Chapter Thirteen

Richie was following behind Angel Rose as they walked back into the great room. He was telling her about the ceiling, and had his head tilted back while he pointed at the features as he went.

Ang wasn’t listening. There, in front of her, was Kirstin, wringing her hands together as if she was worried about something. The ghost was standing right in front of her, plain as day, and Ang stopped short to keep from walking through her. After the briefest hesitation, in which she mentally berated herself again for visiting the hidden room downstairs – she should have known a place like that would loosen her mental blocks – she took a couple of steps to the right, ostensibly to look at the massive fireplace.

“This is huge!” she commented, stepping in to look up the flue and hoping Richie hadn’t noticed her abrupt change of course.

Kirstin’s eyes immediately went wide. “You can see me?” she demanded of Angel Rose.

“I know!” he answered, oblivious to what had just happened. “Check this out.” He ducked slightly and sat on the bench inside the fire place. He laid on his back, stretching out his legs, and still didn’t touch the other side. “It’s awesome. I can’t wait to fire it up, but it has to be cleaned and stuff first. And it should probably get cold. Does it get cold here?”

“Sure does,” Angel Rose said, sitting on the bench opposite. “You are certainly going to keep warm with this.”

“Uh-huh,” Richie said. You can sit in the window seats too,” he was saying. “The sun comes right in and warms you to your bones.” He smiled wryly. “Of course, just right now, that isn’t quite a selling point, but when it gets cool, it’ll be great.” Angel Rose followed him over to the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, and indicated the benches built just under the sills. “They’re pretty comfortable too,” he said. “Give it a try.”

Angel Rose couldn’t move. The bench that Richie was pointing to was already occupied. Kirstin was sitting there, pleased as could be, with a wide smile on her face. She patted the space next to her on the bench indicating Angel Rose should sit next to her.

“What’s wrong?” Richie asked, watching Angel Rose stare at the window seat.

Kirstin narrowed her eyes. “You CAN see me and I’m not even trying!” she shouted, making Angel Rose wince just a little. “Oh! I saw that! You flinched when I shouted. You can HEAR me too?”

“Angel Rose? What is it?” Richie asked. He grabbed her hand, forgetting for the moment that Ang didn’t like to be touched. Her skin was ice-cold and just before she wrenched her hand away Richie caught a glimpse of something on the window seat. “What the hell was that?” Richie asked. “I saw something just now, when I took your hand.”

“I don’t know what you saw,” Ang said distractedly. Kirstin vacated her window seat and circled Ang, chattering at her like a little magpie.

“Could it have been Kirstin?” Richie asked, examining the window seat again and finding nothing out of the ordinary.

“I suppose,” Ang said, heading for the French doors on the opposite side of the room. “What do the back gardens look like?” she asked.

Kirstin swooped in and stopped in front of Ang, who veered around her without thinking. “What the hell?” Richie asked.

Ang didn’t hear him; her only thought was getting outside.

“He can’t see me, but he saw you walk around me,” Kirstin crowed, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet like a child. Angel Rose took a few steps more and Kirstin moved with her, blocking her path.

“What are you doing, Ang?” Richie asked.

Ang tried to step around Kirstin, but the ghost matched her step-for-step.

Kirstin grinned at Angel Rose. “You can try to ignore me all you want to,” she said, “but I’m not going anywhere. Not now that I know you can see me.”

“Angel Rose!” Richie said, exasperated now. “What in the blue HELL is going on here? Why are you dancing around my living room?”

Richie strode over to her and stopped in front of her. Almost immediately, cold air engulfed him, raising gooseflesh. After a moment, it dissipated.

“It’s cold again,” he said. Then realization dawned. “That was Kirstin, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kirstin answered for Ang. “Yes, it was me.” She stepped back onto Richie, and his skin cooled again.

“Holy shit,” he said, watching his flesh pucker.

“She’s here, isn’t she?” He stepped away from the cold air and his skin settled once more. “And you were – wait, she was standing right here in front of you. And you were moving – damn. Shit. You can see her! That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want to walk through her, and you’re trying to go around – holy SHIT.” Richie looked around the room.

“Oh, for a Yankee, he’s pretty smart,” Kirstin said, clapping her hands. Angel Rose threw her a withering glance.

“Who are you scowling at? Oh man, she’s really here?” Richie said. “He turned to the room and raised his voice. “I’m going to help you,” he shouted.

Kirstin clapped her hands over her ears. “Sweet Lord, I’m dead, not deaf, you silly Yankee!” she complained.

“You don’t have to yell,” Angel Rose said softly, nearly in tears. She was so mad at herself for not trying harder to ignore Kirstin. Now he knew.

“What do you – wait, she told you that? You can HEAR her too?” Richie’s eyes were close to bugging out of his head.

He looked at her more closely, and saw there was something else. Something more she wasn’t telling him. “What else?” he asked her, coming up close to her, forcing her look up at him. “What else is there that you’re not telling me? You see and hear dead people. That’s a hell of a thing, Angel Rose – what else could there possibly be?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she shrank into herself. He may as well know the last of it. “I think that Kirstin Maddox was my great-great-grandmother.”

“You THINK she’s your great-great-grandmother?” Richie asked; disbelief in his voice.

“You’re my blood?” Kirstin said; her joy and exuberance turning serious. “Lord, child, you’re mine?”

“More greats than that, actually,” Ang told him, casting a wary eye at Kirstin. “Seven generations ago, I think. But you get the idea.” Angel Rose haltingly told him about her mother’s adoption, her relationship with her birth mother, and the conversation she had had with her mother that confirmed the Maddox connection.

“Oh child,” Kirstin said, raising a hand to try to caress Ang’s cheek.

Sobbing, Angel Rose turned from Kirstin’s touch, and fled. She threw open the front door and ran.

With a muffled curse Richie chased after her. “Ang, wait!” he called. “Fuck, she’s fast,” he muttered to himself. He caught up to her and she whirled on him, fists flying.

“Damn you!” she cried, pounding at his chest. “Damn you and your estate, and your research project and your cursed money and your fucking GHOST.”

Richie trapped her arms between them as he crushed her to his chest. Adrenaline pumping, he tried his best to calm her down. “Angel Rose, it’s alright,” he soothed. “Just relax.”

He whispered to her as he held her, and gradually, she calmed. When he felt the tension leech from her body into the ground, he relaxed his grip on her. Without him to support her, she started to sink to the ground. He helped her down, and sat beside her.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“It’s okay,” Richie answered, smoothing her hair away from her forehead.

“This is so awkward,” Angel Rose said, turning away from Richie’s touch.

“I’m sorry for that too,” Richie said. “But from where I’m sitting, it’s actually pretty impressive. I mean, I know a lot of people, and other than Miss Nellie, I’ve never met anyone who can talk to ghosts.” He was quiet for a few minutes, but Angel Rose knew he wanted to ask. She could practically feel the words building in his throat.

“Go ahead,” she said, resigned to sharing this bit of herself. “You know you want to ask.”

“I’m sorry,” he said for the second time. “But you’re right. Have you always seen ghosts?”

Ang nodded. She told him a story from when she was a girl. She had imaginary friends like none of her other girlfriends did. Her best imaginary friend, the one she saw the most of, was a lady named Mathilda. Mattie, as Ang called her, was an old woman who had lived for more than a hundred years. She told Ang stories about raising her children on a farm during the Great Depression, and for days, Ang thought she was hearing the locusts coming; great swarms of them, with their ominous hum growing louder in her head until she couldn’t stand it any longer. She’d wake in the night, sure that the flower garden would be gone, and wouldn’t go back to sleep until her father had taken her to check it out.

There were other friends, but Mattie illustrated the point for Richie. When Ang finished telling her story, Richie just looked at her. “Wow,” he said. “I just had an imaginary dog.”

Ang burst out laughing. “Oh God”, she said. “I can’t believe you said that.” Getting herself under control, she looked in his face and tried to gauge if he was making fun of her or not. She decided he wasn’t.

“So,” Richie said carefully, “I take it you are not overly pleased with this gift you have?”

She just glared at him. “You mean ‘curse’, don’t you? Do you know how long it took me to suppress it? Of course you don’t. No, I’m not overly pleased, as you say. It’s damned inconvenient, truth be told, and frankly, I wish it wasn’t so. But, oh God, she is my great-great-whatever-grandmother; at least I think she is, so I owe her. I have to help you help her.”