Page 71 of Haunted

“I was thinking of Elliott,” I say. “It’s been weeks since I thought about him. Properly thought about him. What kind of brother does that make me?”

She loops her arm through mine and steers me toward the exit. “The kind who’s been busy living, which is exactly what Elliott would have wanted you to do.”

Over lunch, she lets me talk about him. The things I remember. The things I don’t. The wall in my memory that locks out everything before the fire and only lets through fragments—his laugh, his obsession with Super Mario, the way he’d line up his action figures by height and scream if anyone moved them.

“Can I ask you something?” I say. “Have you ever heard of a company called Albatross Press?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Alice said it belonged to the man she thought was my father. And there’s a bank statement in a box at Lance’s that says twenty thousand dollars went from Albatross Press into Mom’s account.”

Aunt Shelley sits back. “That’s a lot of money.”

“No kidding.”

She shakes her head slowly. “I have never heard that name in my life. Not from her, not from anybody. And I’d have remembered it, because it’s a damn stupid name for a business.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I were more use to you.” She picks her fork back up and puts it down again. “She kept a lot to herself, Jonny. I’m learning that the same as you are.”

“I want to hate her,” I say. “Mom. For what she did to me. For making me into his keeper. For making me responsible for two people who were falling apart.”

Aunt Shelley puts down her fork. “Making you into their warden wasn’t the answer,” she says quietly. “I told her that. More than once.”

“No, it wasn’t. I just—” I stop. I’ve been carrying this anger for so long that the next words feel dangerous, like pulling a pin out of a live grenade. “She didn’t set out to become what she wound up as. She was just overwhelmed. When Grandma was really there, and she didn’t get confused, she could keep Elliott in line. But when she started failing—how else was Mom supposed to manage two people who needed full-time care? She couldn’t afford help. She couldn’t ask the neighbors. She was drowning.”

“I don’t think anybody deserves blame. It was an impossible situation. Everything was one cascading disaster after another. None of that makes it okay,” I say. “What she did to me was wrong. But I think I’m starting to understand that she wasn’t cruel. She was just—out of options. And too proud to say so.”

“That’s the most generous thing you’ve ever said about your mother,” Aunt Shelley says. Her eyes are bright. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’re right. She loved you. She just didn’t know how to love you without leaning on you.”

Then Aunt Shelley leans forward with the look she gets when she’s about to pitch something.

“So, I’ve got some news. And I know it’s changing the subject, but I’ve been angling to get out of this bullshit job for years and I finally got the opportunity to get out of the alumni office. The university is giving me the Fairhaven radio station to manage next term. WFHV. It’s been limping along for years with student volunteers and no budget, and they’ve finally decided to put some real resources behind it.”

“That’s great, Aunt Shelley. Congratulations.”

“The thing is, I need talent. And before you say no—”

“No.”

“—you have an excellent voice for radio. I’m serious, Jonny. That low, intimate quality you’ve got—it’s perfect. People lean in to hear you. That’s exactly what you want on the air.”

I stare at her. Nobody has ever described my voice that way. In my head, it’s still the damaged rasp the smoke left me with—the voice that can’t carry across a room, that can’t shout for help when someone is dying on a boathouse deck. But Aunt Shelley isn’t hearing damage. She’s hearing something else entirely.

“I’ll think about it,” I say, which surprises us both.

“That’s not a no!” She points her fork at me. “I’m holding you to that.”

I look around the restaurant. It’s a campus place—wood tables, chalkboard specials, faculty and staff picking at salads. Through the window, I can see the memorial banners along the quad, and even from here, I can make out the Excelsior photograph reproduced at poster size. My face, Lance’s face, soot-streaked and terrified, hanging from every lamppost like a wanted poster.

“You know what the worst part of being back is?” I say. “The pictures. They’re everywhere. And even with henna in my hair and thirty pounds of muscle and enough ink on my skin to rewrite the Rig Veda, I still feel like I’ve got a sign on my face.”

Aunt Shelley tilts her head. “How much of that is the anniversary, and how much of it is waking up next to Lance?”

I stare at her. “What does Lance have to do with it?”

“Everything. You spent nine years building a life where nobody knew Parker Bishop. Now you’re back in the one place where everybody does, and you’re sleeping with the boy from the photograph. You can’t outrun who you are, Jonny. Especially not here.”