Chapter Seven

Meghan often reflected on those words. Partly because it was good advice, but mostly because those were the last coherent words Meghan’s mom ever said to her.

Meghan glanced at Deb as he drove. He got home later than she expected—after 8:30—and it was almost 8:45 before they set out to take Meghan home.

Deb was quieter than usual—and he was normally quiet, so that was saying something. He hadn’t spoken at all since they got in the car. Meghan guessed the team meeting with Coach Logan was weighing on him somehow. She decided not to ask him about it right away, to give him a few minutes if he wanted to bring it up himself.

Besides, Meghan loved that they could be quiet together without feeling hopelessly awkward about it. It had been that way even from their first date, which was downright peaceful. He held doors for her, pulled out her seat at Puglioni’s, a great Italian place in Morgantown. He was the perfect gentleman, content to let her talk or simply to eat together in comfortable, confident silence. She couldn’t think of anyone else that she could share silence with and not feel compelled to break it.

Other than her mom, but she was gone.

Meghan was nine when her Mom died. In the seven years since, Meghan was pretty sure she hadn’t yet “made something good out of it.” But, true to her mother’s wishes, she also hadn’t obsessed over why it happened. Meghan’s mom had always taught her: take what you’ve got and make of it what you can. No point dwelling on things that can’t be changed anyway. Learn from the past, but don’t wallow in it.

That lesson was tested when Meghan’s father remarried. Lots of twelve-year-olds would have protested or broken down—YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM!—but Meghan knew her father loved Peggy Young, and Meghan liked her just fine, so why make a fuss? She had even forced herself to call her “Mom,” and within a few months even thought of her that way, for the most part.

What Meghan was trying to figure out now—and what Gus had seen on her face in the pasture by the pond—was whether her mom had been right about that. Sure, it seemed right. Move on, live your life, don’t dwell on pain or wallow in pity. But what if obsessing over her mom’s death could in some way, in some form, bring her back? Meghan wasn’t so sure that was a bad thing.

Meghan glanced at Deb, who still hadn’t spoken but didn’t look upset or angry.

The two Marsh boys were an interesting study in grief. Gus obsessed over their dad’s death, but Deb closed himself off to it. Deb often came across as aloof or even stupid to people who didn’t know him, but Meghan could see he was simply managing the grief in a different way. He threw himself into his athletics—no doubt the reason for his late return home tonight—and used that to medicate the pain.

Meghan was fairly sure she hadn’t behaved like either of the Marsh brothers when her mom passed. She had faced the grief, to the extent a nine-year-old can, but not obsessed over it. But now she wondered: should she have?

Two days ago Meghan didn’t believe in ghosts, not at all, not one bit. How was it possible that now she knew someone—no, two people—who could “see souls”? Realistically what were the odds of that? Sure there were a lot of people in the world who claimed to see ghosts, but none that she’d ever known personally, and besides, this was different. Gus and Mrs. Miller weren’t Ghost Hunters. They weren’t recording audio of dripping water and claiming it was the voice of a deceived, deceased damsel screaming Avenge me!. They were seeing them, and working, systematically, to be able to see them better. There’s no way that was a widespread phenomenon. If it were, The History Channel (such as it was) would be running ten episodes of that every day.

Meghan wasn’t sure what she herself believed about ghosts, or souls, or whatever they were. But she was sure about one thing: whatever Gus was experiencing was beyond her understanding….

…and, honestly, she felt kind of left out.

As Deb drove them past the blonde girl’s—that is, Sophia Howdershelt’s—driveway, Meghan squinted into the woods. Deb’s high-beam lights penetrated a few hundred feet, but Meghan saw only tree trunks and undergrowth. The road curved left, and Deb clicked off his high-beams to avoid blinding an oncoming car.

Meghan continued to scan Soul Car Woods (she liked the name she came up with—she’d have to share it with Gus tomorrow). The woods were nearly completely dark, and her eyes were adjusted to Deb’s headlights, so she couldn’t see anything at all. But if the Soul Car appeared, she figured she’d be able to see it even in the dark—it probably glowed or something.

“Meg?”

Meghan almost gasped. It wasn’t just that Deb startled her—it was that his tone carried a trace of what on earth are you doing? with it.

In relationships, Meghan valued honesty above all else. From December of her freshman year to January of her sophomore year, Meghan had dated Landon Jackson—an athlete like Deb, but a basketball player, and a “jock” in the most pejorative sense of the word: a show-off and a ball hog, in sports and in life. Still, he had been Meghan’s first kiss and first everything-else, too. She didn’t regret dating him, but she did regret lying to him.

She never lied to Landon about anything truly important. It was little stuff, “relationship grease” stuff—things she liked because Landon liked them, people she put up with because they were Landon’s friends. All that little stuff added up. Each lie was a loan, and the collateral was Meghan’s sanity. The problem was, she interpreted her growing anxiety as fear of losing Landon. It wasn’t until he told her he was moving to California to live with his dad that she realized she was more afraid of keeping him. Turned out, she was thrilled he was leaving.

Meghan had learned her lesson. Honesty wasn’t for the other person—it was to keep yourself from having to remember of a bunch of crap. She vowed never to go down that path again.

But now she was trapped. Granted, she had already fibbed a little about the “history project” for Mrs. Miller’s class. But Deb hadn’t asked her, directly, about the project, or even if there was a project. She knew she was splitting hairs, but there was a difference between a little misdirection and an outright lie.

Right now, the way Meghan saw it, Deb was asking what she was doing. What she was doing was scanning the woods for a car that smashed into a tree about half a century ago. But sharing that would be a betrayal of her promise to Gus.

She decided to stall. “What?”

“It was like you were looking at something.”

“Just out the window.” Meghan was pleased. This was true, to an extent. “Everything go well at practice tonight?”

Deflection was a tried and true method to avoid a thorny subject, and Deb had proven particularly susceptible to it. It still unsettled Meghan, though, because despite her hair splitting, the weight in the pit of her stomach was calling her a liar. It was deflect Deb or rat out Gus, though, and she had made a promise.

Deb grunted. “Went okay. Coach can’t get his head off of Parkersburg’s running back—Taylor whatever.”

“I mean, that’s his job, right? Figuring out how to stop the other team’s star players?”

“Well, yeah,” Deb agreed. “But he’s the only weapon they’ve got. I watched the highlight reels his dad posted on Facebook. He’s nothing special.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Meghan advised, and she meant it. Not just because she thought it would affect his play—ever since she and Landon split, she found cockiness incredibly unappealing.

“I’m not,” Deb assured her. “I can tell the difference between a good player and a great player. He’s good. But if we take away the ground game—eight, nine guys in the box—he’s irrelevant.”

They were almost to the intersection of 50 and 119 now, and Soul Car Woods was nearly out of sight.

As subtly as possible, Meghan leaned forward and shifted her eyes to the passenger-side mirror. Even if she saw anything in the dark woods, it would look much farther way than it was (Objects in mirror are closer than they appear), so she knew it probably wasn’t worth the trouble. Still, there’s an expression: It’s like watching a car crash—you can’t look away. This was literally a car crash, albeit an old one, so it was no surprise she couldn’t look away.

“What are you looking at?”

Damn, Meghan thought, Deb’s on his game tonight. Any other night I could be doing handsprings over here and he wouldn’t notice.

“Honestly?” Meghan tried stalling again, but that word made her cringe a little. She knew whatever she wound up telling Deb wasn’t going to live up to honestly.

“It’s the best policy,” Deb joked, but it wasn’t a joke, and Meghan knew it. What did he know? Was she finding some deeper perception in the stone monolith that was Deb Marsh?

“I thought I saw something in the woods back there.”

“Thought you saw what?” Deb prodded.

“I wasn’t sure, so I was double-checking.” Meghan’s conscience was tugging at her, but she felt she was on relatively safe ground here. No big whoppers, yet at least, and her promise to Gus was intact.

A moment passed in silence before Deb spoke. “Must’ve been something pretty weird.”

Meghan was unnerved by his tone. “Why is that?”

“Seems to me you’d’ve told me what you thought it was the first time you were looking, instead of sneaking another look later.”

This was as close to an argument as Meghan and Deb had ever had, which was a testament to the placidity of their relationship. But she realized that Deb had just, for all intents and purposes, called her a liar. Her first reaction was a flash of rage, which she squelched right away—she may not like being called on her lie, but it certainly wasn’t fair to lash out at Deb. Her second reaction was a mild form of despair. She didn’t know what to say, and she had already paused so long that any answer she gave would be suspect.

Then, in a flash of inspiration, she remembered Gus’s conversation with the bus driver.

“I thought I saw a road over there.”

“Thought you saw a road?” Deb asked. “What do you mean?”

Meghan found her footing. “I guess the way the light hit it this evening and the angle we were seeing it from, it looked like some of the trees were younger than others. Like in a path or something. I wondered if there used to be a road over there.”

“Not as long as I can remember.” Deb obviously bought her explanation, because he was racking his brain to remember any details about an old road there. “But it’s certainly possible.”

Meghan’s conscience still twisted her stomach a bit, but she felt talking about the road was a good compromise between the truth and a lie.

“Sorry I was so cryptic about it,” Meghan said. “I just felt stupid saying I saw it when I didn’t know if I’d seen anything at all.”

Deb was matter-of-fact. “I’ll never think you’re stupid. And I’m sorry too—it was none of my business.”

Two reactions competed for Meghan’s attention. First, her conscience went berserk. Deb’s kind response made her feel terrible for deceiving him. Her second reaction was to positively melt, and that’s the one that won out. She felt tears in her eyes, and she smiled.

“I don’t deserve you, Deb Marsh.”

It was a little after 9:00 when they arrived at Meghan’s house. She turned their goodnight kiss into a mini make-out session. She could tell from his return kisses that Deb was not entirely into it.

Meghan leaned back, keeping his head in her hands. She smiled. “Thanks for the ride home.”

“Least I could do, since I forgot to tell you about practice.”

Deb might have sensed that he was coming off cold, because he leaned in and initiated the next kiss himself.

When he sat back, he sighed. “It’s me that doesn’t deserve you.”

That caught Meghan by surprise, but she decided to play it off as nothing. “You don’t deserve me, I don’t deserve you. So what? We’ve got each other, so who cares about deserving?”

She kissed him again, but firmly and with finality, so as not to imply she wanted another make-out session. “You’re the best.”

That meant I love you, but they hadn’t uttered that particular phrase to each other yet, and tonight definitely wasn’t the night to start.

Meghan hopped out of Deb’s car, waved once, and went into her house. As she heard his car restart and roll through the gravel driveway, she felt a wave of relief pass over her. She had survived without revealing Gus’s secret. Close on the heels of that relief, though, was the worst twist of her stomach yet. If she was feeling relieved to be away from her boyfriend, what did that say about her chances of keeping the secret for much longer? Worse, what did that say about her chances of keeping her boyfriend?

This was much worse than the relief she felt when Landon had moved away. That had been cathartic, a lovely realization that made life easier going forward. This, this was guilt, and that wasn’t a familiar feeling for Meghan. She didn’t like it one bit.

Meghan heard the TV on in the den, which meant her parents—that is, Dad and Peggy—were in there. It occurred to her that, if there were any room in this house with a soul in it, it would be the den.

Meghan dropped her bag in the hallway, took a breath, plastered on a smile, and bounced in to say hello to Dad and Peggy.