Ghost in the Pages

by Angela M Hudson

  Ali nodded. She knew that all too well. “Can someone call him—tell him I’m okay?”

  Di nodded, and both women left the room. It was only then that Ali took a moment to appraise herself and the room. White curtains, glossy floors, stiff bed, and a large window. Flowers. Lots of flowers. Maybe a bunch from every person in town. There were cards on them, and from what she could see of the names nearby, she had no idea who they were. But they were all sorry and praying for her quick recovery.

  Ali sent her mind down her body then. Tube in her nose; tube in her nether region; tube in her hand. Arm in a cast, feeling bruised everywhere. She touched her neck and immediately drew her fingers away in agony and disgust. That was obviously very bad.

  When she swallowed, her throat still felt tight, making her panic a little. Calming herself with a slow breath, Ali curled her hands into tight fists to fight the urge to scream. Then her thoughts went to the baby.

  Without giving it a second thought she grabbed the buzzer and called the nurse in, pressing it again and again until a silhouette appeared on the glossy floors outside her room.

  “What is it?” Ginger asked impatiently.

  “The baby.”

  “All fine.” Ginger smiled. “You’re very early yet. The doctor guesses eight weeks—”

  “But he punched me in the stomach—”

  “And it’s fine,” she assured Ali. “They can withstand quite a bit, you know.”

  Ali shook her head. She didn't know. She had no idea.

  “Oh, and here,” Ginger said, moving to the table by the door. “Doctor Finely left this for you. When they realized you were pregnant they took you down for a scan just make sure everyone was okay.”

  Ali took the small picture she was handed and frowned at the mess of white and black smudges, wondering if this was some joke. “What is it?”

  “That’s your babies. See?” Ginger leaned over and pointed to a white dot, moving her finger across to another white dot.

  “Wait, what?” Ali looked up at her. “Did you say babies? As in plural. Not one. Two?”

  Ginger nodded. “You didn't know?”

  “No.” Ai hugged the picture, her skin tightening with little bumps of relief. “Does Sam know?”

  “No. We weren't allowed to say anything on account of the fact that he’s not family.”

  Ali laughed without understanding why, relaxing her spine. “My sister? Does she—”

  “Oh yes. She knows.” Ginger rolled her eyes. “She flew in on the red-eye when she heard what happened and she’s been bossing everyone around since. Wants only the best for her baby sister and nieces and/or nephews. Or both.”

  “It could be both?”

  “Fraternal twins.” Ginger nodded. “Non-identical.”

  Ali allowed herself to dream for a moment, imagining the look on Sam’s face when he not only saw her alive and well but found out they were having an instant nuclear family. “Is Mel here now?”

  “She went home to Mrs. Beaty’s for some rest. She’ll be back later.”

  “Does she . . . did she see the surveillance tape?”

  “No. But she knows all the details.”

  “All the details? Including what happened to . . . to . . ” She couldn't say his name, but in piecing things together right now, she also couldn't recall seeing him escape. And something cold stuck in her mind, her ears still tuning in to his terror-stricken scream.

  “No one’s got much details about that sick fuck, ’scuse my French. All we know is he got stuck in the fire and died after he tried to kill ya.”

  Ali nodded. That was good. She hoped he suffered and screamed. “What time is it?” She looked for her watch but it was gone. “And what day is it? How long have I been asleep?”

  “Six days—”

  “Six days!” She wanted to cry, feeling suddenly like she was trying to fly but couldn’t get off the ground. “Has anyone reached Sam yet? I need to see him, I—”

  “Not yet. I’ll go call him again. He’s not answering his phone, see? Case we call to tell him you didn’t make it.”

  Ali’s heart broke for Sam. She nodded, sitting back on her pillows.

  “Back in a jiffy, sweet pea.” Ginger walked toward the hall and then quickly stepped aside as Sam burst into the room, wrapping his sooty, smelly body around Ali before she’d fully realized he was there.

  “Thank god,” he breathed, kissing her head. “Thank god!”

  Ali wrapped her good arm around him and buried her face in his neck. “Sam, I’m so sorry—”

  “No.” He leaned out from her body, his eyes red and wet and swollen from crying. “Don't you dare ever apologize. This is my fault. I should have been there—”

  “No it’s not. And Sam, I need to tell you something—”

  “Grant killed Sarah?” he guessed, nodding. “We know. There was audio on the surveillance. We heard everything. Saw everything—”

  “I know. Di told me.”

  “Did she tell you how he died?”

  “Who?”

  “Grant. He . . .” His eyes drifted off to nowhere. “Ali, you won’t believe what we saw on that tape. No one can explain it.”

  “What?”

  He leaned in, lowering his voice. “It was smoky and hard to see. But you can still make out a figure—which we believe was Grant—flying a few feet into the air, like he was lifted by a full grown man. And then he snaps.”

  “Snaps?”

  “Snaps!” He broke an imaginary branch over his knee. “Snapped backward. After that, flames leave the fireplace like . . . it’s like rabbits jumping a fence, and it all goes to hell from there. But, Ali . . .” He smiled, unable to believe it himself. “No one wants to say it aloud, but we all know what did that.”

  Ali grinned, giving Sarah a little mental high five. “So I guess he got what he deserved after all,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Sam said with a laugh. “He did. Oh, and hey.” He bent slightly around and reached into his back pocket. “Marv found this. Safe and sound.”

  Ali looked at the open box—the birthday gift she’d been dying to give him—and almost cried. “You opened it?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but anyone could see he wasn't sorry. He leaned in and kissed her mouth, drawing away to look into the beautiful face of the woman carrying his child. “You are amazing, Ali.”

  “So I take it you’re happy?” she asked, wondering if he’d then ask if it was his.

  “Happy?” He laughed, brows high. “I just took the fifteen minute drive over here and managed to eat an entire box of ice cream on the way!”

  Ali laughed.

  “You have made me the happiest man alive.” He kissed her again. “I don’t care that the house burned down. I don’t care that I have nowhere to live and no stuff. You’re here, you’re safe. And we’re having a baby.”

  “Um, actually,” Ali started, happy again when she realized the surprise wasn’t totally ruined. She did have at least one thing to give him that he didn’t yet know about. “Not a baby.”

  “What?” Sam looked down as she lifted the small square picture and showed it to him. His eyes swept over the images, and though Ali had no idea what was what, his medically trained eye must have seen it right away. He let out a loud “Ha!” through a massive smile and then looked closer at the picture.

  “This—” He held up the image. “Twins?”

  Ali nodded, her face spreading into a wide grin.

  The elation moved up from his heart and illuminated his beaming grin. “We’re having twins!” he practically yelled.

  “What?” Di screeched from the doorway. “You’re pregnant?”

  Ali and Sam glanced over as Mrs. Beaty and Mel swarmed into the room behind Di, little Charlie wailing loudly as everyone fussed in high voices, kissing and hugging Ali and Sam. Congratulations were thrown wildly around the room, the excitement tiring Ali out quickly.

  Mel hugged Sam then and whispered, “I’ve been dying to tell you
.”

  “You knew?” he said, drawing back from the hug.

  “Of course—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I knew my sister would want to tell you—”

  “And besides,” Mrs. Beaty said, “we knew Miss Ali would pull through but you were convinced she wouldn't. Nothing we said changed that, Sammy. We didn't want you to be worrying about the babies as well.”

  “So you knew as well?” Sam asked the old woman.

  Mrs. Beaty nodded, smiling.

  “I had to tell someone,” Mel said, beaming with excitement. “Little Charlie just didn’t have a thing to say about it when I told him.”

  Ali gave Sam a remorseful pout. The poor guy must have been through hell, she thought, wishing she’d been there to comfort him. And now he was one of the last people to find out he was going to be a dad.

  “Was there anyone that didn’t know?” he asked.

  Di put her hand up, eyes misted with happy tears.

  Sam sat down in the chair beside Ali and shook his head at the picture again, still slightly in shock. In one moment he had almost lost everything. The fear that paralyzed him as he sped home that night only to arrive at a house on fire, his girlfriend hanging by her neck and arm, was still so fresh in his mind that he woke up screaming at night. His house burned down and, though the insurance company agreed to pay him out, he was still a man without a home. And until a few minutes ago, he thought Ali would be in a coma for the rest of her days. Now he was sitting here looking at his family. His two children growing inside the woman he was going to ask to marry him.

  He stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Ali said, her smile slipping away.

  Sam backed toward the door. “I’ll be back soon. Can I take this?” He held up the photo.

  “Um, sure,” Ali said, frowning at the other women as Sam ran out of the room. They heard his boots squeak all the way down the corridor until they vanished behind an echoing apology that followed a loud crash.

  “I wonder where he’s going,” Mel said.

  Mrs. Beaty smiled to herself, her hands gathered at her front. “I have a pretty good idea.”

  ~22~

  New Beginnings; Old Stove

  The car slowed. Ali could hear the familiar crunching of gravel under the tires and knew they were home. Or, what was left of their home. She lifted her head off the window and opened her eyes, seeing only the diamond ring on her finger through the small gap in the blindfold.

  “Can I look now?”

  “Not yet,” he said sweetly. Ali could hear the excitement in his voice. She could also hear the beeping sounds of large vehicles reversing and the rushing roars of their engines.

  The car door opened and Ali felt Sam take her arm, guiding her out of the car carefully. It was much noisier out here and it was quickly obvious to her that the remains of the house were being cleared away. She just couldn't understand why she needed a blindfold for that. There was no way Sam could have rebuilt the house in the last three weeks while she recovered, bedridden, at Mel’s new house.

  “What are we doing here, Sam?”

  “Doing where?” he said innocently, leading her up the curbside. She almost slipped on the snow until, with a gasp, Sam corrected her steps and moved in to hold her up.

  “We’re on Hamilton Street,” she said.

  “How can you tell?”

  Ali drew a deep lungful of air and breathed it out slowly. “I’d know that smell anywhere.”

  Sam laughed, placing something in her hand. “Here. This is what we’re doing.”

  Ali closed her fingers around a small, familiar key, and as it sunk in with a rush of excitement, she ripped the blindfold off, her eyes going up to the dilapidated old house beside the almost completely cleared block that once was their home. She didn’t need to ask what this meant. She needed only to see that the repairs had begun on the portion of the house where the tree had fallen, and when her eyes went past the “Sold” sign sitting out front, her whole face crumpled into an uncontrollable ugly-cry.

  “You bought Mrs. Denver’s house?”

  Sam nodded, grinning. “I went to see her. Took the picture of our little family and begged her to sell it to us.”

  Ali covered her mouth, crying harder. She loved that house! And now it was hers. Theirs.

  “She didn’t even hesitate when I asked her,” Sam said, shaking his head as he looked up at their new home. “She said she’d grown up next door to my great-grandfather and she adored him and always adored me. She never wanted this house to end up in the hands of those strangers that would come in from the city to take the keys off her dead body. She wants this old place to belong to someone that loves this town as much as she does, that wants to raise a family as a part of it. So, she sold it to me while it was still hers to sell.”

  Ali’s face was completely wet with tears. She turned and stood on her toes to throw her arms around Sam, hardly able to believe she had come to this town alone and lost, afraid of this man she now held on to so fiercely. He was everything she was ever looking for in her life and she didn’t even know she’d been searching for anything at all.

  “We’ll renovate, of course,” Sam said. “But Mrs. Denver did give one very strict stipulation—even threatened to haunt us when she dies if we don’t adhere.”

  “Okay.” Ali laughed, wiping her face as she stepped back. “What is it then?”

  “The stove,” he said, making a tight, awkward face. “She wants us to keep the stove.”

  A burst of laughter left Ali’s lips and she wiped them after, nodding. “Of course she’d want us to keep that old heap.”

  “It’s all right.” He put his arm around her and they both smiled up at their new beginning. “We can use it as a storage shelf and build a working stove on the other side of the kitchen.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Good. Now . . .” He swept his hand out and offered the way. “Let’s go cross the threshold of our new home.”

  Mrs. Beaty and Di were waiting on the step with baby Charlie when they arrived, and Mel stepped out with a basket in her hands.

  “What’s this?” Ali asked, frowning at it.

  “Bread.” Mel handed a long loaf to Ali. “So that this house never knows hunger. And salt,” she added, handing them a small salt shaker, “so that life always has flavor. And” —Mel grinned, handing a green bottle to Sam— “wine for prosperity.”

  Ali laughed. “Someone’s been watching It’s a Beautiful Life again.”

  Mel shrugged. “I thought it was a nice idea.”

  “Me too,” Ali said, laying her gifts in her arm.

  “And there’s one more tradition we best follow, according to Mrs. Denver,” Sam said, handing Mrs. Beaty the wine as he bent to scoop Ali up in his arms. She squealed, laughing then as the three women parted to allow entry, and Sam crossed the threshold with his wife-to-be into their new home—new ghost-free home.

  “At least this means Charlie and I can come visit you now,” Mel said thoughtfully, taking in the new digs. “Since we won’t have to worry about restless spirits.”

  “Ha! I didn’t think of that,” Sam cheered, placing Ali down.

  “Something tells me Sarah Harvey isn't all that restless these days anyway,” Ali said, wondering where she’d ended up after the fire, if she’d crossed over now that her unfinished business had been settled.

  “Well, all’s well that ends well,” Mrs. Beaty said, cupping Ali’s arm.

  “Yes, it is.” Ali smiled.

  Everyone left then to let Ali and Sam look around alone. It would be a few months before the house was ready to be lived in, but Ali was happy to wait, and Sam had big plans for this place, finally able to picture a life he never allowed himself to imagine.

  “We’ll have a room for each of the kids,” he explained, walking Ali along the ground floor and pointing up to where the rooms would be. “And we’ll turn your old bedroom into a writing room—”
<
br />   “I want the turret,” Ali said.

  Sam stopped. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “I want that as a writing room. I always have.”

  “Well, okay.” He smiled. “So I guess the front bedroom can be a nursery for now until the kids are old enough for their own rooms.”

  “Perfect.”

  “And we’ll have to childproof the stairs and the fireplaces,” he went on, leading Ali into the kitchen as he exploded with ideas. Ali quite liked the house the way it was, though. It had grown on her, but she had also loved Sam's house and knew he had good taste. He would make their new home just as perfect as his, with a little bit of the imperfection that gave this old place character.

  While Sam knelt down to study the belly of the old stove, Ali watched out the window as the workmen next door left their trucks and hurried away under an onset of heavy rain. This would be the place she stood in times to come, watching the leaves change from one season to the next, her little family growing up around her. When the kids grew older and left home, it would just be her and Sam and the stories she wrote, the pictures he painted, and everything about each season of her life to come sounded perfect. Perfect, if it was here, in this house, with Sam. She didn't care that her novel had to be started from scratch since she was too stupid to use iCloud. She didn't care that her failed novel had become a bestseller since the story of the ghost and her near death leaked. All she cared about right now was the future.

  A grumble of thunder rolled over the hills outside, heading toward town, and as a small flicker of lightning brightened the gloomy day for a split second, Ali leaned forward, squinting to see through the rain. Out there, with the sloped backdrop of the forest and the foggy blurriness of cold rising off wet snow, Ali thought she saw a woman. Dark red coat. Black umbrella. Looking up at the naked trees.

  She drew a small breath to call for Sam but the woman turned, eyes meeting over the distance between them. It was hard to tell what was real or imagined sometimes, but Ali knew in her heart that the woman standing out there in the rain was Sarah.