Page 39 of The House on Haven Way

I go on the defensive. “I’d never seen him act like that before. He’s a medic. Worked at the hospital. He could have grabbed something and slipped it to me.”

“He could have, sure. Anything is possible. Isn’t it also possible that your friend hoped you’d listen to him and realize you didn’t really love Nancy so that he could have a shot? And when you passed, he jumped on the chance to get her for himself, because he knew there was no point in waiting, no point in being sad and alone? After all, you were a healthy young man, and you’d died in the prime of your life.”

“But that’s just it! He’d died in the prime of his life!” Amber shouts, making us both jump. “Why aren’t people suspicious and investigating? This has to be murder. Johnny... Johnny’s been stuck here, all alone. All this time,” her voice weakens and breaks. “It wouldn’t be fair for this to have been natural. Would it? He would have crossed over. It’s... It’s not fair!”

Manny is silent, trying to figure out how to respond to that outburst. Amber’s angrily scrubbing at her eyes with one sleeve of her baggy orange sweatshirt.

“You know,” I say, taking her hands. “It would be fair. And it would have been okay with me to be stuck here for all this time if I got to meet you because of it. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I don’t want you to shed tears over me and my dumb mistakes.”

“There was a standard sort of investigation, Johnny. Coroner and folks at the hospital morgue, I guess. I heard it was a burst appendix. You’d taken ipecac, and that’s a bad idea. It can actually cause an inflamed appendix to rupture. They advise against using it in almost all cases these days.” Manny pats my back with his hammer-like hands and quickly pulls back when he almost punches straight through me. “Oops.”

“A case of appendicitis shouldn’t be fatal. Not fair!” Amber looks at me, eyes still full of tears despite what I said.

What I’m starting to believe.

Manny’s voice rolls on, a gentle tide. “If you did burst your appendix, you might have passed out. People can pass out from pain, after all. If you had called the hospital that night, they could have saved you, probably. IV antibiotics were available back then. Peritonitis could be contained if it was caught early. I don’t think it should have happened so fast, but there could have been other factors, like alcohol, dehydration, or some underlying infection, or maybe even some structural thing with your organs that you’d never have known about if things weren’t going wrong.”

“You’re right. You’re right,” I say. “Thanks, Manny. That helps a lot. We’re still waiting for some records to come in.”

“All right. Sure sorry I upset you. In a way, aren’t you glad that it looks like it was an accident?”

Amber looks at me.

I look at her.

Seventy years wasted suspecting my best friend?

Seventy years of loneliness.

But also... Seventy years of training myself to be a master of the form I have left, so that I can touch things, control things, and even float things. Change forms and states of solidity.

Seventy years of waiting—so that Amber would walk into my life.

“I’m glad I know that now,” I murmur.

“I think I’ll duck out. Hey, Johnny, you... You wouldn’t want to come back to work part time? Handle the easy stuff like oil changes and changing tires? Laz’s wife is helping at the front desk so Rhea can be home with the baby, but more and more people from the campus are using us as their local garage, so...”

A job. A girl. This house. My house.

And knowing that, sure, I died young, and suddenly, but it wasn’t Harry? And Nancy, sweet girl, got the guy she was really in love with? Harry got the girl he wanted?

Damn it, good for them. “I need that spirit bottle, buddy. And I’m still helping Amber recover, so it might not be a lot of time.”

“That’s okay. We can be flexible with the hours.” Manny sticks out his hand. “Good to see you, Johnny. Is it okay if I tell some more folks you’re back? The ones in the know, you know?”

“It’s fine. Can’t wait to see everyone. Or meet ‘em for the first time.”

“Right. Glad to have you back.”

“Good to be back.”

And it is.

It’s not true. It’s just that Harry Rogers is way more clever than they think.

It can’t be a simple, silly, everyday, ordinary type of tragedy that forced this good, kind person to wait here. Trapped.

And... It can’t be that simple. That no investigation needs to be reopened. No cold case to solve. No headlines proclaiming that I’m the badass detective, the modern Miss Marple, who solved it all.