“Why, when I met your mother, I was so smitten with her—”
“Dad.”
“—we didn’t leave the hotel room for three days.Three days!”
“Dad.”
“Her lips like fresh rose petals—”
“I get it, I get it! I just... I don’t think I’m ready for a new relationship. I don’t think I’ll ever be.”
“Maybe the universe will surprise you.”
For some reason, the angular face of my new editor came to mind. Yeah, right. I ran my thumb over the pages of one of the books in my lap, feeling them buzz softly. “How’s the family business?”
“Good as it’ll get,” Dad replied. “Remember Dr. Cho? Your orthodontist?”
“Alice said he passed.”
“Was a good funeral, though.Beautifulweather for April. The wind danced through the trees, I’m telling you. A great send-off,” he said, and then he added a little softer, “He thanked me afterwards.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat because anyone else hearing that would’ve thought he was crazy. Maybe he was a little crazy, but if he was, then I was, too. “Did he now?”
“It was nice. Got some ideas for my own funeral myself.”
“It’ll be a while,” I joked.
“I should hope! Maybe then you’ll come home.”
“I’d be the talk of the town.”
He laughed, but there was a little bitterness there. One that we both shared. It was why I left, after all. Why I didn’t stay in Mairmont. Why I went as far as I could, where no one knew my story.
As it turns out, when you solved a murder at thirteen by talking with ghosts, the newspapers printed exactly that.
LOCAL GIRL SOLVES MURDER WITH GHOSTS
You can imagine how that sort of thing could haunt you. I wasn’t exactly the popular kid in high school, and after that I didn’t stand a ghost of a chance of being asked to prom. Carver and Alice couldn’t see them, and neither could Dad’s younger sister Liza, or Mom. It was only the two of us.
We were the only ones who could understand.
Another reason why I was better off alone.
“Please go see Dr. Martin next week—” I began, when he interrupted me.
“Oh, there’s another call coming in. I’ll talk to you soon, okay, buttercup? Don’t forget to call your mother!”
I sighed, more out of resignation than regret. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you more!”
He hung up, and I finally noticed the bookseller glaring at me for sitting on the stool. I popped up and quickly apologized for taking up real estate, and scurried off toward the cash register.
One of the only good things to come out of this writing gig was the fact that I could write books off on taxes. Even if I never read them. Even if I used them to build book thrones and then sit down and cry on them while pouring myself glass after glass of merlot.
It was still worth it.
And the small hit of serotonindidmake me feel a little less murderous. Tucking the books into my backpack, I left for the closest station that would take me back to Jersey. It was about a twenty-minute walk up to the Ninth Street station, but the afternoon was sunny and my coat was heavy enough to protect me from the last biting chill of the season. I liked the long walks in New York. It used to help me work through a plot inconvenience or figure out a scene that never quite worked, but all my walks in the last year couldn’t jostle my brain into creating again, no matter how far I went. Not even today, on the eve of everything coming unraveled.