Sadie climbed into her own vehicle. Glancing at her watch, she realized the day was slipping away, and she was suddenly anxious to spend time with her mom. She offered Zack a quick wave before she drove off. On her way home to get the photo album, Sadie called Maeva and filled her in on Zack’s secret rendezvous with a squalor cleanup and his ex-girlfriend.
“Sounds to me like his heart’s in the right place,” Maeva said. “Even if he was acting pretty stupid to not tell you right off the bat.”
“Yeah,” Sadie agreed. She was relieved that the cause of Zack’s peculiar behavior during the last few weeks might be because of this simple, well-meaning lie.
“So you didn’t speak to your dad again?” Maeva asked.
Sadie explained about the photo album and promised to call Maeva later if she had any more dad-daughter communication. Now at her house, Sadie ran inside only long enough to pick up the pictures and check to see if any requests for cleanup had gone to her answering machine in the den. Nothing. Things were deadly quiet when it came to mopping up blood in Seattle.
A quick hug to Hairy and Sadie was back on her way to her mom’s house. Secretly she hoped to find her mother still asleep when she got there but, instead, she found Peggy Novak awake and sitting in a chair in the living room, staring sadly off into space.
“Sadie!” Mom exclaimed. Her face momentarily brightened before exhaustion and sadness pulled the corners of her mouth down again.
Sadie looked at her mom, noticing the gray roots showing through her rumpled auburn hair and the black funeral dress looking like it was too big for her petite frame.
“Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up,” Sadie said, glancing furtively around for Dad before walking into the living room. “Did you see my note? I thought I’d stay with you tonight.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” But she looked so immediately pleased that Sadie was glad she’d made the decision.
“It’s nearly dinnertime. How about I fix us something to eat?” Sadie offered.
“If you’re hungry, it’s not like we need to cook. Your friends left a ton of leftover sandwiches and an entire platter of cheese in the refrigerator. What on earth is one person to do with all that food?” She absently smoothed her wrinkled dress. “Of course if your father was here, none of it would go to waste. He would make himself a massive submarine sandwich for a snack and . . .” Her voice trailed off and her gaze seemed to focus intently on the flowered wallpaper on the wall across the room.
“I’ll go through what’s left and fix us each a plate,” Sadie announced, grateful to have something to do. “Why don’t you change out of your church clothes and into something more comfortable while I get things ready?”
“I’m fine,” Mom protested weakly as she got to her feet.
Mom followed Sadie into the kitchen and took a seat at the same oak kitchen table where Sadie had eaten countless meals in her lifetime. Mom folded her hands neatly on the table in front of her and found another wall to stare at. Sadie went through the trays of finger sandwiches, cold cuts, and cheeses and put far too much food on each of their plates before she carried them over to the table.
“I’m not really that hungry,” her mom said, glancing down at the overloaded plate.
“Just have a couple bites of a sandwich,” Sadie said to encourage her. “It’s been a long day, and you hardly had anything to eat when everyone was here.”
“I’m used to being the one who serves the food,” her mom said. “I’m not complaining, though. Your friend and her boyfriend did a fine job. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
The two women nibbled and pushed their food around in silence for a few minutes.
“It was a beautiful service,” Sadie murmured around a small bite of a cucumber sandwich that was too soggy after being rewrapped and placed in the fridge with the rest of the leftovers.
Mom only nodded. She delicately held a wedge of cheddar in her fingers but had yet to take a bite. For the first time Sadie noticed new deep lines around her mom’s eyes. The exhaustive pain on her mother’s face so closely reflected how Sadie’s own heart felt that she could scarcely look her mother in the eye. Instead, she tried to think of other things than their shared grief.
Sadie interrupted their simple meal twice to visit the bathroom but her father didn’t take the hint. Not that she wanted to speak to her dad in front of her mother, but she did want to make sure he was planning on coming back and hadn’t somehow gone over for good.
While Sadie swept the floor, her mom just sat at the kitchen table, staring off into space.
“How about some tea?” Sadie asked at one point.
“You hate tea.”
“So I’ll have coffee and you’ll have tea.”
“I don’t know how a person can hate tea,” Mom remarked coolly as if this were the big problem of the day. “It seems unnatural.”
Sadie didn’t comment. She didn’t want to tell her mother that she hated tea because it was routinely offered to her by grieving people when they hired her to clean the remains of a loved one. Didn’t matter the flavor. If grief had an official drink, it was tea.
She made a small pot of her mom’s favorite cranberry tea and brewed a single cup of coffee for herself. Then she made another trip to the bathroom. When she returned, her mother eyed her quizzically.
“Do you have a bladder infection?”
“No,” Sadie said quickly. “I’ve just been, um, drinking a lot of coffee today and I guess it’s finally catching up with me.”
Her mother offered her a skeptical look, but Sadie was saved from more queries about her frequent trips to the bathroom because Aunt Lynn called. Sadie washed up their small dinner while the two women spoke. Once her mom was off the phone, Sadie got out the photo album. Her mom and Sadie shared the stories surrounding the old photos and reminisced about her dad. There were a few pictures that her mom particularly liked, and Sadie separated those from the album and promised to have copies made.
“I’m glad you brought this over,” her mom said, patting the photo album. “I never knew you had so many pictures of the family.”
“Zack put them in an album for me when he found them all stashed in a shoebox,” Sadie admitted with a light chuckle.
“That was very thoughtful of him,” her mom said.
With a stretch and yawn, she made a big show of glancing at the clock on the stove. It was only nine o’clock. She announced, “I’m going to take another of the pills the doctor prescribed and go to bed.”
“Okay,” Sadie said, and got to her feet to give her mom a quick hug before she disappeared down the hall.
The house soon became quiet and Sadie turned on the television just for company. While an old Western played on TV, Sadie thought about all the things she wanted to tell her dad if he reappeared. She wanted to tell him that she remembered how patient he was when he showed her how to ride a bike and again when he taught her to drive a car. She wanted to also tell him that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of guy, that she always knew he loved her, and that she forgave him for the times he missed her Little League games because of work. She practiced dialogues inside her head but never got a chance to use her speeches because Ron Novak didn’t show. All the discussions and prepared speeches were on the tip of her tongue, but she fell asleep on the sofa after midnight with the words still in her throat.
In the morning, she woke with a jolt where she’d fallen asleep on the uncomfortable sofa. She sat up and rolled her shoulders to alleviate the pain in her stiff neck. She glanced around the room and scowled. Sadie was even more determined to talk to her dad now because she didn’t know how much longer she’d be at her mom’s house. She paced the house and checked every room except her mom’s bedroom.
“How the frig can I tell him how much I loved him if he doesn’t have the decency to show up?” Sadie grumbled under her breath.
So much for telling him how much he meant to me. How important he’s been in my life
. How much I loved him, miss him, and that, thanks to him, I’ll never forget the importance of changing the oil in my car.
Sadie realized he may have found his way over to the other side without any help from her, and the thought saddened her.
With a sigh of resignation and an underlying simmer of anger, Sadie went to the kitchen to make coffee. With abrupt movements she snatched the coffee canister from the cupboard and spooned the grounds into the filter.
“If you haven’t gone over, you’re just being stubborn,” she said aloud to the empty room, trying to coax Dad to appear.
Even though Sadie knew that her father’s ghost could’ve resolved his own issues and found a way to cross over without her help, she felt betrayed. It wasn’t fair that she could talk to a mean, ugly monster ghost at Sunnyside Avenue but she couldn’t reach her own father. It was bad enough she’d never been able to have a conversation with her dead brother because suicides didn’t connect with her. Sadie realized she may have blown the only chance she had to have that last important conversation with her dad yesterday after the funeral. It simultaneously depressed and enraged her.
“This totally sucks,” Sadie muttered, shaking her fist at the ceiling. “You really don’t play fair.”
“You can’t blame God for your father’s death, Sadie,” her mom said softly as she strolled into the kitchen, her worn slippers making swishing sounds on the tile.
“I know.” Sadie walked over and gave her mom a hug. “You’re up early.”
“I’m always up at six.”
“Really? Why?”
“Once your father retired, he started to always get up at seven. Getting up at six was the only way I could get an hour to myself during the day, unless he decided to go golfing.” Her voice broke then and she cleared her throat to cover it. “Guess I won’t have to worry about that anymore.” She clapped her hands. “That’s it. Tomorrow, I’m going to sleep in.”
Sadie poured them each a cup of coffee and then sat at the table with her mother. She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and stared into the dark liquid. Sadie started to wonder if letting her mom know about her ability to talk to the dead might be a good idea.
“Mom, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about my work. . . .”
“I know what you’re going to say,” her mom said, looking into Sadie’s eyes and sighing with deep resignation.
“You do?” Sadie raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“You think that now that your father’s died, I should be more comfortable with what you do. You think it’s time I realized the importance of your work because it saves families from being traumatized twice if they have to clean up after a deceased loved one. You want me to stop telling everyone I know that you run a specialized cleaning company for executives, and you want me to admit the truth: that you run a successful trauma clean company that tidies up after murders, suicides, and people who have been dead a long time.”
“Well, yes, all that would be real nice but—”
“I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed by what you do for a living. I know you started the whole thing in order to deal with Brian’s suicide. I guess I always figured you’d go back to being a schoolteacher eventually.” She looked at Sadie hopefully. “Teaching is an honorable thing too, you know. There was nothing wrong with teaching second grade. Do you think you’ll ever go back to being a teacher?”
Sadie thought about the wide-eyed admiration of seven-year-olds compared to decomposing corpses and crazy ghosts like Mr. Ugly.
“As tempting as that is—”
“You don’t want to.” Mom nodded sharply. “You’re a big girl and I should just butt out of your life, right?”
Sadie opened her mouth to smooth the edges of her mom’s anger but her mom was already on her feet.
“I’m going to have a shower.”
Once her mother had left the room, Sadie poured herself another cup of coffee.
“I almost told her,” Sadie said aloud. “But maybe Mom’s not ready to hear that I talk to the dead.” She paused for a response, and when none came she sighed. “If you haven’t gone over, you’re just being a pigheaded stubborn jackass now.”
“That’s a fine way to talk about your dead father.”
Sadie glanced up and a smile lit her face when she saw her dad leaning casually against her kitchen counter.
“Thanks for coming back.”
“Well, it’s not the same as walking in and out of a room when you’re alive, you know. I have to really want to come and then concentrate somehow.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure if I’m even doing it right. It all feels so . . . unnatural. Is this really how it’s going to be, then? I’m stuck like this?”
Sadie paused before answering carefully. “Dad, I wish you weren’t dead, but don’t you think it’s good that we get another chance to talk?” she asked hopefully.
“Well, sure, hon, but this can’t be normal. Is it?”
“What’s normal?” Sadie shrugged her shoulders. “I’m glad I got another chance to talk to you because I want you to know just how much you mean to me. I love you so much. You were a good dad. You taught me a lot.” She blinked away tears.
“About cars, you mean.” He chuckled. “I was never good at the important stuff.”
“Well, sure, you spent a lot of time making me watch you tinker with things under the hood, but I knew that was when the important conversations would happen.” Sadie smiled. “Like when you told me if a boy ever tried to force himself on me, I should knee him in the family jewels.”
“Words of wisdom to live by,” he said.
“And when you said that you’d pick me up anytime, anyplace, no questions asked if I was ever out with a date who had been drinking.”
They were quiet a minute.
“A dad has to give his daughter advice like that,” he said. “Now it’s your turn. If you do this talking-to-spirits thing on a regular basis, then you must know how it works.” He waved his hands around. “Is this purgatory? Am I supposed to be doing something to get to heaven?”
“Do you feel like you need to do something?” Sadie asked him gently.
“I don’t know. . . .”
Sadie knew it wasn’t fair to avoid his questions, but part of her wanted him here. She didn’t want him going over until they said all they could say to each other.
Suddenly, his gaze snapped up. “Your mom’s out of the shower. I should go.”
“She can’t see you.”
“Yeah, but if she sees you talking to yourself again, she’s going to make you take the pills the doc gave to her.”
“Come back and talk to me later,” Sadie pleaded on a whisper.
“Maybe. I can’t make any promises. I don’t know how this thing works.”
“I really want to see you and I promise you won’t be any less dead if you visit.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he replied gently. “It’s like every time I talk to you, it gets harder to feel which way I’m supposed to go.”
“What do you mean?” Sadie asked.
“It’s like the room gets darker and I don’t know if I’ll be able to find the door if I keep coming back.”
Then he was gone and Sadie wondered if her dad would pay too high a price for her own selfishness.
Peggy Novak’s shower seemed to help her set her mind into action. She emerged with her hair damp and a list a mile long of things that needed to get done. Sadie’s mom and sister were both list makers. It worked for them but Sadie didn’t often make lists, unless it was an agenda related to work. Mom’s first item was to put Sadie to work with writing thank-you notes to those who’d sent flowers and casseroles.
“I called your aunt Lynn already and we’re going to take all the flower arrangements over to the senior home today,” Mom announced.
“That’s a good idea,” Sadie said. “When is she coming over?”
“She should be here within the hour. Afterward we’re going out for lunch. Do you want
to join us?”
“No, you two should spend some time together. Maybe I’ll just take you out for supper instead,” Sadie offered.
“Gosh, it’s not like I want to spend all day in restaurants,” her mom said while placing a stamp in the corner of an envelope. “Besides, don’t you have work to do? I’m sure you can’t afford to just take time off.”
“Business is slow right now,” Sadie admitted.
“Slow doesn’t mean stopped,” Mom said. “Honestly, Sadie, I don’t require a babysitter.”
Sadie thought about Paula’s house and the angry ghost, and she shuddered. “I guess there is a job I could work on.”
“Good. Lynn and I will be busy enough during the day, and when she brings me back to the house you can always join us to finish up with the thank-yous that we don’t get done now.”
Before she could respond to her mother, Sadie’s cell phone rang. She was surprised to see the incoming call was from Paula Wicks. With a frown Sadie answered.
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Sadie, but I just showed up at my mom’s house before heading off to work, and Zack was here already working on his own. He hurt his ankle somehow and he needs to have it looked at, but he’s too stubborn to go to the hospital.”
“Let me talk to him,” Sadie said. There was some shuffling while the phone was handed to Zack.
“I’m fine,” he said.
In the background she heard Paula shout, “You’re not fine. Your ankle’s swollen.”
“If it’s swollen, it should be looked at,” Sadie insisted.
“It’s only a little swollen,” he replied.
“I’m on my way. I’ll take a look at it,” Sadie said, already getting to her feet and rinsing her coffee cup.
“You don’t need to do that. I’m fine,” Zack protested.
“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Sadie said, and disconnected. To her mother she said, “Zack hurt his ankle on a job. I’m sure it’s not too serious but I should go. Are you going to be okay?”
“Of course I’ll be okay,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Go and be with your guy. Lynn will be here soon and I’m not an infant. I can be on my own.”
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