Page 42 of Haunted

The door slams. The engine revs. I stand in the parking space he’s just left behind as the truth hits me, and it guts me like one of the catfish waiting to be fried up in Captain Eddie’s.

Parker Bishop—Jonny Bishop—hates me.

Chapter sixteen

Jonny

Of all the people in the world who could have witnessed Krista Chambers taking me apart like a cheap watch, it had to be Lance Broussard.

I’ve been replaying it since I got home. Every version is worse. I swore in public. I told off a woman who was, if insensitive, probably not ill-meaning. I weaponized the death of my family to shut down a woman who was. I called the love of my—I called someone I used to know a clown. And when Lance put his hand on my shoulder and tried to help, I told him to fuck off in a parking lot while holding a bag of catfish.

The worst part isn’t any of that. The worst part is that when he said hush puppies, my body knew him before my brain caught up. After a decade and ten thousand miles, it still knew the sound of him.

I push it down. I’m good at pushing things down. I’ve had practice.

I sit at my desk and open my laptop. There’s editing to do. I’ve been thinking about an outtake reel, and I have decent unused footage from Andhra Pradesh. But when my email loads, one subject line stops me.

From Alice Cadwalader

Subject: Following up on our conversation.

I click on it.

Dear Jonny,

It was so good to meet you this evening, and I hope you’ll forgive me for staring. It’s been bothering me ever since.

I don’t want to put a name in an email. I have been wrong before, and I would rather be wrong to your face than in writing. But I knew your mother a little, in the years before you were born. There was a man who came to that house. I only saw him three or four times. I remember thinking he didn’t belong on our street.

I have spent this evening trying to talk myself out of it. I can’t. You have his jaw and his brow and the way he holds his head when he is listening, and I have seen that face around this town for thirty years.

It’s entirely up to you. I understand if you’d rather let this rest. But I felt I owed it to you to ask, and I would rather say it to you at the boathouse on Tuesday than have you find it somewhere else.

Best, Alice

My father.

I stare at the screen. My mother told me she had IVF. I never questioned it. There was no man in the house, no name on a form, no photograph. My birth certificate says FATHER: UNKNOWN, which I always took as confirmation.

But Alice said I reminded her of someone. Not from Denning Court. “From somewhere else entirely.” She was looking at my face—at the bones of it—like she was reading a map.

The idea that I have a father, somewhere, is staggering. Does he know about me? Has he always known? Did he choose not to be there, or did my mother shut him out the way she shut out everyone?

And then the thought: what if I have siblings?

I lost my entire family in one afternoon. My mother, my brother, my grandmother. Every person on earth who shared my blood. And now this woman is telling me there might be someone else. Someone connected to me by biology, if nothing else. The pull of that is so strong it frightens me.

I close the laptop and sit with it. I need to think.

The front door clicks. “Jonny!” Aunt Shelley calls. “Sorry, things ran later than I thought.” She knocks on my door and peers in. “How was your day, honey?”

“Eventful,” I say. “I’ll tell you over dinner.”

We set the table together. I dole out Captain Eddie’s—the catfish I pretty much started a war over—and Aunt Shelley pours white wine into the Waterford crystal, because cheap takeout obviously demands the good glasses.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

“Certainly not,” she says, in the voice she uses when she is. “I don’t see why you insist on going with me. I’ve been going to doctor’s appointments alone since I was old enough to drive.”