by Linda Palmer
“Did he die in an auto accident?”
His eyes brimming with tears, my patient nodded. “A year ago.”
“He wants you to know that he appreciates the flowers you put on his grave every week. He’s also fussing because you spend too much. Get some silk ones, he says, and arrange them yourself. It’s the thought that counts.”
Dalton laughed through his tears. “Tell him to shut his trap.”
“Believe me, he heard you.” I focused on the females. “Your mom and your sister want you to know that they’re with Jacob, who found them when he passed. Mom’s fussing because you kept him a secret. She says who wouldn’t like such a nice boy?”
His face contorted as he struggled for composure. A sob was his response.
“Are you worried about dying?” I asked.
He looked away and swallowed audibly. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know your situation. I mean, I mostly deal with the dead. But if you do die, they’ll be there waiting for you, you know.”
“He’s not going to die,” said Cooper. “At least not any time soon.”
Dalton and I both zoned in on him.
Dalton spoke first. “But the doctor said—”
Cooper stopped him. “Lab results should be here by this afternoon, but the tumor was benign. You’re fine.”
Dalton lost it then. Without thought, I went to him. We hugged for a long time, both of us crying. When I sneaked a peek at Cooper, I could tell he’d choked up, too.
When he and I left shortly after, we saw Detective Simms lurking down the hall. I greeted him, noting that he wasn’t the only officer around. Another one, this cop in uniform, appeared to be standing guard outside the door of 408.
Just as Detective Simms opened his mouth to speak to us, a female spirit that was almost fully materialized slipped out of the room via the wall and stood in the hallway. My startled gaze clashed with hers. I knew she saw me. I’d never seen a ghost so…fresh, I guess. I realized that she had an Asian look about her and wore a hospital gown. The bandages on her neck and bruises everywhere else gave me an impression of brutality and pain. The moment she began to fade from view, I registered the silently flashing alarm lights, mounted high on the corridor walls. Nurses and orderlies came running from everywhere, obliterating my concentration. The detective and the guard cop both startled violently and charged into the room along with everyone else.
Cooper and I exchanged a look and got out of there. By the time we reached his truck, I was an emotional mess and not just because I’d seen the ghost of a woman who’d just died. The session with Dalton lingered with me, too.
For that reason, Cooper didn’t drive me straight home, instead heading back to Sonic. Without ordering anything, we sat in his truck for a while to regroup.
“Thanks for telling Dalton about his lab work,” I said. “I’m so glad you picked up on that.”
“Couldn’t have him stressing over nothing.”
“You saw that poor woman in the hallway, right?”
“I did.”
“Did you sense the brutality around her?”
“It was hard to miss.”
“I’ll bet Detective Simms was there because she was an attempted homicide.”
“Attempted? I think it was a done deal.”
“Oh yeah. Of course.” With a shudder, I abruptly changed the subject. “Heard from your mom today?”
“Nope.”
Didn’t like the sound of that. “Did you try to call her?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, Cooper. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take it a day at a time. The phone works both ways, you know. And meanwhile, I’m hoping Dad will eventually forgive me for shutting him out all these years and drop by again with some advice. So far, though, nothing.”
“Did I tell you he told me not to give up on you?”
“What! When?”
“Nick brought him by.” I gave Cooper the details.
“Was he okay?”
“He was fine and loves you more than ever, so I’m thinking he’ll definitely hang out with you if you’ll let him. Not sure what’s holding him back now, but I’ll ask if Nick brings him around again.”
“Thanks.”
“We should probably leave now.” I pulled down the mirror on the passenger side visor. “Do I look okay? Don’t want to worry them.”
“Baby, you have no idea.”
That brought a smile to my face. “I want to help Mom with dinner. We’re making lasagna. You do eat Italian, don’t you?”
“If I’m going to love a Tagliaro, I’d better.”
He had that right.
When we got to my house, Mom greeted Cooper with the biggest hug ever. Since she was so worried about him, she overcompensated. I could tell that her gushing embarrassed him and quickly sent her back to the kitchen, from which wafted some amazing smells.
After settling Cooper on the couch and handing him the remote, I joined her at the stove. I noticed that she’d abandoned her usual at-home attire of jeans and a sweatshirt, going with nice pants and button-up blouse she didn’t tuck in. She even had on flats.
Was that for Cooper’s sake? I liked that it might be. “What can I do?”
“Set the table for starters. Use the good stuff.”
Pleased by the implication, I did just that, choosing our nicest china to make my guy feel extra special. My efforts did not go unnoticed by my dad once he got home, and of course he commented on the table, now perfectly set with our best silver and four crystal glasses. A low bouquet of fresh fall flowers sat right in the middle, complementing the color of the tablecloth and napkins and giving the room a festive touch.
Cooper sat across from me at our table for four. As we ate, Mom and Dad kept the conversation flowing, both carefully avoiding any mention of sidekicks and home life except for a couple of pointed questions at the beginning of the meal.
“So you’re staying with Marty Bookman?” Mom asked Cooper as she spooned steaming pasta onto his plate.
“For now. Do you know him?”
“I know his whole family. They eat at the restaurant a lot. Both your parents were from this area, right? You don’t have any relatives around?”
“No ma’am.”
I slashed my hand across my throat to kill that line of questioning.
Dad quickly took up the slack, asking Cooper about his new job, school, and football. “What position do you play?”
“Tackle.”
“How’s the season going?”
“We’re five and one. Two more games left.”
Since I had no interest in sports, even one Cooper loved, my mind wandered while they discussed game details and the upcoming basketball season. For some reason, a spirit I knew but didn’t know approached, startling me. Strange ghosts seldom showed up at the Tagliaro house, something I constantly thanked Nick for. I figured he was protecting me from unwanted intrusion since I wasn’t very good at doing that, myself.
Hard to ignore, this spirit—an Asian mix, I thought—hovered. As I shoveled pasta into my mouth, I became more and more disturbed and, as a result, jittery. I dropped my fork, which clattered onto my plate but didn’t chip it, thank goodness. I bobbled my stemmed glass, spilling Coke. Then I knocked over the bowl of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
“Are you okay?” asked Mom, quickly righting it.
“Uh-huh.” I laid my cloth napkin on the table and pushed my chair back. “Excuse me. I’ll just be a sec.” Practically running, I went to the bathroom and locked the door. “What do you want?”
Though it felt as if the spirit had followed me into the room, I got no response. Impulsively, I turned off the light, which doused the area in darkness, any specter’s playground. I instantly saw an apparition that was mostly a face with a wispy body. I couldn’t make out clothing at all. Had the spirit from the hospital followed me home? And if so, she’d sure faded a lot. And why didn’t she feel the same?
A
new possibility came to me. Was this the woman lying in the leaves in that snapshot in Detective Simms’s office? She had bruises and scratches that told me she’d died a violent death. But how had she found me?
Weirded out, I flicked on the light to chase her away. A nanosecond later, I puked over the toilet, heaving until my ribs hurt and I thought I’d keel over.
*
Chapter Seven
Someone pounded on the door. Bang. Bang. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Mia! Are you sick?”
Mom.
“I’m fine. Be out in a minute.” I quickly flushed and rinsed my mouth. Then I looked in the mirror. A pale, wide-eyed girl with brown eyes and black hair looked back at me. I pinched my cheeks for color, pasted a smile on my face, and opened the door. “Yuck. Something did not agree with me.”
“So Cooper said.”
It didn’t surprise me that he knew. Naturally I wondered if he’d seen the spirit, too. “Hope nobody else gets sick.”
“So do I.” She led the way back to the dining room.
I slipped into my chair, next to Cooper.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, avoiding his intense gaze.
I played with my food during the rest of the meal, unsure if I should try eating again. But by dessert time—good ol’ American apple pie—I managed to get something down. After dinner, Mom and I sent the guys to the den. We quickly cleared up and joined them just fifteen minutes later. I immediately invited Cooper to accompany me to the back deck even though it was a little cool out.
He snagged his hoodie; I snagged mine. We went out through the door in the utility room. A black sky spangled with stars drew us into the night. Since I’d deliberately left the deck light off, we were nothing more than shadows in the dark as we sat on the steps descending onto the lawn. Cooper chose the step above mine, which left me free to settle right in front of him. Leaning back, I rested my arms on his thighs. I looked around, half expecting that scary spirit to show up again. But she gave us our space.
“You saw her?” I asked.
“For a split second. Did she follow you to the bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
Cooper leaned forward slightly to wrap both his arms around me. “That wasn’t the woman from the hospital, was it?”
“I don’t think so, but she favored her a lot.”
“As in Asian.”
“Exactly. Or a mix. The eyes were exotic, but not really Asian.”
“Well, whoever she is, she definitely died a violent death.”
So he’d picked up on that, too. I shivered at the memory.
We sat in silence for a minute, with Cooper rubbing my shoulders.
“If the police have everything under control, why are these women coming to me?” I said, breaking the silence.
“Have you seen more than just those two?”
“No.”
“Then I think they’re coming to us.”
He had a point, and that made me feel a little better. “I don’t know one thing about what happened to those poor ladies. Are you getting any details?”
“Not yet.”
So he thought he might. Good. Another forward step towards a full sidekick reunion. “So all we can say for sure is that they’re definitely dead. Even that little bit of information might help solve Detective Simms’s cases if I told him.”
“It might for sure. Assuming they have something to do with him, and I think they do since he had those photos on his bulletin board and was at the hospital, too. But he may not thank you for the information. I mean, he seemed pretty adamant about keeping us out of it.”
“For sure.” I thought about helping anyway, trying to picture myself at the police station passing along terrifying details about a murder. In my whole life, my sidekick had never once focused on anything so scary. The spirits I communicated with were happy ones. I feared letting bad stuff inside my head would change me and what I normally did. “Even if Detective Simms would agree to let us help, I’m not sure I want to or can do it. What about you?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Honestly? I’d rather not. I’m afraid I might open a door I could never close again.”
“So how do we handle this?”
“We were told to stay out of it, so that’s what we should do…at least for now.”
That sounded good to me.
We went inside a few minutes later since I’d started to shiver. Mom and Dad were both in the living room. Preferring privacy to their favorite sitcoms, we headed upstairs to my room. I didn’t really have a comfortable chair, the perfect excuse for us to stretch out on the bed and begin some channel surfing of our own. I loved the way Cooper slid his arm under my neck, which gave me freedom to cuddle up to him. I didn’t even mind when he found a football game on TV.
But he didn’t really watch it. Instead, he began kissing me. Though I’d left the door open, I didn’t hold back. Kissing Cooper was pure heaven. I loved the way his heart beat so steadily beneath my hand; I loved the scratchy feel of his chin against my face; I loved his lips, always gentle but firmly pressed to mine.
Sensing we had company—the spirit kind—I waved Nick away. “Not now. I’m busy.”
Cooper turned on his side to face me. “You need to set limits, as in when you’re making out with your handsome, brilliant, totally awesome boyfriend, no dead people can come in.”
I snickered just a little. “Doesn’t work.”
“Then I’ll do it for you. Dude—”
“His name is Nick.”
“Nick, we have a new rule. When Mia is entertaining someone up here— Let me rephrase that. When Mia is entertaining me, you can’t come in. You’re also not welcome when she’s in the bathroom, dressing, or naked. If, however, she’s got another guy in here, feel free to barge right in.” He caught my eye. “Have I missed anything?”
I could barely answer for laughing. “Don’t think so.”
The room instantly felt lighter.
I slapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God. It worked. Don’t be mad, Nick. We really aren’t trying to hurt your feelings.”
“Hey now! Do not undo what I’ve just done, please.”
“Sorry.” I spoke to the ceiling. “The new rules still apply.”
“That’s better.” Cooper sat up. “I need to go. Marty’s parents sometimes go to bed really early during the week, and I don’t want to wake them when I get there.”
“Okay.”
We kissed again and then got off the bed. I walked him downstairs, where he said his goodbyes, and then stepped out the door.
He turned to face me. “Are you coming to my game tomorrow night?”
“Um…I guess I could.”
Cooper chuckled. “Just testing your devotion. It’s out of town and it’s supposed to rain, so don’t bother. I’ll tell you all about it on when you come into Chick-fil-A on Saturday.”
“Great.” I hoped he didn’t pick up on my lack of enthusiasm for a sport he loved. “I’m going to be at Chick-fil-A on Saturday?”
“If you want to see me, you are. I’m working from three until eleven, so we sure won’t be able to do anything after I get off.”
Since I hadn’t really thought about the difficulties of dating a guy who played football on Friday nights and worked on Saturday nights, I was pretty bummed.
“Of course, there’s always Sunday if you want to hang with me,” he added.
“Do you want to hang with me?”
He grinned. “Baby, you have no idea.”
We had a pep rally at school on Friday just before lunch, something we only did for away games that some students couldn’t get to. And though I’d reluctantly attended every one held so far, this one was different because I actually had a player to root for. Since Brynn did, too, we both cheered our hearts out, something new. Oddly enough, I almost felt as if I belonged with the other kids crowded around us.
Tyler, a fan of most other sports, seemed
a little bored with everything, as usual. We secretly decided he needed a girlfriend to liven things up and promised each other we’d be on the lookout for a female senior who liked six-foot-plus guys with a wicked sense of humor, a lot of loyalty, and no sense of romance.
Once that was over, we all filed into the caf at once, causing a huge traffic jam of human bodies at every entrance. Focused on feeding my growling tummy, I didn’t see three girls approaching me until they stood barely a foot away. I’m sure my eyes flew open wide when they blocked my path.
Though Martinsburg had its share of Goth chicks, I’d never been approached by one, much less three of them. Startled, I backed up a little, which put me in contact with Cooper, rock solid and standing right behind me.
“Can I do something for you?” I asked when I found my voice.
The girls, all with ebony hair and too much eyeliner, wore clothes only a double-double-toil-and-trouble sort of gal could love. They smirked at me as the center one spoke. “We don’t think you’re the real thing.”
And they were? I bit the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. “Sounds like a personal problem.”
“We hate fakes,” said the girl on the left.
I noticed she had black lipstick on her tooth, which sort of spoiled the look she was going for, but I didn’t enlighten her. Any chick who thought lips were naturally that color had to have serious mental problems. “And you’re telling me this because…?”
“You should watch your back,” said the girl on the right.
That did it. I laughed out loud. Cooper, however, went ballistic. “Just in case you weirdoes don’t know—” He got right in middle wannabe-witch’s face “—this school doesn’t tolerate bullying. But that wasn’t really bullying, was it? That was a freakin’ threat.”
I’d never seen his cheeks so red. Concerned that he might just lose it and start yelling or something, I shot a glance at the teachers watching us and touched his arm. “Cooper, no. They’re not wor—”
“Cooper? Would that be Cooper Marsh?” The girl on the left glared at us. “Just because your dad is the principal doesn’t mean you have the right to harass us.”
Huh? I immediately wedged myself between my guy and the idiots confronting us. “Marsh isn’t his dad, and I believe you three started this.”