26…Under The Surface…

Leif seems to be so comfortable in his own skin, but he's clearly not now. I know it has something to do with what's just beneath the surface of this dive bar in the Brewerytown section of Philly. I just don't know what it is. Yet.

Earlier, really only minutes ago outside the restaurant, when we were all taking photos of each other with the river as the backdrop, it was James who suggested we come here. When I saw Leif shoot his best friend a scathing look, I'm the one who pushed it. I innocently said we should take a vote. I shot Em my own look when she didn't immediately raise her hand to vote my way, but she eventually did, even through her Mrs. Babic-like thousand-yard stare. When Leif angrily pulled James aside, I listened.

Pffft…Of course I did.

I couldn't hear what Leif said, but I heard some of James' reply to him, "Let's go for closure. It was a big part of our lives and I want Emory to know everything. To know me." That decided it for me. I didn't need to hear the rest of their heated exchange. We were going to this damn bar come hell or high water.

Right when we pulled up, though, Em said out loud, "I don't like boat whistles." Actually, she really only got out a wispy "…boat whistles." She'd obviously had too much to drink and I would've ordinarily stayed with her. But instead I jumped out of the cab after we worked out that James would take her back to the townhouse. She'd be safe, and besides, I was on a mission.

I was already seated at the bar not far from the door before Leif furiously stalked in. "We're leaving. Now."

I replied, "You're welcome to, but I'm staying."

"No you are not," he said softly, making me shiver.

"I now know one of your nicknames is Invincible. But you're not the boss of me." I sounded pretty cool, but still had to look away when his face turned apoplectic.

He whispered in my ear, "I'd be only too happy to turn you in for a fake I.D."

I had to steel myself against both the threat in his words and the fact that the whole side of my body he was pressed against heated to boiling. My ear, I'm sure, was bright red. I took a deep breath before shrugging, "Do what you will. I'm not ordering alcohol."

It was right then the bartender came up smiling, "Vince! It's been too long!" There was a bro handshake across the bar and I didn't learn anything except our bartender's name was Joe. "What'll you two have?"

Without looking at Leif, I quickly ordered a burger and fries with a Coke. I'm not even sure if he ordered anything what with the deep steadying breaths I was taking to keep up my cool facade. Once Joe left—Leif didn't introduce me—I braved a glance at him, and had to turn away again, fast. He was still pissed!

"So sue me." I'd said, not daring to look at him. "I'm still hungry." That part was at least half true. I kind of was. Although actually eating with all these butterflies in my stomach might be an issue.

And here we are.

Leif slides onto the stool next to me. His furious energy is blasting me. It's coming at me like a wave. Or an explosion. But my stubborn Taurus side, as Em calls it, is holding its own. Because more than anything else right now, I want to know.

It starts up again almost immediately. But with a slightly different vibe.
"Holy effin' hell! If it's isn't the fist of fury himself!" This, from a man at a table halfway down the bar. This place is loud, crowded with people talking and a jukebox playing in the corner. But even with all that, the whole front half of the bar can surely hear him. The man starts to get up from his hightop table. Leif though, doesn't let him come to us, he goes to him. I pretend not to have heard, staying facing the front on my stool, but yeah, I'm watching them give each other bro hugs.

Peripheral vision is a beautiful thing.

They stay talking for a while, but I can't hear them for the most part. More guys have crowded around Leif, clamoring for his attention. There are hugs and pats on the back, smiles all around. I see him glance back at me a few times. I just sip my coke, cool as a damn cucumber. On the outside, at least.

A girl slides into the group of guys to give Leif a different kind of hug altogether. I notice he glances at me before gently disengaging her arms from around him. With Leif's back to me again, I turn my head to watch her leave because sometimes peripheral vision is just not enough. The guys make some smartass comments about her. I don't have to hear them to know they're being crude. Leif seems to shut them down and the guys look a little chastened. One of them puts his hands up in supplication saying, "Just jokin' around. No harm." I half hear it and am half reading this guy's lips. I'm a damn good interpreter. Leif shakes his head at the guy and I give him silent props for that; Grandmother would approve. The girl, though, does not look at all pleased when she rejoins her girlfriends at their table. All four of them start whispering about Leif. Or Vince, rather. They're too far away to have a hope in hell of my hearing them, but it doesn't matter. Their scathing stares say it all. With Leif at the center, the group of guys keeps talking and laughing.

It takes me a moment to understand that there's a hand waving in front of my face. I follow it to my left to see a guy sitting on Leif's bar stool. There are two friends of his right behind him, all looking at me. Sitting guy leans close. Too close. But I don't even care about that, I'm just annoyed because he's taking my focus away from my detective work.

"I asked you—twice!—what you were drinking."

For a second there, it's almost as if he's speaking Polish or Punjabi or any other language I don't know. I shake my head. "What? Huh?"

He doesn't answer. He's not even looking at me any longer, but behind me. "Whoa…Vince! Hey! Long time, no…" he trails off right when I feel Leif press against my back, putting an arm around my shoulder. "Oh…sorry, was this your, uh…seat?" This guy can't get up fast enough and with a quick pat on Leif's back and a "Good to see you, dude," the guy and his friends are gone.

Leif slides into the vacated stool, just as the bartender, Joe, slides two baskets of burgers and fries and a caddy of condiments in front of us. I turn back toward the bar to squirt some ketchup on my fries. Leif takes the bottle from me to do the same to his. Neither of us says a word as we start eating.

Two shots of some clear liquid appear before us and Joe tilts his head to indicate a table a little further down. It's those same three guys Leif chased off. He lifts up his glass toward them and they do the same with theirs and they all down it. I start to pick up the other one, but Leif grabs it before I can, slinging it back. We continue eating silently.

A group of girls walks in and, spotting Leif, immediately gather around him. He pivots on his bar stool to greet them cordially, kindly, even. He asks about people they all know—a Tony, a Randy, a Laycee. A Frankie and a Jolene and a Jaylene. Apparently there's a Little Iggie and a Big Iggie to go with an Ignatius Senior. Who knew? They ask after James. I listen, absorbing everything I can beneath the surface. I try not to stiffen— too much—when he casually drapes a hand on my leg while they're talking, but he still doesn't introduce me, so I follow his lead and don't introduce myself. I do turn to smile politely and nod at them after that because it seems rude not to. Two of the four have some really big hair. And every single one of them is staring at Leif's hand. Then at me. Then the hand. Through sheer force of will, I keep my own eyes from staring at Leif and the hand. Instead, I nod and turn back around to continue eating my burger, or pretend to, at least. Because who could eat.

With this Hand.

On my leg.

Because this Hand. This Hand is searing. Somehow, it's as if the entire bar, the entire earth, the entire world condenses down into this one hand. Leif's hand. On my leg.

Just as casually, he lifts The Hand. Off my leg. But it remains. Burning. On my leg.

The women don't stay long after The Hand. I don't have much experience with the sort of collective group think of girls—I've never been a part of a group like this. But still, I'm pretty sure they're scurrying off to go discuss Leif's hand. On my leg.

I have no foundation on which to try to understand the subtext of Leif's action. This subtext is what Henry calls The Thing Behind The Thing. He claims that identifying and understanding the thing that is at the core of an interaction is what made him good at interpretation. More so even than his knowledge of languages. I have no foundation in which to interpret this.

Instead, I keep listening.

Other people come up while we eat, in groups or alone. Leif doesn't leave his stool again, just swivels around with each new visitor. He turns down a lot of offers of drinks. Everyone asks after James. And everyone asks him about graduating.

I get another coke, then another, and I listen, catching wisps of conversations, which I file away.

"This new crop are a bunch o' wussies. It's not the same as when…"

"We all miss you something fierce, but we understand. You know I took James' advice and invested my winnings in…"

"This whole hood is gen…gentri…Whaddaya call that thing where rich people move in and harsh everyone's mellow? Yeah, yeah…that! It's getting gentrified. I still live here in BTown cause my Mom's house is paid off, but some of our gang are selling out. Robbie C. up and went to Manayunk…"

"Remember when you had to pull that ugly as hell Jersey kid outta the Delaware? And his brother? He looked like a drowned rat coughin' on the shore…"

"I still never seen nothing like the one with you and Dominic. I lost rent that month. Should'na bet against ya. James warned me…"

"My nose never looked the same and Carla says I snore like a steam train now. But I'm still proud it was you…"

And there is this series of gems from one boisterous group of guys. "I'm not gay or nothing…not that there's anything wrong with it…but Vince you were damn beautiful to watch in every single one of your matches on land or sea. You turned me on nearly as much as my ex, Brianna, did when she did that thing with her tong... Oof! That hurt!" One of the guys in the group must've hit him. It's all I can do not to turn in my seat to look at them. There's laughter all around. "Hey! I'm just sayin." Someone else says, "No one was as vicious as your ex was. Bri and Vince ever went 'round, it'd be the first time I wouldn't throw down a bill in his corner." Murmured agreements. More hoots of laughter. I think my lip's going to bleed because I'm biting it so hard to keep from doing the same. "Did you hear she's with Jimmy now?" "Jimmy A or Jimmy Pascal?" "Seriously? He's a prick!" "Yeah, he is, but we go way back, so what can you do." "You think Bri's still doing that thing with Jimmy with her… Oof!...Hey! That hurt!" Leif was mostly silent during this exchange. When they finally leave to join some other friends in the back of the bar, I do peek at them. I can't help it. There are six of them, all in plaid shirts and I think I love every single one of them. I smile watching their retreating backs wishing so, so badly that Henry could've been here.

I've slowly eaten all my fries and half of my burger and I can't eat another bite. Leif's burger basket is long since gone. When he swivels back around, he asks Joe for the check.

Joe first says, "You know your money's no good here, Vince!" Then he leans in with a devilish smile. "Four different people took care of your bill." He winks, patting his jeans pocket. "Thanks for that. Don't be a stranger, brother." He turns to take another order.

Leif chuckles at Joe, shaking his head. Then he looks right at me. Intently. I gulp. This look of his seems to activate the burning place where his hand rested. He pops the entire half of my burger in his mouth, saying around it, "Now can we go!" It's the first thing he's said to me since he threatened to turn me in for my ID. An idle threat, I knew.

At least I'm pretty sure it was.

"You shouldn't talk with your mouth full! It's disgusting!" I admonish with a smile, wiping my hands on a napkin. That's the first thing I've said to him since "You're not the boss of me." But he knows what I really mean.

Leif slides off his seat. He holds out his hand with a begrudging half smile on his face, maybe even a hint of respect there.

He never introduced me. Not once. And we didn't even talk because he's used to getting his way and being in control and he didn't and he wasn't and he was pissed about it. I gave him space and didn't intrude, but he knew I was listening. I can't pinpoint the moment precisely, but sometime during this stop at this wonderful dive bar, he'd just given up. I wore him down. Even if he didn't want to let me in, he accepted that I wasn't going anywhere.

I take his hand, of course I do. And I give him a huge smile, brimming with triumph.

He's not so Invincible after all.

Outside the bar, he asks if I want a cab. I don't. "Are you sure you can walk in those heels?" He looks down at my shoes with a sexy gleam in his eye.

There's no way I'd take a cab no matter if my feet were bound ancient Chinese-styles because walking will get me unadulterated time alone with him. And this time I'm actually going to ask all those questions that are reverberating around in my head.

"You seem to pay a lot of attention to my shoes." I say with mock arrogance, again mirroring something he said to me before.

He narrows his eyes and a deep growl emanates from his chest. It does weird things to my body. "These shoes are worth paying attention to. So is this." He reaches over to stroke the ribbon on my neck.

I'm struck mute at his touch. We stroll silently as I try to gather my wits again.

"What are you thinking?" he asks.

"The same thing I've been thinking every time you've asked that question," I answer truthfully. Well, a partial truth. "I want to know you." The last part comes out like a plea.

He tenses. I can feel it in my hand he's holding. "Why?"

"I hear such different accounts of you that I can't quite rectify."

He rounds on me, blocking the sidewalk. "And do you always believe everything you hear." I shrink at his glare, but I am too determined to let it derail me. For long.

I take a deep breath, trying for casualness. "Please! Don't insult me. You didn't know my grandmother, but do you forget who my grandfather is? Readily accepting someone else's opinion on anything is just vapid, although it's often done. They've always taught me that an observation says more about the observer than the observed." I meet his eyes, thinking about what Varick Falk had said.

"And what have you observed?" he challenges.

Deep breath. "For one thing, you get angry when you don't get your way, which you are so obviously used to. James just ignores it, probably because he's used to it, too." He's glaring at me, but I don't shrink this time. Well, mostly. "You're kind of proving my point right now."

"Let's see how you like these observations," he smirks. "You worry about everyone around you so you don't have to face your own fears."

This is like a slap and I cannot deny that it stings. I drop his hand and put my arms around my middle, but parry back muttering, "Still proving my point." I start walking again.

He catches up quickly. "What do you want to know?" he asks tersely.

"Why did you put your hand on my leg in front of those girls?" Geez! Of all the questions I have, I ask that one first? I swear I can still feel it on the exact place he laid it just above my left knee.

"Those girls gossip like hens, and I know they'll spread the word."

"That wasn't sexist at all," I murmur, pondering this for a moment.

"Think of it like a kind of closure." I wait, hoping he'll fill the silence with a clearer explanation of this cryptic comment. "I want to leave here as, uh…as cleanly as possible."

"So I was a kind of girlfriend beard, so to speak?" This thought excites me a little until it occurs to me that he felt safe to put his hand on my leg, probably because he doesn't find me remotely attractive. I'm firmly in the friend zone. Now the thought repels me. That's probably why he made a point to introduce me at the restaurant, earlier, if not the bar. He had to have seen all the cocked eyebrows and surprised looks. "You were using me to sort of let down all the girls you've dated?"

"I have never dated anyone."

"Don't be disingenuous." He doesn't know what I saw and overheard this afternoon.

"And don't call me a liar! I have never had a girlfriend. Just like someone I know who's never had a boyfriend." His angry mocking tone tells me he's actively trying to sting me again.

"Why not?" I ask.

"I don't have the time nor the inclination. Why not you?"

"Exactly what you said." Until now, that is. "But 'not dating anyone' means something different to you than it does to me."

"Are you trying to ask me about sex in your oblique way?"

"No!" Yes! Maybe not. I couldn't handle it.

"I've never dated anyone, let's leave it at that." We glare at each other until he takes my hand and starts walking again.

I blurt out, "Why do you hold my hand?" I probably already know the answer now—I'm safe.

He drops my hand, but keeps walking, both of us facing forward. "Would you rather I didn't?"

"It's not that, it's just that half the time you seem like you can't stand me and yet…" I don't know how to finish this as every one of our interactions gets jumbled in my mind.

"Right back at you," he says cryptically.

"What do you mean by that?" I stop to look at him.

"Half the time you seem like you can't stand me." He's getting mad again.

"That's because half the time you're a jackass!" Did I really just say that?

"That's because half the time you piss me off!" He's glaring fiercely at me.

I parry back, my voice rising. "What have I ever done to you?"

"Because you won't stay in your place!" he practically yells and hisses all at once and I back up a pace as he advances, getting right in my space, blasting me with his instant rage.

"What does that even mean?" I whisper, watching a kaleidoscope of emotions cross his face.

"I don't know," he whispers back, almost to himself. He looks…lost…as we continue to stare at each other. I see a flash of a little boy, not the fierce man in front of me. I tentatively reach my hand up to his soft and stubbly cheek and he leans into it, closing his eyes. He puts his hand over mine on his cheek.

"I couldn't stand it if you hated me," I plead. His eyes snap open at my words.

"I don't h…" he falters, looking almost panicked before the inscrutable mask slips down over his features. He takes my hand off his cheek, but holds onto it as he turns to start walking again. It is only as I follow him that I notice a few people in the street have stopped to stare at us—it is a graduation weekend, after all and there are a lot of people around—but I don't have time to be embarrassed about causing yet another spectacle.

"It started because I wasn't sure you could stand on your own once I carried you to the sofa after you fell in the hall." It takes me a moment to realize he's answering my question about holding my hand. He's referring to right after I heard my parents' voices. I can barely keep up with his verbal and emotional pendulum. "And it seemed…comforting…I guess, so I kept doing it."

"Comforting to whom?" I ask, but only get the barest shrug in reply as we continue walking slowly down the street. Yep…I'm safe.

"Now I've got one for you. What was it about that recording that set you off? You were just…gone for a minute. Like you lost time." I stumble over nothing on the sidewalk and he tightens his hold on my hand, stopping our movement. I can't look at him, but feel his eyes piercing me. He gently takes my chin and moves my head to face him. "Maybe I want to know you, too."

I finally meet his beautiful deep pools of ocean water. I don't know what he sees in my expression, but his fierce eyes soften. "We can start with another one. Why did you tell me your name was Lucinda Grace? I can't figure that out for the life of me. Did you just make up some random name?"

I can't help it, a small giggle of relief escapes me and I see relief in his face, too. "Well, I sort of didn't say Lucinda." At that, he shoots me one of his patented smirks. "Okay, well, I was watching you trying to wrench my shoe out of the elevator gap and it reminded me of Cinderella. You just assumed Lucinda when you thought you heard Cinda. But I was actually trying to say Cinderella." His eyes go flat. I guess he doesn't know the story. "You know…the fairy tale? Cinderella? Where the handsome Prince Charming has her shoe?"

"I'm not exactly a fairy tale kind of guy. But…am I to understand that you're billing me as the handsome Prince?"

"'Charming' would so not be the first word that comes to mind," I mutter before rolling my eyes, bypassing the "handsome" part entirely. "But seriously…fishing for compliments again? When you have girls throwing themselves at…" Mierda! Didn't mean to go there.

"But you said you didn't find me attractive."

What? I never said that. What's more, I've certainly never thought that. I mean…how could I? He pulls me down the street again and I could swear he's hiding his face from me. "So…Grace, where did that come from?"

"Um…because I was the opposite of grace? I was tripping all over the place." My face goes red at the memory. "It was a joke, but it's not my fault if you were too obtuse to get the full scope of its comedic brilliance."

"You're just hilarious," he deadpans, glancing at me askance. "For my next question…"

"Nope," I cut him off. "My turn. Your friends bet on your rowing races and probably swimming races, too, right?" Whoa! His hand is like stone now. "That's why you didn't join the official college teams, even though you were probably good enough to. Because you couldn't bet if you did."

There is a long, long pause.

"Yes."

"But there's more to it, isn't there?" He doesn't answer, nor will he look my way as we walk. "Are you going to make me pull it out of you piece by piece?"

"You've had your question. Why are you the girl from nowhere?"

"Como?"

"Emory called you the girl from nowhere and everywhere."

Ohmigod! I have to search my mind before I remember that that's from the dinner at The Rambler. Has he had that question in his mind about me this whole time? Like I've had questions about him?

"Prior to Stanford, the longest I've lived anywhere was maybe eighteen months in D.C. The second longest was a year or so in London. Even during those times, we traveled a lot, but those were our home bases. Other than that, we've moved all over the world every few months. Or even weeks."

"You're not from New York then?"

"Combined over the years, the time I've spent in New York would really only add up to a few months. This is the longest I've been here all at one time."

"But your family's had the apartment—The Rambler, as you call it—for a long time?"

"For ages. Since the sixties or seventies, I think. Mostly as a place for my late grandmother to house the furniture and art she collected from around the world and to create those wonderful rooms."

"She was an interior designer?"

"No. My family speculated about this at length with her. She probably would've been an architect or industrial designer or something if it had been different times, like if she was coming of age now. But she was a Main Line Philly debutante who married a State Department master translator. She expressed that part of herself by building things or remaking whatever space we've lived in, even though it wasn't part of an official job. She could do anything."

"I would've liked to have known her. She seems interesting." He sounds almost wistful. "So what do you consider your home?"

"Not a place, like Em being from Georgia, or you being from Massachusetts. My home has always been wherever my…family is." I'd started to say "grandparents," but I don't want to invite further inquiry about my parents.

"Where were you born?"

"Hey! You've snuck a lot of questions in. So I get a few now." His hand tenses again as I blurt out the first thing in my mind. "Why did James call you the poor bastard from down the way?" So much for brain filters.

"My mother never married my father, so I am truly a bastard by definition. Growing up, I never knew him and my mother never talked about him except to say that he was of Norwegian decent. As for the poor part, we simply never had money."

"Do you have brothers or sisters?" He shakes his head, his hand harder than stone. "The explorer Leif Erickson was Norse. Is that how you got your first name?" He nods once. "Why can't your mother come to your graduation?"

Oh no! What if she's dead? I'm usually more careful in touching on people's parental status because I never want to answer questions about my own. I have no wish to cause pain to anyone else.

"I didn't ask her. She's not the graduation ceremony type." Whatever that means. He's getting more irate by the moment.

"Does it bother you that I asked?"

"Every question bothers me," he replies tersely. "You bother me!"

"Why?"

"Enough!" He's barely containing his anger.

"Just one more."

"I said, enough!" He explodes, dropping my hand. I have to pick up the pace to keep up with him.

"Fine." We walk silently for a while as I knit some things together in my mind and decide to change tacks entirely. I don't want to do this with him anymore, this whole back and forth thing where we push each other's buttons. I'll have to push another couple to get there, though. I gather my courage.

"Another observation then. I was only half right before. You do get irate when you don't get your way—I was correct there—but you also get mad when something makes you uncomfortable, like with personal questions. Which, now that I think about it, is really just another form of not getting your way. Anger is your defense mechanism; it pushes people away. Hence, the jackassness that I referred to earlier. But I also noticed tonight that you are so loved…" Leif has stopped walking and fully faces me. He's looking at me like I'm an alien being. "Yes…loved…and respected by a lot of people. But still, you hold yourself apart from them; you're very remote. You deflect questions about you by asking about them. They all want a piece of you, they all want more from you, any scrap they can get—the boys as well as the girls. They want to know you, but you don't let them, do you? I imagine James is the only one you've let in. Which leads us right to another thing I was only partially right about. And that's that you aren't a jackass half the time, like I said, just some of the time and it seems to be directed at me a lot. For whatever unfathomable reasons, I push your buttons, make you uncomfortable. You're not an angry ass to them. You're charming to them. So… maybe if you try to keep your jackassness to under fifty percent of the time around me, then I'll try to learn to accept it like James does. Okay?" He continues gaping at me with an array of fleeting emotions crossing his face.

Finally, he rallies, venomously spitting out, "I didn't ask you to accept me."

"Hmm…Kind of proving my point again, but I'm going to try regardless. Look, we're going to be around each other even more starting in a couple days, so maybe we should both give a little. We're both of a stubborn and taciturn nature and seem to get under each other's skin. But if you'll recall from a minute ago, I was hoping you'd keep it under fifty percent. As in, less than." I make a suppressing motion with my hands. "Not over. Under."

He continues to glare at me until incredulity seems to overtake all the other expressions on his face. "It seems I was wrong, too. You don't piss me off half the time; you piss me off all the time." He takes my hand again and starts walking. "I thought your friend said you were the quiet one. I like that one better."

"Key word: under," I mutter, doing the suppressing motion again with the hand he's not holding. A glance up at his profile shows the tiniest twitch of a reluctant smile.

I let go of the remaining questions I have of him—for now—as we walk the rest of the way to the townhouse in something approaching a comfortable silence.

Yep…not so Invincible after all.

Sleep is proving impossible at the end of this strange, exhilarating, and emotionally fraught day and night. I swear it has as much to do with the weight of this ghostly house, as with what I learned and saw today, that has made my mind and legs so restless. I keep trying to tear this red ribbon off my neck, but it's knotted really tightly and the more I pull at it, the more it feels as if it's strangling me. I finally give up and get out of bed—maybe I can find some scissors or a knife for this thing—and once I do, the ribbon loosens its hold and I can't even feel it any longer. It's not cold so I don't bother with a robe over my thin, frilly, white old-school nightgown. I tiptoe past Leif's closed door to make my way down the stairs. I could really use a proper Walkabout, but it's the middle of the night, so I'll just pad around the house until I can find some stillness.

It is right when I have the thought that this house is quiet as the grave with everyone asleep that I think of how Leif said he liked the quiet girl better, but I'm not really sure he's even met her. He'd hissed—angrily of course—that I wouldn't stay in my place. I don't know what he meant by that, but it hits me now both that that's close to what I said in the Throw Down with Henry that I didn't understand myself when I yelled it, and also that I won't stay in my place to myself. The structure of my life and of me is new and keeps changing since I've been back. Maybe even more so since meeting that compelling, fierce, intense, angry, and sometimes even kind man—he seems to bring out some other part of me that I can't quite keep a grasp on. The quiet one, I think, is dead and gone.

Like my ancestors, whose graves I visited today. And my grandmother.

And my parents.

My parents. Their ghosts seem to be everywhere these days, not staying in their place in the past. Behind the wall in my mind.

Suddenly, I feel weight pressing on my chest—this stupid house!—as I pace down the hall from the kitchen and I see and feel flashes of things I don't understand, trees tumbling and earth shaking and screaming monkeys and my legs won't move anymore and I'm rendered immobile in the hallway and I grab onto a wall, no, a door jamb, as I am overcome by dark waves of terror and powerlessness. And absolute and utter grief.

I hear a ghostly gasp and whip my head up to find I'm in the doorway of the living room and I see, I truly see a ghostly specter right there in the dim light coming through the windows and all I can do is watch it wavering in front of me, deep in the long living room. This house…I knew it—I knew it! The ghost reaches its arm out…Beckoning?

And then a light flips on.

I blink rapidly. Not a ghost, but a beautiful man looking at me in shock. Leif is shirtless and barefoot, in just his jeans, his skin glowing. He has one arm stretched out to the switch of the floor lamp and his other hand is holding a glass of some amber liquid. We just stare at each other. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open and he looks like he's seeing a ghost.

"You" he says after an eternity, putting his glass down on a table without breaking eye contact and I'm not sure if it's a question or a statement, but my legs unlock and I run to him, wrapping my entire being around him as he holds tightly to me and I feel so safe and warm and right and I inhale his strength and aliveness and somehow, one silent tear falls from my eyes and runs down his neck.

In a veritable torrent, I whisper "My parents were killed when I was seven in some kind of car crash caused by a landslide in Costa Rica, no one really knows how, and I was in the car, too, but I don't remember it except to get terrifying flashes sometimes like it's not in the past, but always just beneath the surface and I miss them so much and that's whose voices were on that recording and that's why…that's why…"

"Shhh…It's okay, baby. I've got you. I've got you." He backs up to the sofa and sits down with me on his lap, encasing me in his strong arms. "I've got you now. Shhh…" That's the last thing I remember.