Page 6 of Ghost Hunted

“What about Laura Day?” I ask Piper gently as she hesitates.

“Uhm…” She inhales. “I wasn’t talking about my adoptive mom, actually. I was talking about… my birth mom. Lia.”

2

Logan

Avery long silence follows Piper’s words.

I’m reeling. Not because I don’t think about Lia every moment of the day, or because I haven’t talked about her with Piper before. But I have to do a lot of preparation before hearing anyone speak her name out loud. Even when her own daughter refers to her, it sends me spiraling.

I grip onto the side of my desk, gulping in deep breaths to calm myself.

“Okay, Piper. What about Lia?”

“Well… I’m pretty sure she just called me.”

I bolt up from my chair, feeling like lightning has fried my skin right off. “What are you talking about?”

My voice comes out harsh, much harsher than I intended it to. Much harsher than I know Piper has ever heard it before. I don’t need to see her reaction to know she’s freaked out.

“Sorry, sweetie.” I take a few more calming breaths. “You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

Everything’s fine. And everyone’s fine. Except for whoever played that cruel gag on you. She’s dead.

“It’s not fine,” she says in a shy voice, “it’s better than fine. Isn’t it? My mom is alive.”

“No.” I bite my tongue to keep the groan from leaving my mouth. Eighteen years of pain, and I still can’t handle it. I just can’t fucking handle it.

I crouch by the desk, willing away the threads of white currently invading my vision, and hug my cell phone to my ear. “She’s not alive. Piper, don’t take her calls anymore. It’s a trick. Lia’s… dead. You know that.”

Eighteen years, and it’s still the hardest word to speak.

But I have to. Because the only person I truly care about in this world, apart from her, is her daughter. My daughter.

She may not be called Aurora anymore, but she’s still mine. I may have given her up, officially, but she never stopped belonging to me.

“But she said she was my mom,” insists Piper. “Maybe… maybe…”

“Enough, sweetie. I know how much you wish it was true, but… but I visit Lia’s grave every day. I don’t think ghosts know how to use phones.”

The bitter joke can’t possibly mask the heartbreak in my voice. Even though I know it’s a trick, a trap that must have been laid by whatever mafiosos pathetically remain, it still hurts like hell. All the old, painful memories crowd back in. The ones I’ve spent so long pushing down. The ones that still vibrate underneath the layers of hardness I’ve built up over the years.

“Logan,” insists Piper, and my heart squeezes painfully like it always does when I hear her call me anything but papa, the way she did when she was little. But that’s just how it is. She’s lived a full, happy life without me. I’m not her father anymore. I lost that the night I lost everything, eighteen years ago.

“Logan,” she says again, “I know it was her. I… I can’t explain it. But her voice sounded familiar. It was like when you showed me that photo album of me as a baby. I didn’t have any memory of it before, but it kind of started to pierce through the fog… like a grey-out or something.”

“A grey-out?” I repeat.

“Yeah, like, when you’ve had too much to drink, but it’s not quite a black-out… because you remember things once people tell you about them.”

I scowl. “I really hope you’re not drinking, Piper.”

“Yes, dad.” That’s the closest to papa she’ll ever get to, and it’s only to mock me when she thinks I’m overdoing it with the fatherly concern. I can’t tell if it makes me want to laugh or cry. “I’m twenty-two, by the way. Almost twenty-three. I’m legally allowed to drink.”

I know exactly how old she is, but it’s still strange to hear it. Twenty-two. My little girl is older than Lia was when she died.

And that’s the thing—the words everyone says are false. Lies. Because time doesn’t make anything easier.