Chapter Four: Empty House

Slips of sunlight leaked into the kitchen in wide splashes of hazy gold. My bare feet slapped against warm tiles and the dishwater still left in the sink was practically warm again. I perfect Sunday tradition there wasn't a sound, outside the island lingered between dreams, wrapped up cosily under the morning dew.

I drained the sink wordlessly, ignoring the stir from the lump under a quilted throw on the sofa. I filled the metallic stove-top kettle and opened the fridge for a short stock take. Plenty of greens, egg, milk, and cheese. Still fresh. I rolled my sleeves.

Hot water whistled, my frying pan clacked pleasantly on to the range and I folded egg over leftover deli-ham.

Content in my element I thought of the well-established Shakespearean saying: 'the world is mine oyster.' I wasn't much for Old English or mussels but if they had the world then I had this room. A multitude of taste was at my fingertips, prepared by my experienced hand and a variety of my stubbornly obtained quality cookware. I knew where to reach, what to grab, how to enhance or perfect a dish with every ingredient and tool within my means. The idea of our branch out on the mainland consumed me as a thrill; to replicate this feeling on a larger scale... to tempt a customer base equipped solely with my own recipes and talent... the omelette performed a perfect turning arc through the air.

"Can't you do that a little more quietly...?"

I caught it on a plate with ease.

"It's you, the figment of my imagination, who needs to keep quiet. Even whispering I still feel ridiculous."

"There's a simple solution for that," Angela shot back, now fully emerged from her cocoon of blankets and trying ineffectually to comb her hair with her fingers. She settled on a smile. "Just accept that I'm real."

I served half of the omelette to her, arranging a second plate for Maya.

"Now that raises some different issues." I finished; successfully ending the conversation. I took the tray of omelette, toast, and tea in hand and walked it to the bedroom. My ghost could wait.

Maya was stretching; her hair curled wildly where it was tucked behind her ears. "Ooh, eggs!" she approved, settling against a propped pillow and flattening her lap. I set the tray there and pressed a swift kiss to her forehead.

"I'm going out."

"But it's only eight-firty," she managed around a mouthful of buttery toast.

"Early bird catches the worm and all that." I shrugged, smiling easily at her as though she were a child.

"I'll miss you,"

I laughed, not really knowing why, "I won't be long."

Angela was scraping up the last of her breakfast and chewing without really appearing to taste it when I returned freshly dressed. She glanced at my bare toes and back up again without any sense of shame and I nodded towards her boots. In a hurry she dropped her fork and rushed to pull them on, stumbling after me out the door. Why should I worry when she made a ruckus? After all it was only me that could hear her.

"I didn't even get to brush my teeth!" she complained.

"Do you need to?" I asked quite honestly, almost curious.

She was breathing into her hand and wrinkling her nose, "I feel like I need to. Especially as someone was a little heavy-handed with the pepper."

I shot her a dark look, grasping quickly for a comeback and winding up empty-handed. Without the necessary nutrients from breakfast in my brain cells it seemed I was going to be a bit slow on the uptake. An anxiety I never knew I possessed reassured me: better this than a suspicious third plate.

"Bed head," I pointed, distracting us both, and she nearly tripped while trying to smooth it.

Later Angela asked softly, "Where are we going?"

The walk past my neighbours had been pleasant. A little crisp, but as a change from the sweltering heat of fever I was grateful.

I hadn't expected to hear more timidity in her voice after her ferocity the day before but it served to demonstrate that the question required no answer. There wasn't much else this far out-of-town.

But filling the peaceful tranquillity of our walk with her questions seemed to absolve her nervousness.

"So why here?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Mentally I kicked myself for speaking so antagonistically. I would need to utilize a little more restraint if I was going to get her onside and therefore be rid of her. I glossed over my blunder with a sweep of my hand, directing her gaze across the open fields.

As far as plantations went it wasn't much to speak of. Since her departure the fields had gone back into the possesion of Town Hall but without the success of another rancher or family to take up residence the grounds had been divided into smaller plots and offered up to the townspeople as allotments. Most residents were not eager for more property, and the allotments saw little but varied use. It seemed that even with the stimulus in increased population there still weren't enough willing hands to make use of so much previously infertile land.

Further back, nearer to the sprawling black spires of pine trees and mountain rock the single-story cabin stood vigilant. The building remained humble, having never been developed with extensions or a second level. It was not yet overlooked by the garden allotments of disused pastures but rather kept tidy. The lawns were trim, the windows clean, and the paint not yet cracked.

Angela appeared impressed if not a little touched by the new lattice-work, the vibrant plants and colours that grew in patches, but her sentiments were diverted once her eyes fell upon the old house- her old house.

"Who lives here..?" she said; another question. I had to sigh.

When we reached the cabin I was unsurprised to find it unlocked. I entered first and Angela cautiously took up the rear. I flicked the light switch, wondering just how much of the yearly budget the new Mayor was allowing to compromise here, but nothing happened. The room remained dim until I shoved the curtains back with little delicacy. Angela flinched as though we hadn't just previously been out in the bright sunlight.

For all her timidity and ferocity that I knew in equal measures and under different circumstances a new emotion settled over her. She became cloaked in awe.

The cabin was exactly as she'd left it. Her hands fell on oak table top, fluttered over stone counters, touched the sun-stained plastic of the old touch-tone telephone that rested silently on a skinny-legged bureau that was good for little else. It was practically antiquated. Finally her gaze rested on the calendar still showing a spring month seven years ago. Her light somewhat erratic handwriting reaching a block half-way down, citing numbers and evaluations that lost my interest, and then never again.

It wasn't my first time here since she'd gone but it had been a long time since the last. I cast a glance over the objects that filled the room as I waited for her to speak and found myself thoughtful. Any girl with half a conscientious mind wouldn't have left so much well-crafted and altogether valuable fixtures behind, but while Angela may have been the island's key player in a renaissance she had never been that prudent. There'd been days when she'd shown up at the bar, exhausted and expiring, gone a day or two without food thanks to overspending on seed, and one of us would take pity. If it didn't produce milk or sprout green out of the ground then she didn't have it in her to waste concern.

"This is all mine," she said plainly after a time.

"Yeah," I offered, already knowing as much. My memory wasn't quite so flawed. "It seems that you had a certain effect on the people here."

She turned round brown eyes on me that looked more like they belonged on a wild animal than on her pale face. I felt a knot tie itself in my stomach even as my speech continued on regardless.

"They advertised it as a rental for a while, but the effort was pretty meek. Before long it was just closed up like this and no longer on offer. The pasture made into plot-land."

"But why?"

"A lot of people stand by the idea that you saved us, the island— the goddess." I paused to swallow down any reluctance that might have crept into the word. I didn't believe it myself but there was no reason to taint the facts with my personal opinion.

Angela's mouth became a tight line. Her cheeks were puffy and pink. I might have smiled for the increased likeness to that wild animal I could almost put a name to but she put an abrupt end to my amusement.

"I don't like it, Chase. Make them stop."

"-What?"

"Make them stop this! Who started this? Was it him?"

"Hey, come on Angela,"

Had it actually been made public I might not have agreed with the idea. It wasn't commonplace in our traditions to respect someone in this way. I certainly wasn't volunteering to dust the shelves down or mow the lawns, but I could still see that it was harmless. It was as though the most hardcore among her friends were house-sitting for her, keeping the hearth warm and the cobwebs at bay. It was almost as though this was a physical manifestation of their hopes that she might one day return.

In a way I was glad I was the only one to witness the combined realization and disenchantment of that hope.

"You can't help being famous."

She didn't stop, "It's like a tomb!" She wrapped her arms around herself as she had the first night. In a trick of the light I thought I saw through her. Oh, those clever ghostly illusions that leave us so vulnerable.

"-This more than anything makes me realize how lost I am."

We sat on the bed, its mattress covered by worn tarpaulin. It was the only aspect of the room that really exposed it as devoid of human occupancy. Angela was quiet but she didn't cry. The emotions she went through were raw and complex but they mingled and escaped as angry steam rather than wet tears. I didn't know how to console her or even if I wanted to. The old familiarity of our situation had put me on edge.

"I'm sorry." She surrendered after a while.

"No need."

"I shouldn't ask such a thing of you..."

But you did.

"Not like you have much choice though."

"Hmm," she sighed by way of agreement.

"It probably was Gill."

"As expected," she stole the words from under me.

"So," I rolled a shoulder feeling it pop more than hearing it. The action put me firmly back in the present, the reality, "We should go talk to him."

"I'm not sure I want to see anyone yet."

I closed my mouth, finding my thoughts a frustrating blank again. She'd met with me, but it'd happened by accident. She'd seen Maya on account of me, and in a way it had been the same with Toby. We'd spent enough time apart since that fateful tumble in the fireflies that I assumed she'd tried her luck with everyone; appearing in windows, shouting at them to the effect of white noise, moving cups or important possessions for the victim to search after... But Angela was Angela. She'd probably just sat in one place trying to collect herself. And when it all became too much it wouldn't have been a huge trial to track me down again.

If I didn't feel quite so plagued by her presence and its effect on my psyche I might have been proud that I'd been granted such a pedestal in her heart; that her confidence in me was so unshakeable that she didn't even bother to seek out another person with the so-called sight. Tangled in the complexities I laughed in spite of myself. Angela promptly frowned.

I formed my next words carefully. "It's no problem if you want me to do some detective work on my own but I think it would probably be better if you were there with me."

Her forehead wrinkled; a sign of furious thinking.

"You'd be my secret weapon. Like an invisible lie-detector."

It wasn't the easiest person to get along with. It wasn't as though I was unaware of the fact. I could be hard and dismissive and when I wasn't masquerading with a smile I could even be cruel. I'd never been the best at encouraging others, and my efforts were usually met with lukewarm reception.

Thanks anyway, Chase.

It would be a lie if I said I wasn't trying. For all my detachment it was still difficult to see the seven-years-unchanged Angela so troubled, but for my average at best record for positivity I did not expect her to do what she did next.

Her forehead bumped against my shoulder and rested there; a mere circle of contact. Her fine hair rustled softly against my sleeve to hang in her face. Her frame shook as though she was sobbing, but I glimpsed a smile from under the curtain of her hair and realized instead that it was something of an unsteady chuckle.

"Oh Chase," she trilled, "This is why I'm glad it's you."

By the time we'd reached town the sun was high and the air was hot. The promise of another summer night lingered on the sweaty brows of working men and the swollen ankles of new mothers. Angela crunched on several small heart-shaped tomatoes while we walked. We'd picked over the allotments before we'd left, reminiscing over the land that used to be hers and the sometimes silly trials she'd put herself through in the very beginning.

"Well, they're amateurs but I think you can appreciate how that is."

"What are you saying; I was perfectly professional the moment I set foot here."

"The first time I saw you I thought you were a miner."

"What!"

"Or a boy."

"That's just rude! Why would you think that?"

"Big eyes. Like a mole."

"You've never seen a mole before have you..."

In a fit of laughter Angela had broken one of the stems, seemingly more delicate that her touch. The plant would survive but I didn't see the problem with her eating the spoils. It wasn't like anyone would see her doing so or guess after the culprit behind the garden thieving. Guessing after the physics behind an imaginary woman eating an actual-factual tomato and not being seen only served to baffle me.

Did the tomato become invisible once she touched it? Or was I currently walking next to a half-chewed morsel, drifting through the scenery?

If I were to take hold would it be given a physical form once more?

Did the tomato in her hand enter some sort of limbo? A second copy of the fruit which had never actually separated from the plant to begin with except in our eyes and realities?

That last one was where I had to draw the line.

You're going insane, Chase, and that tomato is the least of your worries.

"What are you going to ask him?" Angela asked once all the fruits had been devoured. Mercifully, we'd made it half way down the street without them being discovered; eliminating option one.

"I'll keep it casual...Just talk about old times." I murmured back, smiling at Anissa and her daughter as they swished past.

"I can hardly imagine you two being casual..."

I surrender. "I have some business to discuss as well."

"Gill will love that." She grinned pleasantly.

I didn't bother vocalizing how unlikely that was.

The hall was the same as always, heavy doors, dimly lit corners- the oldest and most extravagant building on the island including the cathedral and Julian's new free-standing garden pavilion. The only thing that had changed was the mess.

Gill appeared from behind a tower of leaflets like some sort of abominable snowman; his blue eyes were the only truly striking part of his appearance amidst snowy blonde hair and pale drawn skin.

"Hello," he greeted coolly, moving piles of the paper to the other side of the desk- a process I couldn't see the necessity in without knowing further details. Elli was stamping something in a deeper recess of the room. The thump, thump, thump of rubber stamper going from ink pad to paper and back again was like a distant drum. I wondered how she managed to do it so quickly. Her hands were surprisingly unstained.

"Can I help?" Gill prompted.

Thump-thump-thump-thump. Elli had begun humming a jaunty tune.

"I hope so," I answered sincerely.

A/N: A little more progress. The inevitable appearance of Gill. I hope my subtleties were apparent enough but still subtle enough that they all click into place in later chapters...

Thanks for reading, please review :)