Page 36 of A Midsummer Night's Ghost

I took up with a rush of lightheadedness, hands trembling. There was blood all over them. Sara was leaning against a chair, still moaning.

“I’m going to throw up,” she said. “I need a bucket.”

“You need a smack upside the head,” Anne told her, plopping down in the chair next to Grandma with a heavy sigh. She picked up her purse and started digging into it.

I was too afraid to glance over at Mary so I sat down on Grandma’s other side. “Do you have a wet wipe?” I asked her.

She also started digging in her purse.

Anne produced a stick of gum and handed it to Sara. “Chew this. You need a jolt of sugar.”

Grandma yanked a packet of wipes out of her purse and ripped one out for me. My stomach was in my throat as I wiped my hands clean.

“I think Mary’s dead,” Anne murmured. “She looks gray.” She gave herself the sign of the cross.

Grandma did the same.

Biting my lip, I steeled my nerves and looked over at Mary. The EMT was giving her chest compressions but it didn’t look good.

That was confirmed when I realized that Mary’s ghost was standing next to her body, looking very confused. Rightly so.

I stood up and walked as close as I could without interfering, still wiping my hands. “Mary?” I said softly, staring down at the floor so no one would question what I was doing.

Her ghost turned sharply in my direction. “Bailey? What’s going on?”

I took a deep breath. “Just close your eyes and go to the light, Mary.” I wasn’t sure if that’s how it worked but I couldn’t stand the idea of her being stuck as a ghost when it was clearly an accident. A heart attack or stroke. I wanted her to find peace.

When I looked up, her ghost was gone.

Relieved, I saw that Clifford was being lifted onto a gurney and he was protesting loudly that he wanted to see Mary.

I felt horrible for him.

“What happened?” I asked Sara, who had managed to drag herself onto a chair.

“I have no idea. I was showing Clifford how I wanted him to really put some oomph into stabbing himself and the knife actually went in.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh God.”

She turned and promptly threw up all over the floor.

“It’s a shame the janitor died,” Anne said, prosaically. “This place is a mess.”

I guess when you’re in your eighties, you get really damn practical.

“Do you think this will delay Opening Night?” Grandma asked her.

With that, I decided to stand up and go scrub the hell out of my hands, even though the wipe had gotten most of the blood off.

I kind of wanted to scrub this whole day off.

NINE

“How was play practice?”Jake asked, dipping a spoon in his sauce to taste it as we entered the kitchen from the attached garage.

The whole house smelled like tomatoes and basil and garlic and it was exactly what I needed.

“Should you tell him or should I?” Grandma asked me, setting her enormous purse down on the kitchen table.

It was a pet peeve of mine that she did that. Handbags and purses get rested on the floor sometimes if there’s nowhere to hang them, including bathroom stalls. It grossed me out. But all I could do was quickly move it to the hooks by the garage entrance door and spritz the table with cleaning spray under the guise of getting it ready to set the table.

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