Page 2 of Chasing Your Ghost

She shifted on her feet and wiped her damp palms on her denim shorts. Her pulse beat a loud and unrelenting rhythm in her ears, but Riley stood her ground even when all she wanted to do was run.

When she heard footsteps approaching, the march of feet matching the drumming beat in her ears, she bit down harder on her lip, the metallic taste of blood hitting her tongue. The doorknob twisted, and Riley stopped breathing. The door opened, and Riley’s mouth went dry.

“Can I help you?” a salt-and-pepper-haired man asked her. His smile was kind, not a trace of falseness tinging it, despite Riley essentially being a stranger.

She waited for his eyes to widen or his jaw to drop in a comic display of shock, but there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. Apparently, the pictures her father had been sending over the years hadn’t been shared with him. Riley wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Riley’s mouth opened, but no sound came out, words failing her as she stared at him. In every scenario she’d played out in her mind, the door had always been answered by the woman she was there to see. She hadn’t prepared herself for what would happen if someone else greeted her at the door.

The man frowned, his sea-blue eyes losing some of their warm glimmer. “Can I help you?” he repeated.

“Use your words, honey,” her dad encouraged her, and his teasing remark was enough to snap Riley out of it.

Just say it, she silently urged herself. It’s not that hard. Just say the words. “I… I’m looking for Edith.” She licked her dry lips and cleared her parched throat. “Is she here?”

“Yes,” he replied, his frown easing but not disappearing. “Can I ask why you’re looking for my wife?”

Riley wiped her clammy hands on her shorts again. “I need to speak to her about my father.” It was the truth but only half of it, and she knew she was only delaying the inevitable. She would have to say the words eventually. There was no way around it.

“Oh,” he replied, his eyebrows drawing together and his eyes focusing on her face with new intensity. His lips parted, and his eyes widened, telling her he’d finally made the connection. The pictures must have been shared with him after all.

Riley shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Look, I think it would be better if I just spoke to Edith,” she said. “Tell her…” The words she didn’t want to say got stuck in her throat. She took in a shaky breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the man was staring at her with something close to wonder. “Tell her that her daughter is here to see her.”

Riley’s words didn’t hit him with the force of a truth too long buried. Instead, her words had a grin the size of Texas appearing on his face. Not the usual reaction a man had when someone he’d never met pitched up at his door claiming to be his wife’s daughter, but their situation had always been a bit complicated—the understatement of the century.

“Riley,” Hugh finally managed, his voice trembling with the force of his bizarre joy. “You’re here.”

Riley’s heart clenched in pity. He was looking at her like she was a god or the answer to a question he’d been battling over for eons. He didn’t realize that she would leave as soon as the letter was in Edith’s hands. He didn’t realize that she hadn’t come of her own volition.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize you with the purple hair,” he explained.

“See. He also called it purple,” Riley’s dad said from where he stood beside her.

Edith’s husband didn’t react to the words or look at the other man. It was expected, but it also meant she couldn’t reply to her dad about her lavender hair without looking unhinged.

“And isn’t lavender a shade of purple?” her dad continued. “So, technically, we’re not wrong when we call it that.”

Riley fought the urge to roll her eyes. This was not the time for a debate on color. The envelope she had in her backpack was the reason they were here, and she was going to deliver it as promised and then promptly leave.

“Is Edith here?” she asked her stepfather.

He nodded. “Yes, sorry. Right. Come in.” He opened the door wider and gestured for her to walk inside, but Riley took a step back instead.

“Actually, I think it would be better if I stayed outside.”

Hugh’s smile dimmed, but he didn’t argue. “Alright. I’ll be back in a minute.” He stared at her for another few seconds and shook his head in disbelief. “She’ll be so happy to see you.”

“For a second there, I thought we might have the wrong house,” her dad murmured once the man had left to go and find his wife and had closed the door behind him. “I’ve somehow gotten used to the purple hair, so I didn’t even consider they might not recognize you.”

“It’s lavender,” Riley reminded him. “And you knew before we got here that this was the right house.”

Able to instantly travel to any place or person he’d known well in a kind of ghost teleportation, her father had traveled there three days earlier to ensure they had the correct address and that Edith was around and not on holiday with her picture-perfect family. There was no possibility that they had the wrong place.

“Why didn’t you want to go in?” he asked after a beat of silence.

“I’m here to give her the letter. That’s it.”

“She loves you, Riley,” he replied quietly. “She made a mistake, but she loves you.”

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