Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Monday at eleven forty-five there was a knock on the door. Well, not so much a knock as a pound. Nan Simpson was early.
Cassie closed her laptop with a snap; she hadn’t been all that focused anyway. In fact, she’d been scattered all morning. The appointment on the calendar—with an actual ghost hunter!—had activated waiting mode in her brain, so she couldn’t concentrate on this project brief she was supposed to be reviewing (and removing Oxford commas from, which hurt every time she did it because the Oxford comma was the only good comma, but all these briefs had to follow AP style for some reason…but she digressed). So even though Mrs. Simpson was early, the knock on the door was a welcome relief. Maybe she could be more productive after this was over.
Cassie wasn’t sure what she expected a ghost hunter to look like. Certainly not like the kindly looking grandmother on her front stoop. She had gray-white curls and wore a purple velour tracksuit in the Florida heat; a large bag made of crocheted granny squares was slung over her shoulder.
“You Cassie?” The question was a bark out of the older woman’s mouth. So much for kindly looking.
“That’s me. Mrs. Simpson?”
“Call me Nan.” Cassie barely had time to nod and step back from the doorway before Nan stepped inside.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee? I think I have some iced tea in the fridge, or a Diet Coke?” Cassie was halfway to the kitchen before realizing that Nan hadn’t followed. She turned to find the old woman in the center of the living room, eyes closed, breathing deeply. It was a little disturbing, but maybe this was part of the process? Cassie didn’t know anything about ghost hunting.
After a few moments of silence Nan opened her eyes again.
“Coffee would be great. Black.” She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and took a slow turn around the living room, examining everything. “This the original floor?” She tapped on the floor with the toe of one running shoe. Nan didn’t look like the kind of person who did a lot of running.
“Sure is.” There was still a half pot of coffee she’d left on from this morning, so Cassie got a mug from the kitchen and filled it. “The built-in bookcases are original too, according to the seller, but all the rooms were freshly painted before I bought it. The furniture’s mine.” She tried to hand the coffee off, but Nan was still looking at everything like she was going to write a report on the condition of the house. Cassie was stuck standing there holding a cup of coffee like a butler until Nan was ready to take it from her.
“Hmm.” Nan took a long sip of coffee, then looked at the mug with a grimace. “This is old. If I’d known that, I would have just taken a Diet Coke.”
“I’m sorry.” Why was Cassie apologizing? She’d been drinking the coffee all morning; it was fine. But apologizing to grandmas when you disappointed them was what you did. “I’ll make a fresh pot next time you come over.” She’d meant for the words to be sarcastic; when was Nan going to be coming back? Wasn’t this a one-time visit? Or was Nan going to be coming by on a regular basis, making sure her home remained ghost-free? Maybe there was a contract for Cassie to sign for an annual ghost inspection.
“Mmm.” Nan took another sip, so the coffee couldn’t have been that bad. “She misses the cabbage roses.”
Cassie looked at her blankly. “Who? The what?”
“Cabbage roses.” Nan gestured toward the walls with the coffee cup. “The wallpaper that was here before.”
“You were here before they renovated the house?”
Nan shook her head. “Sarah Hawkins died in 1942. Two years before I was born. I’ve never seen anyone live in this house. Never been inside.” She said those last words softly, almost to herself. Then she picked back up the thread of what she was saying. “The wallpaper. Pink cabbage roses on a soft green background. She’d picked it out, put it up herself. It matched the roses she grew outside. She was proud of it. The work she’d done to make this house hers. A home. She doesn’t hate the paint, but she keeps saying over and over that she misses the cabbage roses.”
Cassie’s breath left her body in a whoosh, and she stepped back, groping for the chair she knew was right behind her. It was a race to sit down before her legs gave out. “She?” It was a question she knew the answer to, but it seemed right to ask it.
But as critical as Nan had been about the coffee, she didn’t scoff at the seemingly unnecessary question. “Sarah Hawkins.” Her voice was gentler than Cassie expected.
“She really is here, then.” It was a rhetorical question, but Nan nodded anyway.
“Oh, she’s here. No doubt about it. I clocked a feminine spirit the second I walked in the door. The floors felt like a hug—yes, I know how stupid that sounds. But there’s nothing but love in that old wood, at least as far as she’s concerned. I figured it was original to the house. But when I asked for a message, she kept showing me pink cabbage roses. On the walls. And outside.”
“Wow.” Cassie let her gaze travel over the living room walls, which were painted an inoffensive but boring shade of beige. When she first saw the house, even before putting in an offer, she’d imagined painting it a livelier color. Pink, she realized now with a start. She’d thought of painting the living room either a soft pink or a muted green. The color of the cabbage rose wallpaper that Nan was talking about now.
Damn.
Nan nodded. “She misses those roses something fierce.” She headed now for the kitchen, and Cassie got up to follow. She was about to direct Nan’s attention to the fridge, and the message that lingered there, but Nan saw it immediately.
“Clever. You do that?” She turned to Cassie with raised eyebrows, and Cassie shook her head.
“No. That was what I told Libby about. When I got home Friday night, first it said ‘wrong.’ Then it changed to that.”
“Not the message. That’s obviously from Sarah. I mean the magnets. The words.” She stepped closer to examine the hundreds of little words on the refrigerator.
“Oh. Yeah. Those are mine. Magnetic poetry. I’ve had it for ages. It’s just a thing I have. It’s not like I got it to communicate with…” Cassie couldn’t let herself say the word out loud. It made all of this too real.
But Nan looked impressed. “It’s a great idea, though. Not all spirits can use them, of course. The afterlife is weird, and spirits come through in different ways. But the ones that can make things move…I like it. I’m gonna tell Libby to get some of these.” She thrust her coffee mug back into Cassie’s hands before rummaging in her bag and drawing out a notepad and pen, scribbling down a note. “Magnetic poetry, you called it?”
“Yeah. Glad I could help.” Cassie desperately wanted to bring the conversation back on topic. “So about the, uh, spirit that’s in my house. Sarah Hawkins? How do we get rid of her?”
“Oh.” Nan put the notepad and pen away before turning back to Libby. Her expression was almost sympathetic. “Oh, no, honey. Sarah’s not going anywhere.”
“What?” The word exploded out of Cassie’s throat, much louder than she’d intended. But disappointment was a loud emotion.
Nan didn’t react to her outburst. “Not all spirits need to be gotten rid of.”
“But…” Cassie sputtered. “I thought she was Mean Mrs. Hawkins? Chasing people with sticks and whatnot?”
“I thought so too.” Nan looked around the kitchen with a puzzled expression.
“Then, don’t we want to get rid of that?”
“Typically, yes.” Nan was silent for a moment, concentrating. “But I’m not getting that from her. She’s not mean. I don’t think she ever was. She loves her home. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with letting her stay.”
There’s a lot wrong with it, Cassie wanted to say. It’s my house now. Not hers. But arguing with a ghost through a third party felt petty somehow. Childish. Cassie took a deep breath through the annoyance. After all, hadn’t Nick mentioned this could be a possibility? He seemed to be just fine with a ghost roommate.
This was all getting a little too weird. Ghost stories were one thing, but living in one?
First things first. “Then can she stop scaring the shit out of me?” She gestured toward the fridge.
That got a chuckle out of Nan. “I don’t think she meant to scare you. Think of it from her perspective.”
“From the ghost’s perspective,” Cassie repeated dully. “Think of it from the perspective of the ghost who’s haunting my house.” Was she the only one who realized how ridiculous that sounded?
“Sure.” Nan took her mug back, draining it before putting it down on the counter. “She’s been here, by herself, for…well, for longer than I’ve been alive.” She gestured at herself in emphasis, and Cassie had to admit the visual drove the point home. “She’s been watching this house she loves deteriorate, nothing she can do about it. Then some asshole comes in, tears out her cabbage rose wallpaper that had probably all but disintegrated anyway, and paints her living room this shitty vanilla color. Then you show up, move your things in, make this place a real home again. And don’t get me wrong; I’m sure she loves that. But then—then!—you put those little words up on your fridge, and she can move them. She can get a message across to you. Imagine how that would feel.”
“Oh.” Cassie swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat. When had that happened? When had she gone from angry to sad? She blinked away tears that blurred her vision. When Nan put it that way, her heart ached for Sarah. But…“She said ‘wrong.’ What’s wrong? Is she really that pissed about the wallpaper?”
“Hmm. I don’t think that’s it.” Nan brushed wizened fingers over the words on the fridge, closing her eyes. She didn’t move for several minutes, and Cassie got a little concerned. It was almost like the old woman had gone somewhere else, leaving her body behind like a car in a parking lot to come back and pick up later. Silence stretched out in the kitchen, gradually becoming awkward. Just as Cassie began to wonder if she should intervene in some way—was it possible for someone to fall asleep standing up?—Nan dropped her hand, stepping back and opening her eyes.
“She doesn’t have a problem with you.” For the first time since walking into the house, Nan sounded tired. She sounded old. She didn’t protest when Cassie took her arm and guided her to a seat at her kitchen table. “She doesn’t have a problem with you,” she said again as Cassie pushed a glass of water in front of her. “No, she thinks you’re just fine.” Nan took a deep breath and a sip of water, both of which seemed to energize her. “It’s Sophie she has a problem with.”
“Sophie?” Cassie sat back in her seat opposite Nan. “The girl who does the ghost tour?”
Nan nodded. “She says Sophie’s getting it wrong. That’s the most I could get out of her.” She passed a hand over her eyes. “It’s hard to listen that deep.”
“But how would she know?” Cassie asked the question to the room at large. “Sophie’s never been here. I mean, sure, she’s outside, and the ghost tour goes by here every Friday night. But she…” Cassie’s voice trailed off as she remembered. She liked to open the windows in the evenings sometimes, to get the breeze off the ocean. She’d left them open that night when she’d gone to meet Nick for the ghost tour. Had that let Sarah hear Sophie’s spiel? Or had she always heard the spiel, and just now decided to try and set the record straight with Cassie’s magnetic poetry?
Whatever it was, it was time to believe. No more explaining it away. Ghosts were real and she lived with one. “What about my laptop, though? Most of the time when I plug it in, I can’t get it to hold a charge. Is that Sarah too?”
Nan looked at the laptop, which sat now on the table between them, still plugged in from when Buster had been there the other day. It was all charged up now, because Cassie was scared to unplug it and upset the status quo. Nan prodded at it with her forefinger, but nothing happened. “Hard to say,” she finally said. “I mean, spirits messing with electronics is nothing new, so it’s possible. But I’m not getting anything from Sarah off of it.” She shrugged. “We’ve got a lot of ghosts here in town, but that doesn’t mean they’re behind everything that happens. Sometimes it’s just as simple as shitty wiring.” She opened her bag again, peering inside. “There’s a great handyman, Buster Bradshaw. I’ve got his card here somewhere. He could…”
“He’s been.” At least it was good to know that Buster came highly recommended around here.
“Tell him to look again. I bet he missed something.”
Great. That was absolutely what Buster wanted to hear from her.
Nan levered to her feet, and Cassie was relieved to see that she seemed steadier now. “That goes for me too,” she said as Cassie walked her to the door. “Anything else weird happens, you give Libby a call. She’ll get me over here.” She paused at the door. “In the meantime, see if you can get Sarah to talk a little more.”
“How?”
“Use your words.” Nan nodded back toward the kitchen. “She’s been alone a long time. She might like to talk.”
Cassie closed the door behind Nan, then looked over her shoulder at the magnetic words on the fridge. She could relate, couldn’t she? To being lonely. To wanting someone to talk to.
Maybe she and Sarah weren’t so different after all.
After dinner, Cassie settled in on her sofa. It had been a while since her last reality television binge, and she was ready to turn her brain off for a little while. No ghosts, no cute guys who ran cafés, no poor financial decisions with janky plumbing and a stuck kitchen window. She reached for the remote on the side table, and promptly knocked it to the floor instead. She swore softly as it slid across the wood floor like a hockey puck to rest under the sofa, thudding against the back wall.
“Of course.” With a long sigh she hauled herself off the sofa and lay on her stomach. But no matter how far she stretched, her fingertips just barely brushed the remote. Resigned, she got to her feet and tugged the sofa away from the wall.
“All this to watch gorgeous people in tiny bathing suits try to find love.” She slipped behind the sofa to pick up the remote when something near the baseboard caught her eye. When she’d moved in, one of the first things she’d done was direct the movers to nestle the sofa next to the built-in bookshelf; the blues and creams of the sofa matched the bookcase perfectly and it looked made for this room.
But now…she bumped the sofa with her hip, nudging it a little farther from the wall so she could kneel on the floor. At the side of the bookcase, just above the baseboard, there was a small place where the texture of the wall changed. It wasn’t large, maybe three inches or so, but this close Cassie could see it clearly. Wallpaper. A piece that had been missed when the flippers stripped the wallpaper and repainted the room, it was wedged between the baseboard and the built-in bookcase. Cassie picked at it with her fingernails, but it was stubborn. Obviously the painters had given up on it and just given it the landlord special: paint over it and pretend it doesn’t exist.
Her manicure kit was on the coffee table, and it only took a few seconds and a pair of nail scissors to extract the piece of wallpaper. The colors were obscured by the cream-colored paint, of course, but when Cassie tilted it toward the light she could make out the texture. It was a floral print in the shape of a round, unfurled rose.
A cabbage rose.
“Okay.” She sighed at the ancient wallpaper. “Okay.” Hotties in bathing suits could wait. She studied the scrap of wallpaper as she walked back into the kitchen. Then she studied the words on her fridge before selecting the two that would work best for this.
“All right, Sarah.” She raised her voice like she was calling to someone in the other room, but maybe Sarah was right here, looking over her shoulder? How did ghosts work, anyway? “I get it. These guys did a shitty job on your house, and you’re pissed about it, right? If this is the wallpaper that Nan was talking about, it was green and pink with cabbage roses on it. I’m not gonna lie, wallpaper is kind of a pain in the ass, and given the choice, I’d rather paint the room a different color. But it’s not my choice; it’s yours. So I need you to tell me. What do you miss?” She held the wallpaper scrap to the fridge with one hand. “I have two words here. If you are dead set on the cabbage roses, choose the word ‘flower . ’?” Cassie lay the magnet over the wallpaper. “If you just want it repainted in those colors, choose the word ‘color.’ Leave the word you want in the middle.” That magnet went over the wallpaper next, and between the two of them they held the wallpaper scrap securely against the fridge.
She held her breath as she took a step back. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but nothing happened. She let out a sigh as the adrenaline that came from talking to a ghost faded into a slight hum in her blood.
“Maybe you need a minute to think.” God, it was weird, talking out loud to thin air like this. But she was committed now. “Take your time. I can’t do anything about it tonight anyway, and I really want to watch some TV. You can join me if you want.”
She scooped up the opened bottle of merlot on her counter and brought it and a glass back into the living room with her. “I bet you’ve never even seen reality television. Or any television at all, huh?” Now that she’d started talking to invisible people who might be listening, it was hard to stop. “Mrs. H, you’ve got a lot to catch up on. This show is called Romance Resort , and it’s the worst. All these hot people are living together in this island paradise. They say they’re looking for true love, but we all know better. It’s all about hookups and drama.” She pointed the remote at the television. “You’re gonna love it.”
The opening credits rolled, the bikini-clad people were impossibly gorgeous, and Cassie felt her brain click off. She needed this. She had no idea what the future held, but she could stick around for now. To help Sarah out. Nothing wrong with that.
Three episodes later, in the darkened kitchen, where there were no windows open and therefore no breeze, the wallpaper scrap twitched against its magnetic captors.