Page 17 of Between Here and the Horizon
It felt a lot safer sitting at the kitchen counter to read the note. My name was slashed across the envelope like Ronan had been in a terrible hurry when he’d written it.
Inside, the letter:
Ophelia,
We met for the first time today. You weren’t impressed with me in your interview, I could tell, but I was impressed by you. You weren’t flustered. You were respectful and polite, even when I was rude. You were steady. You were calm. You were exactly what I need you to be now, in this moment, when you’re reading this letter.
You probably think I’m a monster, and I suppose I am in a lot of ways. I haven’t made this decision lightly. Know I have wrestled endlessly over my decision to take my own life. Not because I wanted to live, but because of the effect it will have on the children. I haven’t second-guessed myself. Ever since Magda died, I’ve wanted to follow after her. My family was fairly religious when I was growing up—Roman Catholic—but I haven’t believed in that stuff for a very long time now. I don’t think Magda’s cancer was a test handed down to her by a higher power. I think more than likely it was a shitty hand dealt to her in a game of poker she didn’t even realize she was playing. But if there’s a chance there is an afterlife, something more that we go to when we leave this plane of existence, then I have to hope that I’ll be joining her soon.
I don’t expect you to understand how I can risk my children’s happiness on the slim possibility that I might be able to see my wife again. But you see, if I lived my children wouldn’t be happy. They would resent me. They would hate me. As the days, the weeks, and the months have passed me by, I have caught a glimmer of the man I am to become if I continue to live and breathe in this skin of mine, and he isn’t a good man. Before Magda, I was lost. I was weak. I was broken. I am even worse without her now.
So you see it’s better this way. I’ve amassed a fortune in the past few years. Enough money to make sure Connor and Amie receive the best education money can buy. They’ll never have to worry about making their mortgage payments. They’ll never have to stress about making ends meet. Their futures lie before them, all the better and brighter for the fact that I won’t be in them.
And you…this is where you come in. I’m sorry I lied to you. You’re a strong, smart, fiery woman, and in another life I’m sure we would have been great allies. You’re like Magda in so many ways that sitting across from you in that interview made me very uncomfortable.
I ask you to please carry out the job I hired you for. I’ve opened a bank account on the island and left enough money in there for you to be more than fine from now until the summer. Take care of my children. Teach them. Nourish them. Comfort them. If you’re too angry to do this for me, then please do it for my wife. Connor and Amie were her sun and moon. She was a sweet, kind, wonderful woman, and no matter how badly I am letting her down right now, I have been determined to make sure someone equally as wonderful as her safeguards the children until their uncle agrees to take them himself.
In case you are still unaware, I have a brother, Sully. Sully and I haven’t spoken in seven years, but the truth of the matter is that he is still my closest friend. Hewilltake the children eventually, Ophelia. He might just need nudging in the right direction. I have every confidence in your ability to make him see sense.
On my desk, you will find a leather diary along with this letter. Read it. It will explain a lot.
Ronan.
P.s. When he’s ready, give Sully the medal.
Great. So not only did Ronan want me to take on the role of mother, father and sometimes teacher to his children, he wanted me to convince his estranged brother to accept the role after me? Ronan and I barely spent any time together whatsoever. How he had figured out I was capable of accomplishing this monumental task in such a short period of time was a mystery. Damn it. Talk about an uphill battle. He must have known it would be too much to ask of one person. Hemusthave known.
It was late. I should have been exhausted from getting up so early and the events that occurred shortly afterward, but instead my brain was wired. Too much adrenalin pumping around my body, lighting up my synapses, causing my muscles to jump and twitch of their own accord. I was going to read that damned diary. I was going to read it cover to cover, and if there wasn’t something monumentally terrible inside then I was going to curse the name of Ronan Fletcher for what he’d done.
Getting up, I hurried back into his study, moving as quickly as I could—I didn’t want to spend a second longer than necessary in that terrible room—but my eyes never landed on the diary. The second I walked through the door, I looked up and sawhim.Saw him standing there, on the other side of the window. Our eyes met, and I saw the shock on his face. Only a matter of hours ago I’d been outside, feet covered in mud, heart hammering in my chest, watching him swinging back and forth. Now our roles were reversed, him pale, white as a sheet, hair tumbling into his eyes, staring at me through the glass, and me, swaying in the study, barely managing to keep my legs from quitting out from underneath me.
It couldn’t be. It justcouldn’tbe possible. Ronan was dead. I’d seen him with my own two eyes. The cops had made sure. How the hell could he be watching me from outside if they had taken his lifeless body away to somewhere else on the island? The answer was obvious and yet impossible at the same time: I was looking at a ghost. Ronan’s spirit reallyhadlingered behind, and he was observing right now me with hard, steely eyes and a firm set to his jaw that told me he wasn’t happy with how I was dealing with this situation.
My head spun. I couldn’t breathe. A heavy weight pressed down on my chest, constricting my ribcage, preventing me from expanding my lungs properly. My mother had always said ghosts were real. She’d been saying that since I was a kid. I’d never believed her. Never once considered she might not be completely loopy. Until now. The room seemed to be pitching to one side, listing drunkenly. I was about to pass out.
“Ronan?”
The face on the other side of the window—Ronan’s face—frowned. My breath shortened even further, coming out in sharp, ineffective pants that felt unwelcome in my body, as if my lungs had hardened, refusing to accommodate the oxygen I was trying to force into my body. I took a step back, my body reacting too slowly. The message my brain was sending to my legs was,“Run! Run like the fucking wind!”but they wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, I shuffled backward away from the window, hands stiff at my sides, heart beating like a signal drum in my ears, in my temples, everywhere in my body.
The figure on the other side of the window acted as if he were my reflection in a mirror, moving away from the window, vanishing into the blackness beyond. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. If I did, he was likely to materialize out of thin air right behind me and kill me somehow.
That’s what ghosts did, wasn’t it? They wanted to cause harm? They sure as hell didn’t show up for a cup of tea and a chat as far as I was aware. My obsession with the TV show Supernatural kicked in, then, and I began frantically trying to remember where the nearest iron poker or piece of rebar might be. It wasn’t that kind of house, though. Once upon a time it might have been, but now everything was renovated and brand new. The huge fireplace in the living room was gas powered, and with two small children around it was unlikely anyone had left building materials laying around.
While my brain was thinking these ridiculous thoughts, Ronan was vanishing, disappearing little by little, the shadows eating him, swallowing him, until finally he was gone.
The spell was broken.
I bolted from the study like a shot.
My feet hammered up the stairs; it seemed as though I made enough racket to wake up the children and half of the island, but when I raced along the hallway and dashed into my room, slamming the door closed behind me, I didn’t hear another soul stirring in the house. All I could hear was my own labored breathing, and the sound of thunder rumbling off in the distance.
“Jesus.” I leaned my back against the door, swallowing hard.Get yourself together, Lang. Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? It couldn’t have been him. It wasn’t.
It took a long time to convince myself of this. I paced my room for fifteen minutes, shaking my head, mind racing. It had been a long day. An awful, heartbreaking day. There was no way Ronan had killed himself, only to come back as a ghost, though. No way in hell. The mind was a powerful thing, and after the day I’d had it was understandable that I would be overly sensitive. Imagining things, seeing things that weren’t there.
I was still too freaked to shower. I got changed and climbed into bed with my laptop instead, jumping every time the house creaked or the branches of the trees outside the window shook, casting long shadows on the walls inside my room. Flights. I needed to book my flight home. The sooner I got back to California and away from this god-forsaken place, the better.
I opened up my web browser and had to stop myself from booking the earliest flight available. It would be really crappy of me to leave before the CPS worker came and collected Amie and Connor. I didn’t even have anywhere to leave them. Waiting until everything was squared away with them was the right thing to do, even if the prospect of postponing my flight from the island for a few extra hours was enough to make me break out in hives.
