by Morgana Best
A Ghost of a Chance (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 1)
Copyright © 2015 by Morgana Best.
All Rights Reserved.
Smashwords Edition.
Smashwords License Notes.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy from your favorite ebook retailer. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.
* * *
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the author, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book may contain references to specific commercial products, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and/or trade names of products, which are trademarks or registered trademarks and/or trade names, and these are property of their respective owners. Morgana Best or her associates, have no association with any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, specific brand-name products and / or trade names of products.
By this act
And words of rhyme
Trouble not
These books of mine
With these words I now thee render
Candle burn and bad return
3 times stronger to its sender.
(Ancient Celtic)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Connect with Morgana
Next Book in this Series
Other books by Morgana Best
About Morgana Best
Chapter 1
“The wages of sin is death!”
I jumped when I heard the words that made up the blaring ringtone of my mother’s cell phone. Sure, we were outside a chapel, so it was an appropriate setting for such words, I suppose, but it was my father’s funeral after all.
The service had just ended, and my mother was busy complaining to her captive audience about the minister’s words. “This was a good opportunity for Pastor Green to witness to the unsaved,” she said for the umpteenth time. “He spoke about nothing else but my husband, Larry, yet he calls himself an evangelist!”
I sighed and turned back to accept the condolences of people I had never met. I’d left home for college, and had done my best not to return home from Melbourne since. Witch Woods was a small town in New South Wales, a two to three day drive from Melbourne. I’d grown accustomed to the hustle and bustle of city life, and that was one of the reasons I’d planned to stay in town for only a week or two, max. The main reason was my mother. For the sake of my sanity, I could not live with her day in, day out, for too long.
It also didn’t help that I was able to see and speak to ghosts. A funeral home was not a good place for a person with such abilities, for obvious reasons. You would think a major city like Melbourne would be full of ghosts, and you would be right, but I was good at not letting on that I could see them. Ghosts always leave you alone if they think you can’t see them.
However, in Witch Woods, the people, living and dead, knew me, so it was hard to pretend. The one saving grace was that most people crossed over to the other side as soon as they died, and it was only the ones with unfinished business who remained on this earthly plane.
My childhood had not been easy. My mother had been horrified that I spoke to my imaginary friends, which is what she called them, although she knew the truth. The ability to see ghosts happened to the daughters of every second generation in Mom’s family. My grandmother had told me this when I was around ten years of age, just before she died. However, my own mother was in denial. She had taken me to child psychologists and even had me on medication for a while, until my father had put a stop to it. I had soon learned not to speak to ghosts in front of anyone.
My mother’s voice snapped me back to the present. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” my mother said to someone I hadn’t met, a Goth teenager, who was backed up against a wall with no visible means of escape. “I’m not upset about my husband, as he’s in a better place. But do you know where you will spend eternity?”
“Err, no,” the teenager said, looking around frantically.
“Mom, Pastor Green wants to speak to you,” I lied. The teenager shot me a grateful look and hurried away. I wouldn’t fare so well. I knew I would pay for that later.
I was developing quite a nasty headache, and the noise level didn’t help. There were so many people, I suppose because everyone knew Dad as he had the funeral home, and everyone from Mom’s church appeared to be here as well.
Mom appeared at my side. “Liars and perjurers do not inherit the kingdom of God,” she said loudly, pointing to me, and everyone turned to look.
My face burned hot with embarrassment. I beat a hasty retreat and headed for the door that led to the kitchen, intending to refill the coffee pot. We generally served coffee, tea, cold drinks, and snacks to attendees after a funeral. Just as my hand closed around the doorknob, someone cleared their throat loudly behind me.
I swung around to see an elderly man, a cranky expression on his face. His clothes were old fashioned, like from fifties movies. His trousers were somewhat baggy, and he looked unkempt. He was wearing a frown. “Who are you?” he barked at me.
“I’m Laurel Bay,” I said, extending my hand to shake his.
He backed away and looked at my hand. “Bay?” he repeated. “Are you Larry’s daughter?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
The man stepped forward and narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t seen you around before.”
Here we go again. I’d have to go through my life story one more time that day. “No, I went to Melbourne for college and stayed there. I’m only back for Dad’s funeral. And you are?”
“Ernie Forsyth.”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get back to work.”
Before I had a chance to leave, Ernie snorted rudely. “Work! Do you call this work? Does anyone around here actually know how to run a funeral home properly? Do you have any idea what your mother does with the profits? I’ll have you know that I used to run a very successful funeral home, until I retired to Witch Woods. I gave your father advice many a time, but he just wouldn’t hear me.”
I rubbed my temples. I didn’t need this right now. “Well, thank you, Mr. Forsyth, but—”
He cut me off. “You can call me Ernie.”
“Okay, Ernie.” I looked past Ernie to see two elderly ladies staring at me.
“Are you okay, dear?” the taller one said as she walked over to me, straight through Ernie.
Chapter 2
I stepped into the lawyer’s office, and I was surprised to see how cramped it was. There was a desk near the back of the room, almost
touching both walls, and two chairs sat in front of it. Just next to the door was a large bookcase that was leaning to one side, as though it might fall over at any moment. It had piles of important looking books on it, the kind you would certainly expect a lawyer to have.
The lawyer himself, Mr. Goddard, was sitting behind his desk. He removed his reading glasses when I entered the room, followed by my mother. He squeezed himself between one end of the desk and the wall and made his way to us, extending his hand. After I shook his hand, I stepped aside for my mother to do the same.
“Please, have a seat, and we can get this underway. I know now is a time of pain and sadness, and I doubt either of you want to spend more time in here than necessary,” Mr. Goddard said. He was a large man with an immaculate goatee perched on his chin. His eyes were narrow and pale blue, and his brown hair thinning.
It was obvious to me that the lawyer was right about me not wanting to spend more time in his office than necessary. The place was so small that it felt like an elevator, and the whole room was stuffy. There was a window in the office, right behind the desk, but it was firmly shut. I spent a moment wondering if it would be rude for me to ask him to open it. I decided to suffer in silence.
My mother chose one chair, and I dropped into the other. I looked over at her, and saw her hand dip into her purse. She pulled out a white handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes, a move I had seen plenty of times in the short time I had been home. It looked exactly like what a good grieving woman would do.
That wasn’t to say I thought my mother wasn’t grieving, of course. I knew that she was. Whatever her faults, and there were really too many to list, she had loved my father, and he had loved her, for some reason I had never figured out.
“Thank you for seeing us a little earlier than you had planned,” my mother said, smiling at the lawyer. “I have a church group function today, and I couldn’t miss it.”
Mr. Goddard nodded as he sat back down at his desk. He folded his beefy hands on the desktop in front of him. “Church is important,” he said.
“It is the most important thing I know of,” my mother said, “but we don’t see you there every Sunday, Henry. Shall we see you there this week?”
It was all I could do not to scream and dive through the window. I didn’t have a problem with church in general; it was more a problem with my mother. Living through my childhood had been bad enough, being forced to attend the countless hours of church functions most days of the week. But to be back, and to see that my mother wasn’t any different now than she had been when I was a child, creeped me out a bit, to be honest. It was fine to be religious, but she was a fanatic and not even a borderline one. If God were a business, she would certainly be the number one salesperson in the office.
The lawyer had a manila folder on his desk. He flipped open the cover and pulled out a document that consisted of a good number of pages. I sincerely hoped he didn’t intend to read each and every page. He picked up his reading glasses and set them on the end of his nose once more.
“Now your husband, and your father, of course,” he said, nodding to each of us in turn, “has left a few things to others, and they will be notified in due course, but I thought we could go ahead and go through it since you two will be receiving the bulk of his estate, such as it is.”
My mother and I both nodded, waiting for the man to go on.
“Thelma, you are to receive the residence behind the funeral home, the considerable sum of your husband’s savings…” and the lawyer continued, while my attention drifted. Of course, my mom was to receive most of my father’s things, if not everything. I figured he would leave me something, maybe his prized Gary Ablett Senior signed AFL football jersey. Football was something I only marginally cared about, but my mother didn’t care at all, so my father had gravitated to me as his football buddy.
Indeed when the lawyer was finished with my mother and looked at me, the jersey was the first thing he mentioned. The second thing, however, took me by surprise.
“And also, Ms. Bay, your father has instructed that you are to take over the day-to-day running of the funeral home. More precisely, he has left the funeral home, the acreage on which it stands, and the business, to you.”
My mouth dropped open, and beside me my mother said, “What?”
I looked at her. She was as shocked as I was.
Mr. Goddard went on. “Thelma, as I said, you are to receive the residence on the allotment behind the funeral home, but your daughter is being given the business itself.”
“I can’t run a business,” I said.
“You’re right!” my mother screeched. “You don’t know the first thing about it. I’ve been by your father’s side for years. And this is how he repays me? I’m so hurt. I’m so hurt that I’m completely speechless. How could he do this to me? He could never make a decision for himself. He didn’t even discuss the will with me. In fact, I’m not sure this is even legal. I should be the one to take over the business.”
“You can do it!” I said. “Believe me, I’ll give it to you.”
“Actually, hold up a moment!” Mr. Goddard said as he raised a thick finger in the air, commanding our attention. We both looked at him, and he went on. “The deceased states that if Ms. Bay is able but unwilling to run the funeral home, it will simply be put up for sale. She is the only person in the family he wanted to run it.”
I looked at my mother. “Okay, we can sell it.”
“Absolutely not!” my mother said. “With God as my witness, and of course, being the great Christian that I am, he is always my witness, but as God as my witness, no one but our family will ever run that business.” She fixed me with a withering glare. “Laurel, I feel in my spirit that God is telling me to oversee the business and do periodic checks on you, to make sure you are indeed running it. I believe God is telling me that I alone should manage the purse strings.”
“We can sell it,” I repeated. “I don’t even want any of the money.”
My mother pulled another white handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at her forehead. “No! What would I do after that money was gone? I need to work. I need that business.”
“But if I run the funeral home, you wouldn’t get money from it, anyway,” I said, confused.
“If you ran it, obviously you would hire me as the general manager,” my mother said sharply.
To be honest, I hadn’t even considered hiring my mother. Not that I had ever thought about running the funeral home, but if I had, she’s not someone I would hire. And I wasn’t even sure the funeral home had ever had a general manager. That sounded more like a job you would get in retail. Dad had always done the lion’s share of the work himself.
Behind his desk, Mr. Goddard looked a bit uncomfortable. “That’s all the will says,” he said, rising from his chair, no doubt trying to get us to leave. I took the hint and stood, and my mother did the same. I shook the lawyer’s hand and then my mother did, too.
My mother then leaned over the desk, and peered into the man’s eyes. “You know, I meant to tell you, I suggest you look into changing your name. The name ‘Goddard’ is blasphemous. If you don’t change it, I wouldn’t expect you to be welcomed into heaven. I told Pastor Green of my concerns last year, and I’m surprised he didn’t mention it to you.”
The lawyer’s mouth dropped open, but he quickly shut it. “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”
My mother nodded and patted his cheek. Then she turned and walked out of the office. I threw an apologetic look at the lawyer, and followed her.
We had driven to the lawyer’s office together, something I was now regretting. We climbed into my car and I started the engine.
“So you can leave it all to me, but you can appear as though you’re running the business,” my mother said firmly, as I pulled into the street. “That was obviously what your father really wanted.”
“What if the lawyer finds out?” I asked.
“Now, you don’t need to be a little brat,” she said. �
��You’ve caused me enough problems as it is. You took three days to be born, and you’ve given me trouble ever since. Did you know, a woman came up to me in the hospital bathroom and asked me if I’d had a boy or a girl? I was forced to admit that I hadn’t had the baby yet. Do you have any idea how embarrassed I was? I knew then what I was in for with you. You caused me trouble then, and you’re causing me trouble now.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Well, we can make it look like you’re running it, but I’ll do it.”
I sighed. Mom always pulled out the three-days-to-be-born story when she was super mad with me. “Mom, I don’t live here. I don’t want to live here. I don’t even live in this state. I have a life! I have another job.”
She snorted rudely. “A retail store assistant? Hmpf!”
“Mom, you know I’m a jewelry valuer.”
She pursed her lips. “Well, I won’t sell it.”
I shook my head. I got on the small two-lane highway and headed back to the small town in which I had grown up. Everything around here was small. It drove me nuts.
“It’s not up to you, Mom,” I said, quite bravely. “It’s up to me, and I don’t know the first thing about running a funeral home. Dad did it all. He embalmed until Janet came along; he hosted the gatherings. Everything. What am I supposed to do?”
“You need to do it, because I guess it’s all up to you. But you cannot sell it.”
“I’m going to sell it,” I said quietly. “I can’t see any other option.”
“You need to pray more,” my mother said in a huff. “Come to the church outreach meeting with me today.”
“No,” I said with enough severity that my mother let it go, and we drove on in icy stillness. When we got home, she got out in stony silence and went directly to her car. She pulled out of the drive and headed toward her church.
I went inside. The place was empty. No one was working that day. The business was dead, so to speak, while everything got ironed out. I walked down a long hall and then opened a plain white door. It led to a corridor, and I found myself in the embalming room. There was a slanted metal table there, and numerous tools that were foreign to me. Dad had spent a lot of time here. He prided himself on making people look as natural as possible after death, and he was very good at his job. Of course, as the business had grown, he had employed Janet to do that.
