Free A Question of Ghosts by Cate Culpepper Page A

life, even after years of acquaintance. Becca’s face seemed familiar to her now, open and expressive and honest.
    They chugged up the steep rises of Capitol Hill, but the silence inside the car was more comfortable. Another welcome oddity in Jo’s sparse social life, not having to struggle to fill perfectly good quiet with empty talk. She watched Becca’s fine-boned hands on the wheel, her wrists delicate in spite of the strength in her arms. She imagined Maddie Healy’s hands had been much like her daughter’s.
    Becca pulled up in front of the house on Fifteenth Avenue with a squealing of brakes, and the engine harrumphed several times before dying.
    “Doesn’t the state pay their social workers enough to buy decent transportation?” Jo hoped Becca would hear the teasing in her voice.
    Becca chuckled and tapped the steering wheel. “Well, the state pays me more than the staff makes at my aunt’s shelter. Basically, I’m too cheap to buy a decent car. Or decent sneakers. I love to get out of the city on weekends, so I save all my dinars for trips.”
    “Where do you trip?”
    “Cannon Beach. Lake Crescent. I seem to run for pretty water whenever I get a chance.” Becca was still tapping the wheel. “I’m stalling. You can tell, right?”
    Jo nodded. “It’s hard for you, going back into this house.”
    Becca gazed out her window, to the dark cemetery across the street. “It’s going to be hard for me to sleep in this house again. We don’t know how long we’ll have to stay here?”
    “There’s no telling, Becca.” Jo was sympathetic but resolute. “If it’s any comfort…I’m not sure why it would be, but if it’s any comfort, you won’t be alone in there. I’ll be with you every minute.” She smiled. “You won’t hurt my feelings if you scream in dismay now and run away again.”
    A brief laugh escaped Becca. “Both of us are pretty private people, Dr. Call. If we’re alone together every minute, for days on end, I can imagine we…”
    Jo wasn’t sure what Becca was imagining until she started to imagine it, too. Becca’s gaze changed, deepened, as she studied Jo more intently. They stared at each other, and the warm confines of the car seemed suddenly close and confining.
    “Pop the trunk,” Jo said. “I’ll get our bags.”
    Becca reached beneath the dash and popped the trunk.
    *
    “We should plan to sleep in this room, and spend most of our time here.” Jo was tinkering with a silver radio on the coffee table in the living room, so she didn’t see Becca’s look of dismay. “It’s best if we consolidate all of our resources in one area.”
    “We’re going to sleep in here?” Becca said faintly. “Not in the bedrooms upstairs? I don’t think I can do that.”
    “Why can’t you? We’ll be perfectly comfortable.”
    There were a vast number of things Becca felt incapable of at the moment, but she decided to focus on dealing with this one, this thing with Jo. She didn’t want to keep ignoring what was happening between them. She continued her slow circle of the living room. “Listen, maybe we should talk. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but it’s my way to be direct about things like this.”
    “What is it, Becca?” Jo sat back on her heels, turning a tiny screwdriver to tighten a recessed screw in the radio.
    “There’s a funny energy between us.” Becca hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. Khadijah said Becca’s willingness to confront elephants in the room was admirable, but this elephant was Joanne Call. “We’ve had a couple of moments, lately. In the cemetery, and just now, in the car. I think I’m starting to feel some attraction to you, Jo.”
    Jo kept working, her long fingers nimble and sure on the machine. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “What?”
    “Your attraction to me doesn’t matter.” Jo positioned the radio carefully on the tabletop and adjusted its many dials. “It’s nothing we’ll act on.”
    “Okay.” Becca felt a flare