Not Quite Free Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Also By Lyla Payne

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Thank You!

  Acknowledgments

  Also By Lyla Payne

  About the Author

  Copyright 2017 by Lyla Payne

  Cover by Lyla Payne, Complete Pixels

  Developmental and Line Editing: Angela Polidoro

  Copyediting: Shannon Page

  Proofreading: Mary Ziegenhorn, Diane Thede, Cheryl Heinrich

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used factiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Also by LYLA PAYNE

  WHITMAN UNIVERSITY

  Broken at Love

  By Referral Only

  Be My Downfall

  Staying On Top

  Living the Dream

  Going for Broke (published in Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology)

  LOWCOUNTRY MYSTERIES

  Not Quite Dead

  Not Quite Cold

  Not Quite True

  Quite Curious

  Not Quite Gone

  Quite Precarious

  Not Quite Right

  Not Quite Mine

  Not Quite Alive

  Not Quite Free

  Quite Dubious (March, 2017)

  THE PIACERE PRINCES

  The Playboy Prince

  A Royal Wedding (November 18, 2016)

  The Dutiful Prince (January 27, 2017)

  The Crooked Prince

  Mistletoe & Mr. Right

  Sleigh Bells & Second Chances

  SECRETS DON’T MAKE FRIENDS

  Secrets Don’t Make Friends

  Secrets Don’t Make Survivors

  Secrets Don’t Make Lovers (2017)

  Young Adult Novels Written as TRISHA LEIGH

  THE LAST YEAR

  Whispers in Autumn

  Winter Omens

  Betrayals in Spring

  Summer Ruins

  THE CAVY FILES

  Gypsy

  Alliance

  Buried

  THE HISTORIANS

  Return Once More

  Exist Once More

  For the tour guides in Charleston, who are devoted, knowledgeable, and fantastic storytellers besides - may you continue to inspire generations of people with your love of history.

  Chapter One

  Having a newborn baby in the house should be considered a form of torture by the United Nations. There’s no way that waterboarding, sensory deprivation, or solitary confinement could be more effective than being awoken for days on end by a tiny, demanding, totally dependent human being every three to four hours.

  As tired as I am, guilt tramples the thought even as it forms in my mind since I actually know someone who was mistreated and confined and kept from her family and her country. No matter how exhausted or confused I am about simple things—what day it is, which end is up, or whether I put underwear on this morning—my discomfort can’t possibly be anything compared to what Lucy suffered for three years.

  You mean Lucy, who stole your boyfriend? hisses the not-so-friendly devil on my left shoulder.

  Yeah, Lucy who’s probably living with Beau in that nice, big house in D.C.? his friend asks. Recovering, she says.

  “Shut up.”

  I wince, but a quick glance confirms Amelia’s still asleep in her bed.

  The funny thing is that even though the baby’s awake, I didn’t creep into her room this early because Jack woke me up. He’s been quiet this morning. He’s a convenient excuse to get out of bed, since I can’t keep my eyes shut for more than five minutes without thinking about all of the ways in which my life’s gone awry.

  “You’re not due for a feeding for another forty minutes, young man,” I whisper to the baby, who uses his superpowers of cute to make me smile through everything.

  I reach down and scoop him up, then tiptoe out of Amelia’s room so she can get the remainder of her rest. Jack and I make our way downstairs. We pass the mirror in the foyer and the shock of his deep red hair, unchanged after two weeks at home, charms me as it always does. Another smile.

  They happen so rarely that they catch me off guard.

  It’s about five-thirty in the morning when I settle into Gramps’s old chair and lay Jack on my thighs, rocking him slightly back and forth as I turn on the television. At this hour, my choices are going to be the local news, which I’d like to avoid in case I find my face on the screen, the national news, which I always avoid because I have low blood pressure and would like to keep it that way, and Married… With Children reruns.

  My fingers push buttons half-heartedly, stopping without permission on a rerun of Saved by the Bell. Jack is content to look around the room and at me, kicking his short little legs and probably wondering why his mother leaves him alone with his weird pseudo-aunt who can barely take care of herself. On the television, Zack Morris contrives to skip school, either for a Dodgers game or to win a bet, I can’t tell which. It doesn’t matter, but it’s pretty sad that I don’t even have the brain power necessary to follow a twenty-minute episode of teen angst.

  The email notification dings on my phone a couple of times, but I don’t pick it up. It could even be something remotely interesting, like a message from my grad school friend Clara, who’s been translating my ancestors’ journal entries for me, but I can’t find the will to care. I’ve been blaming my lack of motivation on having a newborn in the house, but since I’m not his mother, the excuse is going to run out sooner rather than later.

  “Well, Jack, since you’re being so good, what do you say to making breakfast for your mommy?” He doesn’t reply other than to kick a couple of times, which I take as a yes. It must be frustrating to be a baby and have people just assume you agree all of the time.

  But it’s nice for me.

  I carry him into the kitchen, where I deposit him in a little rocking swing thing on the floor by the table before switching on the coffeemaker. There is milk and a box of waffle mix, which I pull out of the cabinet as I say a quick, silent sorry to my grandmother, who would have crossed herself if I’d suggested using a mix in her presence.

  Amelia shuffles into the kitchen a while later, just as Jack starts to fuss, making little sniffles and cries that I’ve already come to associate with his being hungry. My cousin is trying to keep him on a feeding schedule that allows her to rest, but her body responds to his cues in an instinctive way that has surprised me at every turn.

  They’re doing pretty well, though. Jack is a good baby. Which means, at least to me, that even though he might look like our ancestor Anne Bonny, the notorious pirate, most of her trouble-making genes passed him up. Thank goodness for us.

  “Morning,” I tell Amelia, sounding far more chipper than I feel. Both of us can’t be struggling at t
he same time and she looks as if she wants to fall over. “Waffles will be ready in a few minutes.”

  “And bacon?” she asks hopefully, bending to scoop up her son and then settling into a kitchen chair with her nursing pillow. Apparently breastfeeding makes you starving. Amelia is eating at least as much now as when she was still pregnant, except she’s losing weight instead of gaining.

  “Sure, why not?” I slap a pan on the stove and grab a package from the fridge, peeling off several strips before dropping them in the skillet, ignoring the painful pops of grease on my wrists as it starts to cook. It almost feels good, like a reminder that I’m still alive and not wandering through some kind of diaper-filled purgatory.

  “That smells good,” she says after several minutes.

  The first waffle comes out steaming and I set it on a plate in front of her, buttering it and squeezing on syrup since she only has one hand. “How’s that for service?”

  Amelia frowns, which is not the appropriate way to thank a cousin who is waiting on you hand and foot.

  “Grace…how are you doing?”

  “What do you mean? I’m tired, too, but not like you.”

  “No, not that. I mean as far as Beau, and this whole murder thing?”

  This whole murder thing is me being blamed for my father’s dead body showing up under the house, along with the shovel that did him in. A crime for which I was arrested and then let out on bail.

  I forgive her wording because she’s tired.

  Strangely enough, I find the topic of my impending incarceration less distasteful than discussing what happened between Beau and me. Even if I technically broke up with him, not the other way around, but there was little choice in the matter. He’s torn between two women, and given that one of them is recovering from a years-long ordeal, I don’t see how being the other one could have ended well for me.

  “I’m okay.”

  She quirks an eyebrow at me. “Really? Because you haven’t left the house since Jack and I got home, other than to file a police report about the break-in. Brick has been bringing groceries since my mother left and LeighAnn is filling in at the library.”

  “You need help.”

  “Sure, and I’m grateful. But it’s not as if I can’t be alone for a few hours here and there during the day.” She pauses, detaching Jack and raising him to her shoulder for a burp. “You can’t keep hiding, Grace.”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m helping,” I protest, carefully turning the bacon one last time before transferring it to a plate covered in paper towels. My response sounds like the lie that it is. So much so that neither of us even bothers to acknowledge that fact.

  “You haven’t answered your email in God knows how long. Brick sent you the investigator’s latest report four days ago and you never opened it.”

  Stupid Brick. What happened to lawyer-client confidentiality?

  I guess it doesn’t extend to email correspondence. Or strange sort-of relationships with your cousin.

  “I’ve just been…” I set the plate of bacon in front of her as she gets Jack started on the other boob. “I’m not ready to face what’s out there, Millie. Not yet.”

  Her free hand snakes forward toward the plate of bacon. It surprises me when she diverts it and covers my hand instead. Our eyes meet and the empathy shining in her light green gaze makes my heart ache.

  “I get it. I do. I wanted to hide forever after what happened with Jake, but life goes on. The charges aren’t going to wait, and neither is your career. Both of those things should give you something to focus on that’s not Beau.”

  “I know.” I sigh and grab a piece of bacon. It really does make everything better, if only a little. “Not to mention figuring out who trashed our house and stole Frank’s things.”

  “There’s really only one option, there.” Amelia lets go of me and snatches her own bacon. “It’s obviously the same person who killed Frank.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, he must have left clues for you in his things. Or something. Like that weird note they found in his pocket.” She crunches her bacon and then goes after her waffle, not noticing when she drips a bit of syrup on the baby’s head.

  I sigh and get a rag to wipe it off. My brain goes over and over what she’s saying, well-oiled since this is not the first time we’ve had this discussion in one form or another. It’s hard to argue with her logic.

  Frank brought a bag full of family lore to the house—a family tree, various documents, and a set of journals written in French by generations of my ancestors, all women named Carlotta. Frank was killed, and I’ve been framed. It stands to reason that whoever killed him must have known about the things he gave me and worried about what I might discover from them.

  But I don’t want to admit what else that means—that whoever broke into our house, whoever wants to see me imprisoned for something I didn’t do, is somehow connected to Heron Creek. Because only a handful of people know about the bag that Frank left me. Even fewer know what was inside of it, so unless I want to get super crazy and start considering the possibility that someone hacked my email account…it has to be someone I know.

  “I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Oh, Grace.” Amelia covers up as Jack finishes eating and then wolfs down the rest of her food before getting to her feet, the baby propped on her shoulder.

  I’m going to get out of this discussion the same way I’ve gotten out of a bunch of them lately—by ducking behind her need to tend to Jack. At the moment, his diaper is in serious shit. Pun intended.

  “You can’t keep hiding,” Amelia repeats on her way out of the kitchen, taking the baby, and my excuse, with her. “None of this is going away, and up until now, you’ve been such a fighter. For me, for Glinda and then Beau. When Mel and Leo were in trouble. Why don’t you care enough about your future to fight just as hard for yourself?”

  I have no answer for that, and she knows me too well to wait for a response that’s never coming. My shoulders slump when I hear the creak of her footsteps on the stairs. I hadn’t even realized they were tensed around my ears.

  After stuffing another piece of bacon in my face, I push my untouched waffle away on the table. Food. Blah. I slide my phone closer, determined to check my email, at least, and prove Amelia wrong in the process. Even if it is after the fact.

  Most of the dings from the past couple of days are junk and spam, updates from my bank and social media, crap like that. There is one from Clara, and the one from Brick, but I ignore both for the moment in favor of a message from the editor at the Journal of American History, which is publishing my first article on Henry Woodward next month.

  Miss Harper—

  I’m pleased to tell you that your edits have been accepted and the article is set to publish in next month’s issue. We will send you an early copy, as well as a few complimentary ones at the time of publication.

  As far as the second article, I look forward to seeing the draft soon. Is there any way that you could advise me of your intended submission date so that I may schedule time to read and edit it?

  Regards,

  John C. Edwards

  It’s good news. I look around instinctively for Henry even though he’s been scarce since we came home with Jack. Too much commotion, I think, and no way to pin down a schedule of when he might catch me alone.

  It’s almost funny to think of ghosts having a calendar to help them keep track of who can be haunted when. I sort of miss Henry, and since Lucy—who wasn’t actually a ghost, I know now, but a doppelgänger—no other dead people have come knocking.

  The Graciela Harper who returned to Heron Creek last May would have been relieved as shit to think that perhaps the spirits were finally taking a break—maybe for good—but this version of me, who has come to find something like purpose in helping these uninvited visitors, finds the potential change unnerving.

  The worry that they’ve lost faith in me, or perhaps that I’ve let them down
by failing to save Frank, whose ghostly powers vastly outshone mine, hurts in unexpected places. Not that I even knew Frank was in danger, since the man refused to talk to me except in riddles. But on Henry’s first visit after Frank’s body was found, he made it clear, through his usual pointing and nodding, that he thinks I’m responsible for my father’s death all the same. So perhaps it’s not much of a stretch to assume the other ghosts agree.

  I sigh and close my email without responding to Mr. Edwards or reading what Clara sent, and Brick can wait, too. I’m going back to work at the library on Monday, and that seems like as good a time as any to take charge of everything else in my life.

  At least, that was the promise I’d made to myself. I suppose it behooves me to keep it, even if hiding still seems like the better option.

  Until then, there’s always my bathtub. Which would be more enjoyable if I could get Amelia’s final question out of my head, along with the insistent voices of my devils wondering aloud whether my own, sad life is worth the fight.

  All of our friends arrange to come over for dinner on Sunday night. We’re having takeout supplied by Brick, since he doesn’t want Amelia cooking, he doesn’t think I’m very good at it, and Mel’s due date is now right around the corner.

  Which is fine with me, even if I kind of wish he would have just dropped it off and left. I know that’s not fair—Brick’s hardly to blame for my arrest, let alone the disintegration of my relationship with his brother—but the sight of him reminds me of Beau.

  And also that I might spend the next few decades in prison.

  But Amelia likes him, plus he’s been a big help ever since Aunt Karen left town a week after the baby was born. I’ll grin and bear his presence, and at least with Leo, Travis, Mel, and Will all coming over, too, there will be plenty of buffer.