Dying For You (3 page)

“It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing,” she continued aloud. “The keys showed up, right?”

A definitive rap, as if unseen knuckles had knocked on the ceiling.

“Okay,” she said again, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Are you one of my friends playing a joke? I promise I won’t get mad.”

Two raps.

“This was your house?”

One rap.

“Well, it’s…it’s my house now,” she said with a firmness she most definitely did not feel. “I mean to say, I will be living here from now on. I-I hope that’s all right.”

One rap.

“Good. My name is Cathy. If one rap equals A, and two raps equal B, and three equals C, and so forth, what is your name?”

J-A-C-K.

“Well, it’s…it’s nice to meet you,” she said, feeling foolish. Part of her could hardly believe this was happening. It
had
to be a joke. Because otherwise, her beloved pink Victorian was haunted, and did she really want to share living space with the dead?

No. She did not.

“I’m…I’m going out now. To get groceries. Will you be here when I get back?”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

Feeling both disappointed and relieved, Cathy managed to walk, not run, out of the house this time.

No one named Jack had ever lived in her house.

Cathy had spent her lunch break doing extensive research and web surfing into land, deeds, home ownership, and spirits. She quickly determined her ghost was not a poltergeist, and did not seem malevolent, but she had less luck finding out who it—he—was. But apparently, his silence after the evening’s excitement was not atypical: manifesting seemed to really tire out a ghost.

The question was: did she mind?

She did not know; it was too early to tell. All it—he—had done was talk to her and produce her keys. Then nothing for the rest of the night, or the entire next day—Sunday—or this morning.

She couldn’t discuss this with Nikki, because her friend had a strong streak of practicality. If she couldn’t see it or
touch it, it wasn’t real. Cathy, however, tended to believe her senses. Her keys moved by themselves. Someone had spelled out the letters J, A, C, and K. If it wasn’t a practical joke, which she had not entirely ruled out—though if it
was
a joke, no one had come forward and it was going on too long—then she was prepared to believe her house was haunted. It was certainly old enough to house a spirit or two.

She thought about calling her real-estate agent, John #1, then immediately decided against it. She’d been living in her new house less than seventy-two hours. It was a little early to go running for help.

And whatever would she tell him? “Hello, John, the house you sold me is haunted and I…I…” What? Wanted a refund? Not hardly. She wasn’t going back to pouring money down the rent rathole. Not ever. She had felt like a drone bee in a hive, living in those low-personality apartment complexes.

She decided to go about her business as usual, and see what the ghost—if it
was
a ghost—did next.

“Perfect,” she said as lightning crashed outside her window. It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. “That’s just perfect.”

She had finished the unpacking and was almost swaying with exhaustion. But it was finished, all finished. A place for everything and she had put everything in its place. Now the house felt a little more like her house.

A little. She still couldn’t believe it when she pulled into the driveway and realized this was her house. She owned it and lived there and it was hers. She supposed the feeling of
euphoric surprise would go away someday. It was almost a shame.

The storm had started about three hours ago, and was building up to a rare fury—rare for St. Paul, anyway. As long as it wasn’t a blizzard, most Minnesotans didn’t get too annoyed by the weather. That might change, today, especially if—

The lights went out.

“And again,” she said aloud. “Perfect.” Rats and double rats. Where had she unpacked candles? After a moment’s thought, she remembered they were in one of the kitchen drawers, as were the—

“One more time,” she said as she heard a kitchen drawer open by itself, heard things clink and shift around, heard a candle rolling in the dark toward her. “Perfect.”

She looked down and, when lightning flashed again, saw two candles bump up against her foot, along with a small box of matches she’d grabbed the last time she’d had sushi at Kikugawa.

“Thank you,” she said. Testing, she added, “Thank you, Jack.”

No response.

She bent, picked up a candle, lit it, used the lit candle to light the other one, stood. She still had a very real sense of unreality about the whole business, but one thing was certain: having a ghost around could be handy.

Her weekly duty was almost completed. Ah, to be so close to the end, and yet have it remain so tantalizingly out of reach.

“Cathy? You still there?”

“Still here, Dad,” she confirmed. Her father lived in Missouri with her Wicked Stepmother, or W for short.

Not that there was a thing wrong with Kitty Wyth (if one overlooked the absurdity of referring to a fifty-eight-year-old woman as “Kitty,” which was difficult even during the best of times).

Cathy had lost her mother to breast cancer when she herself was barely into puberty—possibly the worst time to lose a parent. And she was not prepared to welcome anyone who was there to take her mother’s place. Thus, Kitty had been dubbed W and that was it, that was all there was to it. She was Wicked, sleeping in Cathy’s mother’s bed. She was
The Stepmother—not the true Mrs. Wyth—and that was the end of it.

“Maybe Kitty and I should come up to see you. Maybe Labor Day Weekend,” her father suggested doubtfully. Warm family get-togethers were not their thing. This was, Cathy knew, entirely her fault. W had done nothing wrong; had tried, many many times, to make Cathy feel included and loved.

If she could not have her mother’s love, Cathy did not want the love of a grown woman named Kitty.

This, she knew, made her a bad person.

“Well,” she replied, not actually answering her father, “it was nice talking to you.”

“Yeah. You, too.” He hung up. Her father never said good-bye.

She walked into the kitchen to hang up the phone and saw one of her mother’s china plates on the table, with one of the frosted sugar cookies she’d picked up at the bakery that morning. Beside the plate was a small glass of milk.

“Right, Jack. Because I need that on my thighs,” she joked.

“Who are you talking to?”

Cathy turned and saw Nikki standing in front of her screen door. “Myself,” she replied easily. She ignored Jack’s indignant knock and let Nikki in. “Oh, good, you’ve started dropping in without calling first. I was afraid you wouldn’t pick up any bad habits this year.”

“Go fuck yourself,” her friend replied cheerfully. “I was in the neighborhood—that bakery is kick ass—and thought I’d come over.” She held up a white wax paper bag and shook it.

“Oh no,” Cathy said.

“Oh yes! Cream puffs!”

“You’re evil,” she replied, but took the bag.

“And you’re too thin. Like, it’s time to be drinking Ensure too thin.” Nikki smacked herself on the flank. “Someday, when you grow up, you might possibly top out at over a hundred pounds, and then people will start to take you seriously.”

Cathy laughed. Yes,
that
was the problem, oh yes indeed, no one took her seriously. Ha!

“Soooooo,” Nikki said, sitting down and drinking Cathy’s milk, “have you jumped Shirtless Ken yet?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not his real name,” she teased.

“Avoid the question a little more! So, I’m guessing no.”

“You would be guessing correctly. In addition to his many other odious qualities, which are legion, he drinks.”

“Oh.”

“A lot.”

“Well, drinks like, hey, come in and have a beer? You know, like normal people? Or drinks like, hey, come in and help me finish this keg?”

“I have no idea because, thankfully, I don’t know him well enough to make that judgment. He mentioned losing his license the other day. DUIs.”

“Ouch. Still, that doesn’t mean he’d, you know, suck in the sack.”

Cathy rolled her eyes. Neither rain nor sleet nor substance abuse would prevent Nikki from pushing inappropriate partners on a friend. “Thankfully, I have no idea if that’s true.”

“Well, get on it, Cath. You’ve gotta strike while the bird is in the bush.”

“And you’ve got to stop mixing your metaphors. I cannot
believe
you’re pushing me toward this man, whom you know perfectly well is totally inappropriate for me. For any right-thinking woman.”

“First off, real people don’t say ‘whom.’ Stop saying ‘whom.’ Second, what? Like you’ve got so many great other options?”

“There is more to life,” she said sternly, “than sex.”

“There
is?
” Nikki looked shocked, which made Cathy laugh again. “Get out!”

“I’d like to, but this is my kitchen.”

“Yeah, brag a little more, creep. I still can’t believe you actually own property.”

“I can’t, either,” she confessed.

“I suppose you’re already plotting to redo the fence? Dig up the garden? Fix the gate?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.”

“And the fact that you don’t know a drill bit from a dildo isn’t going to stop you?”

“Well, no,” she said, and burst out laughing.

“Just checking.” Nikki downed a cream puff while prowling around the main floor, eventually pronouncing it, “Absurdly neat. Finished unpacking already, huh? Yech.”

“We can’t all take eighteen months.” Cathy shuddered. She’d helped Nikki move last winter and the woman
still
had boxes stacked all over the guest bedroom. “Seriously, Nikki, how about if I come over and—”

“No no no no no no
no
.”

“No?”

“You’re
not
coming over and unpacking for me. No way! I can never find a damned thing after you’ve cleaned. You have to hide everything.”

“I did not hide the vacuum cleaner,” she replied sharply. “It was in your hall closet—an eminently suitable location, I might add, and—”

“Blah-blah-blah. So, what are we doing today?”

Cathy sighed. Nikki was annoying, blunt, rude, infuriating, and her oldest friend. She would do well to keep in mind that Nikki put up with
her
personality quirks as well. And almost always without complaining. Well, sometimes without complaining. Well…

“I didn’t know we were doing anything today,” she replied. “What did you have in mind?”

“Going over to see how badly Shirtless Ken is hung over,” Nikki said promptly. “Then invite him out to lunch. Let’s take him to one of those No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service places, just for fun.”

Cathy laughed again, unwillingly. The most annoying thing about Nikki—and this was really saying something—was her completely absurd way of looking at life. Because she had not been joking. “How about we don’t do that, instead?”

“Oh, fine, you pick, then.” Nikki took off her baseball cap—the one with the puzzling yet eternally fascinating logo
GOT MAMMARIES?
—fiddled with her long, straight blond hair for a moment, then tucked it all up under the cap. It never ceased to amaze Cathy how much hair Nikki managed to hide. Normally it hung down to the statuesque beauty’s waist.

Maybe that’s why Nikki saw all her friends as beautiful, Cathy mused. Because she herself looked like an escapee from a
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue. Ridiculous, but there it was.

“As long as it’s something fun,” Nikki was ordering. “Which means
no
libraries,
no
bookstores, and
no
bed-and-breakfast tours.”

“No tractor pulls, either.”

“Like I’d go to one in this heat,” Nikki retorted, which was, Cathy felt, entirely beside the point.

“Ooooh,” Nikki said when they pulled into Cathy’s driveway four hours later. “Company.”

“God
dammit,
” Cathy said, and pulled the emergency brake with a yank. Nikki’s car, a standard transmission, promptly stalled. Annoying habit of Nikki’s Number 672: the woman insisted on being driven everywhere. “I told him. I
told
him.”

“Uh-oh. I’m sensing a personal space violation.”

“How the
hell
did he get in?”

“Whoa with the potty mouth! A ‘dammit’ and a ‘hell’ on the same day? Cripes. Poor slob doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”

“You’re right about that,” Cathy snarled.

“Now Cath. I’m sure”—Nikki said, scrambling out of the
car and hurrying after her—“he’s just trying to help. You should be, um, flattered.”

“Flattered?”

“Okay, intensely annoyed. Aw, come on, give him a break…he’s so cute!”

“People have been making allowances based on his appearance his entire life, I’ve no doubt.” Cathy pushed the front door open and practically leapt into the foyer. “I have had enough.”

Her worst fears were realized: Shirtless Ken had lugged a stepladder, tool box, and various implements that required plug-ins into her living room. He was currently up on the ladder, poking a screwdriver at her 123-year-old chandelier.

Which he had offered to fix the day she moved in.

Which she had politely refused.

And now he had snuck, had waited until she was gone and
snuck into her home,
on the pretense of “helping” her, and that was…that was just really…that was…

“Ken!” she bawled, and later decided that’s why she felt such guilt and why she made the series of disastrous decisions. Because if she hadn’t yelled, the rest of it might never have happened.

Startled—which was stupid, hadn’t he heard them drive up?—Ken flinched. The screwdriver went in a little too far. Shirtless Ken was suddenly galvanized as electric current slammed through him.

Cathy had just enough time to start toward him and think,
don’t touch him, knock him off the ladder with something wooden—
a broom?,
when he toppled off the ladder and hit the living room carpet so hard a cloud of dust rose in the air.

“Holy shit!” Nikki had time to gasp, before Cathy seized her arm in a claw-like grip. “Ow!”