Page 72 of Haunted

She’s right. I know she’s right. But it still feels like standing on a knife’s edge. “I have to leave,” I say. “You know that. The university paid for my ticket. The minute that visa clears, I need to get back to work. It’s not like I can just stay here and—what? I’ve got no work history, no qualifications, no skills that translate to anything in this country.”

“Radio,” Aunt Shelley says.

“You’re not letting this go, are you?”

“No. And I’m serious. It’s talk radio. You’d be interviewing people, telling stories. You’re already doing it for Jonny on the Spot—the only difference is a microphone instead of a camera. You’re good with strangers. You’re curious. You listen. And that voice of yours—”

“How much of this is about keeping me in town?”

She doesn’t flinch. “Can’t blame me for trying. There are several people in this town who love you. You have to decide whether you can integrate that into the life you’re going to build moving forward.”

I don’t have an answer for that. I take a sip of water and glance around the restaurant, and that’s when I notice the man.

He’s sitting alone at a table near the door. Brown hair, unremarkable build, about my age, give or take a year—pale eyes, blue or gray, hard to tell in this light. He’s looking at me. Not the casual glance of someone people-watching over coffee—he’s looking at me like he’s waiting to see if I’ll place him. He holds my gaze a beat too long, and gives me a lazy smile, like he’s saying there you are.

I’ve been getting this look all week. The anniversary has my face on every surface in town, and half of Fairhaven seems to know me from a life I can’t get back into. My life before the fire is locked behind glass—dreamlike, there but not reachable—and the months right after are worse, a smear of strangers and casseroles and people who held my hand at funerals I don’t remember attending. So when a man looks at me like he knows me, it opens that old, gaping curiosity. Maybe he went to Farley with me, or Central. Maybe he taught a class I sat in and can’t remember sitting in. Maybe he has stories about a version of me I’ll never get back on my own—maybe he even has pictures. There’s only one way to find out.

I stand up before I can think about it. Aunt Shelley watches me cross the restaurant.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the man, sitting uninvited at his table. “Have we met? I’ve been out of town for a long time and there are so many people coming up to me trying to place my face. I’m Jonny Bishop.”

He recoils in surprise and then smiles. His chin comes up, and there’s a smirk somewhere behind it. It is a look I have had before in three or four countries. It says you’ll remember my name soon enough, and underneath that it says something about my mouth.

“Hi, Jonny.” He shakes my hand. “Yes, we have met. In a manner of speaking. It was a long time ago, and very indirectly.”

“Your name?”

“Roger.”

“Please forgive me for not recognizing you. There are a lot of things I don’t remember clearly, especially when it comes to the time around the wildfires. I assume that’s the period we’re talking about here, right?”

He hesitates. “More or less.” He stands up and glances past me at Aunt Shelley. “I’d better be on my way. I’ll leave you to your aunt. It’s nice to finally meet you, Jonny.”

“And you too, Roger.”

He leaves. I walk back to the table. Aunt Shelley is watching me with a look I can’t quite read.

“See?” she says. “Proof of concept. You’re not afraid of anything. You just walked up to a total stranger and had a conversation. That’s exactly what a talk show host does.”

I let her talk. But as I half-listen, I think about the man at the table. Roger. I wish that I could remember. There’s so much missing, and the pieces of memory just aren’t fitting back into place. And that’s the part that scares me the most about staying in Fairhaven. What if I’m never able to reassemble those shards of memory and they wind up cutting me? What if the gaps I can never fill are bigger than the life I can build without them?

Chapter twenty-five

Lance

Jonny stops outside the church hall and I can feel him braking. I offer my hand. He hesitates, then takes it. I straighten his collar. “It’s going to be okay in there. I’ve got your back.”

He glances at the building. “It’s just an uncomfortable meeting with bad food. Breaking the news to Aunt Shelley that I was moving in with you was way more awkward.”

“She took it well.”

“‘Good luck’ is pretty ambiguous.”

I smile at him. “Please. Your aunt loves me.”

“You’re cocky.”

“I’m sexy.”