Chapter 5 Caroline

Chapter 5

Caroline

The world had gone noisy and white, like it was snowing inside the bar—which, well, after the year she'd had seemed unlikely, but not impossible.

Caroline could sense that Ben was holding her. She could register the warmth of his chest against her cheek. And while it was welcome, all Caroline could really concern herself with was panic for her mother, for her customers, for the Rose itself. It felt like a family member was dying right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do about it. And yes, that was a little bit of a hot-button issue for her.

Her fingers tangled in Ben's flannel shirt and the smell of pine and spice filled her nose. It brought her back to herself, to stolen moments in Ben's old room, after she'd climbed up the trellis at Gray Fern Cottage. He hadn't changed his cologne in all these years.

These were truly inconvenient thoughts to have when a building was trying to smack you around.

The noise finally stopped, and the floor wasn't shaking anymore. Ben squeezed her even tighter and then released her, and while everything in her screamed for her to get up, to check on everybody—she couldn't budge as Ben crouched over her, checking for injuries. He was so close she could reach out and brush her fingertips across his lips like she used to, after all this time. How many days had passed with her pretending she didn't miss him? How many other names had she whispered trying to balm the wound? And now, he was looking at her like he loved her and all it did was hurt more.

"You OK?" he said, cupping his hands around her cheeks. "Does anything hurt? Did you bump your head?"

Caroline blinked at him. Was she OK? Had she bumped her head? Because her thought patterns did not seem healthy. Maybe she was just post-crisis randy? It had happened before with particularly dangerous ghost cases.

Ghosts.

Death.

Family.

"Mom?" Caroline scrambled up, practically throwing Ben off of her. He stood, helping her to her feet. Her mom was standing in the middle of the room, staring back at where Caroline had been tucked under Ben's body. "Mom!"

Caroline hurtled across the room, throwing her arms around her mother, who seemed healthy and whole—mostly annoyed. Gert's arms tightened briefly around Caroline before pulling away.

"You're all right," her mother said, almost to herself as much as to Caroline. "You're all right."

"Does anybody need medical assistance?" Ben yelled behind them.

"What the hell happened?" Caroline cried, surveying the confusion. While there was a lot of white plaster dust floating through the air, it didn't seem like anyone was bleeding or clutching broken limbs. Customers were mostly coughing and waving their hands in front of their faces to chase off the dust. Caroline didn't want to think about what they could be breathing in. Tables and chairs were overturned across the floor, like a giant, angry child had a tea-party tantrum. Dishes lay broken on the scarred wooden floor, but that seemed to be the result of people scrambling away from the porch…the porch that was just sort of hanging off the main section of the building like a loose tooth, teetering toward the edge of the hill.

"Does it matter?" Gert scoffed. "Call Celia and tell her we're gonna need emergency services."

Caroline blinked at her, too distracted by the sight of what the family called "the keeper's quarters" upstairs now collapsed in the outdoor dining area her father had added only ten years before. She could see the sky through the ceiling. That was bad.

But, obviously, no one was dining al fresco with snow still on the tables, so fortunately, the debris had landed away from the crowd. At least no one was hurt.

When Caroline didn't immediately pull her phone out of her pocket, Gert rolled her eyes and used her own phone to call. Caroline glanced up. The bedroom above was now visible through the open wound in the ceiling…right where Cole had noted the watermark only days before. It had been such a small thing, about the size of a Frisbee, and now…how had it gotten so much worse, so fast?

Ben moved methodically around the room, checking people over. Cole's massive frame appeared at her left, his hand on her shoulder, as if he wanted to keep her from walking closer to the fractured ceiling.

"Uh, it looks like your ceiling had a heart attack," he said, frowning.

Caroline nodded. Now that it seemed there were no injuries in the crowd, that this wasn't some escalation of her family's spiritual fuckery, she felt her body slowly relax. She felt very tired, which was probably the result of her adrenaline ebbing. "Is that a technical term?"

Cole shook his head. "Nope. I'll take a look, see if I can figure out the problem and how extensive the damage is."

A pained smile stretched across her face. "Thanks, Cole."

Outside, she could hear shouting as the front door of the bar was yanked open. Alice and Riley were standing there, panting, coats hanging off their shoulders, boots half-tied, as if they'd run out half-dressed. Which they probably did.

"Don't come in!" Cole shouted. "It might not be safe!"

"Quiet, you," Alice barked at him, throwing her arms around Caroline. Her exhaustion was still there, but with Riley and Alice's magic nearby, it didn't seem as severe. Riley put her arms around the both of them, and the chaos raging inside Caroline quieted. They were here. She was safe.

Alice told her. "It's just a building. We can figure everything else out."

"We felt you," Riley said. "It was like a full-body shriek."

"I scared Mitt Sherzinger pretty badly on my way over," Alice confessed. "I also may have knocked him right off his bike tires as I tore down the sidewalk. It's possible I owe Mitt an apology."

Caroline nodded. She turned her head toward the bar, where most of the family's pictures and mementos had shaken loose from their places on the high shelf—all but one, the old landscape that had hung there for as long as Caroline could remember. It hung steadfast, despite the weight of the frame and the dodgy craftsmanship that held it in place. Caroline frowned, her eyes traveling down to the area behind the bar, near the kitchen door. The ghost in the purple dress had moved there, in the shadows behind the ice machine, glaring at everybody as if she was annoyed that they were being so noisy. At the same time, she looked…satisfied? Like the family had this coming?

"You guys see her, right?" Caroline asked.

"Yep," both of them chorused.

"That can't be good," Caroline muttered.

Riley shook her head. "Nope."

***

In the aftermath of the "ceiling heart attack," a crowd gathered outside the Rose while Trooper Celia Tyree strung yellow CAUTION tape across the entrance. Cole inspected the damage as Iggy Gilinsky and his brother-in-law, Jeff Flanders, climbed onto the roof, nailing a tarp over the external damage. This didn't strike Caroline as particularly safe, but she wasn't in the habit of trying to tell Iggy what to do. Judith and Regina were in the Wiltons' garage taping together boxes to store what supplies they could salvage. Norma and Margaret stood in the snow, creating carefully organized labels. Samantha arrived to help Ben clear each and every person who had been inside, to make sure they hadn't suffered any injuries that needed to be reported to the Wiltons' insurance company.

Petra had set up a table with thermoses of coffee and tea for those who were helping, and even those who weren't. Rugalach was reserved for people who were helping, though. Petra had standards.

While it had been an absolute bastard of a day, it warmed Caroline's heart to see her community coming together to help her family. And yes, it was a little embarrassing, especially when some of the people helping them should—by all rights—be at home recovering from their near miss with the ceiling. But this was what Starfall did. When Judith's husband, Steven, had a heart attack, Gert had organized the meal train. When Norma's grandson needed help with chemistry, Caroline tutored him. Islanders helped islanders. It was simply the Wiltons' turn.

Denny Wilton had arrived on the scene just a few minutes before, but unlike Caroline's mother, he hadn't approached the entrance. He just stood there, in his parka, staring at the building and looking defeated. Will and Wally had arrived too, but were largely useless, only picking up exactly what Gert directed them to and putting it down in the exact location she specified. So her progress was actually slowed down by their presence.

Caroline suspected the boys had only come to help clear away the items that could be salvaged because they knew it would look terrible that everybody else on the island showed up to help and they didn't.

Cole joined the three ladies outside, wearing an honest-to-goodness Bishop Reconstruction hard hat. On another day, the sight of a big, bearded virile man in construction gear might have done it for Caroline, but all she could see was the destruction, and Ben, gently caring for the people whose close brush with serious injury made Caroline want to weep.

"OK, I'm pretty sure this was the result of a slow leak in the roof," Cole told her. "Over time moisture wicked in and everything deteriorated on that side of the building until that section just couldn't hold its own weight. Particularly, when you take into account the uh, hasty construction on the outdoor dining area? Whoever built it was supposed to use bracing. Without it, the porch put extra, unsupported weight on the existing exterior walls. Like putting a ten-pound earring on your ear, eventually, that earlobe is going to have some real problems."

While Alice and Riley shuddered, Caroline swallowed heavily. Her father had been little over half-finished with the project when Chris died. He was too paralyzed by grief to even think about proper bracing and had trusted her brothers to finish the porch for him. He'd refused all offers of help from Iggy and Jeff, wanting to keep other people out of their suffocating bubble of misery. They had done—to no one's surprise—a hasty job by the barest definition of the word. And her mother didn't have the will or the energy to tell them so. Caroline also suspected Sven, who happened to be the county inspector-slash-property-assessor, felt bad for her parents when he certified the finished product. That combined with the obligation he'd felt, knowing Gert had taken care of his family when he was ill, was probably enough to get a "it's probably fine" certification.

Riley gave a decisive nod. "OK, well, Cole, I think you're going to have to start work here immediately. Caroline's family depends on the Rose. It's a big part of the community. We can't just leave it open to the elements. Can you imagine if this would have happened during football season?"

"It's possible you've lived on this island a little too long," Alice noted.

"I don't usually take on last-minute projects on the fly," Cole protested, his dark eyes going wide. "This seems like a bad idea."

"I don't like to throw around the words ‘unlimited resources,'" Riley told him. "So, I won't do it lightly. All repairs to the Rose will be covered by the Shaddow Foundation Trust."

"You can't do that," Caroline cried.

"I can and I will," Riley insisted. "Consider it a historical preservation project, which is right up the Shaddow Foundation Trust's alley, and I have complete discretion about the sort of projects the foundation supports."

Riley usually played down her fortune, referring to the Shaddow Foundation Trust, when it was basically just her checkbook. Inheriting a family mansion and more than enough financial assets to keep it running had its benefits, which she really hadn't adjusted to after a lifetime of paycheck-to-paycheck.

"But I had plans for your library all drawn out," Cole protested.

"It's the family's responsibility to take care of what's important to the island," Riley said. "Particularly, when you consider how certain factors involving the Shaddow family may have contributed to the condition of the building."

"Uh, what does that mean?" Cole asked, his dark brows furrowing.

"The Shaddows were partners in the original construction of The Wilted Rose and insisted on certain specifications. If they hadn't meddled so much, maybe the building would have lasted longer," Riley lied smoothly. It concerned Caroline, that she was able to do that so easily.

Caroline objected. "I know my mom. Family pride won't allow anything else."

"OK, OK," Cole said, writing some notes on a yellow legal pad with his enormous, long-fingered hands. "But what about your library renovation, Miss Denton?"

"It's Riley," she said. "And it can wait until Caroline's workplace is safe."

"I don't like this," Caroline told her. "We have an emergency fund, just for situations like this. You have to when you own a practically ancient building. I insist on paying half."

"This is a rough guess, of course, but this is the neighborhood of what you're looking at," Cole said, holding out his pad.

Caroline eyed the piece of paper, where he'd scribbled a rough estimate of what it would cost to fix the ceiling, the upstairs bedroom, the outside dining area, the porch—a big, old six-figure estimate. "My family will cover a quarter of the repairs."

And they were going to have to borrow money to cover that . The emergency fund had just been completely blown out of the water. Or maybe into the water. She didn't know. It had been a long fucking day.

"Done," Riley said, shaking Caroline's hand. "Cole, draw up a work contract with a formal estimate and let's get started. Any chance of the Rose being open for the tourist season?"

"Not for Memorial Day, but maybe by the end of the summer," Cole said, pursing his lips. "I've never had a job pitch go this way."

Snow was peppering his dark beard with white flecks, giving him a sort of grumpy wizard appearance. Riley patted him on his shoulder, or at least, what she could reach of his shoulder. Riley wasn't much taller than Caroline. "Welcome to Starfall Point."

"Well, I guess it works," he grumbled. "Celia asked me to inspect the building for the state's oversight offices anyway. I'll make some phone calls, come up with supply lists, formalize the estimate."

He stalked off, muttering under his breath.

"Is it possible that you've become a little too accustomed to throwing your financial weight around?" Alice asked gently.

"I've been told where and how I'm going to live for the rest of my life," Riley said. "One of the benefits of this gig is having money to throw at problems. I've never had that before. Also, it sort of solves some problems for me. Plover is still pitching a fit about the renovations. Poor Edison basically has a disapproving live-in father-in-law…except not living."

"So really, this is to help you, not me," Caroline mused.

"Eh," Riley waggled her hand back and forth.

"What was all that about the Shaddow family contributing to the deterioration of the Rose?" Alice asked.

"A little bit of improvised motivation. We don't know that the ghost lady in the barroom didn't contribute to the cave-in," Riley insisted. "For all we know, the temperature variations that come along with hauntings, changes in air pressure, humidity—that can all mess with the integrity of construction materials."

"I'm not sure about that," Caroline said, pulling her jacket tighter against the wind.

"In particular, I don't think that humidity thing is correct," Alice added.

"I'm grasping at straws here," Riley admitted. "But I can't let you face this on your own, particularly when I think the ghost lady contributed to the bar falling apart, somehow. Even if the bar isn't her attachment object and she can't physically interact with it. Something…something was off about the look on her face, right now, watching the aftermath of everything fall apart around you. I don't trust her."

Caroline turned toward the building and its gaping wounds, through which she could see the purple-dress ghost pacing back and forth, an unsettling grin on her face as she prowled the inside of the bar like a shark tracking injured prey.

"That seems reasonable," Caroline said.

"And you've never seen her before the other day?" Alice asked.

Caroline shook her head. "Not once, but you know, the ghosts only show themselves to us when they want us to see them. I mean, she would have to be connected to my family somehow, right, to be showing up around the Rose? Maybe she was trying to warn us of what was coming?"

"So, it was a warning smirk?" Riley asked, arching her brows at Caroline.

"OK, probably not," Caroline said.

Caroline scanned the crowd again. Ben was pulling a sizable splinter out of Iggy's hand. Her dad had changed positions, far away from the crowd, his coat collar pulled up around his ears. Her brothers, predictably, had set up camp near the rugalach.

"I'm gonna go check on my dad," Caroline told them. "Can you make sure my mom doesn't wear herself out?"

Alice and Riley nodded solemnly.

Denny was staring at the second floor, his expression haunted. He'd been a tall, heavyset man once, but time and heartache had whittled him down. Caroline had gotten her eyes from him, but now Denny's were shadowed and framed by deep lines.

"Maybe we should just let it fall apart and slide into the water," Denny rumbled, though Caroline wasn't sure whether he was talking to himself or to her. "Maybe we should just burn what's left."

"Well, that's one plan," Caroline acknowledged. "But we kind of depend on the income to buy food and stuff."

"I'm sorry, baby," he sighed. "I'm sorry you kids are stuck with this, stuck in this place. I wish things were different for you."

"Dad," she sighed. "Don't start that again. It's not your fault."

"But it is," her father insisted. "I brought this on you."

"No one brought this—"

Her phone rang, and it was their insurance agent, distracting Caroline with blessed minutiae—and her brain leaped for the chance to deal with something she might be able to control. She was still working out whether their coverage included "roof heart attack" when her brothers approached.

Caroline ended the call. It was not looking good, in terms of roof-heart-attack coverage.

"Hey, uh, it looks like you guys have all this under control," Will said, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. People rarely believed that the boys were twins. Will was bald as an egg, thin and angular, while Wally was rounded, with their dad's thick dark hair and a cherubic face that had always gotten him out of trouble when they were kids. They were fraternal in appearance but identical in their ability to avoid responsibility. It would have been impressive if it wasn't so damned irritating..

"There's really not much we can do here," Wally continued. "So, I think we're just going to head home."

Caroline's jaw dropped open. Dozens of people were milling around the site, trying to find a way to help. But Wally and Will were just gonna casually wander away?

"And it's pretty cold out," Will said. "I've got a cough already, and I don't want to make Tabby sick."

Caroline rolled her eyes. Will's live-in girlfriend, Tabby, was a desk clerk at the Duchess Hotel, a job she'd secured after Caroline removed her from her position at the Rose. Physically. Despite Gert's "family only" policy, Will had insisted he "couldn't" work without Tabby there—not that the difference in effort was noticeable in Tabby's presence. But in the end, Tabby spent more time on her phone than she'd spent waiting tables, plus she had a terrible habit of leaving that phone in random places. One unfortunate model had ended up in the kitchen's grease trap.

"Fine," she sighed.

"Uh, I don't suppose that Mom got any of the food out of the kitchen?" Wally asked. "Maybe a turkey melt or two?"

"What?" Caroline gaped at him.

"Well, you don't want it to go to waste," Wally insisted, his voice getting louder.

"And I'm sure Tabby would appreciate it if I brought home dinner for her," Will added, matching Wally's volume. "You know how hard she works."

Caroline resisted a second eye roll. She supposed that ultimately, the family should be thanking Tabby. Without her, Will would probably still be living with their parents. He had moved Tabby into the Wilton house a few years before, but she couldn't stand how "sad" the atmosphere was and seemed to think it was her job to cheer things up—by moving things around, throwing things out—including Chris's things.

Frankly, Tabby was lucky Gert hadn't removed her from the planet .

"I'm pretty sure all the food is contaminated with ceiling dust," Caroline told them.

"Could you check?" Will asked.

"No," Caroline huffed. "If you're not going to be helpful, go home."

"Fine, but there's no reason to be rude," Wally told her. "We're not the ones who let the roof cave in."

"What the—" Caroline turned to her dad, looking for him to defend her, or at least, remind the boys that no one "let" the roof cave in. But her father had already turned away, walking back home.

***

Nearly a week later, Caroline and Gert walked down the sidewalk, trying to keep the brisk wind from blowing the financial papers out of their hands. The gray skies definitely reflected their mood. They'd spent the afternoon at the island's lone bank branch, trying to secure funding for the renovations at the Rose. It had been disheartening, seeing how little the bank really seemed to value the bar, in terms of collateral, or as a viable business. The branch manager, Georgie Farthing, assured her that the family was highly regarded, but the bar's "potential projections" made them a risky investment.

The rising temperatures had mostly cleared the snow slush from the sidewalks. They weren't quite dry yet, but it definitely meant less strain on the tarps covering the roof at the Rose.

She could feel the frustration coming off her mother in waves. Gert had protested the idea of taking Riley's money at all, when Caroline had told her of the offer, but at this rate, they might have to rely more heavily on the "Shaddow Foundation Trust" than they'd originally planned.

"Borrowing money," Gert huffed. "The Wiltons have never borrowed money in our lives."

"Well, times change," Caroline said.

"I just don't like the idea," her mother griped.

Frustration rose in Caroline's belly. Not liking the idea of borrowing money didn't change the fact that the place needed to be repaired. "Well, what else am I going to do, Mom? The boys don't have the credit score we need to secure the financing. Hell, you and Dad barely have the credit score we need."

"I know," Gert said. "It just pains a parent, to make a child responsible for their burdens."

"Well, get over it," Caroline replied bluntly. "We don't have any other options."

Rather than comment on Caroline's saltiness, her mother changed the subject. "What do you think of this Cole character?"

It mattered that her mom was asking her opinion. She rarely did that.

"Well, he has a lot of experience with historical properties, which we need. We only want to do this once. Dad, I guess, didn't know what he was doing. And it was finished quickly, after Chris…"

Her mother nodded, blinking away the moisture gathering in her eyes. Caroline immediately regretted saying her brother's name so casually. "I suppose we're lucky it held together for so long."

As they stepped off the curb to cross the street toward the Rose, Caroline heard a noise to her left. She glanced up Waterfront Street, toward Shaddow House. A teenage girl was riding a dark-purple moped toward them at breakneck speed. In that weird, absent way only possible when panic makes time slow down, Caroline thought, I think that's Ben's daughter .

The girl had carried herself with a lot of bravado when Caroline had seen her in Starfall Grounds with Ben, wearing jeans in "emergency-vest orange" and a lime-green sweater, but she didn't have that bluster now. Her eyes were wide with panic as the moped seemed to be streaking out from under her. She wasn't in control of the bike, that much was clear. And the wet streets didn't seem to be helping as her hands wrenched the brakes.

Caroline grabbed her mother's shoulder and jerked her back, flinging Gert against the sidewalk. Caroline was turned away from the moped when it felt like she'd been punched in the side by a fist made of glass shards and nails.

Caroline was tossed onto the ground, rolling across the cobblestones like a tumbleweed. She couldn't breathe. Everything hurt. Everything felt like it was on fire, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. It was like her body went into reset mode and she couldn't grasp onto any single sensation or thought. She forced herself to take in air.

No. No. Mistake. Air made her insides burn, too.

"Mina!" Ben was running toward them, pelting down the sidewalk, carrying a blue medical bag. Caroline wanted to tell him to slow down, to stop running, or he could trip. But again, her insides were on fire, burning the wires connecting her brain to her mouth.

Caroline's eyes rolled up to the gray skies overhead, the wisps of white rolling by. The next thing she knew, Ben's face was hovering over hers. He was barking out orders at the people around them. She could see Cole kneeling next to him.

Cole seemed more confused than afraid, which was a weird thing to stick in her brain, but it did. Ben, on the other hand, was completely panicked. But somehow, he was still able to examine her with a clinical tenderness that made her heart hurt. Dammit, that was the one thing that didn't hurt.

Gert was so still, her eyes blank and glassy with terror. Riley was there, too, holding Caroline's hand. She could hear Alice yelling in the distance.

Aw, so many people I love, right here. This is nice . And the more Riley squeezed her hand, the less Caroline hurt. That was nice, too. Oh, wait, no, she remembered reading somewhere that it was bad when you stopped hurting. It meant you were going into shock.

Was she going to die? No, no. She was safe here, on the island. She should be safe here. Why wasn't she safe here? Her eye landed on Alice, holding Mina, shushing her gently as the girl sobbed into Alice's shoulder.

That was good. Caroline didn't want Mina to feel bad about this. She didn't mean to hurt Caroline. Kids did stupid things sometimes. None of them had ever figured out how Chris had set the shower curtain on fire. While he was in the shower.

Chris.

Was this how Chris felt before he died? Scared and fading from everything around him? Was she going to see him again now? Part of her almost longed for it, as much as she wanted to live. Chris had been the one she could trust, the closest to her in age, the other "dependable" one.

Ever since she'd met Plover and all the others, she'd wondered. Was her brother a ghost out there somewhere? What would he have been attached to? His laptop? His guitar? Her parents hadn't been able to bear changing anything in his room, even all these years later. No, she would have sensed it, if Chris's spirit was still somewhere nearby. But she wished he was nearby. She missed her brother so much.

"Caroline," Ben panted, checking her eyes. "Sweetheart, please, stay awake, OK? Please."

"Caroline, look at me, OK?" Riley commanded her. "I need you to focus on me. Listen to my voice and keep your eyes open. Caroline!"

Riley squeezed her hand, and Caroline felt better. The fire inside her middle was almost entirely out now. But her head felt fuzzy, like she couldn't grab on to her thoughts…

Oh, Riley. How was Caroline going to help Riley with the ghosts if she died? She wasn't about to become a ghost, haunting Starfall. If she saw a light, she was running toward it. She'd been stuck on this island her whole life; she wasn't about to be stuck here after death.

And then, Caroline remembered, Riley's mom had died in a car accident. She didn't want Riley watching this happen.

"Go," Caroline whispered.

But also, holy hell, producing that one word had hurt so much.

"No, I'm staying," Riley whispered back and held her hand impossibly tighter.

Caroline looked beyond her, to the Rose, where she could sort of see the blue tarps flapping on the roof. The woman in the purple dress was standing in front of the entrance, staring at Caroline's body like she was a specimen in a jar. And she looked annoyed again, which was a weird response.

All of the pain and the cold felt like it was leaching out of her body and into the ground.

She could hear Ben calling out to her as her eyes fluttered shut. "No, Caroline, don't close your eyes. Caroline!"

She didn't drift off to sleep so much as plummet.