Chapter 9: The Ghosts We Know

From "You Seriously Don't Want to Know" by E.J. Donovan

Chapter 9: The Ghosts We Know

Morning after the call

Kate lived a block from the ocean. Sometimes you could hear it through the windows — usually when it was angry. Some days it sounded like something trying to speak but never quite finding the words. Or it was speaking and I just wasn’t understanding the language. It felt like everything was a few seconds delayed — like the sound reached her, but the meaning didn’t.

The house had a huge wraparound porch where she and Patrick used to sit and listen to the wind or watch thunderstorms. Sometimes the wind rattled the porch lights at night; the gulls argued over shellfish in the mornings. She liked the isolation there. Or she had just learned how to survive it.

Zee lay in her usual spot near the glass doors, ears flicking, massive body curled into a deceptively relaxed pose. Her black-and-tan coat gleamed in the light, markings so classic she looked like she’d stepped out of a GSD textbook. She had been like this since the beginning: watchful, patient. Zee was a witness — the most devoted dog. She would squeal and spin any time someone came home and cry if it had been too long. She adored John and Aunt Kara. Now she simply knew: when things weren’t right, when someone might cry, when memory was bleeding through the walls.

Kate kept walking past the envelope, as if it might unfold itself, walk into the ocean, and solve her emotional damage. Which would have been thoughtful.

She missed Paul. Not this fractured, flickering man who drifted in and out like a weak signal, but the one who used to call her “honey” and quote Shakespeare over tapas; the one who loved orange everything and once painted a bathroom “burnt sunset” because Calvin said it looked “spiritually warm.”

She missed her sister too, though they hadn’t fought. They had talked, but not really about anything that mattered in months — since Christmas brunch at her house. Technically they texted, mostly memes and passive-aggressive likes, but nothing that required voice. They didn’t meet on the past. They didn’t meet on the plot.

She tapped the Nespresso harder than necessary. Coffee first. The rest could wait.

The smell filled the kitchen — sharp, familiar. She took it black, the way she always had. For years she’d managed to keep the memories contained, an unspoken agreement between her and whatever waited behind the door. Most of the time, it worked.

This time, it didn’t.

The wind hissed. In the silence she caught the faintest breath of yellow roses.

A photograph unhooked itself from the dark and floated up uninvited — a faded image of her mother holding a baby. That couldn’t be right. No such photo existed. The baby hadn’t made it, they’d said. Still, she saw it: Elle’s dark hair curling near her jaw, the soft fold of a flannel blanket. Her stomach clenched. Her fingers itched to check the old photo albums — the ones Dad “donated” after a move with a casual, Thought you might want these, we don’t really have room. She should call Kara. Or Paul. Or drive to the cemetery herself.

It felt like someone knocked — not on the door, but in her chest, where memory never stopped knocking.

She turned. Nothing. She didn’t move. Not yet. Zee stood at the door, tail low, eyes locked. Probably the ghost of a squirrel. Or her mother. Maybe both.

Kate stayed where she was, coffee cooling in her hand, and listened.

The ghosts we know don’t break in.

They knock.

You decide whether to open.

That night, she slept fitfully. The ocean kept crashing, and when she woke, it was still rumbling outside the glass.

#