She heard Zack walk away, then waited a beat to see if her dad would return. When he didn’t, she stepped out of the bathroom and walked into the living room to find Dawn hoisting one-year-old Jacob into her arms while John snagged the diaper bag and various toys off the carpet. All the other guests were gone.
“You’re leaving?” Sadie asked.
“It’s time for his nap,” Dawn replied.
“He could nap here,” Sadie said.
“It’s just easier if he’s in his own bed,” John explained.
“Maeva and Terry did a great job catering the wake,” Dawn said, shifting Jacob onto her other hip. “They said to say good-bye to you. They were in a hurry because Terry has to cater a wedding in a few hours and Maeva was holding a séance at her psychic café at four o’clock. She said she’ll call you later.”
“Where’s Mom?” Sadie looked around for her mother.
“She went to lie down,” Dawn said. “I think she took one of the sedatives the doctor prescribed.”
At Sadie’s worried look Dawn added, “She’s going to be fine.”
“Her husband of forty-eight years just died. I don’t think ‘fine’ is the word that covers it,” Sadie said, snarkily.
“Easy.” Zack placed a warning hand on her arm.
“That’s not what I meant,” Dawn said reproachfully.
“What your sister meant was that we’ve been with your mother practically every second since your dad died. We know she’s hurting, but she’ll have to be alone eventually,” John stated softly.
“But she shouldn’t be alone today,” Sadie insisted.
“We can stay longer,” Zack said. “We’re not in any rush.”
But Sadie was in a rush. She didn’t want to deal with the naked grief that shimmered in her mom’s red-rimmed eyes. Mostly she didn’t want to deal with her dead father, whose ghost was for some reason camping out in the bathroom.
“You’ve been avoiding spending one-on-one time with Mom since it happened,” Dawn said accusingly.
“I have not,” Sadie protested, but at Dawn’s piercing glare she relented. “Okay, maybe I have, but—”
“Look, I get it,” Dawn said huffily. “But we all miss him and we’re all hurting. You don’t have the market cornered on pain.”
“I never said I did.”
“Well, then don’t act like it.”
“You two knock it off,” Dad chimed from the hallway. “Your squabbling will wake up your mother.”
“Shut up,” Sadie hissed.
“You shut up!” Dawn retorted angrily.
“Let’s go,” John said, taking a now whimpering Jacob from Dawn’s arms and heading for the door.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Sadie protested lamely, but she didn’t want to follow that up with, I was talking to our dead father, who finally decided to come out of the bathroom. It wasn’t until Dawn and her family had left in a huff that Zack spoke.
“So your dad’s ghost is here with us, huh?”
“Yup. This day just keeps getting better and better,” Sadie said sarcastically.
“Wait a second,” her dad spoke up. “You mean to tell me that this guy knows about you being able to talk to ghosts, but you didn’t bother telling me or your mother?” His voice was colored with hurt.
“Sorry. It’s not the kind of thing I felt comfortable talking to you about,” Sadie said to her father. To Zack she said, “He’s miffed that I never told him about the talking-to-the-dead thing.”
“Hell, sometimes I wish you’d never told me,” Zack said, slumping into an overstuffed chair. At Sadie’s angry glare Zack cleared his throat. “I’m kidding. Really. I love everything about you. Your whole communicating-with-ghosts thing makes life, um, interesting.”
“Huh.” Sadie said.
“Tell him to get out of my chair,” Dad said. “I’m dead a few days and that man thinks he can just sit in my chair.”
“That man is Zack Bowman, my boyfriend, whom I live with. You don’t have to act like you’ve forgotten who he is,” Sadie retorted.
“Your dad never did like me,” Zack said, folding his arms angrily over his chest.
“He’s right,” Dad said.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, he just didn’t like the idea that we were living together without getting married,” Sadie said to Zack. “Right?” she said to her dad.
“And I don’t like him sitting in my chair.”
“It’s not like you’re sitting in it,” Sadie said with exasperation.
“Oh yeah?”
Dad walked over and sat right on top of Zack. Of course, Zack had no idea that Ron Novak was sitting sort of on him and kind of through him. Sadie looked over at her father and could see right through him to Zack. It was a surreal image that gave her an immediate headache.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Sadie said with a sigh.
“I just can’t deal with this right now. Maybe I’ll get home and find there’s a message from a nice simple suicide to clean up. That would be nice.”
Devil May Ride Page 27