I can see them on the shore below me, his arms secure around her waist as he picks her up and wheels her around, a spray of sand gusting from beneath her bare feet as they kick out. She laughs again, oblivious to everything around her except him.

She has forgotten me.

Ghosts aren't real. Toby had always thought of them as a far-too-complicated, yet vague, kind of excuse that people use during the grieving process instead of the simple acceptance of facing reality. Otherwise they're just figments that star in stories to scare the likes of Paolo and Chloe and Taylor and (only sometimes) Luke into behaving where they might otherwise find themselves overstepping boundaries.

But that leaves Toby with no explanation to the very real fear that rises in his chest every time that he and Renee walk back from Harmonica Beach, and the disembodied voice—sometimes sad, sometimes scared, sometimes angry, but never welcoming—that swims around him. The one that, if Renee hears it as well, she never mentions or shows any reaction to.

"Stop..." he'll hear when his fingers lace into Renee's. "Don't..." The voice spits when Renee's head rests on his shoulder..

And when they kiss goodbye, he's left with a shiver that has nothing to do with the way Renee's lips play on his. Instead, there's a twinge in him, like a fishhook catching into his middle and it's not a pleasant sort of snag either, like when he saw Renee in her dress at Jin and Anissa's wedding. It's the sort of stab that threatens of something more and on the night of the Summer Festival, as he and Renee kiss under the glowing fountain of fireworks, it's sharper than ever and he sees Renee's brilliant smile as she pulls away from him, but all he hears is a ringing in his mind that seems to come from every direction.

"Or I will make you stay away."

She is beautiful as ever. No wonder that strange boy appears to be washed out by the sun, with his faded smile and equally faded silver hair. It's from too much time with her, the way she shines so bright, that even the sun pales in comparison. He is not worthy of being in her presence, nor is that other boy, the rumpled-looking one whose innocent smile is masking his true intentions. Even I am not worthy of her, and if I am not, no one is.

When Renee leaves Harmonica Beach around noon because she promised she'd show Chloe the newborn foal, just weeks old, Toby wants to be disappointed. But it's like the ebb tide, the way the overwhelming sense of dread that's been hovering over him drifts away when Renee departs. He can hear his own thoughts again without staticky threats cutting through them, can snack on the rice balls he brought along without his stomach twisting at every bite.

Add to that that their date hasn't been much of a date for the past few hours anyway, with Kevin doing his own fishing down the shoreline a little ways.

At one time, Toby had seen the rancher as a rival for Renee's affections, which was more than just his own insecurity about being able to offer Renee anything more than unwavering support. Even as a farmer, Kevin's visits to Horn Ranch seemed far too frequent to be based solely on his occupation. But one Friday, as Toby had been helping Renee brush through sheeps' matted wool, he commented that, strangely, Kevin wasn't here.

Renee's response, unmarred by any sort of offense, was that Kathy didn't come by for horseback riding on Fridays.

After that, Kevin had become one of Toby's closest friends. They weren't attached at the hip, not like Luke and Owen or the Sonata Tailor sisters, but Toby found there were very few people he could explicitly trust like Kevin, who was kind to a fault and would bend over backwards to help anyone in need— the entire Island, for example.

Kevin lets out a victorious whoop as he reels in a fat salmon, and when Toby realizes that this sight is making him happier than his own fishing—the fear for his own well-being replaced only with a foreboding sense of knowing it can return at any moment, and undoubtedly will—he decides to call it a day, at least here on Harmonica Beach. The sun is setting on the warm fall day, anyway, a sign that the Tuna he'd been hoping to catch have probably swam off by now.

"Tobes!" Kevin calls as Toby starts to walk off, fishing rod resting over his shoulder. The rancher catches up to him, his own rod set over his shoulder as well, salmon dangling from it by a string. "What's up? You seem spacier than usual. If that's possible." He elbows Toby playfully, the earnestness of his question tempting Toby to explain everything.

But Toby doesn't answer; he can't answer, only gawk. Behind Kevin, only a few feet away, is a young man not much older than Toby himself, but much less alive. His features are colorless, only opaque shades of gray. Through him Toby can see the outlines of the lighthouse, the crag of rocks and the foamy edges of the waves, except all of it is hazy, as if looking through fog.

And his eyes—his cloudy, menacing stare—is fixed on Toby.

There's a strong, unpleasant taste that forms in Toby's mouth as he is frozen to the spot. Not nausea, just something rotten, as if he's accidentally inhaled a huge whiff of fish guts and it's settled there. He can feel the animosity seething from the ghost as it takes another step toward the two of them, the angry crackling that Toby's become so accustomed to returning with a vengeance and stinging behind his eyes, under his skin.

"Earth to Toby, come in Toby!" Kevin waves his free hand frantically in Toby's line of vision, and Toby uses his own available hand to snatch Kevin's down.

His voice lowers to the barest whisper, although he isn't stupid enough to assume that the ghost can't hear him anyway. "Kevin. On the count of three... run. One..."

"What?!"

In Kevin's confusion, the grip on his pole has gone lax, and before Toby can get "Two" out of his mouth, the rod zips off Kevin's shoulder, the salmon and its string zinging through the air.

Kevin whirls around, swearing loudly in surprise— he must see the rod floating in midair of it's own accord. But Toby can see the ghost with a firm hold on it, intensity literally glowing in his otherwise glassy eyes, much like Luke when he's about to mega-ultra-chop a tree down.

Toby knows he's supposed to move, to protect his friend somehow, but he can't; it's like there's wires crossed from his mind to his movements and he stays as he and watches in horror as the iron rod whips into Kevin's side with the crunch of fracturing bone.

Kevin falls to the sand, arms crossed at his stomach as he kicks around in agony. Toby, too, as if being forced down by an invisible hand, is pushed to his knees and in his peripheral he spots Kevin's fishing rod dropping out of the air.

"Don't go near Anna again. Do I make myself clear?"

And then it's over, the cool of the evening driving away the ominous sensation from the air like a window being thrown open.

He doesn't say anything, only gets to his feet and helps a moaning Kevin up. Kevin's arm slings over Toby's shoulder, and they both almost tumble to the ground again when Kevin jerks in pain.

In the back of Toby's reeling mind is the knowledge that his fishing rod, for the first time ever, is being left behind. He doesn't care.

Kevin rambles the whole way to the clinic—"What the hell just happened?! What was that? Didn't you feel that? Do you know what's going on, Toby?"—his eyes wild and rimmed with tears by the time Irene and Dr. Jinall but drag him back to the examination room. Through Kevin's nonstop babbling Toby catches Jin ordering Irene to bring him sedatives. Then the door shuts in his face but not after he hears Kevin spouting out that "He needs help too!" and Toby knows that it's not him Kevin's referring to.

After waiting in the lobby for close to an hour, Dr. Jin reappears Toby simply that Kevin would do best with no visitors, and a good night's rest.

Toby doesn't know how to explain that he isn't hanging around waiting for Kevin—he assumes Kev is already fast asleep, drained from a mix of medication and pain. The truth is that he does not feel safe walking back to the Fishery, the few short minutes it takes.

So he begins the long walk to Horn Ranch, detouring to Kevin's home to drop off some of his friend's belongings on the front porch, and to make sure that all the animals are inside their respective domiciles.

All the while he ruminates if maybe he should listen to ghost, and stay away from Renee.

In most situations, his natural instinct is that he remain as passive as could be to any of this; he detests conflict, prefers to stay outside of any drama, no matter how small. It's always been easier, and not the least bit sapping of his pride (not like some of the other males on Castanet) to bend to what others wanted, if it meant that it could keep stress out of his life.

He'd always been so content to just let life happen, to let any-and-everyone else be the ones who took initiative.

Now one of his best friends has been injured, and who's to say that the ghost, in its illogical rage, wouldn't hurt Paolo or Uncle Ozzie if he saw them around Renee? What if he'd hurt Renee herself?

On the other hand, to think about living the rest of his life without hearing her musical laugh, inhaling her fresh hay-and-flower scent when she cuddled next to him, watching her face light up when she reeled in a fish bigger than the one he caught, and all because he couldn't man up and face down a pathetic (though insane and possibly homicidal) spirit...

He has to do something. And he will, tomorrow, because there's nothing else that can be done tonight. Right now, he just wants to feel Renee in his arms again, run his fingers through her silk-like hair and kiss her in a way that would follow her into her dreams every night, hoping for it again and again.

Cain passes him on the bridge to Flute Fields, and Toby blushes slightly as he returns the greeting, knowing Renee's father wouldn't be so cheerful if he knew what thoughts were dancing in Toby's head, most of them suggestively involving his daughter.

Renee's on the front porch humming a tune to herself, polishing and cleaning a handful of her tools, not taking notice Toby until he's only a few steps away.

A smile graces her lips as he nears her, and she sets aside her tools. "Tob-AAAH!"

He slips his arms around Renee and pulls her body flush to his, pausing only long enough to take in her shocked but happy expression before kissing her so passionately that her knees give and she wilts against him.

She blinks up at him with those adorable doe-like eyes, her mouth parted as her breath puffs out. "My mom's with the horses in the stable... she'll be there at least another two hours."

"Your dad's on his way to the Brass Bar."

"And you're..."

"I'm..?" Toby's thoughts are too jumbled for him to come up with a clever or even multi-syllabic response.

"Stopping by for a little while?" Renee crushes her lips back onto him, pushing up on her toes and weaving her fingers into Toby's messy silver hair.

Toby gropes for the door handle behind them; it flies open and they stumble back inside, legs tripping around each other's, all the while connected in a kiss.

There's no stupid ghost and its threats to stop him, to scream at him to stay away this time, and even if there was... he wouldn't. Hecan't stay away from her; he loves her so much and she loves him, she tells him an hour later as they lay undressed under the cozy homemade quilt on her bed.

He means to tell her about Kevin, about the ghost, but he doesn't because it's too late to do anything about it tonight, and she's so beautiful when she's sleeping. Peaceful and worry-free and even though it's the ghost's fault, Toby'll be the one to destroy that peace.

Just not until morning.

Will I ever see my Anna again? I wish I could tell her how sorry I am that we fought, and could know somehow that her love for me did not perish with my earthly form. And what of her; is she living out her days in doubt that I loved her until my final breath? Or has she found another to dance with, to laugh with, to kiss, to love. I refuse to believe that she would do such a thing to me, but I must know. I must, or my soul will never find the serenity it so desperately seeks.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me Kevin was hurt" Renee is speed-walking into town and Toby is huffing along at her heels. It's too early for him to be awake, let alone practically jogging over a mile.

He swallows in the crisp morning air, and notices that it's void of anything sinister—he's taken it for granted for so long. "But you wouldn't have been able to see him, I didn't want to... worry you." Or ruin the mood, he adds mentally. "Renee, it's not just that he was hurt, it's how—"

"A ghost, I know, you said that." When she throws a glance back at him, he can tell that she's not truly mad at him, that her short tone is more from being concerned about Kevin.

"I don't know how else... what else to tell you..." Toby stops her in front of the clinic door with a gentle touch of her arm. He can't stand how poor he is with words most of the time, especially when it comes to saying "the right thing"; it's always something that strikes him hours later, and not at the proper time, like he's always a step behind everyone else.

But Renee still takes his hand when it glides down to hers, and they enter the clinic together.

Kevin's awake, sitting up in bed with a hefty book on his blanketed lap and a plate of cubed fruit and eggs on the bedside table. His clinic-issued robe is open and exposing his bandage-wrapped chest.

He flicks a smile up when Toby and Renee step in, and gestures to the tome that's open, wincing noticeably from the simple motion of waving his arm. "Bit of light reading." Upon closer inspection, Toby sees it's an anatomy encyclopedia.

There's a glaze in Kevin's eyes, most likely a result of some powerful medication. Toby can't believe that twelve hours ago he was teetering so close to insanity, babbling incoherently with something much stronger than just the shock of being attack so suddenly and savagely.

Renee ignores his greeting-by-way-of-joke and with a steel in her voice that is uncharacteristic but nonetheless incredibly attractive, barrels right into the issue at hand. "Toby said you were attacked by a ghost last night. Because of me."

Renee is a strong woman, in her subtle way; Toby knows that, and her demanding tone lets Kevin know too. In this moment, however, her quiet reserve is all a mask; she's just as scared as Toby is, as Kevin was last night. Her hand is squeezing Toby's in a death grip, so hard that it's shaking.

Of all the expressions Toby would have expected from Kevin at such a bizarre accusation, it isn't the half-smile of relief he's currently wearing, as though asked to spill a secret he's been carrying around forever.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about it all morning... At first I thought it was the meds making me loopy but it makes more sense than anything else, that it's a ghost. Not sure about the 'because of you' part; he said something about... Anna, I think? And—"

"Tom..." Renee gasps out, the hand that isn't clamping the life out of Toby's flying to her mouth and muffling the rest of her words slightly, but not enough that Toby doesn't hear them.

"Who?" The boys ask simultaneously, Kevin's sounding more conversational whereas Toby can hear his own desperation—he's about to get a name to go with the transparent face that has been trying to swoop in on his girlfriend.

"Tom. He... was my great-grandmother Anna's boyfriend. They were planning to get married, until..." Her words trail off, the rest of the sentence obvious, considering the form he's in. "I read about it... about him... in her diary. They were so in love, and... I always hoped that I would have something like that... someday. I even had the music box he gave her right before he... left, but I have no idea where it is now."

Kevin lets out a derisive noise through his nose, and opens his robe a little further to fully show off his bandaged torso. "Well, this is what Mr. Romantic Tom did to me. Three broken ribs."

"I'm sure he didn't mean to—"

"Didn't mean to?! Renee, let me tell you exactly what happened, and then you let me know what he meant."

Kevin doesn't show much emotion through his explanation; he's actually quite matter -of-fact about it all, as if he'd just read about it in his big anatomy encyclopedia before Toby and Renee walked in. He relays a play-by-play of the moment of attack up until the world went black from the sedatives Dr. Jin injected in him.

The mention of the attack brings Toby's thoughts back to the fact that his pole is still on the beach (hopefully, and not washed away), and an itch runs through his fingers. He flexes them at his side, telling himself that he'll have his most prized possession back sooner rather than later.

Kevin's recollection is nowhere near as vivid as what Toby remembers, not the actions anyway, and that's to be expected considering how violent and abrupt it was. But then Kevin describes what he felt.

"It was like... you were him. It was like being able to read his thoughts, but... you could feel them instead. He was so... I don't think I've ever been that upset before, so jealous that I couldn't see straight. But it wasn't really me feeling it, if that makes any sense at all."

It makes perfect sense to Toby. He mutters in agreement, grateful but a little envious of how articulate Kevin can be about it, after only one run-in with the spirit. He hasn't been jealous during his encounters, but the anger that's boiled under him, the disappointment or possessiveness that is not him, not at all, that's been so overpowering it's made him physically ill.

He's still silently sifting through his thoughts, on each and every occurrence, when Renee asks Kevin if Tom said anything about why he's acting this way; everything she's read about in Anna's diary has been nothing but what a gentleman, a kind-hearted, hard-working farmer Tom was.

"I'm pretty sure what he wants is every guy within a fifty-foot radius of you dead, Renee. He doesn't even know he's a ghost, I bet. He thinks you're Anna, and that we're some unworthy jerks stepping in on you. The Wizard told me all about this kind of stuff when I thought there was a ghost haunting the church, how most of them don't even know they're dead and they just—"

"The Wizard," Toby cuts in. "He could fix this, right?" The Wizard who lived just up the lane from Choral Clinic would be able to put a stop to this haunting, if anyone could. Or the Witch, but from everything Toby's heard about her from Kevin, she wasn't keen on helping humans, only causing them more misery.

Renee gives him a skeptical look; he would too, if he were in her place. But he's not going to let it reach the point where she, or anybody else he cares about, is in the same position Kevin is now—or worse. The anger that Tom emanated—it's the closest Toby's come to it, right now, imagining something this harrowing happening to Renee, and him being unable to stop it, as was the case with Kevin.

"Uh... I don't know. I guess, if anyone could, then, yeah, it'd be him."

"Or I could," Renee says firmly.

"Renee!" Toby tugs her closer to him at the same time that Kevin lets out an incredulous "What?!"

"What, 'what'?" She breaks her hand away from Toby's and gives him a hardened stare, as if it's just the two of them in the room. "I'll just ask him to stop being so... horrible, and just explain there's a misunderstanding. If he really did care about my great-grandmother, he'd listen to me, right?"

"I don't think reasoning and logic exactly applies to spirits, Renee," Kevin answers before Toby can. "You don't even know what this ghost wants from you."

"Well, it's better than not trying anything at all! And I'm not going to let him hurt you or..." She turns back to Toby, gazing up at him. "Anyone else I care about."

"And I'm not going to let him hurt you!" He knows his voice is rising, and he lets it. Let Kevin hear, let Dr. Jin and Anissa and Irene hear in the Clinic. Let Tom the damned ghost hear, wherever he is.

"He won't. Tom wouldn't, not if he thinks I'm Grandma Anna. He loved her. The way I love you." She pushes onto her toes and makes his decision for him with a soft kiss.

Is it so? It is; it is my Anna, coming to see me at last.

I do not advance too quickly to her, and do my best to appear as if it has only been but a day since we've last seen each other, when it has been nothing short of an eternity. To see her again, I can not contain my joy and I close the distance between us, reaching my hand to brush her cheek.

"Anna..."

She gasps; her eyes widen, fresh and alive, as if she has just been awakened from a long slumber. They are not the blue pieces of summer sky that I once fell into. She tells me that, indeed, she is not my love, that her name is Renee. But other than her eyes, she is in every part my Anna... it must be her.

"It's me. Tom. Anna, don't you remember..." My hand falls away from her face, and I drop my gaze from her, filled with the utmost humiliation; clearly she does not. When I do this, I hear a tiny sob escape her lips and that only deepens my shame.

I do not grasp what she's saying. Hurting? Her friends?

I would never have hurt anyone who Anna considered a friend, because they were my friends as well. The only person I ever held any true disdain for was that meddling Witch, and that had been for all of ten minutes. Her reaction to my rejection of her insistence that I love her instead —as if love worked that way!—resulted in my untimely passing.

But Anna tells me of a Kevin, of a Toby. I have never known anyone by these names, and can not even recall a single moment outside of this one now, with her standing before me. How could I have done anything to these men if I were not there to do it? I try to tell her this, but she only blinks, confused, as though my words are nonsense.

Then she speaks of the beach—I have not been there since the week before the accident that took me from this world and from my love, and again, I interrupt her to offer this piece of information.

Again, she allows no real response. Is there anything I can say that she will hear? Or is she hearing it and ignoring me? She is the only one who can help me overcome this agony and yet she can not hear me.

She begins to cry silently, and through the tears she shudders out a reply to my sorrow. "I'll d-do everything I can to help you, Tom."

I return my hand to her face in an effort to wipe the tears away. They fall into my fingers and evaporate into a mist.

Toby watches from the church plaza above, hands on the wrought iron fence with as many fingers crossed as he can physically manage. As intense as his compulsion is to stay by Renee's side, he knows it's better served that he stay a reasonable distance away considering how Tom has reacted to his presence in every other instance.

There's a profound sadness that weighs down on him, a lump rising in his throat before he can even attempt to stop it. It's the same sense of loss as when his parents passed, only magnified times ten, crawling through every nerve in his body, filling every pore. And if he can feel that from here, then Renee...

He folds his arms on the fence, letting his head sink onto them in defeat, trying and failing to completely block out the conversation below. He shouldn't be able to hear it from this distance, but he can feel it: Tom's despair over causing his love so much strife, his abject disbelief of even being capable of such violence, the burning cry for help that consumes him.

Renee comes dashing up the steps from the cemetery, the tracks of dried tears staining her cheeks. She flings herself into Toby's arms, clinging to him as, between fresh sobs, she repeats over and over that they need to help Tom.

He doesn't want to help Tom; he wants to do the opposite, whatever that may be where ghosts are concerned. But, as was the case with Kevin's attack, where he inexplicably found himself not in control of his actions or words, he whispers into Renee's hair that maybe they should go see the Wizard.