Finding the Way Back

by Jill Bisker

  “Connie,” I appealed through the door. “I didn’t know we had a visitor. Could you get me some clothes or my robe or something?”

  Silence. “Connie?”

  “Connie just went upstairs. Can I help?” I heard Emmett ask, his voice coming closer.

  Oh my God, I was going to kill her. She left me deliberately. “Don’t open the door! I’m not dressed!” I exclaimed, horrified. “I just need a robe or something. If you can’t find Connie there might be a towel in the upstairs bathroom.”

  “Okay, hold on.” I could hear him tromping up the stairs. I tried not to look too closely at the dark, yucky stairs around me. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, I was chanting to myself.

  The door opened and a hand reached in with a towel. “Thank you,” I said as I grabbed the towel and quickly wrapped it around myself. I walked back into the kitchen with as much dignity as I could manage. I could feel myself blushing at the ridiculous figure I must seem. “I didn’t realize you were stopping in this morning.”

  Emmett tried to keep his eyes averted, mostly anyway, although I thought I detected a glance at my bare legs. “Sorry, yeah, I was driving by and thought I would stop in when it was daylight and see the layout. You know, plan for tonight.”

  “Right.” I jumped as I suddenly heard pounding on the front door. “Now, who is that?” I asked no one in particular.

  Walking to the front door, I peeked through the glass. No, no, no! You have got to be kidding me. It was Simon. Could my day get any worse? He’d already seen me, so I thought I’d better just open the door. No use causing a scene on my front doorstep.

  “Simon,” I said, opening the door a crack and wedging myself into the opening, not wanting to let him in.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Simon asked, trying to look past me. I glanced behind me to see Emmett standing there, plainly visible through the open door. Now here I was in a wet pajama top, towel wrapped around me, my pajama bottoms wrapped around my head, with Emmett standing right behind me. At first I started to formulate an explanation, then I realized he didn’t deserve an explanation and I didn’t owe him one.

  “Yes, you are interrupting. Go away,” I snapped tersely, backing away to shut the door. How dare he show up here without even a phone call.

  Grabbing the door before I could close it, he pushed it back open. “What do you think you’re doing closing the door on me?”

  Emmett was at my side in an instant. “She said go away. I think you’d better just leave.”

  “I need to talk to my wife,” Simon retorted belligerently. “What the hell are you wearing anyway?”

  I put my hand on Emmett’s forearm and held him back. “It’s all right. I can handle this.” Then turning back to Simon I said angrily, “Ex! Ex-wife.”

  “Not yet, we haven’t signed the papers,” he answered smugly.

  Connie strode into the room. “What is going on here? Simon? What are you doing here? Did somebody invite you?”

  “It’s okay, Connie. I got this,” I told her. I saw her exchange glances with Emmett who nodded tentatively. “Simon, if you want to talk to me, you can sit on the couch and wait for me. I’ll be back down in a few minutes.”

  I turned and ran up the stairs angry and exasperated, but also quite pleased with myself. “You’re not the boss of me,” I added under my breath. He wasn’t going to tell me what to do. Slamming the door to my bedroom behind me, I picked up my suitcase and laid it open on the bed. I started digging through it to find something to wear then finally dumped the whole pile out in front of me. I finally found a jean skirt and a purple blouse that were respectable. Plus, they matched my fingernails. Throwing my clothes on, I went into the bathroom to comb out my hair, put on some blush, eye liner and mascara. Simon could just cool his heels and wait for me for a change. I no longer had to jump to his tune. Looking in the mirror I smiled again, finding my sense of humor in the situation. I was going to blow dry my hair as well, and take my own damned sweet time doing it. I knew he’d be down in the living room irritated as heck to be made to wait. My hair color had turned out great, the lighter highlights brought out the dark blue of my eyes. The pink was a nice sassy rebellion. I was getting my cute back. I could get used to this new independent me.

  After waiting several minutes longer than necessary, I finally decided to go back down into the fray. I’d put on my mithril bra and tough-girl panties and knew I could take them all on. I could hear them all down in the living room talking uncomfortably. Connie sounded like she was trying to draw out conversation but neither Emmett nor Simon were interested.

  I swept in, doing my Lady of the Manor impersonation. “So Connie,” waving my hands and arms with a flourish. “I will leave you to showing Emmett around, and Simon, you and I can discuss whatever it is you came here for.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe I should stick around for a while,” Emmett said to me.

  Simon bristled visibly like a porcupine raising its quills. “This doesn’t involve you, whoever you are. It’s a private conversation with my wife.”

  “Ex. Ex-wife,” I reminded him again, not wanting Emmett to be confused as to my marital status. “I’m fine, Emmett, thanks. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Emmett glanced back into the room one last time as Connie led him upstairs, looking at me, then Simon, then me again.

  “Who the hell is he anyway? A plumber? Contractor?” Simon inquired.

  “None of your business,” I answered haughtily. “Now, what do you want?” I suddenly realized I didn’t really care. I didn’t want anything to do with Simon. I wanted him to get out and move on.

  Simon suddenly got his concerned face on. I stiffened, wondering what lie was going to come out of his mouth now. “The paperwork is done at the lawyers. They called yesterday morning saying they didn’t have your new phone number and that you never gave them your cell. I’ve been trying to call your cell but you don’t answer. I came over to make sure you were all right and to let you know.”

  “To make sure I’m all right? Give me a break, Simon. When did you ever care if I was all right?” I got to my feet. “Well, that’s great. I’ll call and make an appointment to sign. As you can see, I’m fine. I have another appointment in about ten minutes so I’ll see you out.” I tried to be as business-like as possible. Simon got up off the sofa and followed me to the door.

  “Laney, I didn’t come here to fight. And you’re right. I can see you’re okay. You look great. Did you do something with your hair?”

  I turned trying to unravel why he was really here, and where he was headed. “Besides the pink, that is,” he continued. “I’m not sure that really goes with your complexion.” And there he was, his old self.

  I gave him a look that was a combination of a glare and a smile. “Thanks.” I pulled open the door and stood to the side.

  Simon took one more look around the room, “So did your mom give you this old place?”

  Of course. Money. He thought I was going to come into something, and he wanted a share. “No, Simon, she’s just giving me a place to live for a short while since you ran out on me with that tramp. Now get out. There’s nothing here for you.” Shockingly, he actually left.

  My heart raced with adrenaline. How dare he? It was probably a good thing that he kept pissing me off because it gave me strength to stand up to him. I felt another smidgeon of satisfaction as I slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter Ten

  I was just walking back into the kitchen when I heard another knock on the front door. Now what? I turned and was about to shout something, thinking it was Simon coming back, when Mom and Shelly let themselves in. I heard them arguing about something. “No, Shelly, Rock Hudson was the one who was gay, and Doris Day was never in a movie with Burt Reynolds.”

  I rolled my eyes and promised myself I wasn’t going to get dragged into this conversation.

  “Hello, Darling,” my mom said, coming over to give me a kiss. “We saw Simon on our way in, you haven’t take
n him back, have you? What did you do to your hair? Pink?”

  “No, Mom, I haven’t taken him back. I colored my hair and Simon hates the pink, too.”

  “In that case I love it,” she said without missing a beat. “It’s striking.”

  My aunt came over to give me a hug. You wouldn’t have thought it had been only three days since I’d seen her last. I heard Connie and Emmett coming down the stairs.

  “Mom,” Connie said coming over to give Shelly a hug.

  “You look rested after your trip,” she said to Connie, holding her hands. Both little ladies turned to look at Emmett, waiting for one of us to introduce him. I could see the conclusions they were jumping to immediately. It was almost as if they could see future grandchildren floating in the air between us. I decided to leave the job to Connie. After all, she was the one who had brought him into this mess.

  “Mom, Aunt Tess, this is Emmett Linden,” Connie said.

  “And what do you do for a living?” my mother started with. I rolled my eyes again. I could see I was going to have a migraine soon.

  “Mom, Aunt Shelly, please sit down. We need to discuss something with you,” I began. As they sat on the sofa, I directed Emmett to the recliner. “Connie, let’s go get a couple of chairs from the kitchen.”

  Connie and I headed to the kitchen, whispering at each other. “You tell them,” and “No, you should.” “You’re the one who invited him, you should tell them,” I declared. Connie countered, “You’re the one who wanted to be in charge, you do it.”

  “Fine!” I said, giving in. “I’ll tell them.” We dragged our chairs back to the living room and sat down. I would have rather faced a firing squad.

  “So, Emmett is a friend of Connie’s,” I emphasized. I could see all eyes go to my cousin. This was actually more fun than I anticipated. “He’s here because there have been some—how can I put it?—troubling occurrences, shall I say?” Mom and Shelly started to look a little troubled themselves so I continued quickly. “Some strange things have been happening, and it’s just that, well, the house might be a tiny bit—,” I had to say it. “Haunted,” I finished with a dramatic sigh.

  Both women looked at each other, not surprised at all. My mom nodded and said matter-of-factly, “Yes, we know that. It’s always been haunted.”

  It couldn’t have been clearer if my mother had looked at me and said, “Well, duh.” Connie, Emmett and I all gasped. “What do you mean? You know?” I asked. “And you didn’t tell us?”

  “We’ve always told you girls’ stories about this house from when we were children,” my mom said, leaning back in her chair. “I was worried this talk was about something serious.”

  I turned to Connie. “I don’t remember ghost stories. Do you remember ghost stories?”

  “It’s never been a secret,” Aunt Shelly continued, laughing. “You two just never listened to our stories. We didn’t want to remind you of the stories now because we didn’t want to frighten you before you even moved in. What has you all so worked up? Some knocking, maybe some footsteps or something?”

  It only took a few minutes to relate the incidents that had happened so far. I felt chagrined that I hadn’t been reminded, after all I might not have gotten so scared if I had been prepared.

  “So,” my mom began, looking at Emmett. “What does this have to do with you?”

  “Um, yes.” He stuttered a little. “Well, I’m a ghost hunter, I guess you could say,” he rejoined. “Kind of like the ones you see on TV, but not really.”

  “Can you make a living at that?” my mother asked, fishing for more information. I winced. Next she would be asking for his social security number. I wasn’t sure she didn’t have a contact on the police force that could run a background check.

  “No,” he said and laughed. “It’s more of a hobby than anything else. I work with computers for my day job.”

  “Really?” Mom and Aunt Shelly looked at one another, and I could almost see the wheels of some new scheme turning. “You know, I’ve been having some trouble with my computer. Perhaps I could get you to stop by sometime to take a look at it,” my mother said. Oh dear, she was quick. She went on before I could think of a way to stop her. “So do you live here in West Acre? I don’t think I know any other Lindens.”

  This was starting to go off track, and I knew we could be here all day learning Emmett’s life history if I allowed it. “Mom, maybe we could have him leave us a résumé. For now, we are really only interested in whether he can help us with the ghost.” I gave her the look. She tried to look injured but gave up the present attack, at least for the time being. I knew she would renew her efforts later to win the war.

  “You know, I’ve always been interested in the paranormal,” Mom said as she smiled at Emmett sweetly. “So where do we start?”

  “No, there is no ‘we,’” I said, gesturing in a circle with my hand. “Connie and I are going to handle it. They do this stuff at night anyway and you don’t want to be wandering around the house in the dark with all this clutter lying around. I’d hate to see you fall and break a hip or something.”

  “Gee, you make me sound like an old lady,” she said, pretending her feelings were hurt.

  “Really, Mom, it’s no big deal. You can stop by in the morning and we’ll let you know what we find out. We’ll probably just spend hours walking around in the middle of the night and not even find anything.” I was mostly concerned with her meddling, but thought she would take it better if I hinted that it might actually be boring. “Besides, the more people we have wandering around in the dark, the more likely we are just to be hearing one another.”

  She frowned at me but seemed to give in.

  “What my friends and I will do,” Emmett began.

  “Under my supervision,” I interrupted.

  “Uh, yes. Anyway, we set up cameras in a couple of places in the house. They aren’t professional cameras but they sometimes pick up things. We walk around with EMF readers and take readings,” he started to explain.

  “That’s electromagnetic field detectors,” Aunt Shelly leaned in toward my mom and whispered. “They measure increases in electromagnetic fields.”

  “I know that,” Mom retorted loudly. “I do watch TV, you know.”

  “That’s right.” Emmett’s patience seemed to know no bounds with us, although he did speak quickly before additional comments could be lobbed at him. “We also bring a recorder to pick up electronic voice phenomena, or EVP for short, a digital thermometer, and occasionally the guys use a laser grid scope.”

  “How many friends are you bringing?” I asked. “What I mean is, I don’t want the entire town to know we have a ghost. After all, if we intend to sell this house it could hurt its reputation and resale price if everyone says it’s haunted.”

  “Just two other people. It’s really just a small group of us, and we do keep our hobby quiet. We don’t necessarily want to broadcast what we do in our off time to anyone we know in our professional lives. We do have to keep our day jobs and not everyone is tolerant of paranormal beliefs.”

  “Okay, that sounds reasonable to me. How about it? Everyone happy?” I asked.

  “Except for us not being involved I’m happy with it,” Aunt Shelly replied. Everyone else nodded.

  After Emmett left, the four of us started our meeting about remodeling the house. I went and found a notebook and then settled myself on the kitchen chair. I turned to my mom and aunt. “So first, do you have a budget we need to keep in mind because Connie and I have some ideas on raising money.”

  “We have given it some thought, but why don’t you go first with your ideas,” my aunt responded.

  “I know you will want to go through the boxes here but none of us have the space to keep most of the possessions so—Connie?” I motioned to my cousin.

  “We think we could sell some items on eBay or Craig’s List, maybe have an auction, and then possibly for the rest of the smaller items we could have a garage sale. Unless you want
to donate them to charity,” Connie finished.

  “Those are great ideas,” my mom began. “I know there are a few items we each would like to have but on the whole I agree that we should sell most of the things. I know there are actually a lot of expensive objects amongst the riff raff. I would like to see everything before it’s sold.”

  “I agree. I also only want a couple of mementos,” my aunt said. “Do you think you would know what was valuable as you went through the boxes or do we need to find some sort of expert? We can come help some, but we do have other commitments so we can’t be here every day. After the sorting out, we would just like to be consulted about the remodeling. We don’t want to do any of that work.”

  “I’m not sure we would know every item of sentimental value, but I’m fairly sure that between Connie and me, we could figure out the approximate value of most things. We’ve all been antique hunters for years. I was thinking we could get a dumpster and throw out the obvious trash. Then if we cleared an area we could stage the items for you to come by and review. We could also take photos of things we know have value, number them, pack the items in marked boxes and then you could review the photos and decide what you want and what goes,” I added.

  Mom and Aunt Shelly looked at each other, and I prepared myself for their objections. Instead, my mom totally surprised me and went along. “That sounds like a terrific plan,” she said. “I think you should start in the basement. It’s mostly junk down there.”

  “That’s true, Tess, but I don’t think we should stage anything that’s nice down in that damp area,” my aunt added.

  Their general agreement to my plan gave me energy. “I agree. So I thought we could start in the study. If we cleared that out we could stage items there. It’s a room we could live without indefinitely,” I concluded.

  We all agreed on the plan and decided we would start together that day after lunch, just to see how it would go. If the process seemed to be working, mom and Aunt Shelly could be comfortable leaving us to the details and Connie and I could manage it on our own from there. Connie went off to order the dumpster. Aunt Shelly and my mom went off to pick up a carry-out lunch, and I ran out to pick up sticky tags, boxes and wrapping bubbles. It was ironic that we had to buy cardboard boxes with so many already in the house but we had to have smaller ones for mailing and a few empty ones so we had somewhere to place and sort the items as we took them out of the older mildewed boxes. Now I was starting to get excited. Who knew what we were going to find? It was like a treasure hunt. And the organizer in me loved the prospect of turning chaos into order.