”
He’s teasing me and I don’t like it. “I have a brother. I know it’s not easy for a guy to walk up to a girl and ask if she wants a drink or if she wants to dance. I’m never rude when I say no.”
“I never said you were rude.” When I don’t answer he leans in. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear.”
“Some guy called me a bitch tonight. He asked if I wanted a drink, and when I thanked him but told him no, that I was here with my friends, he didn’t take no for an answer. I’m always nice about it but guys do that a lot. Am I supposed to say yes, encourage the guy waste ten bucks on a drink that I don’t want? What if I’m not interested?”
“I guess I never looked at it from a woman’s perspective. Walking up to a girl and getting shot down does suck, but you raise a good point.” He looks to the empty beer bottle I put on the bar a moment before. “And just for the record, I never asked if you wanted a drink.”
