A Ghost of a Chance
Page 14
I jumped up, not wanting to miss her. “Thanks, Ernie,” I said as I ran for my car. For someone who was caffeine deprived, I sure was doing a lot of running.
I jumped into my car and sped off toward the graveyard. Tiffany was there, standing in front of her headstone. She must have heard me coming, or felt me, because she spoke to me without turning. “The police went to my house this morning. They told my mom everything about Louise.”
“It must be nice to know,” I said. “To have closure.”
Tiffany turned to me. “For my mom, or for me?”
I shrugged. “Both.”
Tiffany nodded. “Yes, it is. I know I feel better. I feel lighter, which is a strange thing to say considering I can float.”
“Please don’t float,” I said. “I’m glad you feel better. I’m only sorry it took so long.”
Tiffany smiled at me and shook her head. “Don’t be silly. Thank you so much for helping. No one else would.”
I smiled, too. A man walked past and looked in my direction, but for once I didn’t receive a strange look for talking to thin air. A cemetery was the one place where it was socially acceptable for people to speak to the unseen. “Well, you didn’t exactly have a lot of people to ask.”
“True,” Tiffany said. The sun was in my eyes, and it made her a little hard to see, even for me. She was shimmering.
“So where do you go now?” I asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Tiffany shrugged. “I don’t belong here.” She shook her head softly.
“I know,” I said. “Are you scared?”
“No,” Tiffany answered. “I’m not. I think I should be, but I’m not. I know it will be okay. I can’t explain it, but it feels really good—over there. I’m going to go now.”
I nodded, sad that she was going, but pleased at the same time. Tiffany took another look at her headstone, and then the air around her grew brighter. All at once she took a step forward and then vanished. I knew I wouldn’t speak with her again, as long as I was in this world. The thought of that made me sad, but I was happy for her. She had found closure, and she wasn’t tied to this world any longer.
I turned and walked slowly back to my car, and then I drove home. My mother was still at church, so I walked out and looked at the five acre paddock where Basil was probably going to put his two pet sheep. The grass was already getting long again, and it had only been mown a week ago.
I thought about the people I cared about. There were people who were still in my life, like Tara, my mother, and Basil. I had no idea whether Basil would ever be any more to me than an accountant, but at least I could rely on him. If nothing else, he could be a friend, although truth be told, I wanted more than that. And there were people who were no longer in my life, like Tiffany and my father. Just because I couldn’t speak to them anymore, it didn’t mean I didn’t care about them, and it didn’t mean they didn’t care about me. I knew that, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow.
I stood at the fence, thinking about Tiffany, and about everything that had happened in the last few weeks. I wondered if I would be able to go so willingly to the other side when it was my turn. The idea scared me. What if after this world there was nothing?
Of course, that didn’t make sense. If there were ghosts, it didn’t make sense that we went nowhere, and I knew for a fact there were ghosts, because I spoke to them.
I sighed and walked along the fence line. I didn’t need to keep thinking about things I couldn’t answer. I was back here in Witch Woods and I was happy. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that being back in my hometown, running my father’s business, actually made me happy. It had been a big change, but it had turned out to be a welcome one. I was running a business, and so far, and no thanks to my mother, I hadn’t run it into the ground. I helped people daily. I helped people mourn and cope, and move on.
I supposed moving on wasn’t the right term. We never really moved on. You didn’t lose someone you loved and then just go on with life. There was always a part of them that went with you, and there was always a part of you that died with them. But that was okay, because I knew that the people, good or bad, who help make your life what it is are the most important people you’ll ever know. I thought of Tiffany. I would miss her. I was glad she had crossed over, and I knew I would never forget her.
I wiped a tear from my eye, and made my way to the funeral home. I turned back when I heard someone call my name. Basil was waving and smiling as he walked down the fence line toward me, a sheep on a leash on either side of him.
* * * * The End * * * *
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Next Book in this Series
Nothing to Ghost About
Laurel Bay is conducting a funeral, when someone is strangled in the bathroom. Now that there have been two deaths in the funeral home, business is as dead as a doornail. As Laurel sifts through the clues, she is faced with too many suspects, a wisecracking ghost, and a woman journalist who appears to be after more than Basil’s files.
Laurel thought that inheriting the funeral home was an opportunity to die for, but it seems to be quite an undertaking.
* * *
Other books by Morgana Best
Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch Book 1)
Amelia Spelled has had a bad week. Her boyfriend dumps her when she inadvertently gives him food poisoning; her workplace, a telecommunications center, fires all their staff as they are outsourcing offshore, and she is evicted due to smoke damage resulting from her failed attempts at baking. Amelia thinks her luck has changed when she inherits her aunt’s store and beautiful Victorian house.
Yet has Amelia jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? The store is a cake store, and her aunt was a witch. To add to the mix, the house has secrets all of its own.
When a man is murdered in the cake store, will Amelia be able to cook up a way to solve the crime? Or will her spells prove as bad as her baking?
You might also like Morgana Best’s Amazon #1 Cozy Best-seller and Kindle All-Star Book Award recipient series, Sibyl Potts Cozy Mystery Series.
A Cereal Killer (A Sibyl Potts Cozy Mystery, Book ONE)
Sybil Potts has moved to the pleasant town of Little Tatterford, eager to find a life of peace and quiet after her stressful divorce.
With minutes of arriving in town, she sees a dead body and finds she is surrounded by eccentric people: the English gentleman, Mr. Buttons, who serves everyone tea and cucumber sandwiches, and her landlord, Cressida Upthorpe, who is convinced that her fat cat, Lord Farringdon, speaks to her.
Yet Sibyl herself has a secret to keep.
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About Morgana Best
#1 Best-selling Cozy Mystery author, Morgana Best, lives in a small, historic, former gold mining town in the middle of nowhere in Australia. She is owned by one highly demanding, rescued cat who is half Chinchilla, and two less demanding dogs, a chocolate Labrador and a rescued Dingo, as well as two rescued Dorper sheep, the ram, Herbert, and his wether friend, Bertie.
Morgana is a former college professor who now writes full time. Her subject was grammar. Morgana was a published author of dry academic books under a pen name, but abandoned academia to write cozy mysteries.
In her spare time, Morgana loves to read cozy mysteries, repurpose furniture, and renovate her old house. She is vegan.
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