Page 57 of Ghosted
“You better,” she states, standing and heading for the door.
Once she’s gone, I sigh and say to Dean, “Well this sucks. It has to be a coworker unless someone snuck in.”
Dean nods. “Yeah. And other than my dad and I, the only people in the office that day were our secretary, five senior associates, and two of our paralegals. Minus James, one of the paralegals, I’ve known each of them for years. I just can’t fathom why any of them would do this. I considered them all friends for the most part. Marco, my best friend, ended up moving away with his wife a couple years back, so I really relied on my office friendships for socializing. I thought we were all close. I feel so betrayed and violated.”
He pauses to look down at his hands and collect himself, and then continues, “And I doubt anyone would have snuck in. Courtney is like a guard dog, she takes her job very seriously. She doesn’t let anything or anyone past her without her approval. She even insists on coming in and working the weekends that we all need to be there, too. The woman hardly takes a bathroom break.”
I reach out and place a hand on his shoulder. He leans intoit and sort of falls into a hug, gathering me close so he can bury his face in my loose hair. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly, not knowing what else to say or how I can fix this.
“Yeah, me too,” he mumbles into my hair. I reach up and stroke the back of his neck, wishing there was a way to siphon some of his pain away.
THIRTY-TWO
Today isthe day of the ball, and I have so much to do that my head is spinning. I feel like a cartoon character that just got hit with a frying pan, to-do list items circling my head instead of stars.
I shut the ancient vacuum off, bending to wind the cord up and put it away. The store, at least, is almost ready. I spent the whole morning with Lenore and my mom scrubbing every square inch of the place and ferrying most of the merchandise upstairs to my apartment, so it would be out of the way. We needed room for standing cocktail tables, the bar, the long silent-auction table, and the small dance floor in the back. I added long streamers to the chandelier so no one will hit their head on it. Lenore and Mom are even cordoning off a bit of the sidewalk out front, so people can spill out and get some air without having to be checked back in.
“Hey, Aunt C? Can you tell me if everything on the table looks right?” I call, repositioning the auction table items for themillionth time. The table is almost too long for the store, but it was necessary to hold all the donated goods. They’re a bit crowded, and Aunt C has been unhappy every time I’ve re-arranged them. If she’s got something to say again, she can fix it herself because if I don’t move on, I’ll scream. Moving the various gift baskets and local artists’ work an eighth of an inch this way or that is not at the top of my priority list.
She glides across the floor, snuggled up in an oversized, chunky cable-knit sweater that she’s probably had since the eighties. Her many bracelets tinkle on her bony wrist as she lifts her hand and rubs her mouth in a way that tells me she wishes she had a cigarette. She squints at the lineup and shakes her head.
I swallow down my rage and say, “Okay. Listen, I have a bunch of other stuff to do, so why don’t you finish this up?” I clasp my hands behind my back, squeezing harder than necessary to work out the irritation.
She sighs dramatically. “Darling, you’re the one with the knack for decorating. I couldn’t possibly. It would feel like I was taking your job.”
“I’m afraid I have to insist, Aunt C,” I say through a smile that’s probably more bared teeth than anything.
She throws up her hands in exasperation. “Fine, I suppose I have to do everything around here.” She brushes past me and begins nudging things minutely until they’re in the “perfect position.”
I breathe deeply and count to ten, knowing this is coming from a place of insecurity more than anything. While she’s always been content to let me run things, when it comes to big events like this for the store, she gets testy. She wantseverything to go well and not disrupt the carefully curated image she’s created for it.
I decide to clean up the tarot table that she has stashed in the store room. We’ve cleaned out a bunch in here, too. With a few choice lamps and a rug, it doesn’t look half bad; as long as you don’t pay too much attention to the dingy shelves and stained concrete floor.
I stack her tarot cards neatly in the center of the table, sighing as one jumps out and flutters to the floor. I squat down to fish it off the rug, flipping it over to get a peek at its face in the process. A cracked tower with lightning splitting it in half dominates the card.
The Tower. Fantastic.
I already know my life is changing drastically. Thanks, tarot. I flip the card over and place it delicately on top of the deck, lest another card decide to jump out. The rest of the room is in pretty good condition, so I think it’s time for me to head out before getting any more unwanted premonitions.
Aunt C is still nudging items this way and that, so I creep past her before she can rope me into any more incessant positioning. “Rae, dear? What’s this again?” Aunt C calls to me. My shoulders droop and I turn to her, ready to hear another lecture about how we need to take all the items off the table so we can rearrange the tablecloth. Again.
Instead, I find her holding the grimoire delicately, cover facing me. “Oh. That’s from The Cracked Spine. It’s a grimoire from the 1820s,” I say, relieved.
“Did you look through it?” she asks while frowning down at the book curiously. “It could contain something useful for you or your sister.”
I nod and amble closer. “Yeah, I went through it. To be honest, there wasn’t much in the way of help for me, and basically nothing for Wren. The person who wrote it was able to communicate with plants, so most of the book is related to botany. There was a small journal section that talked about her aunt who could see spirits, but it was more narrative than informational. Something about a dead husband that she kept around.” I shrug nonchalantly, trying to act like that information didn’t tilt my world on its axis.
Her eyes narrow shrewdly as she scans me. “A husband she kept around in the afterlife, eh? And you don’t think that’s useful information for you and your dead boyfriend?” She raises a thin, white eyebrow.
“I don’t see how that’s important. I’m trying to help Dean move on. He deserves that.”
“Does he not also deserve to have all his options presented to him? Is it really fair for you to keep that knowledge from him? You’re making his choice for him when he doesn’t even know there is one.”
“I… Um. I don’t even know how it works or if I could do it,” I counter weakly. “The owner of the book said something about astral projection and soul tethers, but that seems way over my head.”
This isn’t something I want to be agonizing over today. I just want to get this ball and Halloween over with so I can take a much needed day off.
Aunt C harrumphs and thunks the book unceremoniously on the table. I wince, glad at least that I took some photos of the relevant pages. If she throws that thing around any harder, it’ll probably crumble to dust. “All I’m saying is that you deserve happiness, and that boy of yours deserves to know that he has a choice.”
