Collins
I woke up pressed against Brady. At some point last night, we made our way upstairs for a shower and then collapsed in his bed.
It didn't seem like either of us moved the whole night. My head was still tucked under his chin, my hands were still resting on his chest, and his arms were still wrapped around me. As if sensing my consciousness, he pulled me close and breathed me in.
I felt him shrug out from underneath me, kissing my forehead, my nose, and my cheeks—just basically everywhere he could reach. I kept my eyes closed but let out a tired sigh, stretching my body.
"Good morning," he said—this time with a kiss to my mouth.
"Too early," I sighed, and curled into him again.
"Go back to sleep, then, trouble," he said. "I'll make breakfast, okay?"
"Pancakes?" I asked hopefully with one eye open.
"Whatever you want," he laughed. "I don't know how to make them with the muffin mix, though, but I do have pancake mix."
I nodded into his chest. "Perfect."
I heard him rustle around his drawers and make his way out to the kitchen, banging around the cabinets, most likely in search of pancake mix, as I nestled into the warm spot he left behind.
I flipped through all the delicious memories of last night, remembering all the perfect moments that captured how good it felt to be with Brady.
I thought of his caresses, and how they had powered me like my own personal backup generator.
It made me think of the ghosts—how they were anchored to places.
When Brady's hands were on me in any way, it felt like he was my anchor—the thing holding me to the ground so I didn't float away.
For someone who felt like they'd been floating for a year, feeling the metaphorical dirt between my toes when he touched me was everything.
He had helped bring me back to my roots, which had helped bring me back to the ghosts, and ultimately to myself. But I was still hiding part of myself from him, and now, more than ever, I wanted to show him.
He came back into the room with two mugs and a plate, which he set on the nightstand as he sat on the edge of the bed next to me.
"Those smell good," I mumbled, smiling as I opened my eyes.
"So do you," he said. "Are you hungry?" I nodded and sat up. "I put some of your mini M&M's in them. Thought you'd like that."
I felt my heart squeeze. My stomach grumbled, suddenly famished, but I couldn't think about the pancakes until I could kiss him.
I heard Brady groan and pull me closer. "If I start kissing you, I don't think I'm going to be able to stop for a while. You good with cold pancakes?"
"That does sound pretty great. But…do you want to go somewhere with me?" I asked, softly. "No murders took place there that I know of."
"That's not as comforting as you think it is," Brady said. "Another Collins spot?"
"For now," I nodded. "It's about to be a Collins and Brady spot, just like the rest of them, though."
—
It took about fifteen minutes to walk from the back door of Coop's to the area of the forest that you could get to from town. About fifty feet in, there was a cellar door—covered by sticks, leaves, and dirt. If you didn't know it was there, you'd miss it.
"God, this town is like a creepy game of Candy Land," Brady said behind me as I brushed the forest debris off the top of the wooden door.
There weren't any handles, which is another reason the cellar was unidentifiable.
I pried the cellar door open and gently let it fall to the side. "What is this?"
"About five hundred yards back, there's some remains of an old house that didn't stand the test of time.
It belonged to Sweetwater Peak's postmaster, who assumed her post in 1933—at the height of the Great Depression.
She was in the role for over forty years and became the closest thing Sweetwater Peak has ever had to an archivist. Her name was Emily Hofstadt. "
"And you know this because I'm assuming you and Emily used to chat?" Brady asked, kind of in disbelief.
I nodded. "Emily isn't around all the time.
She's always been very hit or miss, but she came to me at the post office one day.
I was taking pictures of it. Well, I was taking a picture of a gaggle of ghosts who stayed at the post office to gossip in death the same way they did in life.
She said she could tell I had a penchant for history and showed me this.
She didn't have anyone to leave it to. Someday, I'd like to get it organized enough to add to it—to pick up where she left off.
"This cellar has decades of Sweetwater Peak history." I stepped onto the first rung of the ladder that led inside.
I skipped the last few and jumped to the bottom.
The walls of the cellar were stone, and the ground was dirt.
It was plain, but it had shelves and shelves of wooden boxes that were full of history—newspapers, artifacts, journals, business ledgers—anything you could think of.
Brady came down after me. "It's big down here," he said.
I nodded. "Bigger than you can see," I said with a sly smile.
"How is that possible?"
"Sweetwater Peak has very cold, very snowy winters, and obviously, they were even worse in 1933—"
"Climate change?"
"—Right. So instead of trudging through the snow, or being stuck in her house…"
"You're not going to tell me there's a tunnel to the post office, are you?"
I felt the grin split my face. "That's exactly what I'm going to tell you. Don't worry—I won't make you walk all the way through it this time."
Brady was quiet for a second. "You really do love this town, don't you?"
I thought about that for a second. Anytime someone had asked me that previously, I answered with a sharp, resounding no.
It felt like a defense mechanism—a way to avoid how much I missed it when I was gone and to make leaving easier when I came back.
But as I had been revisiting these places that I had called my own, I felt different.
Or maybe I felt the same, and this was the first time I had gotten out of my own way enough to see it.
This place built me—for better or worse. It was the place I left to find myself, but it was also the place I came back to, so I could do the same thing.
"I do," I said quietly.
"I do, too," Brady said. "I like it in general, but I really like your version of it. So what are we down here for?"
"I told you about Earnest?" Brady nodded.
"He said something the other day that made me want to look at his obituary again. I have it down here." I opened the box closest to the ladder and started thumbing through the papers inside.
I wish I were more organized, but that's not really my thing.
Usually, however, I'm good at remembering where something is. I had a good feeling about this box.
"He said something?" Brady asked. "You heard him?" The happiness in his voice made me want to plant one on him in this dark and dusty cellar.
"Yeah." I nodded. "There's still some like…supernatural interference, but we had a conversation. It didn't feel like the right time to ask him to remind me about his death deets."
"Makes sense," Brady said. "How, um, how did he die?"
"Someone ran his car off the road when he was on his way to the Sweetwater River. His car wrapped around a tree. They didn't find him for days."
"That's…"
"I know," I sighed. "But something about it is gnawing at me more than usual. I've never really thought about the person who did it. I've only ever thought about Earnest, and how unfair it was for him." I kept flipping papers.
"How can I help?" Brady asked.
"No need," I said right as I found a newspaper marked with a bright pink sticky note. "I got it." Brady looked over my shoulder as I went through it.
"The fifties?" he asked.
I nodded. Obituaries were near the back. I folded the paper in half—I knew that what I was looking for was below the fold. "There he is," I said—pointing out Earnest's paragraphs. There was no picture. I read the lines, but there was nothing I didn't know—nothing about the driver of the other car.
I let out a sigh. "Damn, I thought I missed something." I opened the paper all the way so I could refold it correctly.
The obituary at the top snagged my attention—the picture, rather.
It was a young woman with blond hair, light eyes, and an expression that made me feel like I could feel her sadness through the decades that separated us.
"Does she look familiar to you?" I asked Brady. He shook his head. "Where have I seen her before?" I muttered to myself. I skimmed her paragraphs. Adeline Bennett, frozen to death near the Sweetwater River.
Oh my god.
"Holy fuck! It's her." I turned to Brady. "It's the Lady in White. Earnest was the lover she was meeting!" I recognized her picture now. She looked just like she had in the forest, but in the photo her hair was curled and pinned instead of wild and free.
"The thing that messed with me?" Brady asked, stunned.
I nodded excitedly. "And I'd put money on it being her husband who ran Earnest off the road."
"It is always the husband." Brady nodded.
"Right!" I exclaimed. What if I could keep my promise to her? To arrange their meetup—a little postmortem rendezvous. I didn't know if Earnest could get out to the river without fading, or if she could get…anywhere else, really.
I let my thoughts swim as I watched Brady. He looked around the cellar. His eyes caught on something in the corner, and he walked toward a low shelf. The light blue border of a magazine sitting on top of a box was visible.
I forgot it was here. I brought it to show to Emily when I got my print version.
Brady picked it up slowly and blew dust off the cover. "This…this is the view of the Sweetwater River that you showed me. I didn't recognize it while we were there, but now…"
Brady flipped the magazine open and thumbed through it as quickly as he could until he landed on the page. Page seventy-two. I knew it by heart. He flipped it to show me.
I saw the image of Main Street. It was the last photo I took for the series, but the first one the audience saw. All of the photos were in black and white. The white text over it said Ghost (of a) Town: A Forgotten Town in Western America. And underneath the photo: A Feature by Collins Cartwright.
"Oh my god," Brady whispered. "It was you." He kept flipping through the photo story—black-and-white pictures of the town appearing page after page until he got to the last one.
It was an About the Photographer page. I didn't have to see it head-on.
I knew that there was a photo of me in front of Toades.
My hair was longer than it was now. There was a barely discernible glow next to my shoulder—Earnest.
"?Collins Cartwright,'?" Brady read aloud, "?was born and raised in a town North of Nowhere—where the road ends and the shadows begin. She believes the best stories have already been forgotten and the best places remain undiscovered. She hopes it stays that way. This is her first feature in Blue Sky Geographic. '?" He stared down at it for a second, then at me, then back to the picture.
Then a smile climbed up his face—all the way to his eyes where the wrinkles at the corners of them appeared. He set the magazine down and rushed me—grabbing my face with both hands and bringing his mouth down on mine.
"You brought me here," he said as he pressed our foreheads together. I held on to his wrists while his hands stayed on either side of my face. "It was you."
I kept my eyes closed—clinging to him and breathing him in.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
"Waiting for the right moment." I shrugged.
It was deeper than that. I had a complicated relationship with this piece because of my complicated relationship with this town.
It was the thing that had skyrocketed my career and gave me new opportunities that I never would've dreamed of.
But it also brought pressure and more self-doubt than I thought I was strong enough to carry.
I cleared my throat and kept going. "I didn't know how to be proud of it after everything changed for me last year.
I didn't know how to reckon with how this big, life-changing dream could also bring me so much pain—could wear me down and burn me out.
I still have such a hard time carving out enough space in my chest for all of those things to be true—especially after it all went away.
I didn't know how people would see me anymore.
And I wanted you to see me…beyond my work.
Even then—even before I knew that we could be something. "
Brady nodded and mumbled something to himself, something that sounded a lot like chameleon.
But then he took my hands and looked straight at me.
"Your work doesn't define you, Collins," he said.
"But you should be proud of it. This piece? It changed my life. It pushed me to feel something that I'd bottled all up.
It forced me to take a risk I never thought I'd be brave enough to take, and I'm a better man because of it.
You've made me so much braver, brave enough to even say…
" He trailed off and took a deep breath.
"I love you. I'm in love with you, and it has nothing to do with this, nothing to do with who everyone else thinks you are, and everything to do with who I know you are.
" He brought his hands up to cup my face. "I love you. Is that okay?"
"Yes," I said immediately and quietly, but I just knew he'd hear me loud and clear. "Me too," I whispered. This is the good stuff.
"This really is a treasure trove," Brady said, and I had no idea whether he meant this cellar, this town, or this thing we were building, but it didn't really matter, because then he kissed me again.