by K. J. Emrick
“We’re not staying, Mom.”
“No? Oh, that’s too bad. Well, I suppose I have to take what I can and be happy for the time we have. No one lives forever, you know. Certainly not a poor old woman like me.”
Darcy grimaced at the heavy-handed guilt trip layered into those words. Jozelle was being very sweet about it, but Darcy could tell how much it hurt her to know that her daughter had stayed away all this time and now wouldn’t even stay to visit. Gloria didn’t appear to notice, but Darcy did.
As they walked down the hallway Darcy kept looking all around the house, trying to see Steve’s ghost again. If he was here, maybe she could find some private time to communicate with him. She groaned inwardly at that idea because in previous experience, finding alone time with a ghost usually meant excusing herself to somewhere more private, like the bathroom. Such a glamorous life she led.
Steve wasn’t showing himself, though. Maybe he didn’t want to be around his sister. Darcy was only now beginning to understand how broken this family was. Steve, and Gloria, and their mother Jozelle, and the patriarch Merlon Nelson who had died two months ago. There was a lot of barely hidden resentments lying just beneath the surface of this house. As happy as Darcy had been to finally meet her pen pal, the events of the last few hours were putting a big damper on that. Seeing the way Gloria treated her mother wasn’t helping, either.
The living room, when they came to it, was a bit of a surprise. It had the typical things Darcy had been expecting, like a yellow sofa with curling armrests and matching easy chairs, lamps with tasseled shades, and wallpaper that was straight out of the sixties. What she wasn’t expecting was the hospital bed pushed to the far side with the metal rails pulled down and the wheels locked in place. Jozelle certainly didn’t look like she needed it. Neither did the other woman, sitting on the sofa, pouring steaming water from a china teapot into cups with roses painted on them.
She was just as small as Jozelle, her hair just as white in tight curls around a pudgy face. Her eyebrows were penciled on and they looked almost comical against the white hair and wrinkles. She wore thick glasses, too. Her puffy dress could have come from the same collection as Jozelle’s. This would no doubt be Althea LaCroix, Jozelle’s sister and Gloria’s aunt. Darcy could see the family resemblance around the jawline and the dimples.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” Althea said, her voice squeaky with age. “Gloria! What a surprise to see my only niece here in our town, in our very house. What’s it been, Jozelle? Has it been thirty years since we’ve seen this child?”
“Oh, longer than that, Althea, a few Christmas cards not withstanding. But now my daughter is home. That’s what counts, isn’t it?”
The two of them sat down next to each other on the couch, and each of them raised a cup of tea, and Darcy couldn’t help but think of the women from The Golden Girls, sassy and full of life despite being older than the hills themselves.
Gloria hadn’t stopped looking at the hospital bed since they’d entered the room. When she noticed Darcy watching her, she quickly averted her eyes and began twisting her fingers around themselves. The sisters noticed, too. A silence fell around them, and the mood in the room had gone decidedly sour.
“Is that…” Gloria had to stop and give herself a moment before she could finish the question. “Is that where he died?”
The sisters turned to one another, and then at the same time they set down their cups of tea. It was Gloria’s mother who answered while her aunt sat quietly, with her lips pressed firmly together.
“Yes. Sadly, that is where he spent the last few months of his life. Unable to get out of bed, unable to feed himself, unable to do anything but lay there and tell us stories of the times when we were younger.”
That stopped the conversation cold once more, as the sisters continued to sit there, staring at Gloria while she fixed her gaze to a spot on the floor.
Finally, Darcy had to ask. “Um. I’m sorry, but who are we talking about? It seems like it was someone really important to you.”
“Oh, he was.” Jozelle gave a firm nod, looking over at the bed again. “We’re talking about my father.”
“You see,” Althea said, “we’ve been taking care of our father for years now. Just me and my sister, his two loving daughters.”
“That would be Gloria’s granddad, Merlon,” Jozelle said. “Not that she ever really knew him.”
“Oh my, no,” Althea agreed. “She never came to visit. You know that’s true, Gloria. Now Merlon’s been dead these two months. It would have been so much easier if only we’d had some help, but my sister and I endured. My, yes.”
“Just the two of us,” Jozelle continued. “That’s really all there was, of course. My daughter here had all but abandoned this side of the family, and of course my son Steve was in prison, so we had to make do. Just me and Althea. Isn’t that right, Althea?”
“It certainly is, Jozelle.”
The two of them reached across and held each other’s hands, finding a smile even in the face of such recent tragedy.
Gloria sighed and finally looked up from the floor at Darcy. “See, when I said my granddad died recently, I meant he died right here. And yes, mother, I didn’t really know him, but you know the reasons for that.”
“Well yes, of course,” Jozelle said, her voice sickeningly sweet. “You hated us, of course.”
“Mother…” Gloria couldn’t find the words, and she looked to her husband for help.
“That’s not true,” Cameron said, taking his wife’s hand again. He pulled her in close, whispering to her that it was all right, and she didn’t owe anyone an explanation, and other loving things that Darcy was sure the pair of elderly women on the couch couldn’t hear.
Jozelle and Althea shared a smile of their own and went back to sipping their tea.
Darcy could feel the emotional tempest in the room like a pressure against her skin. Her gift allowed her to feel things like that, sometimes, when people’s feelings were strong enough. Family reunions could definitely bring out those sorts of emotions. Especially reunions that had been this long in the making.
As she was trying to decide if she was intruding on a private moment, Darcy saw a flicker of movement over in the corner of the room. A shadow slid away from the wall and stepped into the middle of the room, moving right through the sofa, close enough to brush Althea’s knee. She shivered as the ghost moved through her and kept going.
The specter of Steve Nelson turned to look at Darcy once, and then walked over to the hospital bed. He jumped up onto the edge, sitting there like he was still a being of substance instead of just shadow, and memory, and whatever it was ghosts were really made of. Darcy didn’t like to use the term ‘ectoplasm’ even if she did enjoy the new Ghostbusters movie with that guy from Thor as the secretary. Steve didn’t look anything like Chris Hemsworth, but he certainly was holding her attention.
She remembered his face, even after all these years. He was short, with a high forehead under a receding hairline, and even in death he looked nervous. He was a man who had trapped himself in a cage of lies and deceits and Darcy still hated him for what he had done. She wasn’t even sorry that he was dead. Not really. She was just sorry for the pain that he had visited on the town while he was alive.
It was entirely possible that he was going to bring more trouble down on everyone with his death, too. Only time would tell.
The button-down shirt and poorly fitting slacks that his ghost was wearing must be the clothes he died in. It was hard to say through the haze of the image, but they looked brand new. Probably the first set of clothes that he’d bought for himself after making parole. They were baggy, too, like they were a couple of sizes too big.
His pale brown eyes turned to look at her now, bringing back a flood of distant memories. One that stood out crystal clear was the time when her wonderful cat Smudge had bared his teeth and hissed for all he was worth when Steve had tried to kill her, too. Good old Smudge. Always there
when she needed him.
She really missed that cat.
“Oh, I nearly forgot, dear,” Jozelle said to Gloria. “You said you were here because of Steve, didn’t you?”
Next to her, Althea gently swatted her sister’s shoulder. “Well, of course she did, you old bird. You don’t think she’d come here just for us, do you?”
“I suppose you’re right.” Jozelle pursed her lips dramatically. “Whatever reason would my daughter have to come to see her poor, ailing mother?”
A flush of anger touched Gloria’s cheeks. “Just stop it, will you? If you want to harass me for living my life and choosing to stay with Dad instead of with you, Mom, then can we do that later, please? This is important.”
“Is that so?” Jozelle put her teacup down, turning it so that it sat just so on the silver tray. “Well, Althea, did you hear that? This is important.”
“Then we’d best listen,” Althea said, turning her teacup to match her sisters.
“Go ahead, Gloria.” Jozelle motioned with her hand. “Please tell me what this important thing about Steve is, and why it finally made you decide to come all this way to see me.”
Gloria’s eyes glared daggers at the both of them. “If you must know, Steve is dead. They found his body here in Misty Hollow today.” She waited maybe two seconds for that to sink in before repeating it for them. “Did you hear me? Steve’s dead.”
The sisters exchanged a look with each other. Jozelle made a sound deep in her chest. “Oh, dear. That is simply…”
“…awful,” Althea finished for her. “Such a hard life. Just like you said, Jozelle. That boy of yours has had nothing.”
“But bad luck.”
“Exactly. His life has been so hard.”
“And now…”
“…it’s over.”
There were tears in their eyes as the feeling of their emotions washed over Darcy in waves of blue sadness. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to lose a child, even a grown man like Steve. After all this time of not seeing him while he was in prison, now they found out that he had been released from his incarceration, only to end up dead.
She looked over at Steve’s ghost again. He sneered at her. Obviously, the fact that she had helped put him in prison in the first place had not been forgotten, or forgiven either. There was hatred in those eyes, and in the permanent lines of that pinched, nervous face.
After a moment, he folded his arms over his chest, hands flat, forearms crossed. He laid down on the hospital bed and stared up at the ceiling. For several long seconds, he just laid there.
Then he slowly faded away.
Steve had let her see him, and when he was sure she was looking he had positioned himself like he was on display at his funeral. The irony in a ghost doing that was almost too much to handle.
Why did he do that on his grandfather’s hospital bed? The very place where his grandfather had died. Somehow, Darcy doubted that was a coincidence. For Pete’s sake, she said to herself. Why couldn’t ghosts ever just say what they meant?
“Well,” Gloria said. “That was all I wanted to tell you.” She seemed almost happy to have delivered the news about her brother’s death. Callous, almost.
Darcy was beginning to wonder if she really knew her pen pal at all.
Jozelle sat up straighter again, her eyes shining with tears and wide with surprise at her daughter. “You’re just going to leave? You just got here, and your brother’s dead, and you’re going to leave?”
Cameron stepped in one more time to support his wife, arm around her shoulders, holding her close. “I know we just met, Mrs. Nelson, but I want you to know that your daughter really is a wonderful person. She’s just… a little overwhelmed by everything. So, yes, I think it would be best if we left now. Um. Can we come back later, maybe? It’s just a bit overwhelming for her, you know.”
For the first time, Jozelle’s eyes carried an open sort of anger. “Then how do you think I feel, young man? My son is dead. My daughter still will have nothing to do with me. She’s overwhelmed? What about me?”
“Now, sister,” Althea said before Gloria could have the chance to say a single word in her defense. “She was here for us when it counted most. She could have left us to this business with your son—her brother, I mean—but she didn’t, now did she?”
Jozelle took a breath, and held it, and then let it out again as she shook her head. “No, I suppose not. She’s here now. She might as well stay for it.”
Gloria watched the back and forth conversation between her mother and her aunt. “Stay for what?” she asked.
“Why,” Jozelle said matter-of-factly, “the reading of your granddad’s last will and testament, of course. It’s been two months. Now we finally get to see what our father left to each of us. Who knows, Gloria? Maybe your granddad even found a little space in his dying wishes for you. You know he had those safety deposit boxes at the bank. Some of it might be for you, dear.”
The stone of Gloria’s expression cracked. A deep sorrow shone in her eyes. “I remember him bouncing me on his knee when we were younger. Before you and Dad split,” she said to her mother. “I always loved that old man. I’m not here for his money.”
Jozelle sniffed. “Well. A shame you weren’t here to see him before he died. He might have liked getting to know you again.”
Darcy waited for Gloria to argue, or say something sarcastic, but she didn’t do either. She just nodded slowly and leaned into her husband more. “I’m sorry for that, Mom. Whatever else is between you and me, I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you with Granddad.”
Jozelle nodded in return, and Darcy thought they looked so much alike in that moment.
It was Althea who got up off the sofa, however, and came around to give Gloria a hug of her own. “You were always welcome here, child. You must know that. It didn’t have to take your brother dying to bring you back to us.”
Gloria’s next words were a shock to everyone. “I don’t care that he’s dead. He was a waste of space. He was a horrible human being, and I’m glad he’s gone.” She took a moment to extricate herself from her aunt’s embrace. “I’m just tired, I suppose. I hadn’t planned on seeing anyone but Darcy on this trip. I wasn’t prepared to see you and my mother again.”
Althea lifted an eyebrow. “And now that you have?”
A small smile curved its way onto Gloria’s face. “I guess we’ll see what happens.”
“Well, land sakes,” Althea chuckled. “Who could ask for more than that?”
Chapter 3
On the walk home, Darcy considered everything she had heard and seen during that short visit.
Gloria and Cameron had driven off to go to their motel. Jozelle and Althea had stood in the front door of their house and waved to them as they left. Such an adorable pair, those two. Like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. She said as much to Gloria, or something similar at any rate, but she hadn’t gotten a response. Gloria only sat staring out through the windshield, not saying anything.
She wasn’t ready to talk about it, apparently. Darcy wondered if she ever would be.
They dropped her at the corner where they had to turn one way to head out of Misty Hollow, and Darcy had to go the other way to get back to her house. She should have driven her own car, not that she could change it now. Oh well. It was getting late, sure, but it was still a nice evening for a walk.
Personally, she couldn’t wait to get home. She wanted a late dinner for her rumbling stomach and a nice bath to soothe her racing mind. Then maybe an hour or two in bed with a good book before lights out. That would be a good ending to an impossible day. Jon wouldn’t be home yet, not with another murder in town.
No way could either of them have imagined this morning that the day would bring the death of a man like Steve Nelson.
Darcy had met so many bad people in her life. People who had committed murder, and stolen from friends and family, and cheated their way through the lives of others. Some of those
people Darcy had helped put in prison. Some had gotten away and were still in hiding. Most of them she never thought about. Some, she knew, she would never hear about ever again.
Some of them, like Steve, popped up in the most unexpected ways.
Still, she felt the little smile that crossed her face when she thought about the events that had landed Steve Nelson in prison all those years back. That was when she had first met Jon Tinker, the man who would eventually become her lover, her husband, and then the father of her children. In a very real sense, she and Jon might never have been a thing if they hadn’t both gotten involved in that early mystery.
The holiday music from the Town Hall was still going and would until nine o’clock. Apparently, Helen had decreed, as mayor, that the music would be too disruptive for everyone in town after that hour. Personally, Darcy couldn’t wait for July the Fifth, when the music would be turned off permanently. The Fourth was in just three days, she reminded herself with a sigh. She supposed she could take it for that much longer. Especially since the tourists were enjoying it.
Helen. Oh, for Pete’s sake! Darcy hadn’t forgotten about her friend, but she hadn’t exactly gone out of her way to contact Helen, either, to ask how she was handling the news of Steve’s death. Steve had been a monster, sure, and everyone except his mother would probably agree that the world was a better place without him in it, but even so. This was Helen’s ex-husband, and he’d turned up dead here in Misty Hollow, practically on her doorstep. Even if she wasn’t the mayor that was bound to tie her up into all sorts of emotional knots.
She stopped where she was, on Main Street, wondering if she should take the time to go and talk to her friend. Helen would need all the support she could get. Her kids were waiting for her at home, but Izzy was watching them and at this hour they should both be in bed. Of course, Colby would just be pretending to be asleep while she used the long days of summer as an excuse to stay up late and read or play with her toys. They would be fine for a little while yet. On the other hand, Helen’s house was a good distance away and she was on foot.
