Free Shattered Spirits by C. I. Black

hadn’t had the time. Probably didn’t have the time. She’d moved in within a month of her husband’s passing four years ago and had struggled to keep everything as close to normal as she could for Jess’s sake.
    He blinked and drew in another unsteady breath.
    He was alone in the hall. Trisha was back in the kitchen and water whooshed from the tap, presumably to fill the kettle. When she didn’t know what to do, she made tea.
    “Orange pekoe or green tea?” she called.
    He shuffled into the kitchen and sat at the worn, linoleum-topped, table. Shoe boxes, old photos, and photo albums covered it. Jess cleared a corner for Ryan.
    “I think there’s another box of albums in the attic. Why don’t you go up and see if you can find them for Uncle Ryan?” Trisha said.
    “Sure.” Jess jumped from the table and raced out of the kitchen.
    Trisha pulled two mugs from the cupboard beside the sink and tea from a white ceramic jar on the scarred counter. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Him. Trisha. The house.
    Except… it wasn’t. He was forgetting something. It was on the tip of his tongue, something about not belonging, or wanting to belong, or being somewhere…
    The thought that he needed to go home kept going through his mind, over and over again. Except he was home… no, home was his apartment on Railroad Street. But that wasn’t right, either. He lived in Elmsville now, not Newgate.
    He slid his gaze over the photos. The closest one was of him and Trisha at Christmas when they were kids. The photo had yellowed, or maybe it had always been slightly yellow. Beside it was a family photo on vacation at Disney. Mom and Dad, him and Trisha. All grinning from ear to ear, wearing those ridiculous Mickey Mouse hats. This was his life… no, it had been his life. Dad had died on duty, trying to stop a convenience store robbery three months after the Disney vacation. When Trisha’s husband passed, Mom had sold her the family house and moved into a modern semi-detached bungalow on the other side of town.
    A black and white picture poked out from underneath another Disney snapshot. Ryan pushed the other photos aside. He hadn’t realized they still had anything this old. Two couples in the stuffy clothes of the early 1900s stood on the front porch of the house. Mom had said the house had been in the family for generations; he’d just never known there was proof.
    A cup of tea slid into the clear place on the table before him.
    “Great-great-great-aunt Sarah and her brother, Eric.”
    Ryan smoothed his thumb over the photo’s corner. None of them were smiling but they all looked happy. Especially the woman standing beside his great-great-great-uncle. She almost looked like Jones.
    “You look a lot like Eric,” she said.
    He dragged his gaze up to his sister. For a moment her hair was strawberry blonde, her face heart-shaped. God, he was seeing Special Agent Jones everywhere. In his sister, in that woman in the photo.
    Fear snapped through him. Jones was in trouble. He just didn’t know when and where. That’s why he was back in Newgate.
    No, that wasn’t right, either. Well, not entirely right. Jones was in trouble. He’d seen it, and his flashes of the future always came true. The question now was whether her trouble was related to Pete’s death… or rather second death, if in fact the body in the M.E.’s exam room was Pete.
    He jerked to his feet. That was it. He was back because Pete’s picture had shown up on the news.
    How could he have forgotten that? How could he have forgotten that the friend who’d died in high school had somehow been murdered yesterday?
    Trisha raised an eyebrow, and he eased back into his seat. She sat in the other chair at the table and hugged her mug of tea. From her pursed lips and slightly veiled eyes, he knew she was dying to ask what was going on. But even if he did know, he couldn’t tell her. He hadn’t told her the complete truth in years.
    “Well, it’s