Ghost of a Chance

  "Where is she?" I had to find Randa. I didn't see her anywhere in the room. Her daybed was mussed, but the covers hadn't been turned down. The computer was on. An old toy chest stood open in the corner with one of her childhood dolls sitting next to it, but Miranda was nowhere in sight. I started to panic, blood pounding in my head. Then I saw the window. It was open, curtains waving in the icy breeze. I shot toward it, but Andrew beat me to it.

  "Holy hell!" He scrambled over the sill. "She's out here." He held her in his arms, my Miranda. She was unconscious, her hair limply trailing in the snow. "She was lying near the edge of the railing."

  Harlow and I lifted her through, and he climbed back in and shut the window behind him. We got her into bed. She was ice-cold, but she was breathing. She twitched, moaning.

  "Is she okay? What is she doing here? She was supposed to be over at Ida's." I knelt by her side, brushing the hair away from her face. Snowflakes still clung to her eyelashes but had started to melt, and now they shimmered like tiny diamonds. I gently lifted her wrist and felt for her pulse. There it was, too fast but strong. She coughed, as if she were starting to come around, but only turned her head to the side.

  "Randa? Randa! Wake up!" I shook her by the shoulders. "Get me another blanket. She's freezing." Harlow retrieved a bedspread off of the brass quilt stand that had belonged to Nanna, and we spread the bedspread over my daughter.

  Andrew raised Miranda's head to slip in an extra pillow as Harlow scrunched in behind me on the bed, her right foot balancing on the floor, her other knee tucked against my left side. She began to rub my shoulders. I could feel knots of tension ripple under her fingers. Using her thumbs, she dug into a pressure point on the muscles near my collarbone.

  "Jeez, that hurts!" I would pay dearly for the fall and the stress, but right now all that mattered was Randa. "Harl, there's a bottle in the medicine cabinet that says "Lung Ease" on it. Could you get that for me?"

  "Whatever you need, babe." She patted my shoulder and popped a quick kiss on my head. "I'm going to call James to tell him I'll be late." She took off out of the room again.

  As she clattered down the stairs, I looked up at Andrew. "Those spirits came right through Randa's floor." I felt her forehead. Her skin was so cold, and she looked so vulnerable. "What the hell is she doing home?"

  He examined the window again. "Want to make a bet she ran for the only way out she could when they appeared? She probably fainted from fright. Can ghosts really hurt people, I mean… physically?"

  "Some ghosts." I shrugged. "Not Susan—I don't think Susan would hurt anybody, but Mr. Big & Ugly is mean. Not only does he have a nasty temper, but he's also powerful. He got through my warding when Nanna's charm should have kept him out. Andrew, will you get the paper that Susan wrote on? We don't want to lose it."

  We were facing a can of worms, all right, and, as Murray had predicted, there was no going back. I thought about her reading. I'd done everything right and still, fate had intervened and put my child at risk. I racked my brain for the rest of what Murray had warned me about. Andrew leaned over the banister and called downstairs to Harlow, asking her to grab the note Susan had written. I made room for him on the little daybed. Miranda didn't fill but half of it. The distant ring of the phone startled me, but then it cut short, and I assumed Harlow had answered.

  Andrew whispered, "Everything will be okay" and slipped an arm around my shoulders. I rested my hand on Randa's chest, feeling her breathe, reassuring myself that she was alive.

  Harlow jogged into the room and handed me the bottle of Lung Ease. "Ida called. She just went in to check on Randa, to ask if she wanted a snack, and found out she was gone. Apparently Randa snuck out without anybody knowing. I told Ida that she was here so she wouldn't worry."

  Randa and I were going to have a serious talk once everything had settled down. "Andrew, could you please stand over there?" She might just be thirteen, but I respected my daughter's privacy. I took the bottle and pulled the cork. The lotion flowed onto my hand, wafting up a cloud of eucalyptus and camphor as I rubbed it onto Randa's chest. I made a bottle every year for colds and coughs, and it worked better than any remedy I could buy on the shelves.

  "Will she be okay? Should we call a doctor?" Harlow took the bottle and sniffed it, then winced. "Jeez, that's strong stuff."

  "It works." I closed my eyes and tuned in to Randa's energy. There, a bright spot surrounded by a lot of fog. But that central core was burning bright. I touched her with my own energy, blew a mind kiss to her, and gently withdrew. She would be okay… my baby was safe. I began to relax. "Randa should be waking up soon." Even as I spoke, she began to stir. She shook her head and opened her eyes. I helped her sit up as she started to cough.

  "What happened?" Her voice was thin and scratchy.

  "That's what I want to know. What are you doing up here? I told you to stay with Mrs. Trask unless it was an emergency, and what happens? I find you here, out on the roof, unconscious. Miranda, answer me: Why did you sneak around like this?"

  She squinted, blinking to brush away the light. "I forgot my book and came home to get it. I knew you'd be mad since you told us to stay at Ida's for the night, and since you were in the shower, I thought I could sneak in and out without you knowing. Then, when I got up here, I figured that I had time to print out my history report that's due tomorrow. I'm really sorry, Mom."

  I tried to remain calm. "You disobeyed me and you snuck out on Ida. She was frantic when she found out you were gone. You knew what we were doing tonight! You know that we have a dangerous ghost. You could have been seriously hurt."

  "I said I was sorry! Jeez, what happened to me? I ache all over." She struggled to stand up, but I pushed her back down on the bed.

  "Stay where you are. I told you, we found you out on the roof, unconscious. How did you get there? What happened?" Feeling on the verge of losing control, I struggled to breathe deeply to keep my temper reined in. A layer below the anger, I could feel anxiety churning away. Did the ghosts come through her room? She didn't seem to remember them, if they did.

  Miranda quit trying to force her way out of bed and fell back against the pillows. After a moment she sniffed, wiping her nose with a tissue from the box on the night-stand. "I don't know. I don't remember what happened. By the time I got everything I needed and was ready to go back to Mrs. Trask's, I could hear all of you downstairs. I didn't want you to find out I was here, so I decided to stay in my room until after you finished. I was reading. That's all."

  I glanced at Harlow and Andrew. Great. Just great, how wonderful. The evening had gone so far astray from our plan that I began to wonder if we weren't jinxed. Harlow motioned me over to the desk. I asked Andrew to sit by Randa and joined Harlow, who was dangling a piece of paper in her fingers.

  "Susan gave us an answer," she said.

  I took the page. In answer to my question about Susan's daughter, the spirit had scribbled, "Ask Karri B…" The rest trailed off into an unintelligible scrawl.

  "Karri B… well, that gives us something to go on." I handed it to Harlow. "Who on earth is Karri?"

  Harlow took the paper back and tucked it in her pocket. "I was thinking about that. It must be Karri Banks—the librarian. She was probably one of the closest friends Susan had, if you can use the word 'close.' Karri and I meet once a month to discuss the literacy campaign; now and then she's mentioned Susan to me."

  "Find out anything you can, babe." Miranda coughed and I joined her again, adjusting her covers and tucking them in. Her cheeks were a bit rosier, the color was starting to come back into her face now that she was warming up. She would be fine. "Harl, could you call Ida back and tell her that Randa will be staying at home the rest of the night? She's number three on speed dial. Tell her that Randa's come down with a little cold?"

  Harlow nodded and took off down the stairs. There was no sense in taking Randa back into the cold just to go to Ida's. I didn't want to tell her yet that I thought that Mr.

  B & U mi
ght be responsible for what had happened. And the truth was, I couldn't be sure. Nobody had been upstairs except Miranda herself; there was no way of being certain about what happened. In my heart, though, I knew this was the work of the spirits.

  Randa sniffled. "I'm sorry to be so much trouble." I relented then, unwilling to put her through any more stress than she already had experienced. I gave her a long hug and kiss, then asked Andrew to step outside. When he left the room, I helped her into her pajamas and brushed her hair like I used to when she was a little girl.

  "We have to talk about the fact that you disobeyed me, but we can do that tomorrow. For now, I want you to get back in bed." I held up the covers for her, and she crept into the brass daybed we had bought when we first moved to Chiqetaw.

  "Stay here?" She reached out for me, as if she were afraid I was going to leave. I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  "I'll be right out in the hall, saying good night to Andrew. I'll sleep in your room tonight, sweetie. Meanwhile, you close your eyes and rest."

  Andrew was waiting for me. "Is she okay?"

  "Yeah, I think she'll be fine. She doesn't seem any worse for the wear, but I'd sure like to know what the hell happened up here. Okay, well, that about caps it for the night. I'm sleeping in her room. Where's Harlow?"

  He pointed to the stairs. "Downstairs. You know, until tonight, I would never have believed such things possible. You've opened up a scary new world for me, one I don't know if I'm ready to face. One that exists outside the pages of a book." He reached out to stroke my face with a gentle hand.

  I kissed his fingers as they ran over my lips. "You don't have to come back if you don't want to. I know this must be terrifying. I deal with things like this enough to be used to it, yet these forces still scare even me. Some of us have no choice but to cope with being able to see and feel these other worlds, regardless of whether we enjoy it."

  He reached down and planted a kiss on my forehead. "I'll stay as long as you need me to tonight. What I'm trying to say is that when I thought of ghosts before, I thought of Casper and Beetlejuice, but not anymore. Now I have more respect. A lot more. For both the spirits and for someone who can handle them like you do."

  I looked at him silently. There wasn't much to say. He didn't smile, just stared back solemnly. When had life gotten so complicated? I swallowed a throatful of tears. "What am I going to do? Ghosts are threatening my family. But as angry as I am, I can't help but feel sorry for Susan. Something's wrong—she wouldn't show up like this if there wasn't unfinished business."

  Harlow reappeared, and when she did, she was carrying a tray containing a teapot, two cups, and a plate of vanilla wafers. "I thought you and Miranda could use something to eat."

  "You're such a sweetheart." I held the door open for her. She carefully maneuvered the tray onto the worktable that Randa had convinced me to get for her instead of a vanity. I poured a cup of what turned out to be chamomile and took it over to my daughter. Randa pushed herself up in bed and sleepily accepted the tea and cookies. I rejoined Andrew and Harlow near the door, where we spoke in low tones so Randa couldn't overhear us.

  "Okay. Harlow, why don't you talk to Karri, see if she can shed any light on what's going on." I turned to Andrew. "Meanwhile, I need to talk to Walter. I don't know what good it will do, but I can read most people; maybe I can tell if he's hiding something. However, I need to be physically near him to do so."

  He nodded. "I might be able to help. My writing group has been talking about putting together a small affair for those of us who loved Susan. If I host it, I can make it a public event. Walter can't avoid coming to something like that—it wouldn't look good if he snubbed us, especially not to her devoted readers."

  "We could use that excuse to contact Diana, too. We could invite her up to her mother's memorial," Harl interjected.

  "Good idea." I squeezed both their hands. "This week is insane. I promised to buy a tree and ornaments, and the shop's annual sale starts tomorrow at noon." We were offering a 25 percent discount on all tea-related items… teapots, teas, and teacups. I was also holding a drawing for a free teapot. Great promotion, and it brought people into the shop. Even though the teapot wasn't "fine china," it had a pretty sunflower pattern, and a lot of people had entered the contest.

  "I wish Nanna could help me. I need her advice." Nanna had been one of the few I could turn to during a crisis. "Since that isn't an option, I think I'll call Murray again, ask if she'll come over and get a feel for the situation. She's a damn good psychic as well as a fine cop."

  "Cop? Are you talking about Anna Murray?" Andrew sounded surprised. "I met her when she questioned everyone in our writers group after Susan died." Andrew inched toward the door. Fatigue clouded his eyes. Harlow looked just as wiped.

  "Both of you go home. Harl, call me tomorrow if you find out anything. I'll either be here or at the shop, depending on how Randa feels. And guys, thanks for being here tonight."

  Andrew pressed his' lips together. "Em, I won't run again. Not because of ghosts or spooks or anything else like that. Would you like me to stay over tonight? I can sleep on the sofa downstairs."

  "Let me know how Randa is tomorrow, babe." Harlow gave me a quick kiss and took off down the stairs as we followed her out into the hallway.

  "Thanks for the offer, Andrew, but it's not a good idea. I have to take things slow. Do you understand? I come with a lot of baggage. Two kids, a nasty ex… a ghost who has revenge on the mind." At the last, I couldn't help but laugh. "That sounds absurd, doesn't it?"

  Andrew snorted. "At least you don't look like Dan Akroyd!"

  "Hey, we may still end up turning into Ghostbusters." My giggles subsided, and I yawned. Every muscle in my body hurt. It even hurt to think.

  He edged toward the stairs. "I suppose I should get on home."

  "Go, sleep, rest. We'll be okay." I blew him a kiss, and he reached out and let his fingers linger against my cheek. "Lock the door behind you?"

  "Will do, ma'am." With a salute, he handed me the cordless phone that Harlow had left on the upper hall table. "Get some sleep. I'll call you tomorrow." Before I realized what he was doing, he leaned over and caught me in a lingering, thigh-melting kiss and slipped downstairs. The sound of their voices echoed, and the front door shut with a loud click.

  I took the cup from Randa, and she burrowed under the covers and promptly fell asleep. After making sure she was tucked in, I crept over to the rocking chair that sat in the corner of the room and pulled an afghan over me as I leaned back and rested my feet on the footstool. The chair had been Nanna's. When she died, she willed it to Miranda. Randa loved it, curling up on it with books and boxes of cookies and glasses of milk. As I drank my own tea, resting my head against the wooden frame, I understood why she spent so much time in her room. It was quiet and calm here. Somehow my daughter had managed to create a little haven of peace for herself.

  I focused on Nanna's energy, her winks and the quarters hidden in her pockets and tiny dolls she sewed from bits of rags. "Nanna? Nanna—if you can hear me, please watch over us as I sleep. Please watch over my little girl and make sure that nothing hurts her. And please, let Kipling be safe."

  The prayer was halfhearted. I really didn't expect an answer, but the curtains fluttered even though there were no drafts and I felt a firm, guiding hand on my shoulder. Miranda stirred again, and a smile broke out on her face as she slept. I squinted, peeking through half-closed lashes, and saw a golden outline standing near the bed. Nanna. Nanna had come in response to my plea. Content that we would be safe the rest of the night, I closed my eyes and fell asleep, drifting into a deep and dreamless slumber.

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke before dawn. My night in the rocker had left me no worse for wear—I was used to it, though when I stretched and yawned, I could feel a sharp twinge in my side from sitting too long. As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I remembered—Nanna had been there, watching over us. No wonder the room had been so comfortable
. I had slept so deeply that I couldn't even recall one speck of a dream.

  Randa was resting peacefully.

  A peek out the window showed that the ever-present clouds had decided to take the day off. A glimmer of light promised a clear morning, although at these temperatures, clear weather meant cold weather. We'd be turning the furnace up another notch before dinner tonight. The dawn was settling in—vague streaks of pale yellow infused the horizon with the illusion of warmth. The combination of the ever-growing snowdrifts against the robin's egg blue sky seemed both beautiful and surreal.

  Ice layered thick on the outside of Miranda's window, but the inner sill was warm to my touch. I stood for another minute, watching the world wake before I padded back over to her bed and knelt by her side. Her breathing was shallow, and she was close to waking. I shook her gently by the shoulder and she dragged herself into a sitting position and looked around. Her mouth puckered with the beginnings of a frown.

  "What happened? What time is it?" She squinted at the alarm clock. "Seven-thirty?"

  "Do you remember much of last night, honey?"

  She scratched her head, frowning. "Not much. I came back for a book and… I guess I got sick?"

  I didn't want to scare her, especially since I wasn't even sure myself what had happened. She'd be terrified if I told her about the ghosts. I felt her forehead. Her skin was slightly warmer than it should be, but I didn't see any other signs that she was the worse for wear. "I think you were, sweetie. We found you on the roof in the snow. You fainted. Probably overexhaustion—all the studying tired you out."