Page 31 of A Midsummer Night's Ghost

“Jake agreed to have Grandma move in with us. Not Jen and her entire basketball team of children.”

“I don’t trust your father to have them stay with him.”

“What is he going to do to them?” I asked. “You trusted him with us when we were kids.”

“No, I didn’t.”

I sighed. “I’ll take Jasmine. She’s almost seven. I can handle a semi-independent child as a temporary roommate. And only if Jake agrees it’s okay. This is his house too.”

“We’re negotiating over loved ones?” Mom asked, shooting me a look of disapproval.

When I didn’t say anything further, she shrugged. “Fine. Though you have to tell your sister.”

“Tell her what? That she’s staying in your condo?”

“No, with Dad.”

I hated to break this to my mother, but I was pretty sure Jen would be fine with it. It was Mom and Grandma Burke who had an issue with Dad, not the rest of us. Though I wasn’t sure Jen knew Nancy and her wooden signs had moved in.

Since I really didn’t want to have this conversation and I clearly needed additional tools and online video instructions on removing stubborn wallpaper, I decided having my mother here did have an additional advantage. This woman knew autopsies.

“Hey, can I ask you to look at an autopsy report?” I asked her.

My mother stopped scrubbing tile and gave me a look that honestly made me shake a little in my sneakers. “Bailey Margaret Burke. Why on earth would you ask me that? Also, I need a verbal agreement from you that you’ll talk to your sister.”

Wow. She drove a hard bargain.

I had always said I wouldn’t want to face my mother in a courtroom as a defendant and this confirmed it. Along with a million other moments in my life.

“I will tell Jen. I promise.” I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my leggings and scrolled to find the email from Jake. “The janitor at the senior center died the other day and his autopsy just came in.”

Now she was really studying me. “Why do you have that and why do you care about this person’s death?”

I might not have thought this all the way through. Because I didn’t exactly have a valid reason and I could not tell my mother I was a spiritual medium. She didn’t believe in ghosts or psychics or astrology or tarot. “His ex-wife is concerned as to what happened because they share a minor child.”

“Ah. She’s worried it’s suicide and she won’t collect the life insurance?”

I nodded, walking right through the door she’d opened. “Exactly.”

She set the toothbrush down and held her hand out. “Give it to me.”

I handed her the phone, feeling very much like I’d just been grounded for looking at my phone at the dinner table. That might have happened once or twelve times when I was in high school.

She pulled her reading glasses out of her bra and put them on.

As she’d aged, her bra had become something of a wonderland. She kept everything in there from her phone to tissues to her debit card. She felt confident no wayward mugger would dig in her cleavage now that she was “old.” Which was of course completely untrue and illogical, especially considering she got angry if anyone other than her even so much as suggested she’s no longer thirty-five. But it all made sense to her.

She scrolled and read. “He died of ethylene glycol poisoning? Good Lord, that’s a rough way to go.”

“How do you get that?”

“You drink a shitload of antifreeze.” She shoved her glasses back up onto her head and handed me my phone back. “That’s the cause of death. Manner of death is undetermined because the medical examiner doesn’t have enough information to determine if it’s suicide or homicide. But it’s probably suicide.”

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged. “Real life isn’t like TV dramas.”

“But aren’t there easier ways to, uh, end your life?”

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