Ghost of Summer

by Sally Berneathy

  GHOST OF SUMMER

  (2nd edition)

  Copyright ©2012 Sally Berneathy.

  http://www.sallyberneathy.com

  Original cover art by Alicia Hope, http://www.aliciahopeauthor.blogspot.com/.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or to actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  "Mommy!" Two-year old Katie Fallon sobbed uncontrollably against her father's chest, soaking his best white shirt with her tears.

  Jerome Fallon held his daughter close and tried to comfort her, but it was hard to offer comfort when he could find none for himself. "Mama's in heaven now, Katie-girl. She's an angel."

  "No! Don't want her in heaven! Want her with me!"

  That was exactly the way he felt about his wife's untimely death. He didn't want her to be an angel. He wanted her here with him, in his arms, in his life.

  Tears streamed down his face as he patted Katie's small shoulder. Feeling helpless and lost, he looked around the big old house that had been filled with so much love and happiness only a week ago. Now it was empty.

  Since he was the Sheriff of Briar Creek County, Texas, he'd been the one to investigate the accident up on the highway, the one with no survivors, the one where his wife, returning from a shopping trip to Tyler, had died instantly.

  Every morning since then he'd awakened expecting to find Emma beside him, and every morning he'd found only the empty bed.

  For Katie's sake, he had to carry on.

  If he could just figure out how to do that.

  Emma had been his rock, his soul-mate, his anchor in life. He had no idea how he was going to make it without her. Nor did he have any idea how he was going to be able to raise Katie without Emma.

  "Don't cry, Katie-girl. Please don't cry. Papa's here." Small wonder she couldn't stop crying when he couldn't either.

  A knock came from the front door.

  "Come on in!" He swiped a hand across his face, trying to wipe away some of the tears.

  His and Emma's best friends, George and Francine Rodgers, came in with their son, Luke, a year older than Katie and already her best friend. George and Francine stood awkwardly just inside the door, but Luke ran over to Katie, rested one little hand on Jerome's knee and patted Katie's shoulder with the other.

  "It was a nice funeral, Jerome," Francine said. "Very simple. Emma would have wanted that."

  Jerome nodded. Emma would have wanted not to die, to stay with her family. But he didn't say that.

  "Katie?" Luke said tentatively. "Don't cry."

  To Jerome's surprise, Katie looked up at Luke, her sobs subsiding a little.

  Luke reached into his jeans pocket. "I got gum." He handed her a piece.

  She took it, unwrapped the stick and put it into her mouth, chewing in rhythm with her decreasing sobs and sniffles.

  "Wanna play ball?" he asked.

  She nodded, sniffed a couple of times and slid from her father's lap. Luke took her hand and led her across the room then out the front door.

  Luke had only been a year old when Katie was born, but he'd immediately taken to her, and the two of them had been inseparable ever since.

  "We came by to see if you wanted us to take Katie to our house for a while and give you a chance to rest," George said.

  Jerome looked at his empty lap, at the empty room.

  No, he didn't want them to take Katie away even for a minute. She was all he had left.

  But she had calmed when Luke came to her. Maybe he himself was responsible for some of her grief. He was sure at her age she didn't comprehend what was going on, but maybe she sensed his sorrow. Maybe he was transferring his anguish to her.

  He nodded. "Thanks. That might be a good idea if you wouldn't mind taking her for a few hours."

  Francine, her own eyes red from crying, came over and gave him a hug. George followed and gripped his shoulder silently.

  "You try to get some rest, then come over to our house whenever you're ready and we'll have dinner," Francine said.

  Jerome nodded again.

  He walked to the door with them, then closed it and went upstairs, heading for the room he'd shared with Emma for nineteen years. He knew he wouldn't really rest, but he was bone-weary. He might as well lie down.

  As he walked slowly down the hall, he noticed a faint glow coming from his room.

  No, it wasn't really a glow.

  Well, maybe it was, only he couldn't be sure if he actually saw it or only felt it.

  He really was tired, so tired he couldn't see straight.

  He turned into his room and was greeted by Emma's favorite scent, lilacs.

  "Hello, Jerome." Emma stood by the window, smiling at him.

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes then shook his head.

  Emma was dead. He was having a hallucination.

  "Dead is a relative term," she said as if she'd heard his thought. "My body has changed a bit. It's much lighter now. I'll never have to go on a diet again."

  Jerome's mouth dropped. "Emma?"

  "Yes, dear?"

  He looked away, closed his eyes, pinched himself, then looked back again. She was still there, the same as always, a slim figure with auburn hair. She even wore her favorite blue dress.

  Well, actually, she wasn't quite the same.

  She was sort of...transparent.

  And she sort of glowed.

  She came to him—floated to him?—lifted a hand and touched his cheek. Her fingers were warm and cool at the same time and tingled pleasantly against his skin. "It's really me, Jerome. I just couldn't leave you and Katie. Heaven's quite nice, but I already had heaven down here with you. I missed you both so terribly much I got a kind of special dispensation to come back long enough to help you get our Katie raised, if that's all right with you."

  Again tears streamed down Jerome's face, but this time they were tears of joy. "All right? Oh, Emma, my sweet Emma!"

  If this was a hallucination, he wanted to go on having it.

  He wrapped his arms around her...and through her. It was like reaching inside sunlight. Not unpleasant but a little odd.

  "That's all right, dear," she said. "We'll have a lot of years to practice with all the peculiarities of this new body. I'll stay until our Katie is grown and finds her true love, the way you and I found each other."

  Chapter One

  "Papa, I have wonderful news!" Kate Fallon clutched the phone to her ear and smiled brightly across her living room at her fiancé who smiled back at her. "Spencer and I have decided to get married."

  Kate chewed her lip, realized she was doing it and ordered herself to relax. Papa was always supportive of anything that made her happy, and the emotional stability she'd found with Spencer made her happy. Spencer was reliable, solid and dependable.

  "Spencer," Papa repeated in his lazy, east Texas drawl. "Do I know Spencer?"

  "Spencer Osborne. You met him at my company's awards banquet last w
inter. He was my escort."

  "Oh, yeah. Tall, blond hair, navy blue suit without one speck of lint on it. Stands really straight. Walks like he had a yard stick stuck to his spine."

  Kate noticed she was sitting—perching, really—on the edge of her chair in just such a stance. She made an effort to sit back, to relax, but it was a futile effort.

  Papa hadn't said anything negative about Spencer. He was actually dead-on in his description. Spencer was meticulous, and his posture was excellent. However, she sensed her father didn't like her fiancé.

  "We've decided on Labor Day weekend for our wedding," she continued and wondered if she sounded as nervous to Papa and Spencer as she did to herself.

  Well, every woman was nervous about getting married. That was normal.

  "That'll give us three months to get all the legalities taken care of. The ceremony will be very informal, at the office of the Justice of the Peace with only family then a small reception afterward. You're the sum total of my family and Spencer's an only child, too, so it will be really small."

  "Good idea. Spend the money on a bang-up honeymoon. Go to Hawaii or something."

  Kate lifted a hand to blot the dampness of perspiration from her upper lip. Was something wrong with the air conditioner? Her open, spacious condo that always seemed cool with its with off-white carpet, white furniture and glass-topped tables, had suddenly become almost as warm as the June day outside—and June in Dallas could get pretty warm.

  "Actually, we're not going on a honeymoon. We plan to invest the money we'll save."

  Spencer smiled and nodded approval.

  "I see. Well, that sounds real sensible, sweetheart."

  Papa was saying the right words, but Kate still perched tensely on the edge of her chair, worried about his approval.

  What was the matter with her? Papa had never objected to any of her decisions. She still wasn't sure why she'd been reluctant to tell him about her impending marriage. However, he seemed...well, maybe pleased wasn't the right word. Okay. He seemed okay with it.

  "So you'll come?" she said.

  "Of course I will. I wouldn't miss my little girl's wedding for anything. Your mother and I have been looking forward to that day. We did kind of want to see you walk down the aisle of the Grand Avenue Methodist Church here in Briar Creek where we got married, but whatever you want is fine with us. I know you said the ceremony would be informal, but you will want to wear your mother's dress, won't you? That would mean so much to her, and it won't cost you anything except the cleaning bill. It's probably a mite dusty from being stored in that trunk in the attic."

  Kate frowned, then quickly erased the expression so Spencer wouldn't think anything was wrong.

  Had she heard right? Was Papa talking as if Mama was still alive?

  Though she'd didn't really remember the mother who had died when she was two, Papa had raised her with her mother's presence. Your mother would want you to brush your teeth. Your mother and I decided when you were a baby...

  But he hadn't been talking in the past tense just now. He'd used the present. Your mother and I have been looking forward to that day. ...whatever you want is fine with us.

  She noticed she was biting her lip again.

  She was really letting her nerves get the best of her. What difference did it make if Papa didn't get his verb tenses quite right all the time? He was the County Sheriff. The job didn't require a PhD in English grammar.

  "Katie-girl? Are you there?"

  "Oh, yes! I'm sorry. I was just thinking about Mama's dress. It's so...so elegant. I don't know if it will be appropriate. I'll have to talk to Spencer. See what he's planning to wear."

  When she'd been a little girl, she'd dreamed about walking down the aisle of the Grand Avenue Methodist Church in that dress, Mama beside her in spirit. But those were the dreams of a little girl, not a grown, practical woman who no longer had stars in her eyes.

  "Whatever you want to do is fine with us. Are you planning to come visit before the wedding?"

  Us? Whatever you want to do is fine with us?

  "Of course I'm coming to visit. I couldn't stay away from you for three months. I've got some vacation time at work, and I thought I'd try to get down there for a couple of days next month, maybe make the Fourth of July weekend. We could take Spencer to the big barbecue."

  "We could do that. Does Spencer like barbecue?"

  The room became even warmer. The air conditioner was broken. No doubt about it. Where was she going to find a repairman on Sunday afternoon?

  "No, uh, maybe he does. Actually, not really." He'd said it was fine for people who couldn't buy a decent cut of meat and had to add artificial flavor. "But there's other food, it's a great festival, and the fireworks are incredible."

  "I'd really like for you to come down sooner."

  That wasn't like Papa to push her on anything.

  "I don't know. There's so much to do. We've got to see the lawyer about a prenuptial agreement. I've got to—" She hesitated, unsure why she didn't want to tell Papa about the sensible decision she and Spencer had reached concerning not bringing any more children into an already overpopulated, over-polluted world...children Kate wasn't at all sure she'd be able to care for. The idea of having children frightened her on a personal as well as a social level.

  She knew Papa wanted grandchildren, knew he and Mama had wanted a dozen kids. However, he'd always encouraged her to make her own decisions and had never criticized those decisions.

  She lifted her chin and stared out the glass doors at the tree that grew half over her third-floor balcony. That tree always seemed reassuring to her. She'd chosen this condo for its view of trees and the creek below.

  "I'm having a tubal ligation in two weeks." There. She'd said it.

  In spite of her reassurances to herself, her knowledge she was doing the right thing, she held her breath waiting for Papa's response, and the temperature in the room rose a few more degrees. Maybe she'd accidentally turned on the heat instead of the air conditioning.

  "I've heard they can do that and send you home in one day," Papa said. "Modern science sure is great."

  He hadn't said one word against her decision. So why did she still feel so nervous?

  "You know I've never really been able to relate to babies and small children." That was an understatement. They terrified her with their softness and fragility. "Who knows if I could have children anyway?" she rushed on. "Look how many years it took you and Mama to have me. Something like that could be hereditary."

  "You know whatever you choose to do is fine with your mother and me."

  He'd done it again, made it sound as if he'd been talking to Mama recently. Was something wrong?

  Stop that! she ordered herself. Papa's fine. Don't look for problems.

  "Well, I'd better go and get started on some of these projects or I'll never get finished in time for the wedding. I love you, Papa."

  "I love you, too, Katie-girl. Oh, could you hold on just a minute? Your mother wants to talk to you."

  "What? Papa? Papa! Hello?" Katie shot out of her chair, unable to maintain her perch any longer. She clutched the phone more tightly to her ear as if she could thereby hear something other than silence.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Spencer rise from his chair and cross the room to her...walking like he had a yardstick stuck to his spine, some small part of her panic-stricken brain noted. The scent of his expensive, sophisticated cologne reached her just before he did, and suddenly it became cloying rather than comforting. He laid a firm, supportive hand on her arm.

  And on the other end of the phone, silence.

  "Kate?" Spencer said softly. "Is there a problem?"

  "No, no, of course not." She pressed the phone even more tightly to her ear as if in fear Spencer would hear the silence and know that her father—no, she wouldn't, couldn't think that. "Everything's fine. My father, uh, dropped the phone a minute, but he's back now. Are you there, Papa?" Silence. She laughed in a high-pitch
ed tone she'd never heard before. "You are? Good. Great. Listen, Papa, maybe I can get down there soon after all and help you get those, uh, tax problems all straightened out. Don't you worry, Papa. I'll be there. Very soon. And everything will be fine. I promise. I love you, Papa."

  She disconnected the call, smoothed her sweaty palms down the sides of her beige slacks and gave Spencer what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "I have to go see Papa. Next weekend."

  Spencer frowned in disbelief. No surprise. Her smile hadn't felt very reassuring from her end, and her voice had sounded distinctly desperate. "Are you sure you're all right?" he asked.