by Jill Jaynes
“Okay. Talk to you later.” With a last dazzling smile at her, he grabbed his food and headed out the door, brushing past his dead father without a backward glance.
Which was absolutely understandable, since of course he couldn’t see him. Like normal people.
* * *
“You have to help me.”
Harry Stone tagged along at her side as she walked the few blocks to her dad’s house. He’d been waiting for her, pacing the tree-lined sidewalk outside of the Honey Bee when she’d stepped out at the end of her shift.
Chloe sighed. She wanted to say, “No, I really don’t,” but that never did any good.
Seeing dead people looked exciting on TV, but in real life, it was often a big pain in the butt.
Ghosts who hung around after they’d died usually had one of two problems. Either they hadn’t realized they were dead yet and simply needed to be told, or they wanted help with something. Like telling a relative about hidden jewelry. Or a cat locked in a laundry room. She once had a woman who worried that her oven was still on.
Thomas’s father had the second kind of problem. And since Chloe had made the mistake of letting him know she could see him, he would be at her every waking moment until she either helped him or convinced him she couldn’t. Once she was sucked in, like now, it was best to finish it out as soon as possible. These guys were on a twenty-four hour clock, being dead and all, and weren’t very considerate about her need for sleep.
“Fine. Tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you if I can help you.”
Harry shoved his hands into the pockets of his threadbare brown sweater. “I’ve made a terrible mistake with Thomas and you have to help me fix it. I tried to tell him before I died but he wouldn’t listen to me at all. He just said it was too late and what was done was done.”
Chloe glanced around the quiet neighborhood street lined with pretty beach-bungalow cottages. Except for Mrs. Darby, who was out watering her hydrangeas, the street was deserted.
She smiled and waved at Mrs. Darby as she passed, then murmured to her invisible-to-everyone-else companion. “Start at the beginning. What was your mistake?”
He scowled down at his scuffed brown shoes. Ghosts usually appeared in the clothing they felt most “themselves” in. Apparently Harry hadn’t treated himself that well in life.
“I only wanted a mother for my son. I thought I was doing the right thing by sticking out a bad marriage with Miranda after my Abby died.” He shook his head. “But I think I ended up scaring him off of marriage. He’s had lots of nice girlfriends, but as soon as one starts getting too serious, he breaks it off with them. If he’s not careful, he’s gonna run out of chances. And it’s all my fault.”
Chloe frowned, unable to guess where he was headed. She was afraid to ask, but the direct approach was usually the quickest. “So, what do you need from me?”
Harry looked earnestly into her face. “He has to read the letters,” he said. “His whole future happiness is at stake. You have to find them and then you have to make him read them.”
“Oooookay,” Chloe said and sighed. “Still not at the beginning here. Let’s keep walking while you tell me. What letters?”
Harry fell into step again beside her. “The letters his mother and I wrote to each other before she died. We were only seventeen when we first fell in love, Abby and me. Her parents weren’t crazy about the idea, and we had to sneak around to spend any time together, so we wrote notes and letters to each other and hid them in a book in the library for each other to find. Even after we were finally together and married, we still wrote notes to each other almost every day.”
They reached the little house Chloe shared with her dad. She stopped at the steps that led up to the wide covered porch. “Hold that thought and promise me you’ll wait here,” she said to Harry. “I need to check in on my dad and see if he needs anything. I’ll be right back.”
After getting his agreement, Chloe slipped through the front door. She didn’t have anything to hide from her dad—he’d been accepting of her gift since she’d told him about it when she was ten. She just didn’t want to have to fend off Harry’s demands while trying to have a conversation with her father.
“Dad?” she called. There was no answer. The house felt quiet and empty. On the kitchen table she found a note from her dad telling her he’d gone over to his friend Glen’s house to play some cards with the guys, and he’d see her around dinner.
She smiled, imagining him and his favorite old cronies haggling over poker on Glen’s comfortable sun porch. She knew Glen’s wife Martha would be fussing over them with snacks while surreptitiously keeping an eye on things.
After taking a minute to pour herself a tall glass of lemonade, she headed back out to the front porch where Harry waited at the bottom of the steps like a lost puppy who smelled dinner.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said as she settled onto the double-seater porch swing. She took a sip of her lemonade. “So, where were we?”
Harry stepped up onto the porch. In a blink he was sitting beside her on the swing. “Talking about the love of my life,” he said. “And how you’re going to help me save Thomas from an empty, lonely life.”
“Well, no promises there,” Chloe said. “I’m still not sure what I’m going to be able to do.”
“I know you can help me, Chloe. You were always a nice girl, and Thomas listened to you when you both were kids. He wouldn’t have passed physics if you hadn’t convinced him to buckle down and study. I know you’re just the girl for the job.”
He leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “My Abby died when Thomas was about three years old. Brain aneurysm, the doctors said.” He looked down at his hands. “Just like that, she was gone.
“When I went through her things later, I found that she had saved every one of those letters we’d written to each other. I sat down and read them all one last time, and I knew I’d never love like that again because I’d never find another woman as amazing as her. So, I put them back into the big brown envelope I’d found them in, packed them away in a safe place, and focused on finding a mother for my son.”
“Hmm,” said Chloe. “I don’t remember Thomas ever talking much about his mother, only his stepmother.” She glanced at Harry. “He didn’t care much for her, from what I gathered.”
Harry looked glum. “I know, I know. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to think through all of my regrets since I passed. Hindsight really is 20/20.” He gripped her arm, or tried to. He couldn’t really touch her, but the energy of his emotion was so strong that she actually felt the pressure of his fingers. “When Thomas reads those letters his mother and I wrote to each other, he’ll know beyond a doubt that true love exists and then he’ll be able find it too.”
Chloe took a pensive sip of her lemonade. “It doesn’t sound impossible,” she said. If someone handed her a stack of twenty-year-old love letters from a lost parent, wild horses couldn’t stop her from reading them. Surely if she could find a way to put the letters in front of Thomas, he would read them. He wouldn’t have to know where they had come from. Not right away, at least.
Coward! Accused her inner voice.
Hey, I’m not saying I wouldn’t tell him, she argued back. I will if and when I need to. I’m just saying I don’t have to lead with the “I have a message from your dead father” thing.
“I think I should be able to help you.”
Harry beamed at her. “I knew you would. Didn’t I tell you?”
Chloe realized she could see the plaid pattern of the seatback cushions through his scruffy brown sweater. He was fading out, his first mission—to convince her to help him—accomplished.
“Wait!” She jumped to her feet as he blinked out of sight. “Don’t go. You didn’t tell me where they are.” She knew she was shouting and anyone could hear her, but she didn’t care. He hadn’t told her the one thing she needed to know to perform the task she’d agreed to. She glared around the empty porch. “Mr.
Stone! Harry! Where are the letters?”
“Up in my attic,” came the disembodied answer, more inside her head than outside of it. Then she felt the air around her go silent, and knew she was alone.
Well, crap. She was going to have her work cut out for her. “Not very helpful, Harry,” she muttered under her breath. “That qualifies as barely better than nothing.”
* * *
At noon the next day, Chloe headed over to Thomas’s father’s house on Elm Street, just around the block from her dad’s place. Thomas had said he would be wrapping up some odds and ends at the property and had asked if she could meet him there to head out for their picnic.
As Chloe approached the white house with dark green shutters, she was struck by how much smaller it looked now than when she’d last been here as an insecure teenage girl. She’d climbed those two front steps and knocked at the door with its intimidating peephole more than a dozen times when she’d helped Thomas study. That was the last semester she’d lived here—his senior, and her junior, year. She’d felt measured and found lacking by the eye watching from behind that closed door every single time she’d knocked.
His stepmother had definitely not been a very pleasant person. At five foot two, she had still managed to look down her nose at everyone.
But now the house sat uninhabited, its power to intimidate gone with the former occupant.
A shiny black, 4-door pickup—Thomas’s, she guessed—sat in the driveway with its tailgate down in front of the open garage. The man himself was nowhere in sight.
“Hello?” She stood at the front of the truck and peered into the dim recesses of the garage, which looked to be stacked to the rafters with boxes, bins and furniture. The remnants of a lifetime, down to a few square feet of stuff nobody wanted anymore.
All of Harry’s stuff, she realized with a jolt. Those letters must be right here, in one of the boxes or bins in front of her. Well, that was a lucky break. At least she didn’t have to worry about how to sneak into the attic to poke around. Maybe if she offered to help Thomas move all this stuff, she could manage a little unobtrusive searching in the process.
“Hey! Hi there, glad you made it.”
Thomas walked out of the garage into the sunlight, a large box in his arms. His black t-shirt was just tight enough to show off the muscles of his chest and arms as he wrangled the clearly heavy load. Faded jeans enclosed his long, lean legs.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m just loading some of this stuff up. I grab a truckload-full whenever I can.” Chloe bit her lip as Thomas slid the box over the open tailgate to rest beside more just like it. What were the chances he might have already thrown away the letters? Well, she would just have to trust that Harry had caught her before the letters had left the property.
Chloe eyed the house. “So what happens to the place now?”
Thomas paused and followed her gaze. “Going up for sale as soon as I can empty it out and make a few repairs,” he said. “My dad actually left it to me, but I’ve got a nice condo down at the beach with a killer view.”
“You don’t want it? This is such a nice little neighborhood.”
“Nope, I’m good,” said Thomas, slamming the tailgate and closing the topic. “It can’t sell fast enough to suit me.”
Chloe clearly read the subtext of that statement. Something to the effect of never in a million years. “Got it.”
He turned to Chloe with a smile, a breeze playing with his dark auburn hair in a way that made her want to do the same. “I’m ready to go if you are. Picnic basket’s up front.”
Chloe’s insides went gooey under the full force of those trademark dimples. “Okay,” she managed a little breathlessly, as Thomas opened the passenger door for her and helped her up into the seat. As he walked around the front of the truck to the driver’s side, she admired his easy, athletic stride and the way it showcased all those nice muscles and felt like pinching herself to prove she wasn’t dreaming. I’m on a date with Thomas Stone.
He slid into his seat and started the engine. “Buckle up,” he said, and backed out of the driveway, hitting the remote to close the garage door.
She glanced into the garage as the door swung closed. She needed to find a way to get in there sooner rather than later to look for those letters. “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff to go through,” she said. “Let me know if you need any help.”
Thomas steered the truck through the quiet neighborhood streets, avoiding the main drag to head north to the park at Rainbow’s End. “Thanks, but I’ve pretty much gone through everything already. All that’s left either goes to the donation bin or the dump.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “My stepmother is living in Santa Barbara now, but she showed up one weekend with a moving van and loaded up everything she wanted before letting me know I could come over and clear out the rest.”
Chloe easily filled in the unspoken curse at the end of that sentence. Bitch. “Sounds like she hasn’t changed much.”
Thomas laughed, dispelling the tension in the car. “It’s nice to have someone around who understands about all that family drama stuff. And no, she hasn’t.” He shot a sideways glance at Chloe. “Except that she really went off the deep end the last few years. I remember you used to be kind of interested in psychics and all that when you were in school, but I swear, these people have no morals about lying for a living. I don’t have a lot of kind feelings for my stepmother, but it was really sad to watch her blow so much money on that old fraud she hooked up with a few years ago. I don’t know why my dad didn’t put a stop to it. Oh wait, I know—he was too busy working and being gone as usual.” He shook his head as he maneuvered his truck around a stray skateboard some kid had left in the street. “This lady claimed to be communicating with some long-dead relative who apparently had an opinion about everything from when it was safe to travel to what stocks to invest in. For a price, of course.” He snorted. “My stepmother practically wouldn’t buy a cup of coffee without consulting this nut-case first. Guess she got clearance on what to keep from the house.”
Chloe’s stomach clenched. Well, thanks, Nut-Case Lady, for ruining any chance of credibility I might have had. Her blithe agreement to help Thomas’s father was starting to look like a much bigger problem than she had counted on. “Wow. That’s too bad.”
“You know,” he continued, “no matter how much my friends try to tell me how great married life is, I’ll never make the same mistake my dad did.”
“Which mistake was that?”
“Getting married, of course. Oh, don’t get me wrong.” He gave Chloe a reassuring smile. “I don’t have anything against relationships. But why take a chance of ruining it with marriage? After all, my dad must have liked Miranda enough at the beginning to marry her. I can only assume it went wrong later.”
“Told you,” said a voice from the back seat.
Chloe turned to find Harry Stone, ratty brown sweater and all, perched on the bench seat behind her. She wanted badly to tell him to get lost in no uncertain terms, but had to settle for shooting him a surreptitious evil-glare-of-death she hoped Thomas didn’t notice.
But Harry had a point. She gave an internal sigh. Another red flag. Big one.
Chloe frowned, trying to understand his reasoning. Her idea of happily-ever-after definitely included marriage and a family. Hopefully sooner rather than later, with any luck. In fact, here in Moonlight Cove would be just fine with her. “I’ve seen some wonderful marriages,” she said. “My grandparents have been married for, like, fifty years and they’re the happiest couple I know.”
Thomas slowed as they approached a stop sign. A pedestrian stepped into the crosswalk ahead.
“And that’s great. For them,” he said. “For me, I can only worry about the decisions I make, and the effect they will have on the people around me.” He leaned his head out the window and waved at a white-haired woman crossing the street in front of them.
“Hi, Mrs. Baker. How’re you doing today?”
> The woman stopped and peered through the windshield of the truck. Her face lit in a smile of recognition.
“Hi, Thomas.” She shifted the books she carried to one arm so she could wave back. “Just on my way to turn these back in to the library.” She turned to continue across the street. “You have a nice day, now. And your young lady too!”
“Thanks, will do,” he called back cheerfully. He leaned toward Chloe, keeping his smile pasted on and his eyes forward. “Don’t take it personally. She keeps hoping I’m going to get married and settle down one of these days. She’s always excited to see me with a new girl.”
Chloe offered a polite wave as Mrs. Baker made her way to the opposite curb. Thomas tapped his fingers on the steering wheel “Yeah, love is a tricky thing to nail down,” he mused. “Seems like a pretty flimsy basis for getting married when you can’t really predict how it’ll turn out.” He turned to her. “Why take that kind of chance?”
Chloe sat dumbfounded. Wow, looked like Harry was right. He really had messed up Thomas’s belief in true love and happily ever after. No wonder his spirit couldn’t move on. Chancing an over-the-shoulder glance into the back seat, she caught Harry’s doleful gaze as he faded out of sight.
Well, at least they had their privacy back. She had a lot to think about, though. Thomas had some serious relationship issues and the message that could help him was coming from someone he didn’t even believe in. Alive or dead.
The crosswalk clear, Thomas continued through the intersection. “Mrs. Baker back there is the nicest lady,” he said. “She shows up with a platter of cookies at every bake sale the booster club holds.” He leaned over to share a conspiratorial smile. “Nobody has the heart to tell her they’re totally inedible.”
Chloe smiled back. How could a guy who cared so much about everyone around him not believe in love? She could understand a certain amount of caution about the idea of marriage after spending a childhood with a stepmother who was stingy with everything but criticism. But just look at him! He was a teacher and a coach—he basically cared about people for a living. It didn’t make sense that he could really build the kind of wall around his heart that he claimed to.
