“If she knows, it’s not because I told her.” The phone line beeped. “I gotta go. Someone’s on the other line.”
He disconnected before even saying good-bye. Sadie looked at her cell phone and swore softly. Then she called her mom, who was now home and sipping tea with Aunt Lynn. Sadie told Mom she’d be home in time for dinner.
“Tell Aunt Lynn she’s welcome to stay,” Sadie offered.
“I’ll cook enough for all of us.”
“There’s no need to cook, Sadie. Have you no idea the number of casseroles I’ve received in the last few days?”
“Oh. Right.” How could she forget? When she’d opened the freezer that morning, she’d nearly had a dozen topple out onto the floor. “Okay, then I’ll heat up one mean casserole for all of us.”
“What about Zack?”
“He can get his own damned casserole,” Sadie muttered.
“I meant, how’s his ankle?”
“Broken. Really swollen and definitely broken and he’s being a big baby about it.”
“Oh, dear! Well, then, don’t worry about me. Lynn and I can certainly heat up a dish and fend for ourselves. After all, you should be home with Zack and—”
“Zack is fine on his own. I just talked to him, and trust me, he prefers it this way. I’ll see you in a while after I’ve done some errands.”
She wanted to stomp her accelerator and rocket the car across Lake Washington but, once again, the 520 was bogged down in traffic, and a fifteen-minute skip downtown turned into a forty-five minute crawl. Finally, she inched her way over to Exit 166 and dipped onto Stewart Street.
The Greyhound bus depot was in the exact same location as it had always been, and it looked just as skuzzy as it always had, regardless of a new paint job and attempts to beautify its exterior. Sadie walked around two bums asleep on either side of the depot door, each with a dirty paper cup set up to accept cash donations.
The inside of the bus depot smelled like urine, body odor, and indigence masked only slightly by an underlying scent of pine floor cleaner. Sadie glanced around the crowd milling about and spotted a bank of lockers on the opposite wall. Locker number forty-two looked like all the other luggage lockers except it had a combination lock instead of a key lock. Sadie took a slip of paper from her pocket and read the combination that Boom Boom had given her. She twisted the combination dial forward and back until she reached the final number and then tugged the lock open. Inside the locker was only one item, a black three-ring binder with worn edges. Sadie took it out, removed Boom Boom’s combination lock from the bracket, and brought both the lock and the binder back to her van.
Sadie flipped open the binder, and staring up at her was a well-oiled model in a full-page Calvin Klein advertisement. She flipped the page and there was another. And another. And then at least a dozen more after that.
“Oka-a-a-ay,” Sadie mumbled to herself. “I’m guessing Boom Boom was a little obsessed with beefcake.” It wasn’t exactly what she imagined he wanted to leave behind for Rosie, but she wasn’t one to judge. Sadie just chuckled lightly to herself and tossed the binder onto the passenger seat. She turned the key in the ignition and prepared to steer away from the curb, but then something caused her to hesitate. Picking up the binder again, she perused the old photos more closely this time. “Well, I’ll be damned. . . .”
Apparently, Mr. Boom Boom was not always Boom Boom. At one time he was Bryce Boom, owner of six-pack abs and a successful male model career.
“Wow.” Sadie blinked in surprise at the difference from success to addict. It was nearly impossible to call them the same man.
At the back of the binder were a number of envelopes and, near as Sadie could figure, they held general keepsakes like check stubs and contracts. She had no idea why Boom Boom would want to pass this stuff along to Rosie, but she knew it wasn’t her job to second-guess someone’s final request. Sadie would do as the ghost had asked.
It would be hours before she could pass along Boom Boom’s bequest, so she called Maeva to see if she felt up to company. She was surprised to hear that she wasn’t at her Psychic Café and was told by the receptionist that Maeva had gone home sick with a headache and had canceled all her readings for the day, so Sadie didn’t want to bother her but she also didn’t want to go home to deal with grumpy Zack. She dialed Dawn’s number next. She should really try to find a way to apologize to her sister. But Dawn quickly told Sadie she was on her way out the door to bring baby Dylan to his Gymboree class, and she hung up before Sadie could muster up an “I’m sorry.”
With a sigh she realized there was no avoiding it. She needed to try to get some one-on-one time with dear old dad. Maybe she could convince Aunt Lynn to take Mom out for a while. She knew Mom hated when she showed up at the house with the Scene-2-Clean company van, but there was no helping it tonight.
Before she headed back to Mom’s house for casserole cooking and deep chats with her dead father, Sadie decided to restock the van with the heavy-duty equipment required for a decomp job, and that meant a pit stop at home first.
As she drove toward home, Sadie began to feel guilty about leaving Zack alone and in pain. She thought of the time she’d broken her wrist when she fell off her bike when she was ten. It had hurt like hell, and sitting in front of a television all day wasn’t nearly as much fun as she’d thought it would be. Just before she reached home Sadie stopped at the grocery store and picked up a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream because it was Zack’s favorite. She figured she could bolster his mood with a bowl of ice cream and maybe a neck massage.
Sadie rolled up the garage door and veered around Zack’s Mustang in the driveway to park next to her Honda. Sadie wondered briefly who had brought Zack’s vehicle back from Sunnyside Avenue and figured it was probably a cop friend. She spent just a couple moments loading equipment into the back of the van. It didn’t take long. During the last few weeks when there’d been very little work, Sadie had organized and reorganized her supplies and then stocked and restocked the van. She snagged her camera from the duffel bag because she needed to load the pictures onto her computer and print some for her own file and some for the mall’s insurance company. Zack, despite his crabbing, would want to see the pictures too. But all that could wait until after Zack got a little love, attention, and ice cream.
With ice cream in one hand and camera in the other, Sadie entered the house from the garage. The door opened into a small room that doubled as a shower and laundry area. When she worked a scene, she’d always strip down in this room, shower, and leave everything from work behind before walking into the rest of her house. She didn’t stop for a shower this time, deciding to visit Zack first.
She opened the door and stepped into the hall. She heard the television and opened her mouth to call out to Zack; then she heard another sound that stopped her cold. A female giggle.
Sadie’s fingernails cut into her palms as she strode down the hall, past the bedrooms, and into the living room.
Zack was on the sofa, where she’d left him, his foot still resting on a pillow on the coffee table. The end table at his elbow still held the bottle of Advil and the phone. It was also now home to a half-finished bottle of Smirnoff vodka. Kneeling on the floor between the coffee table and the sofa was Paula Wicks. She still wore her nursing uniform. Neither one looked back to see Sadie staring at them from the hall.
Paula giggled again and murmured something that made Zack laugh. Then she raised herself up on her knees and looked intently at Zack’s foot.
Sadie held her breath.
She’s a nurse and he’s got a broken ankle, Sadie’s good side reminded her.
They’ve been drinking together, her bad side said. And she isn’t looking at his ankle in a nurse-patient kind of way.
It was like watching an accident in slow motion as Sadie saw Paula lean over Zack’s foot and proceeded to plant feathery little kisses along the swollen skin.
An animalistic growl escaped Sadie’s throat and Paula leape
d guiltily to her feet.
“Sadie!” she exclaimed. “We were just, um . . . I was just, um—”
“I saw what you were ‘just’!” Sadie screamed. She stormed over to Zack, smacked him hard on the head with the palm of her hand, and then flung the bag containing the pint of ice cream at Paula, making a direct hit on her nose.
“Ow!” Paula shrieked. As she grappled in the air to catch the ice cream, Sadie watched with mixed satisfaction and horror as it landed heavily on Zack’s sore ankle and he matched Paula’s shriek of pain with one of his own.
5
Sadie was out of the house so quickly she barely remembered backing the van out of the garage and driveway.
The problem with a lumbering company van was that the accelerator couldn’t move the vehicle beyond seventy, and even if Sadie wanted to bolt from the scene, a car crash a couple blocks ahead had traffic at a crawl. Sadie did what any self-respecting, pissed-off woman would do. She sat in her vehicle and let loose an earth-shattering scream. She yelled over and over until her throat burned from the effort. Then her screams turned to tears. Afterward her head hurt from the sound of her own vocal cords and her hands hurt from pounding them on the dashboard.
When she arrived back at her mom’s house, she was both immensely relieved and somewhat disappointed to read a note from her mother saying she had gone to run errands with Aunt Lynn.
“Dad, if you’re around I could use someone to talk to,” Sadie shouted to the empty house as she paced from one room to the next.
It took a moment, but her dad finally did appear. Kind of.
“What’s wrong?” Sadie asked, looking her father over.
“You’re only half here. Where are your legs?”
Dad looked down and shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you I haven’t mastered this going back and forth thing. I don’t get it. If I’m dead, shouldn’t I be, well, dead? Gone? Vanished?” He tossed his hands up in the air in frustration.
“You must have unfinished business here,” Sadie said, but she couldn’t look him in the eye as she said it. “You have to find out what’s keeping you here and stopping you from going over.” She looked up. “But before we talk about that, can you tell me why men are such assholes?”
“Trouble in the land of love?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows in a familiar way that always used to make Sadie laugh.
Today, Sadie didn’t even crack a smile.
“Zack broke his ankle, so he’s laid up. I just found his ex-girlfriend kissing his boo-boo all better on my sofa.”
“When you say kissing his boo-boo, do you mean his—”
“His ankle, Dad!” Sadie shouted. “You didn’t think I meant . . .” She shook her head and shuddered at the thought of discussing things of a sexual nature with her dad. She added quickly, “I think Zack’s in too much pain to do anything anyway.”
“A man will tolerate a helluva a lot of pain for a chance of sex,” Dad said wisely.
“Gee, thanks. You’re a lot of help; you know that?”
“Just telling you the truth,” he said sincerely. “Look, Sadie, if you think Zack has feelings for this ex-girlfriend, why don’t you just ask him about it? Or better yet, tell him to keep the hell away from her because it pisses you off. Take a stand. Let him know how you feel.”
“I think smacking him on the head and attacking her with a pint of Chunky Monkey told him how I feel.”
“Probably you should’ve just used your words.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But what do I say? ‘Stay away from your ex-girlfriend’? That sounds a little, well, jealous.”
“You are jealous.”
“I’m pissed off and insulted, not jealous,” Sadie corrected. She sighed, sat down hard on a kitchen chair, and rubbed her temples. She thought of Paula’s lips on Zack’s foot and she wanted to punch a hole in the wall.
“I guess I am a little jealous,” Sadie admitted.
“And this is exactly why a man shouldn’t live with his girlfriend without marriage,” her father lectured. “There are all these kinds of questions about what is appropriate and what’s not and how far you go in your commitment. Hell, if you’re married you know damn well you don’t even look at your ex-girlfriend without your wife’s permission because she’ll kill you and—”
“Zack asked me to marry him last month,” Sadie said quietly.
“Wait a second. You mean to tell me that in addition to the secret about you talking to ghosts, you also got engaged and didn’t tell us? That kind of information would’ve been nice to know when I was alive,” he said, sounding hurt.
“I didn’t say yes.”
“You told the guy you wouldn’t marry him, and then you’re surprised that he’s letting his ex-girlfriend kiss him?”
“First of all, she didn’t kiss him. She kissed his foot.” Sadie didn’t know why that distinction was important, but it was. “Second, I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t marry him. I just didn’t say yes.”
“You always were a complicated girl,” Dad said with a chuckle. “I remember when you went away to summer camp and the other kids all made clay ashtrays to take home, but you argued that nobody in your family smoked so you didn’t want an ashtray. Instead, you came home with a coffee mug that didn’t have a handle.”
“It was a candy bowl, and why would anyone want an ashtray if they didn’t smoke?”
“The point is that you could’ve just gone along but you didn’t.”
“You want me to go along now?” Sadie asked quietly. “Do you want me to tell Zack I’ll marry him?”
“Only if that’s what you want. I just want you to be happy, hon. Do you love him?”
“I think so.”
“Thinking so isn’t good enough.”
“I do,” she said more forcefully. “I do love him but . . .” She searched for the right words. “I guess I just don’t know if I want to get married.” She looked down at her hands. “I remember some pretty tense times between you and Mom a few years ago.”
“Our son killed himself,” Dad retorted. “Things like that can tear a family apart. Strong couples can find themselves unable to look each other in the eye anymore. I’m sure you see that all the time in your line of work.”
Sadie only nodded.
“In the end,” Dad continued, “your mother and I were able to lean on each other.”
“I’m talking the weeks before Brian died. Right after Christmas.” Sadie pinned him with a firm glare. “I dropped by for a visit and found Mom alone. Really alone. She said you’d moved out but she wouldn’t say why.”
“I didn’t know she told anyone,” he said, a pained look in his eyes. “Did Brian know? Do you think that’s why—”
This was the worst part about suicide. Forever and for always those left behind asked themselves what they did to make it happen.
“No,” Sadie said emphatically. She couldn’t bear for her father to think the separation had caused his son to take his own life. “I was the only one Mom told. Brian didn’t know.”
Dad seemed to debate what to say next. “If you’re looking for me to tell you why we split, well, that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not? If it was just a simple spat, then what difference does it make now?”
“Sometimes if you reopen old wounds, it’s hard to remember that all has been forgiven.”
“But it’s not like telling me the truth now will make Mom angry all over again,” Sadie pushed. “And maybe hearing how you two got over that rough patch will help me with Zack.”
“Then ask your mother about it,” he replied, holding up his hand to stop her when she would’ve argued. He added ominously, “Sometimes there’s no benefit in picking the scab off an old sore. Sometimes it just makes it hurt fresh.”
His face had taken on a faraway look and Sadie knew he was thinking of that time when things hadn’t been all Ozzie and Harriet in the Novak household. Then he blinked hard to break from his reverie and looked Sadie in the eye.
“
I’m not going to tell you that marriage is a cakewalk. You know your mom and I patched things up and, yes, we had our squabbles afterward too, but these last few years together were some of the best. Marriage is hard, Sadie, but anything worth having is. You know that.”
Sadie nodded and found her throat clogging with emotion as she thought about Zack.
“Maybe I’m not cut out for the long haul,” she said.
She wanted her dad to offer words of wisdom. To give her specific advice. Instead, he threw up his hands and said simply, “Well, life is a crapshoot.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Those are your words of wisdom to your daughter? ‘Life is a crapshoot’? You’re dead and you’re talking to me from the great beyond, and that’s the best you’ve got?”
“That and never forget to change the oil on your car,” he said with a wink.
Sadie couldn’t help but laugh at that, and while she giggled to herself she watched her dad’s face grow serious.
“But what about me?” he asked. “Is this all there is? You try to live a good life, and the best you can hope for is blinking in and out like a lightbulb and having only one person who can see you?”
“Aren’t you glad we get a chance to talk like this?” Sadie asked with reproach. “I like to think we’re making up for lost time. Not many people get this kind of opportunity.”
“Ahhh, Sadie, of course it’s great to have a chance to say good-bye, but for how long do I have to—”
He stopped short when the front door opened and Sadie’s mom and Aunt Lynn walked into the house. When Sadie glanced back, her dad had vanished.
“Why is that eyesore in my driveway?” Mom asked.
“I have to go to work later,” Sadie replied, knowing Mom was complaining of the company van. “Hi, Aunt Lynn.”
“Hi, yourself,” Aunt Lynn replied. “You’re off to mop up Seattle’s dead, are you?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Mom hissed.
“Your daughter does a real service, Peggy. There’s no need for you to act like she’s a stripper or a politician.”
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