Chapter 13 Ben

Chapter 13

Ben

In the familiar dark of his room, Ben rolled over and found Caroline's side of the bed unoccupied.

He sat up, blinking, looking toward the bathroom. Nope. Dark. He paused, listened. He could hear Josh snuffle-snoring down the hall, and Mina's muted music—to deal with the snuffle-snoring. But he couldn't "feel" Caroline in his house. Her cheerful energy was conspicuously absent.

Until last night, she'd been so leery of staying over. She didn't want to give the kids the wrong impression, she'd told him. She didn't want to be a bad influence. And then Mina had thrown a spare toothbrush at her and told her to stop overthinking it.

Maybe she'd gotten up in the middle of the night to avoid an awkward breakfast scene? He was sure his kids wouldn't be the ones to put Caroline on the spot. They thought she was the most reasonable adult they'd ever met, which went a long way with both of them.

Or maybe Caroline's disappearance had nothing to do with him and the kids. Maybe she'd gotten a telepathic message from a member of her coven and she needed to rush over to help. But if that was the case, wouldn't she have told Ben first in case she ran into ghostly danger?

These were questions other single dads didn't have to answer.

On his nightstand, Ben's phone buzzed. His security-cam app showed notification after notification slipping up his screen. He opened the app and saw a clip of Caroline moving past his doorbell camera. She was limping, but there was a strange listlessness to how she was moving her upper body—none of Caroline's usual verve. Her arms were just sort of hanging at her sides, and even as she opened his front gate, she moved as if a puppet master was pulling her strings. And her feet were bare.

Caroline knew better than to walk around town in bare feet—broken bottles and who-knew-what sort of foot-piercing dangers lurked on the cobblestones.

"What is she doing?" he muttered. He slid his feet into his sneakers and grabbed their jackets. Caroline's shoes had been set neatly on the rack near the front door, right next to Josh's. He tucked them under his arm. Then, he tore out of the house, dashing back to lock the door for the kids' sake.

He ran toward the Main Square, his footsteps echoing across its eerily dark, silent stones. Caroline had already made it past the public library, still hobbling on her sore ankle. Had she woken up in the middle of the night and tried to sneak out before the kids realized she was there? And how had she managed to make it out so quietly? Every step in Gray Fern was an announcement of a foot on the squeaky floor.

"Caroline!" Ben cried, finally catching up to her as they neared the turn to the Rose. Was she really trying to go to the bar right now? He'd never known Caroline to sleepwalk. Had she developed some sort of sleep disorder while he was away?

He grabbed her shoulders, but she didn't protest. She didn't even make a sound, merely stared at him—well, no, she was staring past him, like he wasn't even there. She seemed to be staring at the moon, to be honest.

"Caroline, what are you doing ?" he demanded. "Are you all right? Where are you going?"

She didn't answer. She simply began walking, bumping shoulders with him as she passed, as if he wasn't even there. He dashed around her.

"Caroline, sto—" He stopped, seeing himself reflect in the blank white glassiness of her eyes. "Oh, shit."

This wasn't a sleep disorder. This was something supernatural. And while everything in him screamed to take her back to his house immediately and get her somewhere safe, he knew that would only make Caroline's "work" more complicated and ultimately, more dangerous.

Sighing, he gently pushed her to a nearby bench, and docile as a doll, she let him slip on her shoes and glide her jacket over her arms. She might be possessed or whatever, but she would be warm.

Also, she would sock him in the eye if she ever heard him call her "docile," so he would keep that to himself.

She stood and shuffled along the street. To his surprise, she didn't turn toward the Rose but toward the path that led to the state park lands. That particular footpath continued all the way through the woods to the other side of the island.

There was only one thing she—or whatever was in control of her—could be interested in on that side of the island.

"Ohhhh, shit," Ben muttered, pulling his phone from his pocket. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

***

It took far less time for the others to catch up with them than Ben expected, even in pajamas. Of course, neither Edison, Riley, nor Alice had an injured ankle to slow them down. Hell, Edison was carrying a to-go cup of coffee when they reached the footbridge leading to Vixen's Fall.

"You stopped to make coffee?" Ben asked, sipping the contents of the cup as Caroline crossed the bridge.

"Coffee-enthusiast ghost attached to one of those fancy one-man programmable barista machines, just recently acquired," Edison told him. "We always have coffee."

"Nice," Ben said.

"So, for future reference, yelling ‘ghost emergency' into the phone and then hanging up is not what we would call ‘helpful communication,'" Alice told him.

"I was pretty out of breath by the time I called you," Ben admitted. "Sorry."

"It's OK," Alice said, nodding to Riley, who was hovering near a still-mobile Caroline, looking stricken.

"Do we have any idea where she's going?" Edison asked.

"I think we know," Alice said as they climbed the hill that eventually led to Vixen's Fall. In the distance, the full moon glittered on waves that should have been impossible on a lake. Despite growing up on the island, Ben had only been this far out on the island a handful of times, and never under such perilous circumstances. How was it possible that there was a surface of the island that stretched this far up? It seemed a different planet from the gently rolling hills in town. And the waves? How was it possible the lake was creating waves like that? The noise seemed to be boxing Ben's ears, unnaturally loud.

Alice jogged forward to join Riley and Caroline as they got closer to the edge of the cliff. The five rocks that formed the Crown came into view. Each of the women had a grip on Caroline's arm, to keep her from jumping off the rock's edge. The fear and dread burning at Ben's chest banked a little as Caroline dropped to her knees. Riley and Alice knelt beside her.

"Oh, ow," Alice said, wincing and blinking. "Caroline is having an extremely powerful vision. And I can see it over what I am currently seeing right now."

Riley nodded, keeping one eye shut. "It's like a double photo negative with a side of stabby migraine. Oh, this sucks ."

"Is there anything we can do?" Ben asked.

"Prescription-strength ibuprofen?" Alice suggested, wincing.

"What are you seeing right now?" Edison asked gently.

Riley's voice took on a spooky, hollow note as she said, "We're the girl from Caroline's vision. Emily. Her name is Emily . And she's running to Vixen's Fall. She's thinking, Emmett anchored his boat nearby. It's risky and they're going to have to sail the long way around the island to get to the mainland, but it's the only way to leave without being seen."

Alice's voice took on that same eerie tenor. "Emmett's family doesn't want him to marry a servant. They have a wife in mind for him, a rich one. These dreams of being an artist are ridiculous, they say. And honestly, Emily sort of agrees with them, because his drawings aren't very good, but she loves that he wants to do something different with his life. She can't even trust the people she works for, because they have too many connections to Emmett's parents. But the moon is full and the water is high and they were going to sail together."

It was…well, downright creepy when all three women snapped their heads to the left in unison—as if they all heard something behind them. Together, they said, "Emmett?"

Ben and Edison had to turn around and look, because—yikes.

"Emmett, come out. This isn't funny, and we need to leave," the women chorused together. Their voices had taken on a sort of softened British accent. The hollow echo of it sent a shiver down Ben's spine.

"Emmett, the boat—"

Both Riley and Alice let out screams that were absolutely bloodcurdling. They dropped to the ground, their eyes rolled back, showing only white. Caroline stayed on her knees, head tipped back, but her eyes were white now too.

Edison scrambled forward. "Riley!"

Before Ben could reach Alice, Caroline caught his arm—even with her head tilted back. Slowly, she tipped her head forward until her still-white eyes were level with Ben's. She reached up and cupped Ben's face. "Emmett."

"Who are you right now?"

Caroline shook her head and smiled as if he was being silly. With her eyes rolled upward, it was…really upsetting. "Emily."

"OK, Emily. Nice to meet you. Could you get out of my girlfriend?" Ben asked.

Caroline shook her head. "She has to see."

"What does she have to see?" Ben asked.

Rising to her feet, Caroline took his hand and led him behind the Vixen's Crown, close to the cliff's edge. Too close. She knelt in front of the middle stone and ran her fingers over its surface. She took Ben's hand and placed it on something sharpish carved into the rock. Even in the dark, it felt like four boxes stacked into a cube. It reminded him of something, but it escaped him.

"Our initials. Two E's turned toward each other, to make four squares," Caroline-Emily said. "He buried me here. They would have left me there, in the dirt by the churchyard. They gave so many reasons why I didn't deserve a decent burial with decent folk. But the real reason was her. They didn't want to cross her . So Emmett brought me here, in the dark, to our place, to bury me where I was loved." She smiled sadly. "And then he left, ran far away from his family. And he never came back."

The sense of loss in her voice was deep, so profound that he couldn't say anything besides, "I'm so sorry."

"He did his best for me, to keep me safe. But now, there's no one left to care. Except for Caroline. She came here, made contact with me—despite her . Caroline cares . Bury me, in a real grave, somewhere respectable. And I'll be able to rest," Emily spoke through Caroline.

"That's your unfinished business?" Ben asked.

"Wouldn't you say that's enough?" she asked dryly.

"That's a good point," Ben admitted. "Do you think you have an attachment object?"

Caroline-Emily seemed to think about that for a moment. "If not my bones, perhaps the buckles on my shoes? They were real silver, and I worked hard to earn them. They were buried with me, as I would have wanted."

Ben smiled gently. "That makes sense."

Caroline sagged against him, to where he had to hold her up by her elbows. That otherworldly Emily voice was still coming from her lips. "I can't hold this for long. I needed all three of them, together, here, to speak. But she's so much stronger. It's not right, her being this strong."

"Is it so hard for you, to talk to Caroline? Through her?" he asked. "Because of this other ghost?"

The Caroline-Emily hybrid nodded, almost frantically. "She's kept me away, from the day Caroline could see us. Had to reach out, in some way she wouldn't understand. It had to be about love. Your Caroline, she understands love, but not her . She's so powerful. Even in death. She had us all fooled."

"You keep saying ‘she' and ‘her,'" Ben said. "Who are you talking about?"

"The same woman who pushed me off the cliff. The same woman who kept me from being buried in the churchyard. R—"

A burst of green-gray light from his right nearly knocked Ben on his ass. A spectral, skeletal woman was screaming inches from Ben's face like a hurricane made of screeching. Caroline tumbled to her side. She rolled out of Ben's dazed grip. His breath caught, and he didn't have time to worry about the angry ghost lady—who was not Emily, he could just tell from the angry brow and the peeling, rotten skin—howling at him while he tried to wrestle Caroline's dead weight away from the precipice.

"Fuck. Off! " Ben hollered back.

Was he crazy, or did the dead harridan look almost offended?

"You heard him, fuck off!" Suddenly, Riley was sitting up and the ghost was hit with a face full of salt she threw from a small linen bag. With one last sneer, the ghost sizzled into nothing.

"Ow." Riley flopped back to the ground. " Ow. Fucking ow."

Caroline gasped into a conscious state. "Are we awake?"

"Yes, and it's terrible," Alice grumbled into the grass. "Why am I face-down?"

"Why are we awake?" Caroline demanded. "And why does it hurt so much? And why is Alice face down?"

"I'm so sorry, Alice!" Edison exclaimed, crawling over to her side to help her sit up. "Riley went down and I panicked."

"That's OK," Alice huffed as Edison helped her sit up. "I just need someone to pick the grass out of my teeth."

"Oh fuck, that hurts," Caroline groaned as Ben cradled her into his shoulder.

"What she said," Riley moaned, lifting an arm to flap in Caroline's direction.

"Why am I here?" Caroline asked. "Why are you all here? Is this going to be some very unfortunate Wizard of Oz situation? Or did I get slipped some party drugs in a nonparty context? Is that why I'm asking so many questions?"

"You sleepwalked," Ben told her. "You don't remember?"

Caroline shook her head. "I had the same dream, walking up to Vixen's Fall to meet Emmett. But then those hands pushed me, and everything went gray. It felt like I was underwater. I could feel Riley and Alice with me, but I couldn't reach out to them. I could hear your voice, but I couldn't talk back. I couldn't even hear what Emily was saying. And the barroom ghost yelled in my face. Bitch ."

"It was awful. Let's not ever do that again," Alice sighed as Riley helped her to her feet.

"Agreed," Riley groaned as the rest helped Ben and Caroline up. "Also, is it just me, or was that the most aesthetically challenged ghost we've seen so far?"

"She was definitely in a later stage of decomposition," Ben said. "What ghosts I've seen at Shaddow House seem to be in a ‘fresher' state."

Riley's lips twitched. "Is that an official medical opinion of ghosts?"

"Oh, the journal articles I could write…that would immediately get my license taken away and then get me committed," Ben sighed.

"So why the sudden change in ‘freshness?'" Riley wondered as the five of them trudged back through the grass, toward town.

"Maybe that's her real state, spiritually speaking?" Edison suggested. "The purple-dress-lady guise at the bar was just a sort of…well, the fairy tales would call it a ‘glamour,' to keep up appearances? To make people she allowed to see her drop their guard?"

"Well, who the hell has time for ghost vanity?" Riley griped.

Caroline suggested, "Ghosts, mostly?"

***

The house lights of Gray Fern were blazing when they returned, prompting Ben to run up the stairs much faster than Caroline could manage on her ankle.

The kids? Were the kids OK? Had the ghosts staged some sort of distraction to get the adults away from his kids to use them somehow? He didn't know how that would work, but dad panic didn't allow for logic in times like this.

Ben threw the front door open to find Josh and Mina standing in front of the couch, arms crossed and disapproving expressions securely in place.

"Where have you been ?" Josh cried, in a downright rude impersonation of Plover as Caroline walked through the door. "Do you know how worried we were? What we thought happened to you?"

"Ooh, ease it back some, Josh," Mina said, her expression confused when Alice, Riley, and Edison followed through the door. "Going a little too British and elderly."

"Do you have no compassion for my poor nerves?" Josh demanded.

"Oh, no, you went full Austen. That's an overreach," Mina murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

"Guys, we're sorry, we just had a little bit of a middle-of-the-night sleepwalking encounter with some lady ghosts," Ben told them, hugging Mina tight. "I should have left a note or a text or something, but it was a quickly evolving situation."

"Really?" Mina sounded way too intrigued by that for Ben's comfort. "Lucky!"

Josh snapped out of his melodramatic mien instantly. He put his arm around Caroline, prompting a tired smile from her. "Oh, man, we felt this horrible ghost scream a while ago. That's what woke us up. And when we realized you were gone, we just thought you guys just snuck off for some private…eh…"

"Naked fun time?" Mina suggested.

"What? No!" Josh hollered, giving his sister a fully horrified look.

"I never want to hear you say those words together again," Ben said solemnly, making Mina cackle. "Not even when you're eventually having…naked fun time yourself."

Josh shrieked indignantly, putting his hands over his ears. "Just stop talking!"

Ben added, "Fifty years from now. When I'm dead."

Mina's nose wrinkled as she waggled her head back and forth. "That seems like a late-in-life start, honestly."

Josh didn't respond, only sighed wearily.

"OK, OK, let's end the conversational trauma now and talk about dead people," Caroline suggested, clapping her hands and using a bright "camp counselor" voice.

"Sounds good," Josh said, pointing at her. "Who was it this time?"

"Emily. The Vixen's Fall ghost," Alice informed them. "Who was not so much of a vixen as a victim. She was actually very sweet and didn't make a single grab at our ankles."

Caroline winced as she settled her weight on the couch. Ben sat on the coffee table and elevated, then massaged her foot to counteract the inevitable swelling as he explained what happened. Alice and Riley bustled around the kitchen, boiling water for tea, pouring the coffee the kids had already made. By the time they came back to the living room with cups, milk, and sugar, Ben had reached the point of the story where the angry decomposing ghost screeched in his face.

"Do the kids really need to know about all this?" Caroline asked. "It seems like too much for them. The inherent creepiness of full-body possession in my sleep."

"Um, yeah, because if we'd had the full picture about this Emily getting tossed off the cliff, I could have told you that Rose-the-creepy-barroom lady was the one who probably did it," Mina scoffed.

"I'm sorry, what?" Caroline asked, nearly spitting out her piping-hot coffee.

Mina shrugged. "Oh, she hated Emily. Rose hated everybody, honestly. But especially Emily."

"Pause," Caroline said patiently, raising her hands. "Explain."

"Remember when I called Rose a dirty bitch?" Mina asked.

"Vividly," Riley deadpanned. "But mentioning her name—might have been helpful."

"I'm not good with details, sometimes, when I'm mad…or hungry…or sleepy," Mina told them. "And right before I started yelling at her, I guess maybe I was particularly stressed out, or my third eye was pried open or something. But she treated me to a sort of video montage that I think was supposed to make her seem sympathetic, but it was really just middle-aged lady ravings all at once—like she was downloading a zip file into my head, but I don't think she knew what she was doing. It sucked because she was the actual worst. Sorry, Caroline, I know she was an ancestor of yours, but she was full-on, reality-star-exposed-on-YouTube brand of ‘yikes'. And the funny thing is, I don't think she meant to do it. Because what she showed me…"

"Uh, we need less ‘stream of Mina-consciousness' and more of a linear narration," Josh told her.

"The vocabulary lists are really paying off, Josh," she said. "OK, fine. So, what Rose was trying to show me was her life as a poor unappreciated housewife, sick, miserable as her family just sort of blithely ran the inn and ignored her. But the truth was, she ran that place with an iron fist, and she managed to do it from her sickbed upstairs. And she loved it . She controlled who the family bought ale from, who they bought their food supplies from, whose tab got extended, who got to pay their rent late. Did I mention that your family used to own a lot more than just the Rose? They owned cottages and farms all up and down the shoreline and made a pretty penny gouging people for living in them."

Caroline nodded. "So, my family managed to fritter a real estate empire away. Shocker. Wait, so Rose, as in ‘the Rose?' I thought The Wilted Rose was supposed to be named after some angry spinster nursemaid, like a cautionary tale against trusting too easily."

"Well, it is a cautionary tale," Mina said, wrinkling her nose. "Her husband, Henry, might have been the public face of the inn, but it was Rose running the show. All while inviting the neighborhood ladies in her boudoir-slash-control-room for tea and sympathy. She fed them a steady flow of gossip she learned from eavesdropping on the very loud conversations happening in the bar. It gave her considerable influence and power in the community because no one wanted to cross her or be the one she was gossiping about. Her husband was also afraid of her. And so were her kids. I mean, ‘afraid' isn't the right word. They lived in terror of her, like she was a monster in their closet, and she sort of loved that. She loved pulling the strings and watching them dance—I mean, she was subtle about it. She used the art of the veiled insult, the backhanded compliment, the threat of a cold shoulder, a well-timed coughing fit, or just falling into what I guess would be considered a coma—back before people realized how rare comas are—if she was even vaguely disappointed. Her family was just so terrified that she would turn her evil eye on them, or that they would be blamed if disappointment over their ‘misbehavior' was what sent her over the edge and killed her. They were conditioned, like hostages or cult members or…"

"We get it, honey," Riley drawled. "She was the worst."

"Well, then, Emily came along, with her bright smile and her perky boobs," Mina said.

"Emily? My Emily?" Caroline gasped.

"Yep, Emily was supposed to be a sort of nanny to Rose's children. Even though she was supposed to be there for the kids, Rose found a way to dominate Emily's time, sending her into the barroom to fetch this, fetch that for her. She constantly sent Emily on errands and pointless little chores, just to remind her of who was in charge. Emily spent so much time taking care of Rose that a second nurse was hired for the kids, and Emily was in charge of Rose. The inn prospered, so it wasn't a huge problem, financially. Emily was beloved by Henry, the kids, and the people in the inn. Well, Rose didn't like that, or her children's preference for Emily. So Rose started to none-too-subtly imply, during those gossip visits with the neighbors, that Emily was a little too close to Henry. Suddenly, Emily is not as well liked, and people start seeing Rose as this brave, sad woman who needs more community support, more attention," Mina said.

"Oof, that is some advanced social engineering given the time," Riley marveled.

"Sounds like she was the original Nana Grapevine," Mina said.

"How do you know about the Nana Grapevine?" Edison asked.

"How would I not know about the Nana Grapevine?" Mina shot back, sounding insulted. "Do you realize how little gossip there is, for such a tiny town? Gossip is my lifeblood. Anyway, Rose sensed a disturbance in her spider's web of machinations. Emily had developed an interest in Emmett, the age-appropriate, single son of a local solicitor. The solicitor and his wife found out, thanks to Rose's intervention, and did not approve. They thought Emily was the one who was giving Emmett all these dangerous ideas about running away for some sort of artistic career . And Rose took the idea of Emily leaving the island really personally—like, weirdly personally. The insult of it, Rose wouldn't accept that."

"Rose started implying that she's getting weaker and thinks it's possible that Emily is poisoning her. Her health got worse and worse, or so she claimed. Mostly because she was taking a tiny dose of rat poison when she thought that nobody was taking her illnesses seriously—just enough to make her a little sick. She asked the local solicitor to write a will and asked the other ladies of the neighborhood to take care of her kids ‘after she's gone.'"

"This is some ye olde true crime bullshit," Josh said. Ben cleared his throat. Josh just shrugged.

"Rose started to suspect that Emily was catching onto her fuckery," Mina noted.

"OK, the line is blurry, but it's still there!" Ben exclaimed. "The language!"

Mina merely chuckled. "Rose treated Emily worse and worse, and she could sense the desperation growing in Emily, so she pushed up the timeline. She had a few more ‘sickly spells,' spread a little more gossip. She overheard Emily talking to Emmett at the inn and found out that she was supposed to meet him at the cliff at night to elope. But Rose got there first. She pretended to be taking to her bed for one of her ‘early evenings' and snuck across the island. Nobody would ever believe it because it involved running. She got to the cliff before Emily, hid behind the Crown rocks—it was called Starfall Crown back then—and shoved her right off the cliff. No hesitation. No conscience. No regret, not even when she saw Emily's body floating."

"She would have deserved her own series on ye olde true crime channel," Josh said, cringing.

"Rose dashed home as soon as she realized Emmett was coming up the path," Mina said. "Emmett found Emily's body, and was, of course, crushed. He went to the magistrate, raised a big stink, but butter wouldn't melt in Rose's dirty lying mouth. She just reminded everybody of how ‘accommodating' Emily was to customers, free with her favors. She had a lot of admirers. And of course, all of her teatime harpies backed up her story. They suddenly remembered Emily flirting with their husbands, too, because Rose helped them remember. They supposed that she must have met some other man and she ‘got what she deserved'—which was freaking awful. If Emily's ghost was lurking nearby, I hate that she might have overheard that. And everybody believed that Rose was too weak and sick to hurt anyone, but her husband was questioned by the magistrate pretty closely. Rose enjoyed that part.

"And weirdly, even after basically showing me how she murdered someone, this was the point in the ‘memory' where Rose really started trying to change how I saw things. But she couldn't hide the fact that she continued poisoning herself, just a little bit at a time. She enjoyed the sympathy she got when she was sick. And it only added to the ‘proof,' reminding everybody that Emily must have been poisoning her, because ‘look at the long-lasting effects it's had,' et cetera. In fact, she insisted they change the name of the bar to The Wilted Rose, to remind everyone of poor victimized Rose. She let the family think it was their idea, of course, but it was her," Mina said.

"She was the worst." Caroline's lip curled back. It turned out she was descended from a murderer, but definitely not how she thought. "OK, so, why didn't you tell us any of this before? Because this is a wealth of valuable information that we could have used a couple of hours ago."

"Because you cut me off!" Mina cried. "You said you didn't want me involved in any of this and gave me a big lecture about ghost safety. You treated me like a little kid."

"OK, I can see now, that was a mistake," Caroline said. "I'm sorry."

"It's OK, after I got mad—a couple of days after—I realized it was nice to have someone who's not Dad worry about me," Mina said. Ben smiled at her, his chest tightening in a coiling fashion. Caroline cared about his children, and they felt that. He hoped they never lost it.

"But you withheld information because you were butt-hurt," Josh added.

"I don't get butt-hurt," Mina replied primly.

Josh arched an eyebrow. "Mina."

"OK, maybe a little bit," Mina conceded. "But I didn't know it was going to be important information, OK? The last bit—which, again, I don't think Rose meant to tell me. Eventually, all that poison caught up with her, and she died. I think people just chalked it up to all the health problems that she was always talking about, plus, you know, poison."

"What does any of this mean?" Caroline asked.

Mina shook her head. "No idea. But I think part of the reason she was able to smack you three around so easily—"

"Hey," Riley interjected.

"Was because Josh and I weren't there," Mina continued. "For some reason, Rose has a harder time manipulating me. Maybe because I don't have a blood connection to her or because I'm already used to being manipulated by my own mom, and she's a lot better at it than Rose. It's like I'm vaccinated against it, or something."

Ben shot a curious glance at Josh, to see if he would contradict his sister.

Josh merely shrugged. "A triangle is great, but a pentagon is a lot harder to break."

"I concede your point. No more leaving you out," Riley said. "Sorry, guys."

"So, Emily clearly isn't the source of the curse because she doesn't have a grudge against the Wilton family. I could feel her grief and loss out on that cliff, and she didn't have room in her heart for the kind of hate involved in what was done to your family…killing your relatives… So, I can't believe I'm saying this but…could it be Rose?" Alice suggested.

"Oh, my god, really?" Mina asked, her eyes going wide. "I mean, she's awful, but how could she do that to her own family?"

It was a brief balm to Ben's mind, that as bad as Mina's relationship was with her mother, Mina's young mind couldn't comprehend the idea of a mother hurting her own family in that way. It was a small comfort, but it was something.

"Rose liked to control people, you said," Riley noted. "Maybe she saw her family leaving the island as the ultimate loss of that control. She couldn't stand it. I mean, look at how she responded when Emily wanted to leave, and she didn't even like Emily. So maybe she found a way to punish your family members who tried to leave that control."

"Oh, man, Caroline, I'm sorry. I should have said something earlier," Mina said, looking stricken.

"I'm not sure I would have believed you, before I saw the things we've seen," Caroline said, putting her arm around Mina.

"OK, but how does it work?" Josh asked. "How do we get them to move on?"

"Well, that I don't know, dammit," Riley sighed. "We know what happened, but what good does that do?"

"When Emily was possessing Caroline, she said she wanted to be buried properly," Ben said. "She's attached to her shoe buckles, so her spirit's been trapped all alone at Vixen's Fall all these years. And Rose has been keeping her silent. So maybe she wants justice of some kind too, since she's never been able to tell her story."

"So, we bury human remains without telling anybody?" Alice mused, "Caroline, what does the Michigan legal code have to say about that one?"

"I mean, she was murdered, but it's not like we can bring Rose to justice," Caroline said, frowning. "Other than maybe finding Rose's attachment object and sticking it in a box with, like, really smelly cheese and dirty sweat socks. Can ghosts smell? I'm a little ashamed I've never asked Plover."

"I could write a journal article in a historical publication that trashes the hell out of her," Edison offered.

"Aw, that's sweet," Caroline told him, patting his hand. "But I think that would probably upset my remaining family members. But also, fuck Rose, so do what you will."

"If we did contact the authorities, we would have to answer all sorts of questions about how we ‘found' her, without sounding completely suspicious. Digging near the edge of Vixen's Fall isn't exactly a fun weekend activity," Riley added. "I think this is a ‘discretion is the better part of valor' situation. We dig up Emily's remains under cover of night and bury her somewhere inconspicuous near the church with as much dignity as we can provide. That's all she wanted."

A moment of silence passed as the group sort of sank back into their seats.

"That was a lot for one night," Caroline mused as she leaned into Ben's side.

Ben nodded, glancing around at the assembled group. He knew these people cared for his kids, cared for Caroline. He'd made the right decision, bringing his children to Starfall. They were thriving. Hell, they were blooming. They had magic and purpose here. They had people who would nurture them and protect them, but at the same time, they were so young. They were supposed to be worried about SAT scores and fender benders, not magical battles with murderous ghosts.

But what could he do?

He had offers for other jobs. They came into his email account regularly as medical head-hunting firms attempted to find physicians for open spots in hospitals across the country. But could he really uproot them from the most stable environment they'd known in years? Should he do that, before they were "locked in" to the island, like Caroline? And what about Caroline? They had something real and true that he wanted to hold on to. Even if he wanted to leave Starfall, how could he risk losing her again?

He scrubbed a hand across his face. It was late, and this was too much to deal with all at once.

"Anybody want to binge-watch ghost-hunting shows?" Mina asked.

"No!" the others chorused.

Mina scoffed. "Well, you wake me up at two in the morning and give me coffee, what do you expect?"