chapter thirteen

meghan

Everything I assumed about Leonard Carr was wrong.

Interestingly enough, I felt safer talking to him than I did with that asshole barber shop owner on Main Street. Lenny had the kindest eyes, and the most genuine belly laugh I’d ever heard.

Sure, he rambled and went off on tangents, but it became obvious early on that he was just lonely. It wasn’t hard to see that he didn’t get many opportunities to have someone truly listen to him. We just let him talk. The pauses between his stories were longer than they needed to be, as if he were waiting for me or Chase to interrupt, but we didn’t. I wanted him to feel like he had someone’s attention, and I knew Chase felt the same.

Every now and then, I’d try to steer the conversation toward his past. Just gentle nudges—nothing too invasive. “Lenny, when did you first come to Woodvale?” I asked, recalling what Chase had said about the incident at the gas station in Indy. I was working up to asking him how he got here.

He shifted with his back against the brick wall of the orphanage behind him, his eyes flicking to the ground. He’d met us here on the gravel outside the building as soon as we pulled up, and that’s where we remained. “I can’t remember exactly. I mean, I’ve been here a really long time.” He chuckled awkwardly, scratching at his beard. “I’ve been down every street in this town. I bet you I could draw you a map of it from memory.”

I smiled, not wanting to push him into answering the original question. Something about the way he changed the subject told me it wasn’t worth it. Instead, I just nodded, deciding to let him talk about what he wanted.

The public didn’t need to know how he got here to have compassion for him, anyway.

Chase had questions, too, standing in front of his camera wearing that new blazer and holding the WWTV microphone in front of Lenny’s face. He transformed into a different person when the camera was on him, and it wasn’t just the newscaster voice or his confident posture. He was so calm and composed, and he spoke to Lenny like he was the only person in the world who mattered. I caught the careful way he used the verbiage from the articles I’d sent him the day before, never once calling Lenny “homeless.”

And he didn’t ask a single question about ghosts.

“Lenny, what’s something you wish people understood about folks who are unhoused? About what it’s really like for someone living in your shoes, day-to-day?

Lenny rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at the ground while he thought about his answer. Finally, he looked at Chase and said, “People tell me sometimes to just get a job, but what they don’t understand is that you have to have an address to get a job. And you have to have a job to get a home with an address. It’s impossible. People like me, we’re just… stuck.”

Chase’s eyes flitted over to mine, and in that brief glance, I could see he was struggling to keep his composure. We both felt the weight of Lenny’s words. I knew from the way Chase swallowed that he, too, had a lump forming in his throat. It took him a few seconds to ask his next question.

Someone at WWTV was going to have to do some creative editing if they wanted to hide Chase’s emotions.

As he continued his segment of the interview, I thought about a phone call I’d made that morning in my research. I’d reached out to a local church that tried to help the few unhoused people in Woodvale get back on their feet. They knew Lenny well, but they said he refused help, insisting he told them he was happy where he was. But they still kept a close eye on him, just in case. It wasn’t much, but they couldn’t force him to accept help. And really, there was only so much they could do with limited resources in our small town.

Chase was quiet when he wrapped up the interview and shut his camera off. I stuck my pen in the spiral of my notebook, watching him bend over to pack his microphone and cords, when Lenny put his hands on his hips and asked, “Did you know this place is haunted?”

Oh, geez. Chase’s head shot my direction, and I just knew he was waiting for me to grunt and sigh to display my annoyance. But something about his boyish grin and the excitement in his eyes made me smile, too. With a playful roll of my eyes, I said, “I’m going to walk around while you guys talk about that.” Before I turned to walk away, I gave him a subtle look of approval.

I wandered around to the side of the building, running my hand along the crumbling brick wall. The year 1902 was etched into the stone near the corner—faint, but still visible. I’d read about this place plenty of times, and I knew more than I probably needed to. The orphanage had closed decades ago, long before I was born.

There wasn’t a door anymore, just an open doorway. Dead leaves and scraps of trash were piled up in one corner by the entrance. I stood just at the doorway without stepping inside. Beams of sunlight filtered through a tall, broken window, casting dusty streams of light that made the whole place feel eerie, even in the middle of the afternoon. No wonder everyone said this place was haunted.

Just inside the door, there were newspapers scattered around the floor. I spotted my own name printed on a page near my foot. I assumed it would’ve been an old issue of the Times, but there was my Fannie Decker piece from just a few days ago. It looked like there were several copies of that same edition strewn on the floor nearby. How the hell did they end up here?

I glanced up to see stacks of old papers stuffed in gaps between the broken boards, the stories I’d poured my heart into now being used to insulate walls and patch up holes in the windows. A sigh escaped my lips. At least the paper’s good for something.

For a few minutes, I leaned against the outside wall and began dictating into my phone, drafting the article. Sometimes that was the fastest way to get my thoughts out, especially when I had a hundred of them at once. “Within these quiet walls, Lenny has crafted a life that’s entirely his own… finding comfort and familiarity in a place most have long forgotten.” I swallowed, thinking to myself, a lot like him.

After making my way around the perimeter of the building, I made my way back to Lenny and Chase. Their voices echoed from around the corner. I paused once I realized they weren’t discussing ghosts anymore—Lenny was talking about a woman.

“She’s awfully pretty, and she seems sharp as a tack, too.”

Chase let out a hesitant chuckle. “Ha, yeah, agreed on both counts. She’s a hell of a lot smarter than me, that’s for sure, and she’s so beautiful it’s almost intimidating.”

My first assumption was that they might be talking about Mayor Michaels. She fit the description, and she was the only woman who came to mind when I considered whom both of these men knew.

But then Chase added, “Just don’t tell Meghan I said that, alright? I’ve got a reputation to maintain, and I like to keep her on her toes.”

Oh, shit. That was about me?

I couldn’t move. It was like my feet were glued to the pavement. The warmth settling in the pit of my stomach matched the heat spreading across my face, making it feel like I was blushing throughout my entire body. I couldn’t decide which compliment was more difficult to process—the fact he believed I was smarter than him or the thought that I was so beautiful it intimidated him.

I tried to feel annoyed at him for having the audacity to speak favorably of me behind my back while being a menace to my face, but I couldn’t deny the way it made my breath catch in my throat. I could handle all of his teasing and insults all day long, but him complimenting me was far more damaging to my psyche.

This after his declaration he’d keep me safe in the car had me completely fucked up in the most confusing way.

Though I said nothing to allude to my overhearing him and Lenny talk, Chase could tell something was bothering me when we got back into the car. “You’re quiet.”

“Just thinking about Lenny,” I lied, holding my breath as he put his hand on my headrest, looking over his shoulder as he backed up. I could smell his deodorant, the same amber and sandalwood scent I used to practically inhale soothe myself when he held me close. Fucking hell, Meghan, get it together.

“You missed all the good stuff. He told me about all his ghost sightings.”

I channeled the weird, annoying emotions bubbling inside of me to anger. Chase didn’t really deserve my rage at the moment, considering he’d just complimented me, but I found the whole thing displeasing. Most of all, I was angry at myself for the way I allowed him to make my head spin. I clenched my jaw, trying to push down this ridiculous swirl of emotions I never consented to. “I’m sure it was very riveting.”

He didn’t deserve the attitude. I knew that. And when he bit his bottom lip before saying, “It was, at least to me,” something squeezed at my heart.

She’s so beautiful, it’s almost intimidating.

I’ll keep you safe.

Letting him talk about his passion was the least I could do, wasn’t it? Reluctantly, I asked him to describe what Lenny shared with him, and he rambled about their conversation the entire way back to the newsroom. I listened to every word, withholding every judgmental comment on the tip of my tongue.

“You should ask him if the ghost’s name is Billy,” I said once we pulled into the parking lot at the old school.

“Billy?” Chase’s brows furrowed.

Did he really forget? “Little Billy, the orphan you said got left behind in the fire, remember?”

Chase smiled as he shifted into park, giving me a slow nod. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Actually, you were right. Lenny said the ghost resembled a tall and slender man. He’s never heard kids laughing, either. That might have been made up.”

As I reached up to tuck my hair behind my ears, I said, “You should know by now, I’m always right.”

Neither of us made a move to gather our things and get out of the car. Chase’s thumb traced the seam on the side of his fabric seat while he stared at me, his eyes concentrating on mine. When he lowered his gaze, his face softened, and I got the impression he changed his mind about what he wanted to say. A bigger smile stretched across his face before he said, “I was right about your battery.”

I rolled my eyes and unbuckled. “Oh, shut up. So you were right about one thing.”

With a satisfied smirk, he watched me scramble to get out of the car. As I tossed my bag over my shoulder on the sidewalk, Chase rolled down the passenger window and said, “I’m right about a lot of things, you’ll just never admit it because you’re so goddamn stubborn.”

I bent over so I could see his face. “So stubborn it’s intimidating?” I quipped.

Chase’s smile slowly faded. I could practically see the gears turning in his head as he pondered whether or not it was a coincidence that I’d chosen that specific phrasing. I did my best to smirk at him in a way that told him what he feared–that I’d overheard him talking to Lenny. He swallowed. “Something like that, yeah.”

God, fucking with him was too easy. However, I was the one feeling embarrassed all of a sudden—because I was smiling so big my cheeks started to hurt. Nothing I could do would make it stop. Not biting my cheeks, not imagining all his nerdy FunkoPops lining the walls of the bedroom we once shared. Not even his stupid, wrinkly shirt could wipe the grin from my lips.

What’s the matter with me?

My smile didn’t fade until I made it to my cubicle where a musty, leather journal sat on the middle of my desk, its cover half-torn, revealing the first yellowed page with faded writing. “What the hell is this?” I hollered out, dropping my bag on the floor. I carefully picked it up, flipping it over to see the back cover was completely missing.

“Some lady dropped that off for you,” Xander yelled back.

“Why?”

“She’s a fan of your column. I don’t know.” He kept typing, clearly bothered by my questioning.

“Okay,” I said, lifting one eyebrow as I opened the journal to the middle. The thing was falling apart in my hands, its loose pages almost slipping out from the bottom. The writing was so faded, it was barely legible. “Xander, would you mind giving me, like, a crumb of context here? Where did it come from?”

With a heavy sigh, he stood up and walked around the corner into my cubicle. “I don’t know. They found it in an old barn or something. I almost threw it in the trash because it’s stinking up the whole newsroom.”

He wasn’t wrong—it smelled like it had gotten wet at some point, and the black blotches on one of the corners resembled mold. “Why did they think I’d want it?”

Xander put his hands in his pockets. “It belonged to one of those old dead broads you wrote about.”

I looked up with a confused scowl. “Which one?”

“I didn’t write down what the lady said. But it’s probably in the journal, right?” he asked with a shrug. “You know, ‘This journal belongs to ‘Jane Smith’ or whatever?”

I ran through the names from my recent columns in my mind, narrowing them down based on who might have a journal in this condition. I blurted the first woman who came to mind. “Was it Fannie Decker?”

Xander nodded. “Yeah, I think that might be what she said.”

Oh my God—I was holding Fannie’s journal.

To anyone else, Fannie Decker was just another name lost to history—a nobody who died almost two centuries ago. But her life, as short as it was, left an imprint on me. It felt like I was holding a piece of her soul in my hands.

I lowered myself to my desk chair, carefully thumbing through the journal to find a scrap of writing I could decipher. The middle pages were less weathered, which made them a little easier to read. A couple of sentences caught my eye, darker than most of her other writing, as though she were pressing her pen harder against the paper.

That damn fox has outwitted me again. He lives to taunt me. Next time I see him, I’ll shoot straighter.

Well, Jillian was right. Fannie was a bad bitch.