The Ghost and the Bride

by Anna J. McIntyre

  After hearing Ian’s words, Lily resisted the temptation to add, “Yes, it’s been wonderful we were able to spend this time together, but you are all starting to smell like fish.” After the unkind thought popped in her head, she chastised herself, remembering that poor Dani had no family to wear out their welcome. Plus, she really had enjoyed the past week with her family and Ian’s—in spite of occasional annoyances, such as their sisters trying to get the ceremony moved to the beach—and she was grateful their parents had the opportunity to get to know each other.

  When Lily returned to Marlow House later that evening, she went directly to her bedroom. She wanted to finish packing for her honeymoon before going to bed.

  Cory, who had convinced himself the flying shoe was a product of too much gin and beer, and not ghosts, moved back to the attic. Pamela, who didn’t want to draw Lily’s attention to her problems with Kent, intended to sleep in the downstairs bedroom again, but after Kent had too much wine at the rehearsal dinner, she decided to quietly move to the parlor sofa. Pamela had discovered she didn’t care for Kent when he had been drinking, something that had never been an issue before the accident.

  By 11:00 p.m. Friday, everyone in Marlow House had retired for the evening—except for Danielle and Pamela. Kent had passed out in the bed in the downstairs bedroom just minutes after coming home from the restaurant. Pamela had used the excuse that she was not ready to go to sleep when she brought a pillow and blanket into the parlor and curled up on the sofa to watch television. What she wasn’t telling anyone, she didn’t intend to return to the bedroom that night. If Kent woke up from his stupor, she didn’t want to deal with him.

  “Night, Pamela,” Danielle called out from the parlor doorway. She had just looked into the room and spied Lily’s cousin curled up on the sofa with the television on.

  “Is it okay if I watch TV for a while?” she asked.

  “Sure, no problem. Goodnight!”

  Television remote in hand, Pamela turned down the volume for a moment, listening for the sound of Danielle going up the stairs. When she didn’t hear anything, she tiptoed to the open doorway and looked out.

  Most of the lights downstairs had been turned off, aside from a few nightlights plugged into random outlets and the light along the staircase. She could see its glow from where she stood. After a few moments it went off, and she knew Danielle was upstairs.

  Closing the parlor door, Pamela locked it and then turned off the overhead light. Returning to the sofa, she turned off the television and then set the remote on the coffee table. Fluffing up the pillow she had brought with her, Pamela snuggled up under the blanket and closed her eyes.

  Pamela opened her eyes and found herself sitting in the library at Marlow House. She wondered briefly how she had gotten from the parlor’s sofa to the library. Had she been sleepwalking? A man sitting on one of the chairs facing the sofa startled her. He hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  Just as she started to ask him who he was, she glanced to her right and looked at the large portrait of Walt Marlow. Looking from the portrait back to the man in the chair, she frowned.

  “Who are you? You look just like Walt Marlow.”

  “That’s probably because that’s who I am.” Walt smiled at her as he took a puff off his cigar.

  In the next moment, a second man appeared, sitting on the chair next to Walt. It was Kent.

  Pamela frowned. “Where did you come from? You weren’t there a moment ago.”

  “I need to tell you something, Pamela,” Kent told her.

  “Tell me what?”

  “I want you to know I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you. Please remember that,” Kent insisted.

  With a sad expression, Pamela cocked her head slightly as she studied Kent. “But you don’t even remember me.”

  “I could never forget you. You’re the love of my life,” Kent insisted.

  “Oh, how I wish that were true,” she said with a sigh.

  “Please listen, Pamela, you need to go through with the divorce,” Kent told her.

  “Strange thing to say to someone who you insist is the love of your life.”

  “I don’t trust him. And he’s not the man you married,” Kent explained.

  “Oh, I know that,” Pamela mumbled.

  “Kent, could you be any less clear?” Walt snapped.

  “I’m trying, Walt,” Kent insisted.

  “You’re trying to be less clear?” Walt asked. “If that’s what you’re going for, then I’d say you’re doing a damn good job of it.”

  “Walt, please, I’m trying to explain to Pamela as best as I can. I’ve been wanting to talk to her since the accident, and you’re just confusing me!”

  “I’m confusing you? I’d say you appear quite capable of being confusing without any help from me,” Walt grumbled.

  “What are you trying to explain to me, Kent?” Pamela asked.

  “During the car accident, my spirit left my body. Before I could return, the spirit of one of the men who was killed that day claimed it. The man you think is your husband—he isn’t. It’s not me.”

  Her frown now deeper, Pamela slumped back in the chair and stared at him.

  “Do you understand?” Kent asked.

  Pamela considered his question a moment before answering. Finally, she said, “I think I do.”

  Kent smiled. “Good.”

  “This is a dream,” Pamela said cheerfully.

  “Yes…but…I’m really here,” Kent insisted.

  “God, I wish you were,” Pamela mumbled.

  “Listen to me, Pamela! I love you, but the man who’s sleeping in the downstairs bedroom at Marlow House is not me. He looks like me because he’s in my body, but he isn’t me. That’s why I want you to get that divorce. You’re not safe with him.”

  “What Kent’s saying is true.” Walt spoke up. “The reason he’s telling you is because he wants you to know he never stopped loving you, but for all intents and purposes, he died that day.”

  “Yes.” Pamela sighed. “I think I know that.”

  “No, seriously. I’m not saying theoretically. His body is still alive, but his spirit is no longer with his body,” Walt told her.

  “I’m not sure that sounds much clearer than how I was trying to explain it,” Kent argued.

  “I do understand,” Pamela said calmly. “The Kent I knew is not coming back. I need to accept it.”

  “It’s actually more than that—” Before Kent could finish his sentence, Pamela vanished.

  “Damn,” Walt muttered.

  “Where did she go?” Kent asked, looking around frantically.

  “I suspect something just woke her up,” Walt explained.

  In the next moment Walt and Kent were back in the parlor. As Walt had suspected, Pamela had woken up. They found her sitting up on the sofa, a purring Max in her lap.

  “Max, you woke her up!” Walt accused.

  Unashamed, Max’s golden eyes glanced over to Walt, his purr loud, as he made himself comfortable.

  Thirty-One

  The alarm clock woke Danielle at six on Saturday morning. Rolling out of bed, she cursed herself for staying up so late the night before. As she stumbled to her bathroom, clutching the clothes she had laid out before going to bed, Walt appeared, standing between her and the bathroom door. Danielle noticed the three-piece suit he wore was not pinstripe—instead it was light beige, with a dark brown tie.

  “I heard your alarm clock,” he told her.

  “I gotta go to the bathroom. Please move,” she groaned, waving him to the side.

  When Danielle returned to the bedroom five minutes later, she was fully dressed and running a brush through her hair. She found Walt waiting for her, sitting on the side of her unmade bed.

  “You could have at least brought me coffee,” she grumbled as she took a seat at her vanity and looked in the mirror.

  “I would have, but we might have lost some from the wedding party had they seen a cup floating up the
stairs.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” She flashed Walt a quick grin and then turned her attention back to the mirror. She intended to wear her hair down today—no braid.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” Walt told her.

  “Can it wait? I’ve a ton of things to do this morning. They’re delivering the chairs at seven and the flowers at eight. I really want to get the chairs set up before the flowers arrive. And then Joanne—”

  “I had a dream hop last night with Kent and Pamela,” he blurted.

  About to apply eyeliner, Danielle paused and turned to Walt. “I assume you mean Kent’s spirit?”

  Walt nodded. “Before Kent moves on, he wanted her to understand what really happened. That he never stopped loving her.”

  Danielle grimaced briefly and then turned back to the mirror, leaning close to her reflection as she applied the eyeliner. “She’s just going to think it was a dream.”

  “Not if you tell her it wasn’t.”

  After finishing her right eye, Danielle applied the liner above her left eye. “Do we really want to open up that Pandora’s box?”

  “She has a right to know.”

  Replacing the lid on the eyeliner, Danielle turned to Walt. “Maybe she does, but what good will it do her now? I’m not sure I’d want to know. The important thing, she’s agreed to a divorce. She can move on with her life. It’s not like she can march up to Kent’s body and demand that Billings give it back. It’s all too creepy. And what happens if she believes me and then does something crazy.”

  Walt frowned. “Crazy how?”

  “Think about it, if the woman you loved had lost her body to some evil spirit—and face it, from what we know about Billings, he is not a nice guy—wouldn’t you be tempted to do something? Like maybe—hit her over the head and see if you can knock her unconscious. Maybe force the spirit to move out?”

  Walt perked up. “You think that might work?”

  “I’ve given it a lot of thought, ever since we learned what happened. I don’t think it will work, because I suspect Billings intends to hang on tight to that body—especially now that he knows Pamela is willing to hand all that money over to him. If Pamela attempted something like that, it would likely get her put in jail. I don’t want to go there.”

  “I could give him a good smack,” Walt offered cheerfully.

  “No, thanks. If your smack goes too far and he dies—someone from Marlow House will be charged with murder. And to make matters worse, his pissed-off spirit might decide to stick around. No. There’s nothing we can do, and to try is just too darn risky.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he reluctantly conceded.

  Danielle turned back to her mirror and finished her makeup. When she stood up a few minutes later and turned toward her bed, Walt was no longer sitting down.

  “You made the bed!” Danielle grinned.

  “You have a lot to do today, it was the least I could do.”

  When Danielle opened her bedroom door a few minutes later, she found Lily standing in the hallway, preparing to knock.

  “It’s my wedding day!” Lily squealed excitedly.

  Danielle grinned. “You certainly don’t look as if you’re having second thoughts.”

  “Nope.” Lily glanced over her shoulder into the hallway. “Can we talk for a moment, in private?”

  “Sure, come on in.” Danielle walked back into the bedroom with Lily and shut the door. Walt was no longer there.

  “I was curious, that ghost—has he been back?”

  “He’s nothing you need to worry about. I’m pretty sure he’s just a spirit who was passing through. It happens sometimes.”

  Lily let out a sigh of relief. “Good. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when you see a ghost, but when one starts hanging around the house, I figure it must mean something, and frankly, I just don’t want anything to mess up today.”

  “It won’t. So is this the wedding you’ve always dreamed about? You don’t have some secret desire to move it to the beach?” Danielle teased.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” Lily asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Umm…sure…” Danielle frowned, wondering briefly if Lily had wanted a beach wedding.

  “I’ve never dreamed of a wedding. In fact, I never gave much thought to marriage. Not that I was against it. It was just never about getting married for the sake of marriage.”

  “But you want to get married now, right?”

  “Of course! But it’s about Ian. He’s really the first man I’ve ever known who I wanted to share the rest of my life with.”

  “Well, considering the number of men you’ve—” Danielle teased.

  “Hey!” Lily playfully smacked Danielle’s arm. “You have to be nice to me! It’s my wedding day.”

  Danielle grinned. “Actually, I understand what you mean.”

  “Do you? I don’t imagine Laura would. I dearly love my sister, but she’s wanted to get married since we were little girls and she’d make me play wedding. Of course, she always dressed up as the bride. What I never understood, why does anyone dream of getting married when they don’t even have a boyfriend? Well, at least she obviously didn’t back then. But now, she keeps trying, three broken engagements behind her. I suppose it’s a good thing she didn’t actually marry any of those guys, or she would have been divorced several times by now.”

  “I don’t remember daydreaming about marriage when I was a teenager, but I do remember a few girl friends who did. I was pretty young when I married Lucas. At the time, it just seemed like that was the most obvious step.”

  “What about now, Dani? You ever see yourself walking down that aisle again?”

  Danielle glanced over to where Walt had been standing before Lily had arrived. “I don’t think so.”

  Lily didn’t go downstairs with Danielle. Instead, she stayed upstairs with her mother and sister as they helped her get ready for the wedding.

  Downstairs, Danielle instructed the placement of the folding chairs that had arrived a few minutes after seven. Since the guest list was small and the Marlow House entry hall spacious, the chairs were set up in the entry, as they had been for Walt’s wedding. When the flowers arrived, the chairs were already arranged, making it a relatively easy task to place the flowers where Lily wanted them. Of course, she was not allowed downstairs to oversee their placement. That task was left to Danielle, who worked from a drawing Lily had prepared.

  In the kitchen, Joanne made finger sandwiches, with the help of Ian’s mother and sister. Since the wedding was scheduled for 11 a.m., the menu for the luncheon reception following the ceremony included a light fare of crustless sandwiches, fresh fruit salad, miniature quiche, and wedding cake. Lily and Ian decided against any hard liquor and instead were serving champagne, beer and wine. Their plan was to leave the reception before two in the afternoon.

  Kent’s impostor avoided getting roped into helping set up for the wedding by claiming his back was troubling him—a chronic pain from the accident. In truth, he felt amazing physically. In fact, when he had been in his Billings body, he had never felt this good.

  At first he was going to retreat to the side yard, but when Ian and Chris showed up with more chairs to set up—this time in the yard—he headed for the porch swing located at the front of the house. There he hoped to make an uninterrupted phone call.

  “Are you ready to meet today?” was all Felicia said when she answered the phone call he had just placed to her.

  “Yes, but I think we should go somewhere else. Maybe meet on the beach,” he suggested.

  “No. If we do this, I want to meet at Marlow House,” she insisted.

  “Marlow House, why? There’s going to be people here all day. I need to talk to you alone.”

  “Then why don’t we meet there tomorrow?” she suggested.

  “No…no. We’re supposed to be going to Portland tomorrow to fly back to California. I have to do this before then. I need to talk to you before I
decide if I should stay in Oregon or fly back to California.”

  “Why in the world would you want to stay in Oregon?” she asked.

  “I’ll explain everything when I see you. But it has to be today.”

  “But I want to do it at Marlow House,” she said stubbornly. “But not if there’s going to be a bunch of people there…if that’s the case, maybe I won’t bother coming today.”

  “Why here? Why does it matter?”

  “I’ve always wanted to see inside it. And I figure if I drive all the way over to Frederickport, I should at least get a look through Marlow House.”

  “Fine,” he grumbled. “Once you set your mind on something, you can be stubborn.”

  “That’s what Tagg used to tell me.” She laughed.

  When he didn’t respond, she snapped, “Tagg was my boyfriend. One of the men you killed.”

  “Yes, I know. I need to talk to you about that.”

  “Do you have the thousand bucks you promised?”

  “Yes, in cash.”

  “Good. When can I meet you there when there won’t be a bunch of people?”

  He considered the question a moment. Finally, he said, “The wedding should be over by two. I know the bride and groom are taking off for Portland about that time. But then, they’ll be cleaning up after the wedding. I heard Danielle say something about the rental company picking up the chairs this afternoon at four. After that, they’re all going out for an early dinner. Everyone should be gone before five.”

  “That’s kind of late,” she grumbled.

  “How about I rent you a room at one of the motels? You can stay overnight. There’s a place right on the beach; I can get you a room.”

  “Will the money come out of the thousand?” she asked.

  “No. I’ll cover it.”

  “So Danielle Boatman won’t be there?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked.