Unfinished Business An Angela Panther Novel (A Chick-lit Paranormal book) (The Angela Panther Series) (8 page)

“I think we need to see a medium. Maybe a medium can tell us why she’s still here, and what to do about it.”

“What to do about it? Who’s she calling an it,” Ma snipped. “I’m no it. I’m a human being. Well, I was a human being, and now I’m a ghost, but you know what I mean.”

“She’s not calling you an it, Mother.”

Mel shook her head boldly. “No, Fran. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant the situation.”

“My mother knows that, Mel. She’s just being a brat. Stop it, Ma.”

“I’m sorry, Fran. Really."

“I know, I know." Tell her not to get her undies all up in a bunch. I’m not going to come and haunt her or anything. Not yet anyway.”

Now
that
would have been fun to watch. I relayed Ma’s message to Mel, and then watched Ma shimmy away, sparkles and all. I so wished I could do that.

“She’s gone.”

“Wow. Just wow.”

“Yup. Welcome to my world.”

We finished going through Ma’s things, and made plans to meet for coffee the next day.

Early the next morning, Jake and I got up and took our coffee out to the deck. June in Georgia was sweltering, and the only time it was cool enough to sit outside without a cold beer or a frozen drink was before noon, so we took advantage of it when we could.

J
ake had a tiny bit of drool in the corner of his mouth and I couldn’t decide if it was because I wore my hot mama pajamas – baby blue men’s plaid boxers and a tank top – or he forgot to wipe off his sleep spit. He, however, sported a look only a wife could love. A pair of workout shorts and a Harley tee shirt – because those are the only kind of tee shirts he owned. He liked to pretend he was a bad boy and I let him live in his fantasy world.

“Aren’t we just the hot and sexy couple of the year?”

“Your sinuses bothering you? You sound funny."

Well, great, I gave him sexy and raspy, and he heard nasal. We were in serious need of a date night.

“So how was your trip? You haven’t really told me much about it.” Jake had been in NYC. I loved NYC, and was jealous of his twice-monthly trips there. Mel and I went for a girls’ weekend last October and trucked across the city looking for the perfect cupcake. We called it the cupcake tour, but never picked the perfect cupcake. There were too many contenders and when I say too many, I meant a lot. Red Velvet. Chocolate Chip. Vanilla Supreme with Cream Cheese Icing (my personal favorite). It was a virtual cupcake-gasm for three days and it took me three weeks of an extra thirty minutes on the treadmill every day to lose the weight I gained. And I really hated the treadmill.

“Trip was good.” Jake rambled on about architecture and building stability, and about how, on his current project, the architect refused to use a certain type of stone, but the builder insisted he was going to use it anyway because the building would fall over if he didn’t, and it was all way over my head. Sometimes when he rambled on about work, I felt like my dog. All I heard was
“blah, blah, blah, Angela,”
but I learned how to nod, and shake my head at the appropriate times, whereas the dog just put her head down and snored. At least I pretended to be interested.

It was even harder to listen when Ma floated behind him as he talked, and her hands mimicked his, with her face all intense and passionate like his was. She made it hard to stay focused on what he said. I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?”

Ma immediately stopped, and fell into a fit of laughter. “Ah Madone, you’re in trouble now, Ang. You want I should try to move something? You know, to distract him? I’ve been practicing.”

I bit my tongue to keep from giggling harder and pretended to examine something on my foot.

“Oh, nothing. Sorry. I was just laughing at your hands. You know, if you ever break one, you won’t be able to talk. At least not until the cast came off.”

Jake frowned at me but continued his story, and I got distracted watching my mother’s performance all over again. “Well, has he?”

I realized I hadn’t heard a word he said. I shook my head. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You haven’t listened to a thing I’ve said, have you?”

Whoops, busted.

“Yes I have, actually.” I did hear the stuff about the architect and the builder. “You were talking about the architect and the builder disagreeing about the type of stone to use,” I said proudly.

Jake sighed. “That was at least five minutes ago, Ang. I just asked you if Josh has said anything more about seeing Fran.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” I quickly decided not to tell him about the memorial service and how Ma was there cracking Josh up. He was so in his element – being social and talking to everyone – he didn’t even know that Josh served coffee and drinks, so I didn’t think he noticed Josh appeared to be laughing to himself. “He hasn’t mentioned anything, no.”

“What about you? Still dreaming about her?”

If you consider hanging out and chatting with my mother in the middle of the afternoon a dream, then yeah, I’m still dreaming about her.

I guessed it was as good of a time as any to let my husband know I was nuts. “Sort of, but I don’t think I’m actually dreaming.”

He gave me his
this isn’t going to be good
look, the one I got when I told him I’d sneezed while driving through construction and rear-ended the car in front of me. It wasn’t my favorite look from him. I had hoped, instead for his
oh goodie, a fun Angela story
look, but that one was rare.

“What do you mean, you don’t think you’re dreaming?”

I sat still and searched for a way to answer his question without appearing absolutely nuts, but I got nothing. Hard to not appear nuts when I actually felt kind of crazy.

Ma floated away from Jake, and over to me. “Go ahead and tell him, Angela. He’ll believe you."

“Okay, here it goes. Yes, I’ve seen my mother, Jake and I am one hundred percent positive I wasn’t dreaming.” I sort of hoped that would feel a lot better than it did.

Jake didn’t speak. He was probably waiting for me to say
‘psych,’
or something.

“Well?”

My husband took a swig of coffee and lit up a cigarette; a habit I wished he’d quit, especially since it killed Ma, and all. “You’ve seen Fran, and you’re one hundred percent sure you weren’t dreaming.”

Jake repeated what people said
a lot
. At first I thought he did it because he thought what they said sounded stupid or didn’t make sense, but in time I realized the repeating was his attempt at comprehending. Most of the time, that is. I was pretty sure this time fell into the stupid category.

“Yup, that’s what I said.”

He took a drag of his cigarette and blew it out slowly.

I rubbed my temples, feeling the start of a migraine.

“Tell him, Ang."

I rubbed my eyes, framed my face with my hands, and breathed in deeply. Here it goes. “Jake,” I breathed in another big sigh and released it. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I promise.”

I paused, mostly because I couldn’t figure out what to say, but then just went for it. “The first time it happened, I thought it was probably a dream, but after the third or fourth time I knew it wasn’t.”

Long, uncomfortable silence.

“It doesn’t happen when I’m sleeping and it’s at different times during the day, and I’m pretty sure I’m not hallucinating or a narcoleptic, Jake. This is for real.”

Jake ran his hand through his hair, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the sky. After what seemed like hours, he finally leaned back toward me, picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. “After the third or fourth time.”

See? The repeating thing again. Annoying. “Yes, but there have been more.”

Jake stiffened into
defend and attack
mode. He did this when he was preparing himself for an argument. When he did it to other people I was fine, because I knew that ultimately they were going to get a serious ass chewing and it was sometimes fun to watch, but when he did it to me, things rarely ended on a good note. I’ve never been one to back down from a fight.

“Tell me everything.”

Admittedly, his reaction surprised me but I opened up like a broken fire hydrant. I told him about the memorial service, about the cemetery, including how Faith saw Ma, too. I spared no detail and he remained silent, which was actually sort of a miracle and even Ma was surprised. He was probably trying to think of whom he could get to babysit the kids while I was locked up in the loony bin and he was out of town.

When I finished he sat for a minute and gave me a questionable stare before saying, “So you’re telling me you’ve seen Fran, as a ghost?”

Ding ding! Give the man a prize!
I refrained from my urge to jump up and smack him upside the head and say, “
By James! I think you’ve got it
!” “Yup. That’s what I said.”

My husband tried to be open-minded but wasn’t always successful. If he couldn’t touch, see or smell it, or it didn’t personally happen to him, it wasn’t real. I’m his wife and he wanted to believe me and I could almost see the little wheels spinning around in his brain, fighting to find some way to make sense out of my admission. He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say, Ang.”

“Well, for starters you could say you believe me and you don’t plan to have me committed.”

“I believe that you believe you’re seeing the ghost of your mother, and I promise you, I won’t ship you off to a mental hospital. Today anyway.”

Humph. That didn’t work like I thought it would. “Jake, I don’t want you to believe that I believe. I want you to believe what I’m telling you is actually happening.”

He put his cigarette out on the fire pit, which annoyed the daylights out of me, but I remained silent. After almost seventeen years of marriage, I’d learned to pick my battles, at least most of the time.

He stood up, lit up another cigarette and blew the smoke toward our cherry trees. I imagined them instantly wilting from the poison. “Honey, you know me. You know I don’t really believe in all that crap.” He paced around the chairs and sat back down. He did that when he was trying to think something through.

“You don’t need to believe in
all that crap
, Jake. You just need to believe in
me
. I’m not asking you to put aside what you’ve believed for the past forty-five years. I’m just asking you to believe that for me, it is possible.”

We peered at each other but didn’t say a thing.

My mother, who had stayed silent through the bulk of this conversation,
thank God,
groaned. “Ang, I have an idea.”

“Okay."

She floated behind Jake. “Tell him I know about the prostitute.”

My mouth dropped. My eyes shot back and forth between my mother and Jake. “What’s this about a prostitute, Jake?” I might have said that just a little bit too loud, but who wouldn’t? A prostitute?

Jake jerked his head back and forth, and I was pretty sure he was looking for my mother. “Oh my God,” he laughed.
Laughed!
“Holy shit, it is true. Your mother really is a ghost, isn’t she?”

That didn’t help me understand about the prostitute, and apparently my mother found that funny too because she was doing the whole head bob laugh thing again.

I, however, did not find it the least bit funny. “Someone had better tell me about the freaking prostitute.” I clenched my teeth so tight I think I chipped one. “Right now.”

Jake stopped laughing, but Ma’s head still bobbed uncontrollably. “It’s not what you think, Ang. I promise.” He suddenly stood up. “Wait. Is she here? Did she just tell you about the prostitute, Angela?” He scanned the deck suspiciously.

The issue of my mother haunting me and Jake believing it, suddenly seemed unimportant or at least less important than the fact that my husband and a prostitute were...well, I don’t know what, dammit and that’s what ticked me off.

Finally my mother got the head bobbing under control and spoke up. “It’s okay, Ang.” She giggled again. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He got propositioned, that’s all.”

“So you couldn’t have just said,
ask him to tell you about being propositioned by the prostitute,
instead, Ma?” I swear this woman loved to light a fire under my butt just because she could.

Jake stared at me.

I needed to learn to meditate or I’d end up on high blood pressure meds. I probably already needed them. “She said it was nothing, that you got propositioned is all.”

He laughed again, but the humor escaped me. “You could say that." He paused. “So she’s really here, isn’t she?”

I avoided his question because I wasn’t quite finished with the prostitute issue. “What’s so funny about being propositioned by a prostitute, Jake?”

Ma spoke before Jake got the chance. “It was funny because the prostitute was old enough to be his grandmother." Her head bobbed again. “She was close to my age.”

“Oh my gosh. You got propositioned by a grandmother? That takes the cougar thing to a whole new level.” I laughed now too, because it was funny and I knew it was a major hit to Jake’s ego and that made it even funnier.

“Wow. Holy crap. Fran really is a ghost.” The look on Jake’s face was either one of absolute awe or else he was totally freaked out, I wasn’t sure which. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen the look before, really.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Now tell me more about getting hit on by a grandmother." So he did and we had a good, much needed laugh. Afterwards we talked a little more about Ma being the undead, as Jake called her, but his phone rang and in Jake’s world, work was more important than his wife seeing her dead mother.

###

I
headed out to meet Mel at Starbucks, but had to wait for Emily to finish getting ready. I’d promised her I’d drop her off at Taylor’s house on my way. Fifteen minutes after we were supposed to leave, she finally bopped down the stairs wearing a blue and white stripped camisole and cut off “booty” jean shorts, like she had all of the time in the world. What was with girls today? Her shorts were so short I could see butt cheek hanging below the fringe. “Seriously, Em. Those shorts are way too short. I’m not taking you wearing that. Go put on something that covers your butt, please.”