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“Yep.”
“Then you have more trouble here than I’d imagined,” she said to Addie. “Good luck to you.” With that, she bustled out the back door, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll invoice the rest on Venmo! Don’t forget to review us on Yelp!”
Addie avoided me for the next half hour, tidying up the things the spooky sisters had used around the house. I took a quick shower and changed out of my dirty work clothes, and then went down to the kitchen, planning to eat something before I dove into cleaning the old-fashioned way.
“So,” I started, “do you think it worked?”
Addie stopped wiping down the counter and sighed, turning to face me, arms crossed. “I don’t need you making fun of me, okay?”
I hadn’t planned to make fun of her. Or at least not a lot. “Sorry,” I said, sitting at the little table. She watched me warily for a moment, and then crossed the space to take the seat across from me.
Outside the sun was beginning its fall through the turning leaves and it cast the little kitchen in a warm glow.
“Do you really believe in ghosts, though?” I asked, figuring this could actually impact the speed at which we could get through the projects ahead of us.
She nodded. “Yeah, I do. I know you probably think that’s stupid.”
“No, I don’t.” I thought for a moment about what I really believed, Addie’s dark eyes watching me. “I guess I just have a hard time believing in things I can’t see. Or prove.”
Addie traced a circle on the old wooden tabletop, a scar from a long-ago glass of water or lemonade. “I get that,” she said. “I just don’t think everything can be explained easily.”
“So if ghosts are real,” I ventured. “What do you think causes a person to become a ghost? Does everyone’s spirit stick around when they die?” I’d always wondered about the logic governing this topic.
Her eyes met mine across the table then, and I could feel her measuring, weighing whether she wanted to talk about this. There was something wary in her look, and I wondered if someone had hurt her before after she’d admitted to believing in something they didn’t. I had a defensive spark light up inside me on her behalf—I didn’t like the idea of anyone hurting Addie.
“No, I don’t think everyone’s spirit stays,” she said finally. “I’m not an expert, but what people seem to think is that ghosts stick around because they had something unfinished when they died. Something they needed to complete.”
“Like a jigsaw puzzle?” I smiled as I said this so she’d know I wasn’t really poking fun.
Addie rolled her eyes at me, but the corners of her lips curled up slightly, and the almost-smile had me wanting to work harder to make it happen again.
“No, not like a puzzle. Like important life stuff. An apology, or a declaration of love, or revenge. Stuff like that.”
“Speaking of revenge,” I said, “you wouldn’t happen to know anything about a giant sign in the town square advertising liquidation of all the inventory at my store, would you?”
She sat up straighter, her eyes widening. “What? Is this what you were talking about earlier?”
“Yeah, whoever put up the sign also got into the store and put signs on everything that said, ‘free’ and ‘clearance, everything must go.’”
“Oh no, Michael. That’s awful.” Addie’s wide eyes were full of sympathy. There was no way she knew about this.
“Seems like a Tanner thing.”
She frowned but didn’t deny it. “I can find out.”
“Thanks. It doesn’t really matter who it was, though.”
“You planning some revenge?” Addie sat back in the chair and crossed her arms. Her long dark hair was arranged behind her head in some kind of knot, and one long strand fell to the side of her face. In the sun’s fading light, she looked beautiful, like a goddess in a painting.
“No,” I said. “But I can’t speak for Emmett and Virgil.”
“You know your cousins are basically criminals, right?”
That got my attention. My cousins were townies for sure, and maybe not at the top of the haystack in terms of intelligence, but they weren’t criminals. “What?”
“What they did in Mom’s cafe was vandalism. You’re lucky she didn’t press charges.”
“And what about what happened in my store today?” I asked, feeling my blood heat. “I spent the entire day offering discounts when the place barely breaks even as it is.”
