“No, Shay. I mean, I’m sorry.”
“What for? Oh, ’cause I’m dead?”
“Yes. I—” Wish I’d done things differently? Wish it happened to me, instead of you? “I miss you.” As soon as he said the words, he thought about Izzy, whom he’d just said them to, as well.
Shay’s grin returned. “You’re missing someone. That’s for sure. You don’t have to miss me. I’m here. Even when you don’t see me, I’m here. Not in a creepy, stalker way. It’s hard to explain until you’re on this side of things.”
“Try.”
“Um. Well.” His brows drew together, then after a moment, his expression of deep concentration cleared. “You know how, when you’re down at the harbor, you can see the water, but only the surface? You can see the horizon, and you can look the other way and see Captivity rising up the hill?”
“Yeah. I can picture all of that.”
“Good. Now, when you’re flying over Captivity at, say, 500 feet, you can see all of it in one field of view, right? You see Jorg and Carl casting flies off the dock, and at the same time you see the school of king salmon swimming in their busy formation all the way on the other side of the cove. You see the kids at the elementary school playing outside at recess, and you also see the brown bear, fresh off winter hibernation, searching the woods just beyond the fence for berries.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Where I am, I can see like that, only more. Farther, deeper. All at once.” He stopped and shook his head. “Sorry. It’s still hard to explain. Is this really what you wanted to know? Is this what you’re pulling at me for?”
“I don’t know.” He yawned. Did you yawn in dreams? “Maybe I’m supposed to tell you something? Or maybe you’re supposed to tell me what you see, now that you’re…where you are?”
Shay seemed to give that some thought. Ran his hand over the square chin they’d inherited from their mom. “I see so much. I can’t sum up things in a concise way. You really would go nuts. All I can tell you is it’s all good. Everything happened the way it’s supposed to happen.”
Nope. He didn’t see that at all.
His brother offered a sheepish smile and shook his head. “It makes more sense when you’re where I am.” His smile tipped toward ironic. “Trust me.”
“Trust me” had practically been Shay’s catchphrase, and usually indicated he shouldn’t be trusted. This whole encounter shouldn’t be trusted, given it most likely amounted to nothing more than his booze-soaked subconscious taking a stroll. But what if he had some proof? “If you’re so all-seeing, how about giving me the winning lottery numbers?”
“Gambling is the devil’s pastime.”
“Really?”
“Nah. I’m messing with you.” He made a show of looking over his shoulders, and then whispered, “There is no devil. John Lennon had it right—no heaven, no hell. There’s just…more. But I’m not here to alter events. Like I said, things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. If you’re meant to win the lottery, you’ll win the lottery.”
“Spoken like a true figment of my imagination,” he grumbled.
“You want proof this is real? No problem. You can ignore your alarm tomorrow. Frozen fog delays all the flights. Your passengers won’t land ’til late in the afternoon, and then you’ll have to get in line for a runway.”
Awesome. Instead of insight from the great beyond, he got a weather report. A bogus one, because he’d checked the weather earlier and frozen fog wasn’t in the forecast.
“You’ll see,” was Shay’s response to the unvoiced opinion. His attention drifted somewhere Trace couldn’t follow. One of those all-seeing places, possibly. He glanced back, and grinned. “Welp, gotta go. Love you, bro.”
“Love you, Shay.” The words echoed in the empty room. His eyes burned. Was it possible to cry in your sleep? Apparently, it was.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You sound positively bleary, Iz. What’s wrong?”
So much for her acting abilities. She got up and closed the door to Trace’s office. If Danny could sense her misery within seconds of getting on the phone with her, the rest of Captivity would pick up on it as well. “I’ve got a vicious headache.” That much was true, and she’d earned it with that third glass of wine last night, but hells bells, last night had turned into a double blindsiding, and she desperately wanted to get Trace involved before they went any further down the deal rabbit hole. Unfortunately, weather in Anchorage this morning had altered his flight plans. Maybe he’d make it back later in the day. Maybe. She dropped heavily into his big desk chair.
Hopefully. What the hell was “frozen fog” anyway?
“Take something, honey. Surely they have naproxen in Captivity.”
“I will. I’ll find some. How are things there?”
“Same old. Can’t complain. I miss my girl, of course. How much longer is this deal going to drag on?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not much.”
“That’s good news.” At her silence, he added, “Right?”
“Hmm.”
“All right. Enough of this cryptic moping. My door is shut, and my ears are open. Tell Uncle Danny what’s troubling you.”
“Ah, Jesus, Danny.” She picked up her pen and tapped it on the desk, helpless against her nervous energy. “This thing has turned into a clusterfuck.”
“The deal? You haven’t even seen the purchase agreement yet, have you?”
“No. It’s not the deal, per se, but other factors—certain personal circumstances I didn’t know about until recently—and once Trace knows them, too, he may change his mind about doing the deal.”
“Ugh. I’m sorry, sweetie. Sounds sticky. You have to respect the client’s wishes, of course, but I hate to see this fall through because of extraneous personal situations. If the sale was right for Trace, as a business decision, and nothing about the business has changed, can you prevail upon him to separate the personal circumstances from the deal? Men are good at compartmentalizing.”
“Maybe.” She tossed the pen down and watched it roll across the desk. Rolling out of her control like everything else in the last twelve hours. “I mean, obviously, for the sake of my partnership, I’d love the sale to move forward.” Why did that feel like lip service more than truth? “But I care about the people involved. I want Trace to have all the information. If he chooses to go ahead with the sale, I need to know it’s for the right reasons.”