chapter eight

chase

When I was little, my mom was at her wits end with me after I ruined one shirt after another, chewing and sucking on all of my collars until they were soggy, stretched-out, and sometimes even torn. As an anxious kid with sensory issues, that was my only way of coping with separation anxiety after she dropped me off at school.

And then she made me go to this therapist who suggested I start wearing a chewy necklace. Instead of ruining all my shirts, I could chew on this lime green silicone dinosaur hanging from my neck. And that was just fantastic—until I was eventually teased for it and went back to chewing on my shirt collars.

At twenty-nine, I still caughtmyself pulling my collar up to my mouth every once in a while. Never to chew on them or anything like that, but just to feel the texture against my bottom lip. It helped me focus. Made me less anxious. Meghan noticed it years ago. When she heard about the dinosaur necklace, she squealed and told me it made her fall in love with me even more. “Aw. I wouldn't have teased you for it if I knew you back then,” she swore, and she joked she was going to get me a new one.

I was thinking about all of this as I watched her fiddle with the obsidian pendant holding her parents’ ashes, drawing it up to rub the smooth crystal against her lips as she stared at the record player. I’d seen her do it before—she always did it when she was anxious or just lost in thought.

I had a feeling I knew what was on her mind, too.

In the car, she sighed as she flipped through her notes from the interview. And she was still rubbing that pendant. I turned the New Order song down. “Something wrong?”

Another, louder sigh. “Just thinking this article is probably going to be a little boring. Nobody’s going to be clicking to buy a subscription for this one.”

“Hey, they might,” I said, glancing over my shoulder before changing lanes. “I mean, it’s Owen Gardner. People love the guy.”

She slowly turned her head toward me. “Uh huh.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not talking about me. He’ll probably share the link, right?” I gripped the steering wheel, thinking back to how we used to always do this. Her fearing the worst possible outcome, me assuring her things aren’t always as gloomy as she made them out to be. “What’s Xander reporting on?”

“I don’t know. Probably some epic town scandal. We need to find a good story, Chase.”

I recalled my schedule of upcoming features, fully aware this interview with Owen was the pinnacle of my entire week. Ribbon cuttings, road closures–it was all downhill from here. “Well,” I said, tapping my fingers against my leg. “What about the old orphanage?”

Sean and I went out to the abandoned orphanage when our YouTube channel was brand new. It was one of the first haunted sites we visited. There was a fire there in the 1930s, and some people claimed they could still hear the sound of children crying or screaming in the middle of the night. Sean and I didn’t hear anything, but we saw a shadowy figure moving in one of the halls. It was enough to make both of us nearly piss our pants as we packed up our stuff and got the hell out of there.

It didn’t dawn on either of us until the next day that the shadowy figure we spotted was probably just the homeless man who often hung around that place.

“What about it?” Meghan asked, scrunching up her face in confusion. “Are they tearing it down?”

“No. Why not report on the lore surrounding it?”

She smacked her forehead with her notebook. “I knew you were going to say that. And the answer’s no.”

“Oh, come on,” I said with a little chuckle. “Is it because you’re afraid you’re going to see the ghost of a little orphan?”

“No. I’m not afraid. And do you know why?” She paused to inhale. “There weren’t any children in the building when it burned. Every single one made it out safely. There’s even a picture of all the kids smiling with one of the firefighters. The story that kids burned alive up there is just a rumor perpetuated by people like you.”

Oh. Oops. I hadn’t known that. And knowing Meghan, she was absolutely correct about this piece of historical information. She’d spent hours poring over old newspapers, and the woman knew her shit when it came to Woodvale history. “Well. Maybe they forgot one,” I joked. “Poor little Billy… he was never going to get adopted, anyway.”

“Chase! They didn’t forget one,” she yelled, shaking her head with a laugh. She actually laughed. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Never,” I said with a grin. “Okay, but maybe we could make that part of the story. Give them the factsbut highlight how everyone in town has a story about going out there. You did when youwere a teen, right?” I recalled her mentioning something about it before.

Meghan stared down at her shiny, blood-red fingernails. “I may have had a small, unsuccessful seance with my friends there when I was sixteen.”

“See what I mean?”

“But I’m not reporting on this, and nothing you can say will change my mind.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, deciding to take the long way through town to get back to the studio and hoping she wouldn’t notice. “Then speaking of seances, what about all the witchcraft activity in this town?” I turned to her with one eyebrow raised.

“What about it? Plenty of people practice witchcraft, Chase. Pagans, Wiccans–it’s perfectly normal and getting more popular, actually.” She was rubbing her pendant again.

“I’m talking about really dark witchcraft. Culty shit.”

“You’re starting to sound like that paranoid evangelical who was screaming in front of the crystal shop the other day.”

“Wait, I got it.” I snapped my fingers like I was suddenly hit with inspiration, my eyes widening with mock seriousness. “The alien abductions.”

Meghan covered her face with her notebook again. “Got any normal story ideas you want to share? Nobody cares about your paranormal and occult stuff.”

“My six hundred and twenty-two subscribers indicate otherwise.”

Her eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “Yeah? How many does Owen Gardner have?”

Okay, rude. “How many does your little newspaper have, Wednesday?”

“Fuck you,” she snapped. I could only laugh, knowing I’d won this round. As I drove us the rest of the way to the newsroom, I caught the way she was pressing her lips together tight, fighting hard to keep her smile hidden.

I couldn’t help but relish in this tiny victory, a warmth spreading through me at the thought that I could still make her smile. It used to happen all the time—I used to be the reason for those genuine, carefree grins that lit up her entire face.

And then, at some point, everything I said just seemed to be the wrong thing. I read articles and listened to podcasts about how to help your partner through grief. When she started therapy, I did, too. And I stuck it out even longer than she did. When I encouraged her to keep going, to give it a chance to have an effect, I was wrong.

When I told her to stop self-sabotaging by driving past her childhood home just to make herself cry, I was wrong.

When I suggested we go on a weekend getaway during Mother’s Day to keep her distracted, I was wrong.

When I tried giving her space, thinking she needed time alone to process, I was wrong.

And when I stupidly blurted, “Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”—the words that made her walk away from me and never look back—I was so, so wrong. For her, that was the last straw.

I just couldn’t stand to watch her self-destruct. There had to be healthier ways of handling her grief, but she hated me for suggesting them. I could sense her pushing me away, so on that fateful night when she told me she was ready to move on from me , I knew I had to give her what she needed and just let her go.

But for the first time in three years—or maybe more—I’d not only made her smile, but I had made her laugh, too.

It felt good.

**

The energy in the newsroom when I returned was nervous. At first, I wasn’t sure why everyone seemed like they were trying hard to look busy, talking in quieter tones than normal. And then I noticed Silas Brown pacing aimlessly with a takeaway coffee cup in his hand, looming over everyone as they tried to work. Jillian was doing her best to make small talk as she reviewed her notes, but I could see her discomfort from a mile away. Silas was completely unaware his presence was more of a disruption than anything.

I sat at my desk in our open office and began uploading my files until, to my disappointment, Silas strolled toward me.

“I’m curious about something,” he said before he even reached my desk.

No greeting. Just diving right into whatever bullshit was on his mind.

I cleared my throat and looked up from my monitor. “What’s that?”

“Who’s your cameraman?” He glanced over at Jillian before turning back to me. “She’s got a whole crew. Am I correct in assuming that you don’t?

“Uh… yes.” I tapped my fingers on my desk, wondering where this could be going as I tried to work out a way to explain that would neither make me look like a moron or undermine Jill for her own methods. As I formed a better answer, Silas walked even farther around the side of my desk so he could see my screen. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Do you edit your own videos, too?”

I blinked a couple of times. “I, uh, just do a basic edit before submitting them. Sometimes I upload a quick clip for our social media, but Ryan still edits anything that ends up on air.”

Like a predator circling its prey, Silas walked all the way around my desk until he was in front of me again. I fiddled with the corner of my mousepad, which was already coming apart from years of nervous picking. This scrutiny could end any time now. But he wasn’t done yet. With one hand clutching the coffee cup and the other in his pocket, he stood at the front of my desk and said, “No suit and tie, no cameraman. Just you and your jeans against the world, huh?”

What a condescending prick. “I guess you could say that.”

He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. “I’d like to see you in action sometime, out on the field. Email me your schedule so I know where you’re headed, alright?”

“Yeah, sure.”

With a nod, he finally walked away, deciding to pester Marco for a little bit.

Great. Just great. The last thing I needed was our douchebag CEO breathing down my neck, scrutinizing everything I did while I tried to work.

Meghan was going to hate this even more.