2 The Ghosts Upstairs

by SUE FINEMAN

  “Damn!”

  He wandered through the house, and everywhere he looked, he saw signs of Kayla. The family room had a bowl of fruit on the coffee table, the dining room chandelier sparkled, and the changes in the living room made it look like a new room.

  The sun was setting when he heard Buford woof. Billy walked toward the kitchen to let him out. He heard Kayla say, “He’s mad at me, Buford. And I don’t blame him.” The dog whined. “Yeah, I know you love him. Trouble is, I think I might be falling in love with him, too. But now he’ll never even want to kiss me again.”

  “Yes, he will.” Billy walked around the island and found Kayla sitting on the floor with a long-eared hound on her lap. She was barefoot, wearing a pair of boxers with a skimpy top. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nipples poked at the thin knit shirt. He reached down, and she took his hand. “Can we start over, Kayla?”

  “I don’t know. Can you forgive me for making a stupid mistake?”

  “I already have.”

  He pulled her off the floor and they sat in the darkening family room, cuddled in a corner of the sectional, talking. She told him about her first and only night as a topless waitress, about what Steve and the cop did to her, and he told her about the moral code at his school. Then they sat quietly, holding each other and kissing.

  Finally, she said, “I’ll leave whenever you want. All you have to do is tell me it’s time to go, and I’ll never bother you again.”

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Then shut up and kiss me.”

  He smiled and kissed her.

  “Oh, Billy,” she whispered, pulling his shirt loose from his slacks. Her warm hands slid under his shirt and around his sides to his back, and his erection grew so hard it was almost painful.

  He filled one hand with her luscious breast while he pulled her under him on the sectional with the other hand. Their mouths came together in a passionate kiss, and somehow, in the midst of all the passion, he found the condom in his pocket.

  The most ungodly screech he’d ever heard filled the house. He and Kayla both froze. “Shut the hell up, Eleanor,” he yelled into the room. “It is Eleanor, isn’t it?” he asked Kayla.

  “I think so. It’s not the one who was crying before.”

  “Is she trying to stop us from making love, or what?”

  “Nooooo,” the voice screeched. “Nooooo!”

  “What’s wrong, Eleanor?” Kayla asked.

  “Mine,” Eleanor screamed.

  Billy was surprised he could hear actual words from a ghost. He’s never heard the ones in the house on Livingston Avenue talk, only laugh. But they were friendly ghosts, and the ones in this house weren’t.

  “Go to hell, Eleanor,” he yelled.

  Kayla rubbed his arm. “Billy, you don’t really want them to go to hell.”

  “They don’t deserve to go the other direction. They made my life miserable.”

  “For that you want them to spend eternity in hell? Why can’t you forgive them?”

  “Because they don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

  Maggie sobbed, and Eleanor’s screech reminded Billy of fingernails on a blackboard.

  Kayla pushed him off her and sat up. The passionate moment was over, and if he was very lucky, there would be another.

  She took his hand. “Come upstairs with me.”

  “And do what?”

  “Hold my hand while I talk to Maggie. I think she’ll be the most receptive.”

  He sighed deeply, his erection gone along with his hopes for a night of hot sex with a sexy lady. “We should have stayed in my apartment and come here in the daytime.”

  “Or let Benton stay here?”

  He shook his head. “No, under no circumstances would I let Benton stay here.”

  She stood and tugged on his hand. “Come on. They won’t hurt you.”

  Billy didn’t want to get that close to his mother, but he held Kayla’s hand and walked upstairs with her. By the time they reached the top of the main stairs, the racket had stopped.

  “Maggie, where are you?” Kayla called.

  He reached for a light switch, and she said, “No lights. Hold onto me.”

  They made their way down the dark hallway toward the room Kayla had seen the ghosts in before. “Maggie, are you here?”

  “Yes,” came a voice that sounded like she was talking through a tunnel.

  “Maggie, do you see the bright light?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go through the light, and your body will be restored. You’ll find love there, a more complete love than you ever had here on earth.”

  “Nooooo,” Eleanor yelled from the other room. “Mine.”

  The hair on Billy’s arms stood up straight at the ungodly sound.

  He wanted to bolt out of the house and return to his apartment over the garage. Tugging on Kayla’s hand, he said, “Downstairs. This is just way too creepy.”

  “Maggie, you can go through the light without Eleanor,” Kayla said. “She’ll come along later.”

  “Nooooo,” Eleanor yelled again.

  Billy asked, “Why doesn’t she want Maggie to go?”

  “I don’t know unless they’re not headed for the same place.”

  To hell with that macho stuff. He definitely didn’t want to sleep in this house tonight. There were things going on here, things he didn’t understand. “Do we need a priest?”

  “I don’t know, Billy. Eleanor wants Maggie to stay with her. I think that’s one reason Maggie is crying.”

  “I’m going to cry if we don’t go downstairs.”

  “Scared?”

  “Damn right I’m scared. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ve never had a run-in with a ghost like Eleanor before, and I don’t want to have one now.”

  Chapter Seven

  Kayla woke in Billy’s bed, tucked in his arms, her head on his chest. She’d never seen him work out, yet his body was as strong and well-developed as a professional athlete’s. He stirred a little and sighed in his sleep.

  Billy had refused to sleep in Eleanor’s house last night, so they’d packed a few things and come to his apartment. When he asked her to sleep with him, she thought they’d make love, but they were both so freaked out by what had happened with Eleanor and Maggie, all they did was talk and snuggle.

  He said he didn’t want her in that house alone again until they figured out what to do about Eleanor, but she had work to do. The whole second floor needed to be cleaned and the rotten drapes taken down. She’d decided to have a professional clean the windows and then have blinds installed on every window in the house. That way she wouldn’t have to hurry to get new drapes up. But the old drapes had to be taken down first.

  Whatever she did in the living room, the colors would have to coordinate with those light blue sofas. It would cost too much to have covers made for all the blue furniture. She wondered if a silvery gray for the living and dining room walls, with darker drapes and deep rose accents would work. Two or three throws and several throw pillows in rose and dark gray should give the living room a nice pop and tone down the blue furniture.

  One of these days, she’d like to take some interior design classes. Although she didn’t get her high school diploma, she’d taken several college classes. She’d been slowly working toward an associate degree in business, but she wasn’t quite there yet. Nobody in her family had a college degree. It might be different in her daddy’s family, but she wouldn’t know about them. She’d never met her grandparents on that side of the family, and Daddy was an only child.

  Careful not to wake Billy, she eased out of bed and dressed. After she started the coffee for Billy, she searched through the kitchen for something to fix for breakfast. But he’d taken nearly everything in his refrigerator over to the house.

  “Come back here, woman,” he called, his voice husky with sleep.

  She smiled and put a cup of coffee on the nightstand on his side of the bed. “Don’t you have to g
o to work today?”

  He lifted his head, looked at the clock, and moaned. “Four weeks and two days until school is out for the summer.”

  “You sound like a ten-year-old.”

  He pushed the covers back and sat up. Those sexy knit boxers he wore hugged him in all the right places. Looking at the bulge in front, she wondered if she shouldn’t have stayed in bed a little longer. “Billy Kane, you are one fine looking hunk of a man. How come some pretty lady hasn’t snatched you up by now?”

  Sipping his coffee, he replied, “Lady, you’re so good for my ego.”

  Kayla would give anything to have a man like this to love, but she couldn’t stay with him too long or he could lose his job. He loved teaching, and she cared too much to take that away from him. As soon as she got her inheritance and helped Billy get the house ready to put on the market, she’d return to Memphis.

  While Billy shaved, she took Buford outside. She left him in the fenced yard to sniff around and do his business. He didn’t wander off, but Hannah said there was a leash law in the city, and she didn’t need a ticket for having her dog running loose.

  Donovan waved from his kitchen door. “What are you doing here?”

  She walked over and told him what had happened. “Billy was freaked out, and so was I, so we decided to sleep here and go to the house in the daytime.”

  “I always thought Eleanor was behind Maggie’s selfish behavior. I thought once we married and I got her away from that house, she’d come around, but…” He shook his head. “The influence was too strong. Eleanor acted like Maggie was a perfect little doll – her perfect little doll – and she didn’t want anyone else touching her.”

  “Even you?”

  “Especially me. By the time Maggie got pregnant with Billy, Eleanor had her convinced a pregnancy would ruin her perfect body, and a baby would ruin her life.”

  “Poor Maggie. She never really had a chance to live.”

  “She had a chance. I didn’t want her to die, but I can never forgive her for being cruel to Billy. Nothing she did to me compares to that.”

  Billy came out. “Come on, Kayla. I’ll take you out for breakfast before I go to work. Leave the dog here.”

  “Okay, but he’ll be barking at Hannah’s door looking for breakfast.”

  “I’ll feed him.” Donovan waved them on. “Go.”

  <>

  Wearing Granny’s floppy straw hat, Kayla spent the morning weeding the flower beds around the house. By lunchtime, she had three big bags stuffed full of weeds, her back ached, and the knees of her jeans were stained green. She went inside and made a pitcher of sweet iced tea and drank half of it to quench her thirst.

  It was quiet upstairs. Did she dare go up there and pull down those rotten drapes? She’d scheduled the woman who sold blinds for Saturday afternoon, and she didn’t want those drapes in the way when the woman measured. But if she went upstairs alone and Billy found out, he’d be angry with her.

  Grabbing a pencil and pad of paper from the kitchen desk drawer, she sat on a chaise outside in the shade and made notes about what she needed to do. The first item on the list was to finish the deep cleaning, and that meant she had to work upstairs. The second item was to decide color schemes and figure out what had to be done in each room or set of rooms.

  Billy would have to tell her what he wanted done in the library and study, if anything. The library was lined with bookshelves. Window coverings and a new cushion for the window seat should be enough in that room. The study was a masculine room that suited Billy well. Both rooms had brown leather furniture that looked comfortable and well-used.

  The bedroom suites upstairs would all needed major work. They needed new bedding, new window coverings, fresh paint, and new rugs. And then there were the bathrooms. It wasn’t as if they were going to use any of those bedroom suites, so they didn’t need to be functional, just look good.

  If Billy didn’t intend to live here, he’d have to decide what, if anything, he wanted to keep. The bedroom closets and dressers had to be emptied. There were a ton of toys in this house. Eleanor and William must have bought Maggie every toy in the store.

  What would it be like to grow up having everything you ever wanted? To have two parents who loved you and spoiled you? To have a sweet baby boy and a husband to love? To live in a nice house instead of a single-wide trailer that should have been sent to the dump two generations ago? To have nice clothes to wear and a reliable car to drive? To not have to worry about whether you made enough to pay all the bills that month?

  When she married her first love, she thought she’d live happily ever after with a man who would take care of all her needs and love her forever. Blake had muscles and dimples, and he sweet-talked her right out of her virginity when she was sixteen. They were twenty when they married, and he’d already signed up for the Marines. They weren’t married long before he went off to basic training. When he returned, he gave her a venereal disease that caused so much scarring the doctor said she could never get pregnant. She cried for weeks, and Granny encouraged her to divorce him. But before she could save enough money to file for divorce, Blake was sent to Afghanistan. He came home in a box four months later.

  She dated several guys after Blake was killed, but she didn’t consider marriage again until Leonard came along. He wasn’t a man’s man like Blake. He was a singer in a country band with dreams of singing in Nashville. But he wasn’t good enough to make it to Nashville. His voice was pleasant enough, and they sang duets with the band for several months before Leonard said he could make it better as a single act. She knew it was because he didn’t want anyone taking the spotlight away from him. So she went back to being a waitress, and he sang by himself, with the band as backup. Girls fell for the glitz and the glamour, and before long, Kayla knew he was cheating on her. She didn’t believe in sleeping around, and after what happened with Blake, she refused to sleep with a man who did, even if they were married.

  The lowest point was when Leonard got Lisa Marie pregnant and threw it in her face. Kayla loved kids, and he knew she couldn’t have any of her own. Now he was paying Lisa Marie’s doctor bills and buying baby supplies with Kayla’s money.

  She dropped the tablet and pencil on the patio beside her chair and sighed. So much to do and so little time to get it all done. That lawyer said she’d get her inheritance in a month, but nearly a week had gone by. Could she finish up here in three or four weeks? Would Billy be ready to put the house on the market by then?

  Could Billy afford to hire a painter? Kayla didn’t mind painting herself, but there was no way she’d get it all done within a reasonable amount of time. Maybe she could in a small house, but this place was the size of a small apartment building or hotel.

  Billy looked so sexy this morning she wanted to jump his bones. After their talk last night, she wasn’t sure why he’d want to get involved with a woman like her. His daddy was well-respected in this city, and Billy had a respectable job as a school teacher. Hannah did volunteer work in the community, and so did Donovan. People looked up to the Kane family.

  Kayla grew up in a little trailer house on a dirt road, she didn’t have a decent education, and she’d worked as a waitress in a raunchy club that attracted the kind of people Donovan arrested. The more skin she showed, the higher her tips. Definitely not the kind of woman a school teacher would want in his life.

  The pool guys returned from their lunch break. Time to get back to work.

  Kayla made a pot of spaghetti sauce and tossed in a bunch of meatballs. They’d have half for dinner tonight and she’d put the rest in the freezer for another meal. She left it to simmer slowly on the stove while she gathered Billy’s dirty clothes to start a load of laundry. She only owned three pairs of jeans, and she was wearing the last pair. They had grass stains on the knees.

  As she turned the corner into the library, she spotted a small man with white hair walking through the wall. She stopped right where she was and stared after him.

 
Uneasy after what happened in this house last night, she quickly gathered Billy’s dirty clothes and took them back to the laundry.

  Was that Billy’s grandfather she saw? Where did he go? He didn’t fade away like other ghosts; he walked right through the wall.

  <>

  Billy worked the kids in his gym classes harder than normal on the baseball field that day. In his last gym class, the overweight, red-faced boy on the pitcher’s mound threw down his glove and yelled, “Can you do it any better, coach?”

  “Yeah,” a couple other kids yelled, and Billy couldn’t turn down their challenge. He took the pitcher’s mound and burned a couple fast balls into the catcher’s glove. As the catcher removed his glove and shook his burning hand, Billy looked around at the boys’ astonished faces. “Any more questions?”

  “Yeah,” one kid called. “How come you’re not playing pro ball?”

  “Because I wrecked my knee in college.” He glanced at his watch. “That’s it for the day, boys. Hit the showers.”

  He followed the kids into the locker room and heard their hushed remarks. Everyone here thought he was a social studies teacher filling in as a gym teacher. He’d been coaching Charlie since the kid was big enough to throw the ball, and Charlie was almost as good as Billy was in college. The kid could get an athletic scholarship if he tried, but Charlie wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.

  Billy had gotten into teaching by default. After spending most of his sophomore year on crutches, he knew he’d never play professional baseball. One of his professors suggested he study physical education. He talked it over with Dad and Hannah, and they encouraged him in that direction. Pop thought he should be a cop, but Billy had never had any desire to spend his days chasing down bad guys. With a bum knee, he probably couldn’t pass the physical exam anyway.

  He enjoyed teaching, liked interacting with the kids and watching their young minds soak up knowledge, but his real love had always been baseball.

  His last class of the day was social studies, but as the kids drifted into the room, they were talking about his pitching skills. “All right kids,” he said. “Take your seats. They don’t pay me to play baseball here. They pay me to pound knowledge into your heads.”