“Charles?” she said.

Luckily I realized she was talking to him and not me before I answered.

She stepped closer and I moved out of the way. “Charles, what are you doing with this hussy?”

Oh. Em. Gee.

“After all these years—”

Dawning realization and a knowing smile crept across his face. He lifted a hand and wiped a tear off her cheek.

They didn’t say anything else. They embraced and hugged for several minutes as I surveyed the damage to the side of Misery. Freaking light pole came out of nowhere. Fortunately, the scratches were very superficial. Surely they could just be buffed out.

My audience, which consisted of three kids on Huffy bikes, stood waiting for me to explode again and argue with air, their phones at the ready. I so did not want to go viral. Praying they hadn’t thought to record my earlier confrontation with Mrs. Andrulis, I went about my business, ignoring them. But any second now, I was going to have to explain to the Andrulises who I was and what I was and let them know they could cross through me if they wanted to. I’d have to pull the talking-into-the-phone routine. But before it even came to that, they were through.

It happened so fast and unexpectedly, it made me dizzy. I sank onto one knee as their memories flashed in my mind. Charles Andrulis was born in Chicago and stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base for two months before he was blindsided by a redheaded concession worker at the local movie theater. It was love at first sight, but he was so afraid to ask her out, so afraid she’d say no, that he simply stole her employee-of-the-month picture off the wall. He was sent to war a week later, but he carried that picture with him everywhere, cursing himself for being so stupid, vowing to ask her to marry him the next time he saw her. If he made it back alive.

He did and he did.

He made it back alive albeit a bit roughed up, but by the time he got out of the hospital and back to New Mexico, the redhead no longer worked at the theater.

But she’d been good friends with a couple of the employees there and he found her the next day, working the reception desk at a local law office.

Taking no more chances, he walked straight up to her—or, well, limped up—in full dress uniform, struggled to get to one knee in front of her, and proposed. At which point, the feisty redhead slapped the ever-lovin’ crap out of him. But not before she, too, fell in love. They were married a week later and what followed was a whirlwind of children and grandchildren, of long workdays and short family vacations, of struggling to survive and loving each other through the worst of times.

When I blinked back to the present, the air cool against the wetness on my cheeks, I realized something that had never even occurred to me before. Life really was short. The Andrulises’ lives were rich and colorful, even the bad parts. But it was worth every second. Charles had never once regretted marrying … Beverly. Her name was Beverly.

I liked her.

* * *

I carried the heavy polygraph machine up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, vowing to get an elevator installed the first chance I got. How expensive could they be? My phone rang the minute I sat it on my kitchen table. The convent where Quentin lived on the weekends appeared on the caller ID. Sister Mary Elizabeth, a very interesting woman who could hear the conversations of angels, was on the other end. I could tell something was wrong the moment she spoke.

“Charley?” she said, her voice quivering.

“Hey, Sis, what’s up?”

“It’s Quentin. The School for the Deaf called. He left campus this morning and has been gone all day. He’s never done this. Have you seen him?”

Alarmed, I asked, “Have you tried his phone?”

“Yes. I’ve texted him several times and tried to do a video chat with him. Nothing. He’s not picking up.”

The alarm level rose. That was so unlike Quentin. He was the sweetest kid on the planet. Well, most of the time. He was a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed sixteen-year-old whom I’d met when his physical body was possessed by a demon. The demon was ripped to shreds by my handy-dandy Rottweiler guardian, and Quentin had been a friend ever since. He had no family and lived at the convent with the sisters when he wasn’t at school. I wasn’t sure how the Catholic church felt about that—but so far, so good. At least he hadn’t been kicked out yet, but if Quentin started misbehaving in any way, I couldn’t imagine the church would let him stay there much longer.

“Okay, let me see what I can do.”

The moment I hung up, Cookie rushed upstairs and barreled into her apartment. I walked across the hall and watched her as she searched it.

“What are you looking for?”

“Amber,” she said, diving for her phone. “I went to pick her up from school and she wasn’t there. The office said she was marked absent all day. Why didn’t they call me?” She was panicking, but I was amassing an all-consuming kind of dread.

Surely they wouldn’t have.

Before I could tell Cookie about Quentin, my phone rang again. “It’s Amber,” I said to her, then put an index finger over my mouth to shush her before answering. I had a feeling I knew what was going on. And I had a feeling I knew why Amber was calling me instead of her mother.

“Hey, kiddo, how was school?” I said, unable to resist.

“Aunt Charley?” she said, her voice quivering more than Sister Mary Elizabeth’s, and that dread I’d felt rose like a tidal wave inside me.

“Pumpkin, what’s wrong?”