PROLOGUE
Everyone is haunted by something. A road not taken. A hurt, carried deep inside. Harsh words that echo long after the sting of them is carried away on the wind.
Some of us are haunted more literally. We’ve seen and felt and heard what simply cannot be, but is. A low moan coming from the corner of a darkened room. A glimpse of an ethereal shape. A tangible encounter with . . . something. A passer-through.
My haunting is like that—strange, magical, unexplainable—but at the same time, it’s real enough to touch and feel and wrap my whole self around. Real enough to inhabit my dreams and sit like a stone on my heart as I carry it with me day after day.
Memories of other parts of my life over the years—love, loss, the mundane minutiae of living—might be hazy around the edges, dreamlike, as I look back on them now. But when I think of him, the one who haunts me still, the images are crystal clear. Even after all these years, I can taste him on my lips. Hear his voice, low and deep, in my ear. I love him with every cell in my body, even now.
As I sit alone with my thoughts in this empty house, in the dark, a fire crackling in the fireplace and snow falling outside, it all comes back to me. And I’ll let it come. God help me, I will let it come.
CHAPTER ONE
Driving north from my home in Minneapolis, I was trying not to look into the rearview mirror at what I was leaving behind. Focus on what you’re heading toward, I told myself. I was driving to Wharton, a tourist town on the shores of Lake Superior. It would be my home for the summer while I pushed the reset button on my life. Had I known what I was driving into, would I have turned around? I ask myself this question often.
But all I knew then was that my next three months would be about kayaking around a glorious chain of islands and letting the big water deliver the kind of peace that only it can give me. The native peoples in this area thought of this lake as a deity, and as far as I was concerned, they weren’t wrong about that. Lake Superior had a way of dropping my blood pressure as I listened to the waves lap, lap, lapping at the rocky shoreline. I needed that, after the three nightmarish years I had just been through. A shudder ran through me, but I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and took in what was coming into view as I rounded the corner and began to descend into town.
In Wharton, there was nothing other than the discreet Wi-Fi signs in most establishments to betray the fact that the town had, indeed, entered the modern age. Instead, you’d find block after block of Victorian homes with widow’s walks and balconies overlooking the most temperamental of the Great Lakes, whose mood could change from calm to deadly in an instant. No department stores or chain hotels, no fast food, no buildings more than three stories tall, no bustling nightlife. Only mom-and-pop markets, locally owned restaurants, small banks, stores with local artisans’ work on display, apparel shops, and pharmacies. That was Wharton. It was like going back in time, but with all the modern conveniences. People flocked there, especially during the summer and fall, just to get a taste of what it felt like to time travel.
I was here at the urging of my friend Kate, whose family was from Wharton going back generations. Their home was now one of the town’s most magnificent inns, Harrison’s House, a stunning Victorian masterpiece on the hill overlooking the water.
I’d be spending time with her during my visit, but I would not be staying at the inn that she, her cousin Simon, and his husband, Jonathan, ran. Even with the discount they were prepared to give me, it was out of my financial reach to take up residence in that grand home for the summer. And I didn’t want to take away the revenue they could get during high tourist season, which was just about to begin. So, they found me a place at LuAnn’s, a century-old restaurant that had been a boardinghouse back in the day, with upstairs rooms rented by the week, the month, or the summer at prices that seemed to be taken from a simpler time.
This was what was rolling through my mind as I drove down the hill, watching the town, and the lake, laid out before me. Sailboats, their spinnakers unfurled, decorated the water, and ferries chugged in and out of the harbor on their way to the islands that dotted this area of the lake. One, Ile de Colette, was inhabited; the rest were wild. Boats were docked at the slip, and I saw people working on them, readying for the coming season. It was the week before Memorial Day, so tourists had not yet descended en masse, but a few people were strolling around the streets and wandering into the shops and restaurants, which were all open for business. I drove by Harrison’s House and told myself to call Kate when I got settled, then made my way to LuAnn’s, where I’d be living for the summer.
It was a three-story building with deep-red wooden siding and four-paned windows that looked as old as time. A neon sign proclaiming the establishment “Open” hung above the front door. I pulled into the parking lot.
A woman I assumed was LuAnn herself came outside to welcome me, leopard-print leggings, oversize glasses, bling around her neck and all. I put her at about seventy-five years old, maybe older?
“You must be Brynn,” she said, squinting at me as I got out of the car.
“I am. You’re LuAnn?”
She smiled a broad smile. “The one and only. Welcome, honey.” She threaded an arm around mine. “Let me show you around. We can deal with your bags later.”
We walked through the door, and I saw a restaurant that could have been plucked out of the 1950s. It was an odd disconnect. The building itself had a much older feel to it, as though the century-ago happenings inside of it still hung in the air, just out of reach. And yet I was standing in what looked like an old-fashioned diner.
Several round red-pleather barstools bellied up to a long linoleum-topped bar that was backed by what clearly had once been a soda fountain, now converted to dispense beer. A jukebox stood in one corner. Tables with a mishmash of chairs around them were scattered in two oak-paneled rooms. The tables themselves were a mix of styles, too—wooden, linoleum, tile topped, round, square, whatever.
Framed news clippings with historic headlines about D-Day, the moon walk, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Barack Obama’s election, and other life-altering events in this country lined the walls, reflecting a time line of American life over the course of a century. I looked closer at one of them, a photo of a handsome young man standing at the front door of LuAnn’s.
“Is that John F. Kennedy Junior?” I asked her.
“Adorable kid,” she said, shaking her head. “He came here with a group of friends to kayak around the islands. Damn shame what happened.”
I nodded in agreement. It was a damn shame.
“This place was built in the 1800s, originally as a boardinghouse.” She gestured around the room. “Been remodeled a few times since then, obviously. We’re open all day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You get one meal a day with your stay, and you get half off if you choose to eat your other meals here, too. Alcohol is extra, but you can just run a tab and pay for it at the end of the month with your rent.”
I nodded, looking around.
“Happy hour’s at three every day except weekends,” she said. “It’s a good way to get to know people in town, if that’s what you want. Everyone comes here.”
“Okay,” I said, taking it in.
She leaned over the front desk and fished an old-fashioned skeleton key off one of the hooks. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “I’ll show you your digs. You’ll like the room. It’s one of my favorites.”