“Dammit fuck, Everett Waybill, I’m going to—”
Except Everett is nowhere to be found. In fact, no one, living or dead, is in sight. A goat bleats in the distance as if to say,You’re on your own, lady.
So... Everett pushed her and then hedisappeared. That’s somehow more insulting than if he’d stuck around to point and laugh.
The way her satin underwear squishes against her skin as she moves is something she’d be happy to never experience again. And it’s a reminder that even if she could leave now, there’s no way Sulayman would allow her inside his car in this state.
The whole point of this, she assumes, was to give her an excuse to approach Charlie again. A fairly smart idea, she concedes,though it doesn’t erase her anger at Everett for the way he executed it. Still, she might as well head back to the farmhouse and hope this drenched and pathetic version of herself elicits enough pity to earn her an invitation inside.
“You better’ve been right about this,” she grumbles in case Everett has gone invisible somehow and is still able to hear. (After everything that’s happened so far today, she’s not sure what all is within the realm of possibility, and she figures it best not to discount anything.)
Gretchen takes the shortest path to the house, cutting diagonally through the grass because really, who cares about dog poop when she’s already looking like something that would crawl out of a swamp in a low-budget sci-fi film.
She breathes a sigh of relief to see that Clyde, the menacing marshmallow by the fence, has followed the goats to another, farther-away part of their enclosure. Her next breath hitches momentarily as she spots Charlie standing on the porch as if he’s been waiting for her to come slinking back. His features soften as he takes in her unfortunate state, and his lips part to speak. Then his extreme dislike of her must kick in again, his eyebrows sinking into a V as his expression sours. The transformation takes only a fraction of a second, and Gretchen finds herself torn between bracing for his animosity and wanting desperately to know what he was going to say before he thought better of it.
“Pretty sure I told you to leave,” he calls out, folding his arms over his chest to add an extra dose of hostility. His body language and his words deliver the message that he’s completely on guard, but Gretchen catches his eyes doing a quick sweep over her messy body one more time, as if double-checking her for overt injury.Everett was right; Charlie Waybill is softhearted, no matter how much he might hate her at this very moment. That’s something she can work with.
She stops at the bottom of the three steps leading to the porch, daffodils on both sides, and gazes up once again into his hardened stare. “You did. And I was leaving. I just... I... Well...” Then she drops her bag and bursts into tears. Crying on demand was one of the first skills Gretchen mastered while apprenticing with her father. She uses it much more sparingly as an adult, but still, it does have its place.
“Hey, now, hey,” Charlie says, leaping from the porch to the ground without bothering to take the stairs. In Gretchen’s experience, a crying woman sends most men into a tailspin, and she suspects that for someone as compassionate as Everett said Charlie is, this is absolute torture. He puts a strong hand between her shoulder blades and guides her to the porch. The touch makes her feel dry and warm and okay until he takes his hand away and she remembers she is none of those things at the moment.
“Sit,” he orders. “Breathe.”
Gretchen lowers herself to the top step, her dress squishing under her weight and releasing a small pool of water beneath her bottom. Charlie stands on the opposite side of the stairs, leaning against the railing and drying his palm on his jeans. The motion draws her attention to his thighs, and—wow. Manual labor makes a mansturdy. But the position also creates the illusion of him looming over her again, and she feels so... small. At a disadvantage. Something she rarely is and doesn’t particularly like to be.
She chokes down a tiny bark of laughter as she thinks about how the man always seems to be looking down at her. It’s funny.But also not, because the thought of how poorly Charlie thinks of her and how clear he’s been about it pulls a melancholysomethingto the forefront. More tears slip down her cheeks, these not quite as fake as the ones that came before. Weird.
“I... There was a big, gross puddle,” she says, deciding to skip how she wound up making full-body contact with it for the time being.
“Are you hurt?” His tone now sounds less concerned about her than about his homeowner’s insurance premiums.
“No, but I’m... I’m really wet and cold and muddy, and all of my stuff is soaked, so I can’t— I just— I really was going to leave, but now I can’t get in a rideshare like this and—” Gretchen feels herself running out of air and leans into the absolute overwhelmingness of this afternoon. Of her initial confrontation with Charlie, and this one. Of meeting Everett and learning that ghosts are indeed real and that she is, for some reason, able to communicate with (at least) one of them. And also that she is now responsible for saving another person’slife. That’s... well, that’s a fuckinglotto deal with, even for someone good at rolling with punches. Which she used to be, but her spirit medium gig hasn’t exactly thrown her many lately, and she’s coming to realize she’s out of practice.
Charlie lets out a sigh and goes to retrieve her discarded, sopping-wet bag from the walkway. He holds it out to her, and the corner steadily drips onto the stair’s tread—one, two, three times—before she takes it from him. “Come on,” he says. “Get up.”
“But I—”
“You can take a quick shower, change clothes. Then you’re out of here. Got it?”
Gretchen hauls her bag onto her shoulder, smiling to herselfas Charlie turns away to open the front door. Everett’s still on her shit list for pushing her into the puddle, but his plan did work. She’s inside the house now, which is farther than she got on her own.
I still want to kill him, though. Or, re-kill him, rather.
She follows Charlie into the narrow foyer, then up a flight of creaky stairs to the second floor. He leads her to an open door at the top of the landing. Gretchen peeks inside. A bathroom, painted a pale yellow color reminiscent of the daffodils along the porch. The floor is covered in small, white tiles, and a claw-foot tub sits at the far end, the curved rod around it holding up a navy-blue floral shower curtain, scrunched to one side. The fixtures are on the older side, but it’s all well-kept and clean, especially considering this farmhouse seems to be a bachelor pad.
“Towels are in the corner cabinet,” Charlie says.
Gretchen continues inside, then turns around. There’s the beginning of a strange sensation swirling around in her chest, something that feels like vulnerability. She latches onto it, detaching herself enough to use it as a mental exercise.This is what a person feels in this situation.She hugs her bag to her chest.And it makes her want to shield herself. It was one of the things her father taught her from the very beginning: Put your emotions to work for you, let them advise your behavior, but don’t let them take control. Because looking vulnerable is great; actuallyfeelingit is a liability.
“Thanks,” she says. “I really appreciate your help.”
“Yeah, well, this is probably a huge mistake.” Charlie turns to leave, but pauses with his back half to her. “Just do me a favor and try not to steal anything, okay?”
He closes the door at the same time the insult registers. “I’mnot a thief!” Gretchen shouts. But for all she knows he’s already long gone and her protest doesn’t reach him.
She drops her backpack onto the toilet’s lid and unhooks its closure. As she anticipated, the puddle did a number on her belongings. Thankfully, one bra and a pair of underwear have been left unharmed. And there’s a T-shirt and pajama shorts that are slightly damp in spots, but serviceable enough.
“Wowza. Women’s unmentionables have really changed, haven’t they?”
