He’d loved me with all my faults, and I’d loved him with his.
“I asked you a question,” Clarissa said.
“I heard you,” I replied, half-tempted to offer her something to drink. Being Southern was very difficult to get out of your system. As much as I wanted her to leave, I couldn’t bring myself not to offer her refreshments.
As for why I’d grown a set of balls? That was none of her business. I was pretty sure I’d always had them, but they seemed to be showing more lately.
“Would you like coffee or lemonade?” I asked, hoping my facial expression didn’t show my attitude.
“Are you going to poison it?” she asked with a laugh.
She was dead serious.
“Umm… wasn’t going to, but if that’s how you like it, sure.”
“I’m fine,” she said, gazing at my couch.
There were three dead people seated on it, watching her with fear in their eyes. I didn’t blame them. She was scary.
If I wasn’t mistaken, they were the dead people from the church this morning. They had certainly moved in fast.
“Have a seat,” I said, wondering if she would sit on top of the specters.
She didn’t, which was a little odd. After staring at my couch for another long moment, she took a seat in an empty armchair—no dead person in it.
I was losing it. Clarissa wasn’t crazy. She was just plain mean. There was no way she could see my poltergeist. The fact that I was referring to them as mine was not a good sign.
Whatever.
The goal at the moment was to get rid of the abomination in my house. I’d take dead people over Clarissa any day of the week.
“So,” she said, plastering a smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. She was very pretty in a brittle way. However, her personality destroyed her beauty. “How have you been doing?”
“Are you serious?” I asked, squinting at her.
“Yes,” she snapped and then reined it in. “I just thought since we’ll be working together, we should be… a little… you know, friendlier.”
I was having a complete déjà poo. I’d heard the same crap not even an hour ago. Had everyone lost their marbles?
“Clarissa, we’ve worked together for eight years,” I said, holding back an eye roll with extreme effort. “I don’t see any reason to be friends now.”
“You don’t have to be rude,” she insisted, picking up a picture of Gram, my mom and me from when I was a child.
She stared at it for a bit and then put it back down. Her eyes narrowed, and I could swear she wanted to say something shitty. I was ready. I was used to it. However, if she so much as said one vicious thing about my mother or Gram, I would use my Y skills on her. Sooner or later I was going to get some use out of those self-defense classes. If today was the day, so be it. It would feel amazing to head-butt Clarissa.
“If you’re going to be his friend then you have to be mine as well,” she explained, examining her manicure. “Otherwise it’s not fair and I’ll be pissed. No one likes it when I’m pissed, Daisy.”
I amended my earlier thought. Clarissa was mean and crazy. Maybe there was something in the water.
“Who are you talking about?” I asked with an eye roll that felt so good I laughed.
“You know who I’m talking about,” she said, glaring at me. “Rules are rules.”
“Okay,” I said, realizing she could possibly screw my day up completely. She might be nuts, but I was off my rocker. If she wanted to play games, I was in. Off your rocker could kick nuts’ ass any day of the week. Unfortunately, my balls were getting bigger with each conversation I was forced to have today. “Fine. We can be friends with a few conditions.”
“Really?” she asked, perking up.
“Really,” I said, standing. “We can be friends if you leave right now. We can only be friends in public and never at my house. In fact, you can’t come here anymore—that is, if you want to be friends. We have literally nothing in common and if we do, I don’t want to know about it.”
“I can work with that,” she said, nodding seriously.
I almost laughed.
“I’m not done,” I told her.
“There’s more?”
“There’s always more. You will be nice to the paralegals at work. You do anything out of line and you lose friend points. I’ll determine what ‘out of line’ means on a case-by-case basis. If you lose ten friend points, we’re no longer friends. We will not be close friends. Ever. I won’t tell you my secrets and I never ever want to know yours. You feel me?” I wondered how far I could go… This was fun in a warped and unhealthy kind of way. I’d never had the upper hand with Clarissa in the entire time I’d known her. I wasn’t sure why I had it now, but I did. I refused to waste it.
I was nuts, but I wasn’t stupid.
“Will you tell him your secrets? I mean, he’s so old he wouldn’t even understand them. He’s older than dirt, just in case you weren’t aware of that,” she hissed, looking like she was going to throw a fit.
Who was she talking about? Her father? Another lawyer? Gideon? It couldn’t be Gideon. He wasn’t a day over forty-five. Most of the other lawyers in the firm were in their sixties and seventies. It had to be one of them.
Honestly, it didn’t matter who she was talking about. I simply wanted her gone.
“I would never tell him my secrets,” I promised, having no clue who I was referring to. “He’s old… and umm… gross, and I really don’t like him much.”
Clarissa clapped her hands and squealed with joy. It was alarming. However, since she’d jumped to her feet, I had a chance to push her out the front door.
“He’s really awful,” she admitted. “I nailed him a while back and then he pretended he didn’t know my name. Can you believe that?”
“That falls under the heading of secrets,” I said, trying not to gag. “You’re forbidden to tell me those. Remember?”
Picturing Clarissa with one of the geriatric lawyers was too much. I was happy my stomach was empty.
“Right,” she said as I eased her out of my family room and onto the front porch. “So sorry. But I will say as amazing as he was in the sack, he was a son-of-a-bitch the morning after. You do not want to go there.”
Now I was picturing wrinkled old man testicles. I was also sure she wasn’t talking about her father.
“Too much information, Clarissa,” I said tightly, scanning the yard for her car. I didn’t see it. “How did you get here?” I asked, praying she didn’t take a taxi and would want me to drive her back to town. I didn’t have enough sage in the house to do the family room, front porch and my car. The sage had been a gift from Missy. I’d giggled when she gave it to me. I wasn’t giggling now.
“I walked,” she said.
Glancing down at her four-inch stilettos, I doubted her story. But if that’s how she wanted to play it, I would go with it.
“Okay,” I said, ushering her down the porch steps and into the yard. “You’d better get moving. It’s about a seven mile walk back. I’d say this has been fun, but…”
“You’re my friend now, Daisy,” she insisted, sounding a little threatening. “You will not forget that.”
“Don’t think I could if I tried,” I said, walking to my car and scooping up my puppy. I didn’t trust her not to steal my baby or something awful like that.
I turned around expecting a comeback, but Clarissa was gone.
How in the hell did she do that?
I glanced down the driveway to see if I could spot her, but she was nowhere in sight. I suppose she could have gone through the woods. In her heels it would be a challenge. Unsettling and bizarre, but then again so was she. It had taken me a minute or two to grab Donna out of the car so I suppose she could have jogged …
Thankfully she was gone. There wasn’t enough room in my brain to figure out how she did it. I had a jawless dead buddy to repair. Life was weird enough without believing mean girls could poof away. A head-shrinker would be in
sanely helpful right now… stress on the word insane.
Clarissa was not welcome at my home. It was my safe place, and she wasn’t safe.
I just hoped she followed the rules.
Chapter Eight
“You have to stay still,” I told Sam as I pressed his jaw back onto his face… or what was left of his face.
I was still constantly surprised that my gag reflex didn’t kick in when dealing with dead stuff. Never in my life did I think I would be gluing a ghost’s jaw back onto his head.
“Lassssh gaussaus,” Sam repeated for the umpteenth time.
“Yep. Fifty more seconds,” I said, keeping pressure on his jaw as I watched the clock on the microwave. “And I know. You lost your glasses.”
“Naawwwooo,” he said, looking so sad my breath caught in my throat. “Waauufff.”
Crap. A new word.
“Donna, come in here,” I called out. She was better at understanding the dead than I was. It was a shame she couldn’t talk. It would save a lot of time.
It kind of sounded like Sam was trying to bark. Maybe he had the same idea I did about bringing Donna into the conversation. And the strange just kept getting stranger.
“Are you barking, Sam?” I asked as I let go of his jaw and prayed it stayed attached.
“Naawwwooo,” he said, shaking his head vigorously.
His jaw didn’t drop off and hit the floor. I was getting pretty good at this.
“Mmmkay.” I sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out my laptop. It was definitely time to go online and order a Ouija board. “You’re trying to tell me something new?”
“Yausssss. Waauufff lassssh gaussaus,” he grunted, nodding hard as if that would make me understand.
It didn’t.
“Wauff lost glasses,” I muttered, trying to do a puzzle with thousands of missing pieces.
Donna growled.
“I know,” I told her with a laugh. “I got the wrong answer. I’m trying here, guys.”
Sam stood and floated out to the family room. Donna got up and followed. I guessed that was my cue to join. I’d give Sam an hour or so to try to tell me what he wanted. After that, I was going to see Gram. She’d want to hear all about my birthday party. Oh my God, she was going to cackle at some of the jokes.
After that I had to do all the paperwork that I’d shoved into my purse this morning at the book shop. It was going to be a long day, but that was fine. I was home with my puppy and my dead friends. No more weird conversations with good-looking crazy people for me today. I’d had my fill this morning for the rest of the year.
With a smile and a solid resolve to try to figure out what Sam was trying to tell me, I snapped my laptop shut and followed my puppy and dead buddy out of the kitchen.
Sam was on the couch, and Donna was at his feet wagging her tail so hard her little bottom was shaking. I was so in love with her. I was starting to love my buddy Sam too. Probably not the smartest move, but he was adorable in a dead and decomposing kind of way. He had a terrific sense of humor and he seemed kind.
I’d never had a grandfather or a father that I’d known. Not that I was pretending that Sam was my grandpa… Wait. I was. I was crazy and starting to live in an alternate fantasy reality. Not good.
“Dausseeeeee,” Sam grunted and made a valiant attempt to pat the seat next to him on the couch. I was worried his arm was going to fall off since it was hanging by what looked like a paper thread, but I didn’t say anything. I’d bought a case of superglue earlier.
“Did you just say my name?” I asked with a grin as I crossed the room and sat down next to him.
Donna barked and wagged her tail. I’d gotten it right!
“Dausseeeeee, waauufff lassssh gaussaus,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Waauufff lassssh gaussaus.”
“Is there another way to understand?” I mumbled, still trying to decipher what Sam was saying.
Donna wrapped her paws around my ankle and held tight. I glanced down and giggled. She was the oddest little dog. “What are you doing?”
Donna looked up with her paws still around my ankle and barked.
“Really?” I asked, and then smacked myself in the forehead. Had I fallen so far into the rabbit hole that I thought my dog was telling me how to communicate with the dead—the dead that I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure weren’t figments of my imagination?
Deciding to ignore Donna’s advice because that meant there was no turning back from complete insanity if I listened to her, I kept going over Sam’s words in my mind.
Donna wasn’t having it. She kept barking and gripping my ankle with her little paws. Where in the heck had my friends found Donna? She wasn’t normal. I mean, I wasn’t normal, but she was a dog. She was supposed to be normal. Well, crap. Had I screwed her up because I brought her into a home with decomposing dead people and insanity?
I couldn’t even go there right now. Some things—not everything—happened for a reason. I was choosing to believe that I was supposed to be Donna’s human because I was as whacked as she was.
“You want me to grab Sam’s ankle so I can understand him?” I asked, very happy that I lived in the middle of nowhere. If someone heard me, I would die.
Donna barked and licked my shoe.
“I’m not licking Sam’s foot,” I informed all present. I could only do so much. Licking a dead person’s foot—ghost or not—was not going to be added to my repertoire of loony.
“Dausseeeeee,” Sam grunted with what sounded like a laugh. “Haaawug.”
I didn’t need to interpret through my dog on this one. Sam held his semi-transparent arms out and repeated himself.
“Haaawug,” he said, giving me a smile that might have made me think he was a flesh-eating zombie if I didn’t know him so well.
“You want me to hug you?” I asked.
Sam nodded and kept smiling.
In less time than it would take a heart to produce a single beat, the family room was full of so many ghosts, I gasped. Counting them was impossible since they faded in and out of each other, but their excitement was very clear.
The garbled noise coming from them sounded like a very off-key song that was supposed to be joyful but came out macabre instead. However, I’d spent a few weeks with the weirdos. I was beginning to understand far more than I’d ever wanted to.
“Quiet please,” I yelled to my squatters. “I need to think.”
Everyone piped down, but the eager anticipation was still in the air. Had I just figured out the key to help these sad souls? Was that why they were so enthusiastic?
Only one way to find out.
“Okay, Sam, I’m going to hug you and then somehow I’ll understand what you’re trying to tell me about the lost glasses. Right?”
“Dausseeeeee, haaawug.”
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered as I wrapped my arms around what was left of Sam.
I kind of thought my arms might go right through him, but they didn’t. He was solid in my embrace—very frail, but solid. “It’s okay, Sam,” I whispered as his fragile body shook. “I’ve got you. Talk to me.”
My first mistake was hugging my friend. My second was asking him to talk to me.
At least I adored Sam. Dying while hugging a ghost was a weird way to go out. I hoped that one of my friends would take Donna in. I’d hate it if she had to go back to the shelter.
The cold. The cold went all the way to my bones and tore through my body like sharp, frozen daggers made of ice. Trying to catch my breath, I gasped for air and screamed.
The only sound that left my lips came from so far away I could barely hear it.
My head pounded violently and every single cell in my body screamed for oxygen. I tried to pull away from Sam but we were locked together in a deadly embrace.
I thought Sam was my friend. I was wrong. Had the past few weeks been a psycho build-up to my own death? Would I end up in my house haunting whoever bought it?
“I can’t breathe,” I called
out into the darkness that clouded my vision. “Heavy. Too heavy on my chest. I can’t breathe.”
Sam’s arms—or I think it was Sam’s arms—tightened around me and something gently rubbed my head.
My mind went numb and I couldn’t feel my limbs anymore. I vaguely wondered if they had fallen off. Would I be able to find another whack job like me who would glue me back together?
Forgive me whoever might be listening. Please. Forgive me.
My skin felt like ice. When did it get so cold? It was only October. If I could find Gram’s afghan I would be okay.
Oh my God. Gram will be so upset that I died. It’s not the natural order. She already lost her daughter. She couldn’t lose her granddaughter too.
Yes. Yes, she could.
“Daisy?” a male voice said softly. “Stay with me. Don’t walk into the light and never walk into the darkness. Promise me.”
“Who’s talking to me?” I asked, surprised my voice worked. Was it God? Did he really exist? He had a very nice voice—kind of like I’d imagined it should be. I supposed it could be Satan—if he was real—but I didn’t think the devil would sound as fatherly as the person speaking to me.
That is, if I wasn’t imagining it…
“It’s Sam.”
“Shit. Sam, I thought you just murdered me or that you might be God. Am I dead?”
“No, my sweet young lady. You are very much alive.”
“Can you explain to me what the hell just happened?” I asked, still unable to see anything but darkness.
Sam didn’t answer for a moment. “I can’t because I don’t know.”
“Will I be able to leave this place?” I asked, terrified that he wouldn’t know the answer to that either.
“I was told that you will be able to go back.”
“By who?” I demanded, peering into the darkness to try to see Sam.
Nothing. I could see nothing.
“I don’t know,” he told me.
“Umm… that’s not very encouraging, Sam,” I snapped. “Where are you? I can’t see a damned thing.”
“Close your eyes, Daisy,” Sam said soothingly as I felt a gentle hand cup my face lovingly. “My voice won’t last much longer. I’ll show you in a picture what I need from you.”
It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis : A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel: Good To The Last Death Book One Page 8
