It's seven-thirty in the morning, and Lacey and Jeremy Waits are both awake, bundled up on separate ends of the couch in blankets with half lidded eyes, staring at the television blankly. It's an ungodly hour - at least for her - and even now, they've been awake quite some time. Neither could, or can, fall asleep. So here they are. Watching re-runs of some funky deadpan sitcom about an office and its employees. It's not half bad, but Lacey can hardly bother herself to tune in to what's actually being said.

It's hard to focus on anything when you've got the image of a corpse stamped into your brain.

When they arrived home the night before, the rain back to its steady drizzle, they'd ran through the door and dried off as best as they could with a towel that Dad decided they needed at the door at all times now, given the weather. He'd left her with it and dashed into the kitchen to crack open a couple cans of Campbell's soup, but in the moment that Lacey was left alone in that little spot in front of the stairs, the desolate living room to the left and the warm kitchen to the right, she started to shake. Not from the cold or the rain pressed into her skin, but something else entirely. She couldn't put words to it, but she felt paralyzed, shaking violently, teeth chattering so hard that once or twice they clamped down on her tongue and she tasted blood.

She'd felt Elijah's broken soul rush outwards and crash into her. She'd felt someone's whole shattered heart go through her. What even is that? What even is that? And Stella, her broken body down below, the river sloshing against it. Oh, God, there was nothing. Stella. Stella was dead. Stella was dead and Lacey did remember her and the little laugh she'd do after she said anything at all just to fill the air with noise and she remembered those little playdates every other week at their house and she remembered a whole lot in that moment that she hadn't wanted to remember and yet-

Then Dad came out, saw her shivering up a storm. "Jesus Christ, the heat's on full blast and you're still that cold? Go on, get a shower ready, you needa warm up. Soup'll be ready when you're out and I'll make grilled cheese to go with, alright? Go, go!"

So Lacey did all that. Ate in silence then went back up to her room to try and sleep. But she couldn't, not with all that tapping on the window (which, in hindsight, was probably from a branch, because if it was a demon it probably would've freely entered without the salt on the sill and eaten her by now or something). So she wrapped herself up in her yellow comforter, padded downstairs, and slumped on the couch again, eyes wide open. Dad came down later for similar reasons - "I can't sleep thinkin' of how Elijah must be doin'." - and now here they are.

Watching a sitcom. Feet kicked up on the coffee table. Trying to ignore the vague rumbling in their stomachs. Trying to ignore old memories, for Lacey especially. She feels bad now, the way things'd left off with Stella, and for the first time in a long time, she feels guilt that she usually would've shoved on someone else to keep herself afloat. She thinks of Stella's happy face back in preschool, and wills it away, but she keeps coming back, coming back as if to say, "Look at me. You can't look away anymore, so look at me."

A commercial booms from the television, louder than the show itself, and Lacey pinches her eyes to a close, assaulted by the promise of juicy meat from some steakhouse. Jokes on them, she's not a meat sort of girl. It triggers a loud grumble from her stomach regardless, and Dad finally sighs and groans to a stand, knees popping. "If I make breakfast, will you eat it this time?"

A fake smile plasters itself weakly on Lacey's face, and she nods. He grins a bit, the most she's seen from him all night, and then ducks into the kitchen, leaving her alone again. Her smile falls and she sinks deeper into the blanket. Iowa is crazy, man. They don't talk about Iowa, and this is probably why. I should've stayed in Boston. With Mom.

But then Dad comes out, a dish-towel thrown over his shoulder and the stove sizzling somewhere behind him, and takes a hesitant step towards the couch, where he sits again. "Do you wanna talk about it at all? Anything? You're more quiet than usual and I just...y'know. Stuff's been happening." He trails off airily, like his words are suspended for her to grab. Alright, okay, she will.

"Stuff's been happening," she repeats after him. Then silence. Aw, man. Lacey sighs, then readjusts her position on the couch, more to fill the empty air with rustling noise than anything. "I mean, I kinda just wanna ignore that stuff's been happening. Er...like, I just saw a dead body. So that wasn't very fun. And Erie's missing. So that's not very fun either. And mom keeps trying to call me but I don't really want to talk to her because she gets cranky, and like, I don't know, it's kinda lonely here? I don't know. It's stupid." It's stupid that anyone I'm close to is either dead or missing from action or both.

Dad nods, then looks down at his lap. "It's not stupid, Lacey. This house is big and quiet and I know that better than anyone. And I'm real sorry you had to come back with all this stuff happening but I can't help what goes on in-"

"I know," Lacey interrupts.

"I know you know. I know. And I know you don't like it here. If you wanna go back home I get it, but even with all this stuff goin' on, I mean...It doesn't have to be sad the whole time. We can do things that get our minds off it like...you like puzzles, right?"

Lacey raises both eyebrows. "You want to do puzzles. To ignore the world."

He squeezes his eyes to a close. "Okay, yeah, no, it was just a suggestion, but what I'm saying is that our lives don't have to go on pause because of it. I want to be able to catch up with my daughter and be a good dad again. I just...you gotta bear with me here. I'm trying. But all this crap is just...makin' that harder." A pause. "It's puzzle-ing, if you will."

A bark of a laugh leaves her mouth, and she blinks a couple times. "You really had to make a pun? Kind of ill-timed, don't ya think? Here I was, thinking we were having a bonding moment, and then you throw that into the universe."

"Puns are the best type of bonding," he says defensively. "Puns are why your mother liked me so much at first."

"And they're probably why she wanted a divorce, too." She regrets it the moment it leaves her mouth, but Dad doesn't take it badly; in fact, he laughs at it.

"Yeah, okay, fair enough." He chuckles quietly again, and then the air between them is warm, and he looks at her, a subdued smile on his face. A hand reaches out and claps her on the shoulder. "I've missed you. A long time. I'd better get back to the stove though. The eggs're probably burning."

Before she can respond, Jeremy Waits raises himself off the couch and takes long strides towards the kitchen, and disappears beyond the corner a second time. Lacey curls up further in her blanket. I've missed you too, she thinks. Doesn't say. She's never been one to say mushy things like that out loud and that's probably why he got up before she could. But that's okay. The conversation itself had brought a lightness to her chest, and now she leans back, finally comfortable amongst the cushions. Maybe she can finally pay attention to what's happening in the show.

Knock-knock-knock.

Fuck my life, Lacey thinks.

Knowing that Dad's occupied, she groans and flings the blanket off, exposing her legs to a rush of cold air. "I'll get it," she says, and presses her bare feet to the floorboards. They make a sticky noise as she patters across the living room, but eventually she comes to a pause at the front door and flips the lock.

Upon opening the door, she wants to shut it immediately. Would've, too, if not for Laurel Mott standing there with a solemn smile sitting small between the dark brown timber of her cheeks. "Hi there, Lacey. I hope this isn't a bother." But Lacey doesn't respond because her gaze is too busy focusing on the boy standing close behind Erie's mother.

"Hi, Lacey," Gideon says, waving perkily. His blue eyes are alight with amusement. Completely different from the last time she'd seen him. "Nice to see you again."

Lacey blinks. "Daaad," she drones, reluctantly pulling the door open further, "we got company. Set out two more plates."

She steps back and Laurel enters, giving her an awkward side-hug on the way through, but she seems distracted. "Hey, Jeremy," she says, sliding her purse down on the table. "I was hoping I'd get to talk to you sometime."

Dad glances back from the stove and nods, brows high and mouth curled into a small O. "'Course, 'course. Anything you need. Hey, make yourself comfortable, I'll finish up the eggs here, and then we'll talk." He cranes his neck back so far it looks like it might hurt him. "Say, ain't there someone else out there?"

Gideon, still on the porch step, leans in through the front door a bit and waves. Lacey leans away ungracefully. "I didn't come to stay," he calls in, "just walking her over here. Food smells great though, Mister Waits!"

Lacey squints her eyes at the boy, at the honey-brown mess peeking out from under his red hood, at the dumb and easy smile on his face with the smallest little gap between his teeth. He acts like he knows my dad. That's weird. He's weird. "Okay, have a good life," Lacey says, already swinging the door to a close, but the slab of wood seems to catch on something. She peers around the door and looks down to see Gideon's foot propping it open.

"Actually - and this is a complete coincidence because I had no idea you lived here and I for some reason didn't piece together the whole last name thing - I was thinking maybe, like, now that we're face to face again and you're not yelling at me, that we could go for a walk? Y'know, like, to walk. Places. Look around. Explore. Maybe do some soul searching." He wiggles his eyebrows, trying to drop subtle hints about what "walk" really means that aren't subtle at all. For a moment, Lacey even considers it: she needs to go out again to try and dig up information about the little ghost girl, as much as she hates the idea of it. But that's not something she can explicitly share with Gideon, and also, Gideon is annoying and whines a lot.

"Uh, no thanks," Lacey says, "I'd rather go out alone. Plus, I've got research I need to do. By myself."

Jeremy, carrying a plate of eggs over to the table, seems to overhear. "Uhh, I'm not sure I like the idea of you going out alone. And, hey, I think walking with him's a great idea! Didn't you say earlier you were, uh-" he wipes his hands on his dish towel, "-lonely here? This way you're safe and making friends. Not alone with strangers."

Lacey laughs dully, nervously, and then looks around the front door at her father, shaking her head as if Gideon can't see her doing it right in front of him. "He is a stranger, Dad."

Jeremy straightens up, hands settling firmly on his hips. "No he's not. I can vouch for 'em; Gideon's a good boy. 'S raked my leaves and shoveled my driveway a couple years now. Good friend of the Mott family, here. Just-" He looks down at the eggs and sighs. "Take money and make sure you grab something to eat. I think Laurel and I need to talk about things alone, anyhow."

Absolutely positive that there's no squirming out of the situation now, Lacey looks back at Gideon, a flat expression on her face, and sighs openly towards him. "I don't know what game you're playing at here, Giddy Boy, but I'm onto you. Now hold on while I put real pants on."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gideon speaks up after the second corner they turn. "Nice house you got here."

"Thanks. I live in it."

A stiffness hovers between them. Gideon seems like he's about to say something else, but he lets it go. Lacey wraps her arms tighter around her. Despite having real pants on now, a yellow sweater, and a toasty twenty dollar bill stuffed into her back pocket, the air is still cold from the early spring rains. She doesn't want to be out here. She doesn't even know- wait.

"Where are we going?" she asks.

Gideon jumps into conversation like an animal on prey. "I had a place in mind, but pit-stop first. We need to go to Erie's first."

They turn another corner, and Lacey recognizes the way, recognizes the house that Gideon makes a wide flourish of the arm towards, recognizes the yard three doors down from where they stand. Memories of chasing Erie down the street with a large stick flush her throat with nostalgia. Her pace slows and she falls behind. "Wait, why?"

He turns on his heel, starts walking backwards. "To tell you now, or let you simmer in anticipation?" His heel turns again, and then he's sprinting down the street, leaping up the two porch steps to Erie's one-story grey home, and Lacey is chugging behind, trying to catch up before he breaks something and she becomes an accomplice to crime.

"You can't just waltz right into his house, man!"

"You're correct," Gideon says, fishing in the pocket of his hoodie for something. "Most people lock their doors, especially now. That's what keys are for." He flashes something golden and then shoves it into the lock, and before her very eyes, the screen door and the heavier one behind it open up to Erie's darkened hallways, the walls painted a deep greenish teal just like the last time she'd seen it years before.

The questions just keep building and building. "Why do you have a key? What are we doing here? Who even are you?"

Gideon steps inside and flicks on a light, warming the place with brightness and taking away the dim shadows. Lacey follows and is struck by the scent of vanilla in the air. Nostalgia strikes, and her stomach feels weak with suppression. "I have a key because they love me," he says, making a beeline down the picture-laden hall. Why aren't there any of she and Erie anymore? "And also because I'm in charge of feeding his pet rat in any and all instances in which he isn't able. And also, I'm Gideon Lucas. But you knew half that already."

Swirling through the house, they wind up in Erie's room at the end of the hall. It's in a different room than Lacey remembers; wasn't it across the hall last time? He'd never texted her about any changes. But then, he'd never texted her about some "Gideon Lucas" either, or the fact that he was apparently skipping around her dad's house doing chores. She presses a palm to her forehead and glances around. This is a trip.

Gideon seems to have been quieted by the place, too. He hovers in the middle of the space for a moment, staring off at Erie's made bed, at the green flannel flung across the blankets. She sees his Adams' apple bob, but when she blinks, he's completely changed direction, fussing towards a cage on a dresser. "Ohh, my lil cinnastick, my sweet bean, how're you doin', buddy?"

The top of the cage is opened, and he reaches a hand in. Lacey takes a step forward and sees a small, fragile mouse-looking thing stretch its body forward, turning little ears towards Gideon's knuckle, sniffing. The boy grins widely, then rubs the knuckle across a coat of fur colored like milk mixed with an abundance of cinnamon. "Bet you're a hungry lil bugger, yes you are, 'cause Miss Mott is on the verge of a panic attack every two seconds, oh yes she is, and can't be bothered to remember you, oh no she can't."

Lacey blinks as he redacts his hand and cracks open a bag of something and reaches in to place it in a small bowl. Yep. My hunch was right. He's a weird one. She stands there stiffly, awkwardly, wanting to leave, considering leaving, but doesn't, all the same. It's something about the room, something about the way her feet sink into the carpet that roots her there. It's something in the air, in the way the room smells like it hasn't been inhabited by a human in days. In the way it feels like nothing, alive or dead, has drifted from wall to wall aside from the smallest presence of that rat. But then again, Lacey's never been one for detecting auras - it's usually just based on context or licking her finger and sticking it in the air and judging which way the wind blows. She read it in a book once.

She's just about to lick her finger and let the wind blow her out the door when Gideon finally straightens up and dusts his palms off on his jeans. "Well, now that's done. You ready?"

"You still haven't told me what we're doing," Lacey says flatly. If I run, he'll catch me. He's got legs.

"Right, right," he says faintly, distracted by the room again, or maybe a sound outside. Lacey has to snap her fingers to grab his attention. "You know that whole body washing up on the riverbank thing that happened yesterday? Yeah, well, I want to search it."

"I fucking knew you were shady. I'm going home."

"No, no, no! Listen! The cops have probably all cleared out by now and finished their investigation, and because cops can't be trusted in any circumstance, I just wanted to do another scan, see what we could find. Try to figure out where the body came from, y'know? Because if we can find where Stella was then maybe...Anyways, you said you'd consider it, and I want you to consider it now. But in a fast way, possibly. And in my favor. Possibly."

Lacey's already considered it and part of her already suspected that this was his true intention for dragging her out this way. Here's how she sees it: if she goes home, Jeremy will be disappointed, probably send her back out again and take back the twenty bucks he lent her. If she goes home, she'll just have to go back out again later to try and aimlessly find a lead on that little snot of a spirit. If she goes home, Gideon will still know where she lives, and will probably try again tomorrow.

So, although she doesn't particularly want to, she says: "Fine."

And to that, he grins. "Excellent."

It's a long walk from Erie's house to the bridge crossing over the Epling River, and it's made even longer by Gideon's constant talking. Lacey responds to him with everything she can think of to bring variety to the table: nods, says "uhuh," reaffirms that yes, she's listening, and it's not a lie - his debriefing of everything they know about Stella is, in a way she hadn't expected, important to her. But part of her feels like it's only because she saw the body, and there's a bit of self-loathing sitting uncomfortably in her gut for it. It's more than that.

"She'd been missing for two weeks and three days before she showed up at the riverbank," he says, taking long strides that Lacey struggles to keep up with. "I've already heard that her time of death's been established as seven days prior to her drifting down this way. That means that she died a week and three days after she went missing. That means she didn't just die on accident - accidents kill people fast. From what I saw yesterday, she's also been in the water quite a while. All that crumbly, waxy looking stuff, and how decomposed she wasn't- I mean, don't get me wrong, she was pretty decomposed, but the water temperature-"

"Skip the gory details," Lacey says. She wants to scratch the image out of her eyes and he's not helping her achieve that goal.