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A shrug. “I’m not in the business of encouraging people. But the person who broke in here? I don’t think they’re done. People who do things like that don’t stop. So either they come back…or you’ll have to find them first.”

Needless to say, my sleep that night was less than wonderful. I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, trying to figure out how I could dig into Terry Gallego’s past without being horribly obvious about it and coming up with nothing. Sometime around four, I gave up sleep as a lost cause and decided to go downstairs and get a glass of water or maybe make myself some tea. Coffee probably would have helped more to wake me up, but I didn’t want to shock my system like that so early in the morning.

When I went downstairs, I saw Hazel standing near the dining room table. I thought that was odd, since she rarely manifested in the middle of the night, and when she did, it was in the parlor in her favorite chair.

Had she heard me get up and guessed that I was probably headed for the kitchen?

“I couldn’t sleep, either,” she told me as I entered the room. I knew that was technically a joke — ghosts didn’t sleep, as far as I could tell, although they did seem to go somewhere else when they wanted some alone time — so I smiled weakly.

“I was thinking I’d make some tea,” I said, and she nodded.

“Go ahead.”

To speed things up, I poured water into a mug and put it in the microwave rather than waiting for the kettle. Sacrilege to some people, I knew, but I didn’t see the point in making Hazel wait all that time. If she’d been lingering here in the wee hours of the morning, then that meant she wanted to talk.

After the microwave beeped and I put a green tea bag in the mug…which reminded me a little too much of the tea I’d shared with Jude the day before…I went and sat down at the kitchen table. Almost at once, Chauncey pawed at my leg, and I picked him up and settled him in my lap.

“I keep having all these thoughts running around in my head,” I told Hazel. “That you don’t know if your own death was natural. Whether Father Frank’s death was connected to it in some way.” I sighed and picked up the mug so I could blow on it, even though I knew the tea was still far too hot to drink. “And whether I’m ever going to be able to figure it out.”

Rather than offer any platitudes, she only said, “I keep thinking about that, too.”

We were silent for a moment. Then I said, “Jude thinks I’m using this investigation as a way of avoiding my grief.”

Hazel tilted her head at me. “Do you believe that?”

“No,” I said at once. “I don’t think investigating is the same as avoiding grief. Right now, I think it’s the only useful thing I’ve done in a year.”

Rather than contradict me, she only looked at me for a beat or two. Then she said, “That might be true. But it can also be true that you haven’t allowed yourself to grieve the people you’ve lost. Two things can be true at the same time.”

Since I didn’t know how I should reply to her comment, I sat there for a moment, one hand playing with Chauncey’s ears. Part of me wanted to say it might be true in a general way, but in this particular case, it wasn’t true at all.

But another part, the one that usually remained hidden, that stayed quiet and tried to ignore anything too uncomfortable, told me I needed to take a second look at the situation.

“I miss them,” I said at last.

A very faint nod, one I might not have even noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it. “I know you do,” she replied. “So do I.”

That quiet comment hurt more than I’d thought it would. Yes, I’d lost my parents, but she’d lost the nephew she’d regarded as a son, the man who would have been her heir if he hadn’t died before her.

My throat tightened, and I reached over with my free hand, picked up the mug, and allowed myself a very small sip. It was still too hot, but it felt good to have something warm going down. It helped to ease the constriction a little bit, if not all the way.

And my eyes were starting to burn.

Damn it.

“I miss my mom,” I said then. “I know we fought all the time, and she didn’t understand me at all, but I still miss her. I miss the way she’d call and check on me and the way she’d send me notes with gift cards to Whole Foods and Amazon and Dillard’s tucked inside, like she knew I’d never accept money but wouldn’t turn down something that looked like a present.”

Hazel’s eyes were very sad. Although she’d never been a hugger in real life, I got the feeling right then that she wished she could reach over and hold me, pat me on the shoulder and offer comfort simply by being there.

But she couldn’t, because she was a ghost.

For whatever reason, that realization made the waterworks really flow. Tears were streaming down my cheeks before I could even stop to think about it, and then I was sobbing, crying so hard that Chauncey pushed his nose into my free hand and whined, as if trying to tell me that he could feel my pain and wanted to do something about it.

That little gesture was enough to make me gulp in some air, to try to pull myself together. Not because I was worried about upsetting him, but because he’d given me the physical comfort that Hazel couldn’t.

A basket of paper napkins sat on the table. I grabbed one and blotted my eyes and wiped my nose as best I could. The napkin was scratchy and nowhere near as good as a proper tissue would have been, but at least it helped get me reasonably cleaned up.

“I’m going to keep investigating,” I said, and Hazel nodded.