by Candis Terry
With another quick glance into the backseat and finding it gloriously empty, she climbed back into the car and put the gearshift into Drive. She’d gone a few uneventful miles when Tom Jones began to sing.
“It’s not unusual . . .”
“Wow. Again?” she said to the radio and poked at the buttons to find a new tune. “Better hire a new DJ with a more extended playlist.” But with every button she punched, old Tom continued to croon away. Kelly sighed and returned her hand to the wheel. She blinked her tired eyes. When they re-opened, the golden glow in the backseat reappeared.
“Don’t put your panties in a pretzel. It’s only me.”
At the sudden voice from nowhere, Kelly slammed her foot on the brake and turned in the seat. Her jaw dropped. Her heart stuttered. And a cold chill sliced down her back.
There, in the backseat, amid the cookbooks. Amid the balls of yarn. Wearing her traditional overalls, white Tee, and red plaid flannel shirt, sat her dead mother wiggling her fingers.
“Surprise.”
Kelly froze.
“Shoot.” The smile on her mother’s face fell and her glow dimmed. A long chilly sigh of exasperation whipped through the interior of the car. “You’re going to be the difficult one, aren’t you?”
“Difficult?” Kelly clasped her hand to the front of her shirt. “Me? You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I am dead.” A lopsided smile tipped Letty Silverthorne’s colorless lips.
The blood drained from Kelly’s head. Her ears buzzed. Her throat got tight. “I’m going to puke.”
“Oh boy. Here we go.” The figure in the backseat scoffed. “You are not going to puke. You always say you’re going to puke when things get a little iffy. Like the night before your biology report on genetic testing was due. You said you were going to puke. The night before you took the LSAT, you were going to puke.”
“I was just working myself up to the big time.” Kelly turned back around in her seat and tried to ignore the freakish likeness of her mother in the backseat. She gripped the steering wheel. “I’m going to get out of this car, puke, then go home, and pass out. I am way too tired to be driving. I should have called it a night hours ago. But noooo.”
“Kelly Grace, who in the world are you talking to?”
“I’m not talking to a ghost. That’s for sure. I am a logical person who bases everything on facts. If I were talking to a ghost, they would lock me up with some of the crazies I’ve put away over the years.”
“What did I ever do to discourage you from expanding your beliefs that the impossible may be possible?”
If that truly was her mother’s ghost in the backseat, she would know what she’d done to discourage her middle child from expanding her views. In fact, her mother had been the creator of Kelly’s “Sister Serious” moniker. Back then she’d thought the only way to grab her mother’s attention had been to be a straight-A student. Which meant that any fun and games to be had would be enjoyed by her two siblings.
Kelly squeezed her eyes shut then opened them again, thinking the glow and her passenger from the other side would disappear. They didn’t. She turned around again and looked at the person in the back who looked like a perfect replica of her mother minus the whole opaque thing.
“Mom? Is that really you?”
“No, it’s the stinky cheeseman.”
Kelly pulled her head back. “Well, that little bit of snark is unnecessary.”
“You can get away with a lot when you’re dead.”
“Apparently.”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
Kelly inhaled a big breath of air. “Seriously. Because if you tell me why you’re here it might make sense, and then I’d have to rethink the whole life-after-death thing. And right now I’m so tired I can barely think straight, let alone try to solve the mysteries of the universe.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly, what?”
The lines on her mother’s transparent forehead curled together near the center of her brows. “That’s exactly why I’m here. Because you can barely think straight. And if you ask me—”
“I’m not.”
“Gonna give you my two cents’ worth anyway.”
“You always did.”
“No sense stopping now, right?” Her mother grinned.
“Sure.”
“I think you need to reevaluate your whole life.”
“Wow. Really? My whole life?”
“Yep.” The tangled gray knot of hair at the top of her mother’s head wiggled when she gave a curt nod. “The whole danged thing. I thought Kate’s life was a mess, but you—”
“Please don’t compare me with Kate. We are two entirely different people.”
“You’re not as different as you’d like to think,” her mother said.
“Of course we are.” Kelly folded her arm across her chest. “That’s what made it so easy for you to ignore me half the time.”
“I never ignored you.”
“Really?”
“No.”
Kelly shrugged. “Okay.”
“That’s it?” Ghostly hands flew upward. “You argue for a living, and all I get is an okay?”
“What do you want me to say? Because right now, quite honestly, I’m thinking I need more than a brief leave of absence. I think I need some serious therapy and maybe a hiatus of, oh, a decade or so.” Kelly clutched her hands together to steady them. “You are dead. You are not here sitting in the backseat of your crapper of a car.”
“Uh-oh. I think we might have unresolved issues.” The backseat voice sounded mystified.
“Of course we do.”
“Then I’m so glad I’m here.” The mother image thing leaned forward with a big smile. “Isn’t this amazing? That even after I’m long gone, we still have the chance to patch things up? Oh, we are going to have so much fun!”
Kelly didn’t want to hear anymore. Her imagination had gone into slug mode, and she just needed to stumble into bed and have a good sleep. Still . . . she turned again, and whatever or whoever it was that had been in the backseat had disappeared.
Not for a minute did she think she’d actually seen a ghost.
Then again, if you’d asked her three weeks ago if she’d ever consider walking away from the career she’d worked so hard to build, she would have told anyone they were crazy.
As things stood now it looked like the real crazy person might very well be sitting behind the wheel of the world’s biggest clunker.
The clock hit 1 a.m. as James opened the front door and stepped into his living room, where a pizza box, dirty napkins, and empty soda cans cluttered the surface of the coffee table. Sofa pillows were strewn about the floor, and, in their place, gamer controls sat in the middle of the sofa. He picked up the pillows, tossed them back on the leather couch. and sighed.
“Hello, girls, I’m home.”
Yips and yaps and the scrambling of tiny toenails on a hardwood floor commenced from down the hall. As the sounds grew closer James knelt to receive the impending assault. In a flash of silky fur, the two dogs he shared his home with launched themselves into his arms. Slick pink tongues slurped him up one side of his face and down the other. It probably wasn’t the welcome home most thirty-two-year-old men received when they walked through the door at night, but it felt good to know someone cared. Even if they had dog breath.
He captured Poppy and Princess, his two inherited Yorkshire terriers, in each arm and chuckled. “Did you miss me today?”
Poppy’s small body wiggled like a wind-up toy, whereas Princess, the decided diva of the two, played a little harder to get. He gave them equal adoration time then played fetch with their favorite dog-slobbered toys for a few minutes, before he got up and went into the kitchen to feed them.
To his dismay the kitchen was in no better shape than the living room. As much as he tried to make the house a home, someone else always man
aged to unravel his good intentions. Dirty bowls filled the sink, and empty packages of cookies and chips cluttered the counter. Disgust curled up his spine, and he marched toward the back of the house to have yet another confrontation. He opened the bedroom door—or at least he tried to open the door. Something behind the panel prevented him from doing so, and he had to give it a good shove with his shoulder. When the barrier broke free he stepped into the chaos that was his little brother’s domain.
With the exception of the clothes and other teenage boy objects scattered about the floor, dresser, and bed, the room was empty.
“Shit.”
James ran a hand through his hair as he surveyed the disaster. How could one person make such a mess? Then he thought back to when he’d been seventeen—Alex’s age—and knew he probably had no right to judge. In those days he’d been a walking tragedy of a human being. Danger and disrespect had been his game.
Until it had nearly killed him.
Princess strolled into the room, took a look around, and sneezed so hard her pointed ears jiggled.
“Yeah. It’s a mess all right.”
One half of the doggie duo he’d inherited from his ailing mother looked up at him with her big brown judgmental eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” James said, imagining what was going through her prissy little head. “I know you love him. But he’s a pain in my ass.”
Princess sat back on her haunches and gave him a look of complete and utter understanding. He reached down and lifted her into his arms, stroked her silky head, and held her close to his heart. “What am I going to do with that boy?”
The dog in his arms gave a little shudder.
He hadn’t asked to take on the responsibility of his younger sibling. Hadn’t wanted any part of it. Had proven time and again that he was the last person who should be counted on. But he owed it to his mother. Big time. With the stroke she’d suffered, caring for the little dogs she adored became impossible. For her, raising his unruly teenage brother had become monumental. Aside from his mother’s deteriorated health, and aside from James’s own past recklessness, he knew he owed it to the little boy who’d once looked up at him with such adoration. Neither of them had ever had a father for more than a blink of the eye. Alex’s bio dad had stuck around only long enough to remind a then-teenage James that he wasn’t wanted, needed, or liked.
After their mother’s debilitating stroke, they’d all switched positions. Alex had become the hard-headed teen, and James had become the parent in charge. And as long as he’d been appointed to that position, he planned to kick Alex’s rebellious ass all the way to a good life. No matter how hard the task. For either of them.
James took another look around the room before he closed the door and grabbed his truck keys. Alex may think he was smart and knew all the best places to hide and create havoc, but James wrote the book years ago.
CHAPTER FIVE
On Saturday morning, Kelly forced herself from her lumpy twin bed at the crack of dawn. Exhaustion and some explicitly erotic dreams kept calling her back. But when she’d heard her father moving about, she knew she needed to get up and spend some time with him before he went off to the bakery for the day.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, where she washed her face and gave up on the idea of taming the hair sticking up like she’d gone through a wind tunnel, she joined him in the kitchen.
For a moment she just watched him going about his routine. Sunshine beamed through the window, and tiny dust motes floated about his balding head like glitter. His work clothes, which consisted of white pants, a white shirt, and spotless white apron, had been freshly laundered and smelled of fabric softener. His grayed brows were pulled together over a faraway look in his eyes. His movements were stiff and slow, as if he had to focus on every single, painful joint—no doubt created by the tremendous amount of hours he’d spent kneading dough and scrubbing pots. When he heard her approach he turned, and his warm smile lit her up inside. She’d always had a much better relationship with her father than her mother.
Robert Silverthorne was a loving man with a generous heart. He was a competent provider, and there had never been any question that he would protect his own until his dying breath. He was exactly the type of man a woman with any sense would look for in a mate. Her mother had chosen well.
“Good morning, beautiful girl.” He opened his arms and gave her a long hug as they rocked side to side.
“Morning, Daddy.” A sense of calm washed over her, and she wished she could stay right there in her father’s arms forever.
With a kiss to the top of her head, he drew away and reached into the cupboard for another ceramic mug. She laughed at his choice.
World’s Best Pop.
“Didn’t I give that mug to you for Father’s Day when I was like . . . ten?”
He filled the mug with steaming coffee then grabbed the sugar bowl and slid it to her across the counter. “I think it was somewhere around that time.”
“Wow.” She dunked a spoonful of sugar in the mug and stirred. “I’m amazed it survived all these years.”
“Your mother and I tried to take care of all the stuff you kids gave us. We have boxes full of your art and homemade cards out in the shed.”
The thought warmed her. “You do?”
“Sure. Who knows, we might have had the next Picasso living in our midst.”
Kelly laughed.
“Your mother refused to get rid of anything.” Her dad’s expression turned wistful, and her heart squeezed. “Gosh she loved you kids.”
A shiver sped up Kelly’s spine as she thought of the drive home last night and her hitchhiking ghost. Kelly knew her mother had loved her children. Kelly also knew her mother had loved some children more. And she’d never been Mama’s favorite.
“How long you plan on staying, sweetheart?” her father asked.
Forever? Kelly shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
“Then stay as long as you want. Or need.” He stirred his coffee and looked up. “I like having you around.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Daddy.”
He sipped at his coffee. “Maybe you could do me a favor while you’re here?”
Please don’t say come work at the bakery. “Sure.”
“You think you could help me go through your mom’s things?”
“Oh, Dad.” The finality of the mental images those words brought were just miserable. “Are you sure?”
His barrel chest lifted on a heavy sigh. “I think it’s time.”
Kelly set her mug down on the counter and crossed the room. She put her arms around her father and laid her head against his chest. His arms curled around her, and they stayed like that for several long moments.
“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” she said. “I’m so sorry I had to go back to Chicago right after mom died. But I’m here now.”
“That’s all that matters.”
The words were simply spoken. But the grief overshadowing their meaning made her wonder if she could ever do enough to make up for her father’s loss.
She may not have had the best relationship with the woman who’d given her life, but her mother had been her father’s true love. His soul mate. His till death do them part.
And it did.
Summers in Montana tended to be brief. The warm sunshine barely had enough time to bask on the fields of corn, alfalfa, and home gardens to get the red on a tomato, let alone a tan on a Chicago-based prosecutor. Kelly intended to soak up every golden ray of sun she could capture before she had to go back to her small, windowless office in the suffocating heat of the Midwest. Not to mention her enormous failures.
After making a quick omelet for her father before he left for work, she shoved her hair into a ponytail, sank her legs through a pair of running shorts, and stuffed her feet into the barely worn tennis shoes that had beckoned to her from the closet all last winter.
Sh
e stepped off the small front porch and did a few stretches before she took off down the street at a slow jog. The branches of the sugar maples overhead filtered the morning sun and cast fluttery shadows against the sidewalk. Kelly breathed in the clean mountain air and paced herself for the several miles she’d decided to run. She made it past the cute little cabin-like homes on her block down to Main Street and into the center of town. She passed the Sugar Shack, where a bouquet of sweet smells teased her nose and tempted her to stop for a calorie fix. Next came the Yee-Ha Trading Post with its silly tin can totem pole outside the front door. She made it beyond the row of downtown storefronts, then she broke into a longer stride and headed toward the lake.
Once she hit the bend in the road the teens had dubbed Deadman’s Curve, the rumble of an engine came up behind and paced her for longer than comfortable. Her big-city defenses sprang to attention and prickled along the back of her neck, as if she’d just stepped through the doors of a haunted house. After last night’s ghostly episode in her mother’s car, she wasn’t about to take any chances.
A quick glance over her shoulder revealed the big black truck on her heels. Kelly knew of an easy way to fix the problem. She moved over to the dirt path on the side of the road—out of the way and out of grabbing distance. For a moment the truck remained a step behind, then slowly it eased up alongside. The passenger window rolled down, and the guitar riff from Jason Aldean’s “My Kinda Party” blasted through the window.
Irritated and prepared to unleash some girl power, Kelly stopped, turned, and came face to face with—who else?
“Seriously, Harley?” Trying to catch her breath, she propped her hands on her hips. “You’ve resorted to stalking?”
“No stalking intended, Counselor.” He smiled, and a perfect set of ultra white teeth brightened the mischief in his brown eyes. “Just appreciating the view.”
