What She Left Behind ✔️

chapter twenty-eight

I sit at my desk, my high school yearbook opened in front of me. I flip through the pages, scanning over the names of my former classmates. I single in on the males. Which one of them might be Evangeline's father?

I've been obsessing over it since the burial, since Evangeline rejected my offer to be her legal guardian. Perhaps she didn't outright "reject" me, but she told me she wanted to go home and hasn't spoken to me in a week. According to Mom and Dad, she wishes to be left alone for a while.

In other words, she doesn't want to see me.

I don't blame her whatsoever. That poor girl has endured so much. All I want is for her to be happy.

I just miss her. I miss her a lot.

I haven't heard from Bowie in over a week, either. Supposedly, he's still staying at a friend's house. He hasn't reached out to anyone, not even Mom and Dad. Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, I hope he's okay.

His last words to me ring in my head like a church bell: I think I know what Raelyn was talking about in the video, but you're not going to like it. Desperately, I want to know what he was referring to, but I'm afraid to call him. I'm even more afraid to watch the fourth and final video on the "veritas" drive. The first video was unextraordinary, the second was a little melancholy, and the third was downright chilling. If the fourth follows the same pattern as the previous three, I'm unsure if my heart, or my stomach, could take it.

I stop flipping and hold the yearbook closer to my face. Raelyn's green eyes stare at me. In her senior photo, her hair is pulled back into a half-ponytail, her face clean of makeup. At the time, she was already a mom to Evangeline and was struggling to balance high school and parenthood. She graduated, but just barely.

"Feeling nostalgic?"

I nearly fall out of my chair. I slam the yearbook shut and spin around to see Griffin standing behind me.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you." He gets on his knees and caresses my forearm with his fingertips. The sensation gives me chills. "Are you okay, Beaufort?"

"I'm a little on edge," I confess. "There's a lot going on at home."

"Sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?"

"No, unless you can talk to ghosts."

"I mean, I can't, but I know a good medium," he says, his voice humorless.

I snicker. "Yeah, okay. You know those people are con artists, right? It's all a scam."

He shakes his head. "Even if it's not real, is it really the worst thing if it brings people down comfort?"

"I'm not into all that voodoo magic stuff," I retort. "I like to keep my feet firmly planted in reality, not fantasy or sci-fi or whatever that is."

"Color me unsurprised," he says with a chuckle. "Have you taken your lunch yet?"

"No, I've been busy."

"Busy looking at your high school yearbook?"

"Something like that."

"Come on." He rises to his feet and then helps me to mine. "Let's get some food."

He takes my hand and leads me out of the newsroom. I expect us to hit up one of the vending machines, but he pulls me outside to the parking lot, to his sleek Harley Davidson. He tosses me his helmet and instructs me to put it on.

"Where are we going?" I question him.

"Like I said, to get lunch," he answers.

Although I don't believe he's telling me the whole truth, I place the helmet on my head and climb onto the back of the bike, snaking my arms around his torso. Together, we coast through the city. I smile as the April breeze blows through my hair. Riding with Griffin will never get old.