Good Spirits by B.K. Borison - 8

T wenty minutes later, Harriet and I are standing in the middle of a tree field with snow up to our knees. When I said we had work to do, I didn’t expect it to be quite so … rural.

“I’m glad you told me to change. I would have been freezing in my pajamas.”

I grunt in response, my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my jacket. I didn’t tell her to change because I was worried she’d be cold. I told her to change because if I had to watch the tiny strap of her camisole drift over her shoulder one more time, I was going to put my fist through a wall.

Pajamas. Those flimsy shorts with the slit in the side were not pajamas . She was wearing a garment constructed by the devil, designed specifically to bring men to their knees.

“I guess I didn’t notice in the last memory, but the past feels different,” Harriet continues, oblivious to my distraction. She wiggles in the snow, testing it, then holds out her hand and catches a snowflake in the middle of her palm. It holds its minuscule, crystalline shape half a second longer than it’s supposed to, then melts into her skin.

“The cold is only sort of cold. It’s like being in a bubble,” she muses. “Or a space suit.”

“We’re observers,” I explain. “Not participants.”

While current Harriet ponders the logistics of the memory we’ve landed in, past Harriet is doing her damnedest to cut down a tree. All I can see is her jeans-clad legs from beneath a tangle of branches. She’s been trying to cut it down since we arrived. I have no idea what she’s doing under there.

And I have no idea what we’re doing here, in this memory. It’s another perfectly innocuous peek at Harriet’s past. Completely ordinary. We’re in a serene snow-covered field full of rich Fraser firs. Christmas music drifts from the big red barn in the distance. Laughter comes in fits and bursts as kids run by with their parents, and beneath her tree, Harriet persists with what I assume is a horribly inefficient saw.

Maybe she’ll somehow set the tree on fire and reduce the whole farm to ashes? Perhaps the tree she is attempting to destroy is a precious heirloom? Maybe she’s cutting down the tree to spite someone else with … holiday spirit?

What is she hiding ?

“It’s like I’m here, but I’m not,” Harriet continues, spinning on her heel while I brood silently next to her. She bends at the waist and scoops some snow into her hands, dumping it out again. “The snow feels like marshmallows.”

“It’s because we’re in the past,” I say again, tilting my head in concern as the tree begins to wobble. I take in the empty field. What if it falls? She’s out here by herself and there’s no one here to help her with the damned tree.

Does anyone know where she is? Is she even using a saw, or is she gnawing through the trunk with her teeth? My hands flex at my sides. “Stop scooping the snow,” I snap, annoyed. Annoyed that I’m annoyed . “You’ll make your hands cold.”

“I don’t feel it, though.”

“You will when we get back,” I explain, watching the tree sway back and forth. “These things tend to linger.”

“Really?”

I nod. If she’s not careful, she’ll feel the chill of the snow for days. I’ve never cared very much about it, but I seem to care with Harriet.

I am annoyed.

She looks at her hands, flexing her fingers. “How strange.”

I fumble around in my pockets, searching. “Do you want my mittens?”

“You have mittens?”

“It’s winter. Of course I have mittens.”

I pull them out of my pocket, dangling them in front of her. She grabs them and tugs them over her hands. They’re comically large. More like oven mitts than mittens.

She claps them together, delighted. “Did you knit these yourself?”

“No.” Yes. I have an obscene amount of time on my hands and very few hobbies. I knit. I read. I take care of the cats that inexplicably show up at my window every few months. I occasionally steal one of the small fishing vessels docked in the harbor and take it out for a joyride. “I picked them up at that mercantile store by the dock in 1976.”

Her thick eyelashes are a fan across the tops of her cheeks and the tip of her nose is pink from the cold. Her coat is pink, too. She looks like cotton candy over there.

But, fuck, she’s pretty.

“Nineteen seventy-six?” she asks.

“Mm-hmm,” I lie, turning back to the other Harriet and the precariously leaning tree. “They were having a sale.”

“A sale on mittens.”

“Correct.”

“In 1976.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she digs one mittened hand into the pocket of her coat. “You’re lying, but that’s fine.”

She continues to struggle, her arm fully caught in the confines of her pocket, her elbow winging out like a chicken in distress. She wiggles to the left, then the right.

“All right?” I ask, peering down at the top of her head.

“’M fine.”

“You sure?”

She nods, going still. A moment later, she tries to wedge her hand free again. I leave her to it, content to watch her struggle.

Finally, she turns and stares mournfully up at me. Her arm is still pinned to her side.

“I need your help,” she says.

I bite the inside of my cheek against my grin. “With what?”

“My hand is stuck.” She wiggles her arm around for emphasis. “And I can’t get my candy cane out.”

“Where’s the candy cane?”

“In my pocket. I always keep candy canes in my pocket.”

Of course she does. That makes sense, given the sheer amount of them she has in her house at any given moment.

I raise my eyebrows. “And how would you like me to help?”

“Untangle me?” She twists and offers me her elbow. “One good tug should do it.”

“A tug?”

“Yes, a tug. I found this coat at Goodwill and the pockets are too small. This happens a lot.” I imagine it does, with all the candies she’s apparently shoving inside it. Harriet seems like she’s a catastrophic mess, 80 percent of the time.

She shimmies closer, pressing her arm against my chest. She nods at it. “Go on.”

I hesitate. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, please. I’d like to use my arm again today. And I could use a candy cane.” She nods at her past self, still sawing away at the tree. There’s a muffled thud and a groaning sound. “If I remember correctly, we’re going to be here for a while.”

“You know this memory?”

She nods, a secret smile flirting with the corners of her mouth. My attention fixes there, holding until she knocks her arm against my chest. I grab it, fingers gripping tight. The coat she’s wearing is just as soft as the sweater she had on the other day, but thicker.

“Nolan.” Harriet laughs. “C’mon. Help me out.” I adjust our stance and pull gently on her arm.

“What’s that? What are you doing?” she asks, sounding like she’s on the verge of laughter. I can’t see her face like this, her body wedged against mine, her hair obscuring her features. “That’s not going to do anything.”

“I shouldn’t have given you my mittens,” I grumble. “You don’t have an appreciative bone in your body.”

“My hands are nice and cozy, thank you very much. Now try again. Put some muscle into it.”

I put more than a little muscle into it. I pour all of my frustration and a little bit of my resentment, too. I have no idea how I keep finding myself in these ridiculous situations with Harriet, but I’d like very much to do my job and call it a day for the holiday season. I shouldn’t be offering my assignment the mittens that took me close to a month to make. I certainly shouldn’t care whether her hands are cold.

But I did and I do and despite my best efforts to the contrary, I don’t regret any of it.

I pull too hard and she squeaks, her hand coming loose in a single, rough movement. She loses her balance in the snow, arms flailing, a rogue candy cane and an obscure box dropping in the bank to our left. I wrap my arm around her waist before she can go toppling over after it, her mittened hands clutching the front of my coat.

I hold her there until I’m sure she has her footing, then hold her for a second longer. She’s warm and solid and real and it’s been so damn long since I’ve felt the press of someone else’s body against mine.

I flex my fingers against her back. Her hands find my shoulders.

She exhales and her warm breath brushes against my throat.

I spread my fingers wide and tug her half an inch closer. She bends slightly, her head tipping back. It does something dangerous to my control. My magic rolls in my chest, a low hum.

“Okay?” I ask.

She nods, silent, her eyes blown wide. I straighten and set her back on her feet. When she’s standing without any additional slippery mishaps, I let her go and bend at the waist, plucking her items from the snow.

I hold them out to her.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. I’m so busy watching her blush work its way over her skin that I miss her trying to shove the box at my chest.

I grab her wrist. “What are you doing?”

“These are for you.” She shakes the box, something rattling around inside. “Candies. You said you like cinnamon right? I got you a box.”

I blink at her. “A gift?”

“I suppose it is, sure.” She shrugs, her cheeks still a ferocious pink. “It’s not a big deal. I saw them and thought you might like a treat.”

I don’t. The denial sits heavily on the tip of my tongue. It won’t be worth it. Whenever I eat anything, I get only a vague impression of the taste. The reason I like Hot Tamales so much is because the cinnamon bites through the numbness. It’s the closest I’ve come to enjoying a flavor in decades.

If visiting the past is like being underwater, then existing in the present is like being frozen solid. Nothing gets through.

Harriet goes to dig in her troublesome pocket again. “I also have lemon drops, if you’d rather—”

I grip her wrist again. “Hands out of the pockets, trouble.”

She stills. “Yeah. Good point.”

“How much candy do you have stocked on your person?” She smiles at me. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

A laugh punches out of me. She’s probably right. I slip one finger in her left coat pocket.

“Lemon drops are in this pocket?” I tug on it, twisting her slightly. I don’t know why, but messing with Harriet is like cracking open a rusty door to a part of myself that hasn’t seen light in a hundred-something years. I’m stepping down a very dangerous path.

She nods. “Yeah. They’re in there.”

“All right,” I agree. “But I’ll get them.”

I slip my hand inside her impossibly small pocket without looking away from her face. Her lips part as my fingers come in contact with roughly ten thousand pieces of candy. I can barely fit my hand in among all the sweets.

“You have a problem.”

“Never know when you might get a craving,” she says faintly.

Her tongue appears at the corner of her mouth and everything in me pulls tight. A snowflake drifts lazily from the sky and lands against her bottom lip, a tiny crystal miracle before it melts into her skin.

I pull in a deep breath through my nose, then release it. I tug the candy out of her pocket and hold it in the palm of my hand.

“Thank you,” I manage, my voice sounding like it’s been dragged over rocks.

Harriet smiles up at me, shifting her attention back to the wobbling tree. “You’re welcome.”

I stare at her profile while I unwrap the lemon drop and try to rationalize the knot tightening in the middle of my chest. Harriet is the first assignment I’ve had in a decade that’s been close to my mortal age. I don’t usually engage in casual conversation. I can’t remember the last time someone touched me that wasn’t by accident or a part of my job. She’s achingly beautiful with a wicked sense of humor and a desire for kindness that I’m starting to think might not be an act.

Her proximity is affecting me. That’s all this feeling is.

I shove the candy in my mouth. For a single, hopeful heartbeat, I think I can taste it. Smooth, creamy lemon and the bite of something sharp. But then the flavor dulls and fades away, my senses muted once again.

I release a sigh. “What exactly are you doing to that tree under there?”

Harriet snickers. “I’m brutalizing the poor thing. I was twenty-one and painfully uneducated on forestry tools. I couldn’t figure out how to use the saw.” The tree shivers, a victorious screech coming from beneath the branches. “Hold on a second. This is the best part.”

“I don’t understand why you came out here by yourself.” I keep waiting for someone else to materialize. A family member or maybe a boyfriend. Someone to help her with the tree roughly five times her size. “Or why you picked that tree.”

Harriet rolls her shoulders back, her candy cane between her teeth like a cigar. “Because I’m a strong, independent woman.” A thoughtful look wrinkles her nose. “Although …”

A sense of foreboding grips me by the back of my neck. “Although, what?”

There’s a loud snap as the trunk finally gives. I watch as the tree begins to fall—forward instead of back. Toward Harriet’s outstretched legs.

“I was sawing the wrong way,” Harriet supplies next to me, a laugh bubbling up. “Physics never was my strong suit.”

The tree lands with a muffled thud in the snow, right on top of Harriet. In front of us, we watch as she struggles beneath the weight of the tree. I’ve never interfered with the past before, but right now I want to. I want to grab the tree and drag it off her. I want to help her stand up and brush away the needles that are undoubtedly stuck in her hair.

I want to make sure she’s okay.

I don’t think she has anyone to make sure she’s okay.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I say instead, clenching my hands into fists at my side. I bite down on the lemon drop and aggressively chew until I don’t feel so out of control.

Harriet waves her hand, dismissing me. “Everything turns out fine. Look.”

The tree tips to the side and Harriet emerges, red-faced and victorious. She does have pine needles in her hair. A pinecone, too. The beanie she was wearing is now tangled in the branches of the tree, an unintentional ornament.

But it’s the look on her face that has my breath backing up in my chest. She’s beaming down at the tree like she’s just conquered something.

“I didn’t have anyone to come with me,” Harriet explains. “I’m sure you noticed with our last trip to the past, but my family isn’t exactly the ‘walk through a field and perform manual labor’ type. My mom didn’t want—” She huffs a deep breath through her nose, then exhales it slowly, letting the rest of that sentence go. “They had other plans and I wanted a tree for my very first grown-up apartment. My aunt Matilda offered to come with me once she heard I was on my own, but I think I wanted to prove that it was okay to do things by myself. That I could want something and deserve to have it. That even if it ended up being hard, it would be worth it.”

We watch as past Harriet bends and grabs the base of her spruce. She lifts it with a grunt and begins dragging it backward through the snow.

“Was it worth it?” I ask.

Her smile is wistful as she watches herself. “What do you think?” The pinecone falls out of her hair when she gives the tree a particularly rough tug, bouncing down the front of her puffy jacket and landing right next to her hat. Harriet stops yanking and stares at it, reaching up with one hand to pat at her head. Realization lights up her face, a laugh following right after. It echoes out across the field, twisting around the trees like tinsel. There’s joy in that sound. Relief, too.

She found what she was looking for.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Yeah, it was worth it.”

We don’t linger in the past much longer.

As soon as past Harriet disappears down the hill with her tree, I hold out my hand and current Harriet takes it without a word, the wind that’s been twisting around the trees centering on us instead, wrapping around our ankles and coiling up until her hair is in my face and my stomach is in my throat. I’m aware of all the places we’re touching as we tumble through time. Hands, hips, shoulders. Her steady breath on my neck and her palm pressed to mine.

When we slow to a stop, we’re back in her living room, our mugs of tea exactly where we left them. I center myself with the things I can see. Her blanket discarded over the arm of the couch. The ceramic gingerbread men on the mantel above the fireplace. The tree in the corner.

“Did you cut that one down by yourself, too?” I ask.

“I did,” she answers. “I started a new tradition that year, though I like to think I’m better with a saw now. And … gravity, I guess. It’s much less action-packed these days.” Her lips purse in thought. “I order the ones for the store, though. Cutting down three trees in one season feels like pressing my luck.”

A self-deprecating smile blooms across her face. I drag my thumb over her knuckles, our hands still locked together between us. I wish she weren’t wearing my mittens. I want to feel her skin.

I guess I know a thing or two about pressing my luck.

I drop her hand, pressing my palm to the back of my neck instead. I need to recalibrate. We’ve taken two trips to the past now and neither has been particularly revealing. I’m looking at a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

“Felling trees and stealing boats,” I say, frustrated. “Whatever could be next?”

“I suppose I’ve burned a gingerbread cookie or two over the years. Maybe when we visit my past again, we’ll have to watch me massacre an entire town of licorice.” Her smile becomes something forced, her eyes searching mine. I’ve disappointed her somehow. I’ve said the wrong thing. “You still think I’m hiding something, don’t you?”

I think there’s something holding me here. Something I haven’t seen yet. Maybe she doesn’t mean to be deceptive, but the fact remains that there’s something I need to find. To see. And it’s not a train garden or trees in a field.

Mistakes aren’t made. Not here. Not with this.

“It’s my job,” I tell her, feeling a prick of guilt for reasons I can’t begin to name. “I need to get you to your next ghost.”

“My next ghost,” she repeats.

“As much as I’m enjoying myself,” I say, reaching for sarcasm, “I have other things to tend to. People I answer to.” Frustration burns hot at the back of my neck. “You really think you’re the exception to the rules that have governed this realm and the next for millennia?”

Harriet’s face collapses. She pulls the mittens off her hands.

“Of course,” she rasps. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve hurt people. I’m sure—” She takes a shuddering breath. “I’m sure I probably deserve this.”

Guilt pricks at me again. A dull pressure that builds the longer she stares at her feet. “Harriet—”

“I mean, I haven’t called the cops on children, or been responsible for someone losing their home, but—” She shrugs listlessly. “Maybe what I did is just as bad.”

I narrow my eyes. “What did you do?”

She plucks at a loose thread on the mittens, turning them over and over in her hands. “We’ll find out, won’t we? I can’t hide from my past, as you are so fond of saying.” She gives me a tight smile. “But I get it. No hard feelings. I don’t want to hold you up or keep you from moving on.”

She offers me my mittens back.

That’s the thing. I won’t move on. I’ll stay exactly where I am, shackled to this place until I fulfill whatever requirements it has of me. How many decades have I spent trying to figure out how to move on? How many decades more will it take?

“Keep the mittens,” I tell her, suddenly exhausted. “I have other pairs.”

I can knit more. It’ll give me something to do.

“Oh, okay.” She tucks them close to her chest, her fingers gripping them tight. “Are you sure? You got them on sale.”

“They’re twenty years old. It’ll be fine.”

Her mouth tilts in confusion. “I thought you said you bought them in 1976.”

Shit.

“Time is a fleeting concept for me,” I deflect. “There’s a lot I don’t remember.”

“If you’re sure,” she finally says, her words slow. She reaches behind her and places them on the arm of the couch. “Did you want— did you want to stay for a little bit?” She gestures at the half-empty mug on the small, round table by the tree. Her eyes grow hopeful.

“You could finish your tea. If you wanted. We could talk about … whatever you want to talk about. You don’t have to be lonely.”

I shake my head. The last thing I need to do is spend more time in this house that smells like peppermint and pine. These concessions to Harriet’s comfort need to stop. I’m not meant to be her friend. I’m meant to be her reckoning. “I should be on my way.”

“Okay,” she says softly and that makes me feel worse. Her easy agreement. She doesn’t look like the Harriet from the tree farm at all. This Harriet looks tired and broken down. Crumbling at the edges.

She tugs her arms free of her coat and drapes it over the back of the couch. She stretches her arms above her head and I get a glimpse of the smooth, pale skin of her stomach. The rise of her hip and the dip of her belly button.

I swallow hard and avert my eyes to the tree.

“Do you think—”

She stops abruptly. I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t.

“What is it?”

She peers up at me through her lashes. “Do you think—do you think I’ll be able to fix it? Whatever it is I’ve done wrong?”

I don’t answer, at a loss. I’ve never had an assignment ask if they could fix it . I’ve never been with anyone who’s even wanted to try. It usually takes until they’re faced with their third ghost and their unfortunate and/or untimely demise before they’re even willing to consider it.

She rushes to fill the silence, her face earnest. “Do you think I can be a good person again?”

I stare down at her, glowing in the light of the tree. I can’t think of a single thing to say. “I guess we’ll find out,” I finally say, repeating her earlier statement.

Her shoulders fall and she turns her face toward the floor. I’m struck with the irrational desire to cup her face in my palms. Tilt her chin up.

“I should be going,” I say instead, stepping backward. My leg hits the coffee table and our teacups rattle. “I’ll be in touch.”

She nods. “Where will you go?”

“When?”

She tips her face toward mine. Melancholy lingers in the smile she tries to force. “When you’re not here. Where do you go? Do you have a part-time haunting gig at the cemetery?” Her smile becomes less forced, delighted by her own joke. “Do you float around the abandoned lighthouse at the inlet, moaning and groaning?”

“I have a home,” I answer. Though the lighthouse idea has merit. Maybe if I get bored, I can go down there with my bag of recycling and clang around a little bit.

“I’m glad,” she says. At my questioning look, she elaborates. “I’m glad you have a home.”

It’s fine. It’s a small row home on the other side of town with a view of the water that was condemned in the 1800s, I believe. The city of Annapolis believes it to be a hovel, but the department has cleaned it up nicely. I spend my days drinking coffee on the back porch and reading from one of the endless stacks of books that line my shelves. I owned a television briefly in the early nineties. Then I accidentally watched two episodes of The Jerry Springer Show , thought I somehow transferred myself to hell, and abandoned it on the front steps of the fire station.

My existence is quiet, small, and easily contained. Nothing like the home Harriet has made, filled with a tree she cut herself and ten thousand candy canes.

It feels good being here. It’s like—it’s like I’m absorbing some of her light.

Which is exactly why I should go.

But it’s hard to leave her when she still looks so defeated, standing alone in the middle of her living room with her arms wrapped around herself.

I could extend an olive branch.

If I wanted.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Harriet whispers.

The magic in my chest jumps at the sound of her voice, skittering through my bloodstream and settling in the palms of my hands. It’s an odd feeling. Not entirely unwelcome, but odd. My magic isn’t usually so fickle.

“I’m thinking about something.”

“What are you thinking about?” she whispers.

“Peace offerings.”

“Oh,” she says. Her eyes squint. “I don’t understand.”

“Just—be quiet for a second.”

“Okay,” she whispers.

I study her face as I try to find that place in my chest where the magic comes from. That deep tug somewhere near my lungs. A smile flirts with the edges of her mouth and my magic jumps in my chest, a hot flare of something. I grab a hold of the gold, glittering thread and tug, the ground rushing out from beneath my feet.

The last thing I hear before I use my magic to jump from her home to mine is her delighted laugh, almost as bright as the magic roaring through my bloodstream.