Page 10 of My Blind Date is a Ghost

"So, probably not a vampire, then," Beverly says. "Vampires can eat food, but anything they eat that isn't a very rare steak doesn't usually hold much flavor for them."

"These are delicious," I say around a mouthful of cookie.

"I usually keep some around for the grandchildren. Eat all you want, I can just make more."

Finally feeling somewhat satiated, I sit back on the couch, the plate of cookies in one hand and the teacup in the other. I am no longer quite so hungry, but I don't want to put them down. It is as if I'm holding onto them for life itself.

"I suppose they are my great-grandchildren, too," I say absently, picking at small bits of cookie. "Or great-great-great-great-grandchildren, or something like that. Whatever will they think? How will we explain this to them?"

"I'm still trying to figure out how to explain it to myself," Beverly says as she rocks in her chair across from me. "You aren't a zombie or a vampire. And you are corporeal, so you aren't a ghost--"

"I was, though," I say. "I was a ghost for more than two hundred years. Ever since my death."

"You were haunting the bookshop for all that time? I thought it was you."

"Well, mostly. I could leave the shop. I wasn't bound to it. I traveled the world. But I always returned to the bookshop in the end. I suppose because I died there."

"Or because you simply loved it so much," Beverly says. "The answers to life's mysteries are not always the most grim." "Or I was drawn to my descendants," I say. "I was so proud of my son for following in my footsteps and working at the shop with my mother. And I have loved every generation that followed him, all the way to you."

"It's as though you've been a guardian angel of sorts," she says with a chuckle.

"I suppose so. After all, if I hadn't gotten the fire marshall out of his bed back in the 20s, it might have burned down along with the other shops along that row."

"I don't recall reading about a fire there in the 1920s," Beverly says.

"Because it was the 1820s," I say. "No, in the 1920s, it served as a front for a speakeasy in the back, where your office is now. There's a hidden door that leads to a staircase in the closet."

"Are you kidding me?"

I laugh. "No. Believe me, that building holds a lot of secrets."

"Any more ghosts?" she asks.

The smile flees my face and I feel a tightness in my chest. "I don't know. I've never seen another ghost. I know they exist. Dianna's boyfriend, the zombie, I know he can sense ghosts. So there must be other ghosts in the world, but why I couldn't see them is a mystery to me. I was very...very alone for all that time."

"Interesting," Beverly says. "You will have to tell me everything you know about being a ghost so I can write it down. I'm sure a lot of what we think we know is a load of hogwash."

"Indeed," I say. "I've read everything you have on ghosts, and none of it helped me...move on or whatever. Not that I want to now."

"What do you mean?" Beverly asks.

"I'm alive," I say breathlessly. "I died so young. I was only twenty-eight. I didn't get to be part of my son's life or hold my grandchildren. I didn't get to write a novel of my own. My husband... Well, I assume he remarried, had a whole other life after I was gone. All the food I didn't get to eat, all the conversations I didn't get to have, all the things I didn't get to do. This is my second life, my second chance. The last thing I want to do now is move on to...whatever is next."

"I understand," Beverly says. "And, of course, I don't want you to leave when you've only just arrived. But do you have any idea why you were a ghost in the first place? What about any unfinished business?"

"I have no idea about that," I say. "I was murdered. The murderer was hanged. I'm not angry or bitter about it. It's what happened. People die all the time. My family received justice. I had a life unlived, but you could say that about every person who has ever died, no matter their age or manner of death. Is anyone really ready to go if they were given an option?"

"I suppose you have a point there," Bever says thoughtfully. "But not everyone becomes a ghost. There must be a reason why you...lingered for so long."

"I have spent more than two hundred years asking myself that question," I say. "There is simply no answer. I stopped trying to find an answer decades ago."

"Then the more prudent question is why are you no longer a ghost? How are you alive? Who brought you back? Why were you brought back?"

"I don't know," I say, shaking my head. "And I can't say I really care. I'm here, that's what matters. As I said, I've been given a second chance. I don't intend to waste it."

"We can't afford to be so flippant about such a monumental event," Beverly says. "You were brought back to life. We must try to understand how such a thing could happen."

"Why?" I ask, growing frustrated. "Can't we just enjoy it?"

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