Page 37 of Having the Time of My Midlife

“You got any idea how to do that, Daisy girl?” Gram asked.

“None whatsoever,” I replied. “The ending is sending the dead back into the fully functional Light. This game must be how we work our way back.” I sounded ridiculous to my own ears, but we had to start somewhere. Situations in our world rarely happened without reason. There had to be a reason for this…

I stopped dead in my tracks when we got to the wheel. The Higher Power was not just playing games, It was playing hardball. My fists clenched at my sides, but I made sure to keep my body language calm. Even though it seemed like it, I didn’t believe we were alone on this set. It was watching.

The wheel was similar in size to the one on the TV show. However, what was on the triangles made my stomach turn. Instead of dollar amounts, there were names. Names of people I knew. Names of people I cared for. Except for the two black and white bankrupt signs, the names Sam, John and Birdie repeated all over the wheel. They’d been three of the six ghosts standing on my porch who should have been in the Light. I’d helped them go into the Light. Were we about to play for their lives?

“This is fucked,” I said flatly.

“I’m gonna give you a pass on that F-bomb since I agree, darlin’,” Gram said. “In fact, I’m gonna give all of us an F-bomb pass during this entire mission.”

I glanced over at her. “Candy Vargo will crap her ugly sweatpants when she finds out.”

Gram giggled. “That sweet gal will get over it.”

Sweet was kind of a stretch when describing the Keeper of Fate, but Gram loved her. I loved her, too, but to me, she was more salty than sweet.

I looked back at the names on the wheel and my mind raced with memories.

Birdie was a trip—real name, Ethel. I called her Birdie because her mission in death was to flip me off as much as possible. As a ghost, Birdie enjoyed stashing random body parts all over the house to freak me out. That went over like a lead balloon. However, she was truly silly, and I adored her.

Back when she was squatting in my home, I was positive the ghost had been calling me a hooker. Turned out that she’d been a lady of the evening during her life. She’d passed away from a heart attack after blowing a famous politician. Birdie had clarified that she’d been a very high paid escort and enjoyed her job. I’d enjoyed being around her. She was all kinds of wonderfully wrong. However, what she had done after she’d died made me love her even more.

My mother, Alana, had been Birdie’s Death Counselor. Clarissa, the Angel of Mercy before me, had it out for my mom. Wanted her dead and she’d succeeded. However, Birdie was a hooker with a heart of gold. In thanks to my mother for vindicating her after death, Birdie stole my mom’s soul from the vile Clarissa and brought her to my BFF Missy’s great-grandmother. Missy’s granny, like Missy, was a Soul Keeper. Missy’s granny kept my mother’s soul inside her for safe-keeping and, unbeknownst to Missy, had passed the soul to her great-granddaughter right before she died. Missy had kept my mom and Birdie protected from Clarissa for decades. The reason souls came to me was that they had unfinished business. Birdie’s unfinished business was to let me know where my mom’s soul was hidden. It was one of the greatest gifts I’d ever been given.

My lovely bird-flipping buddy had gone into the Light once her message had been delivered. I would owe her until the end of time. Birdie was one of the many beautiful reasons I would repair the rift in the Light.

My eyes moved to the next name—John.

John Dunn, age fifty at death. Banker. Wealthy. His death had been ruled a suicide. It was not a suicide. It was murder. John had been a lovely and level-headed man in both life and death. He’d also had shitty taste in women. He’d been murdered by his much younger wife, Sarina. She was a diabolical woman who’d been after his life insurance payout and all of his assets. John’s unfinished business was getting me to rescue his black lab, Karen, from the pound where his wife had taken the dog after his death and to prove that he hadn’t killed himself.

The Karen part of the mission had been easy. I’d adopted her and loved her with all my heart. I couldn’t replace John, but I could give her a spectacular life. John had been pleased about that. Proving Sarina had killed him was more complicated. Since all of the proof was coming from a dead guy, against my better judgement, I’d gotten my lawyer sister Heather involved. Color me shocked as all get out when it was revealed she wasn’t exactly human. The revelation had started a chain of events, exposing that many of the people in my life were not who I thought they had been. But that wasn’t part of John’s story. It was part of mine.

Heather had been a bulldog and destroyed Serina Dunn in a court of law. With Serina facing life in prison and Karen having a loving home, John no longer had any unfinished business. He’d tried to give me all of his money. It was a lot of money, but I’d said no. After a little illegal tampering by Heather and me with his will, John’s fortune went to the Humane Society at his request. He’d left this plane vindicated and at peace. I was proud I’d helped get him justice. It had been my true pleasure.

The fact that his name and life had been reduced to a cardboard triangle on a wheel made me sick.

My eyes moved one space over and landed on Sam’s name. My heart beat hard and fast in my chest. I thought about the old man often. Sam had been the first ghost I’d helped, and he held a very special place in my heart. When the ghosts first showed up, I thought I was having a psychotic break—thought I’d lost my damned mind.

I hadn’t. It had been real.

Sam’s sweet and loving persistence taught me how to be the Death Counselor before I even understood what a Death Counselor was. Sam had been in his eighties when he died of a heart attack. He was one of most adorable little old men I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. I’d wanted to keep and make him my grandpa, but that wasn’t how it worked. Sam’s unfinished business had to do with his wife, Addie. She was in the early stages of dementia and would often lose her glasses. The night he died, he’d noticed she’d put them in the cookie jar. He was beside himself that she wouldn’t know where they were since he was no longer there to find them for her. The heartbreaking kicker was that her wedding ring was on the chain. Her arthritis had gnarled her hands a bit, and she wore her beloved piece of jewelry on her glasses chain.

Sam convinced me that true love existed and that I should commit my first breaking-and-entering. I smiled at the memory.

Sam’s home had been lovely. It was an older modest Craftsman with a nicely landscaped yard. Thankfully, it was the last house at the end of a tree-lined street and there were no streetlights.

“Are you seeing this?” Gram asked. “It’s like it’s my memory, only it ain’t mine.”

“It’s Mom’s,” Alana Catherine said. “She’s showing us.”

“Am I?” I asked. Why was I reliving the night I’d helped Sam move on into the light? I wasn’t sure why this was happening now, but it had to be important, right? Or maybe it was the Higher Power trying to distract us from the game.

“Don’t fight it,” Alana Catherine stated, her tone so adult and wise beyond her few months.

I nodded absently as the memory overtook all my senses threw me into memory.“I’m going to park a few houses down and we’ll walk,” I told Sam, who’d grunted his assent. “If we get busted on the street, I’ll pretend like we’re just out for an early morning run… or that I’m out for a run. Don’t think anyone will notice you, Sam. No offense.”

Sam giggled… kind of. His frail little frame trembled with excitement. I felt insanely great with all the stress on the word insane. It was crazy what I was about to do, but it was already established that I’d lost my mind.

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