I slid onto the booth seat next to Althea, across from Mom and Stella. “Sorry I’m late,” I said, smiling gratefully at the server who immediately filled my coffee cup. I took a long swallow. Ah, caffeine. “You wouldn’t believe what happened at the ghost hunt last night.”
I filled them in on the preceding night’s events and they interjected, “Oh, no!” and, “I can’t believe it!” as I shared my story. I paused my recital to order scrambled eggs, biscuits, and grits, then told them about finding Braden and the trip to the hospital. I left out the bit about Hank putting the moves on me; I didn’t want to listen to another refrain of “What did you ever see in him?” He was sweet and he loved me and he got to be a habit . . . what can I say?
Althea shook her head, setting the double wooden hoops in her lobes clacking.
“My, my,” she said. “I knew nothing good would come of that ghost hunt. What was that school thinking?”
Stella leaned forward, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. Usually accepting of people and situations as she found them, she had a disgusted look on her gentle face. “Education has become nothing more than entertainment,” she said. “Teachers have to compete with kids texting and only wanting to play video games or check Facebook. I’m not surprised they go out on a limb with something like a ghost hunt to try and get their students’ attention.” At forty-one, Stella had a daughter in middle school.
“Is Rachel holding up okay?” Mom asked, cutting into the stack of blueberry pancakes on her plate.
“I haven’t talked to her this morning,” I said. “She was pretty upset last night. She thinks it’s her fault because she went to the bathroom and left Braden alone.”
“Well, my goodness,” Althea said. “The boy must be eighteen years old. It’s not like she needs to babysit him.”
“No,” Stella put in, “but I can understand how she feels. You can’t help but feel responsible when people you care about are troubled or hurt.”
“Amen,” Mom said with a decisive nod.
“Anyway, Hank says the police are calling it an accident, although no one knows why Braden went up on the landing,” I said. I spread homemade strawberry-rhubarb preserves on my biscuit and took a big bite. Heaven.
“Maybe he saw the ghost and went up to check it out,” Stella suggested.
Althea stopped eating and looked at her. “Are you saying you believe in ghosts?” she asked.
“I don’t not believe in them,” Stella said after a moment’s thought. “There are just too many things that happen in this world that science can’t explain. And whether you think of them as ghosts or spirits or ‘presences,’ you’ve got to admit there’s more going on around us than we can understand.”
“I suppose next you’ll be saying you believe in zombies and werewolves,” Althea said.
Stella’s pale skin flushed red. “I didn’t say that.”
Althea thrust her chin up a hair, defensively, but then lowered it. “Sorry, Stel. I know it’s not the same. And it’s not as if I haven’t thought I felt my William nearby a time or two over the years. I guess I’m just fed up with the way everyone these days seems obsessed with the supernatural. That series all the teen girls are gaga over—the one with the vampire and the high school girl. I took my niece Kendra to the mall last Saturday and all she could talk about was how romantic it was. Fah! And there’s that series about the woman who sees the future or the past or some such rot, and that Spirit Whisperer woman, Ava something, who has that talk show where she chats with ghosts—excuse me, ‘spirits.’ Don’t get me started.”
“Too late,” Mom observed dryly.
We all laughed as Althea stabbed a fork into a sausage patty. “All I’m saying is that keeping up with the people we can see and touch in the here and now ought to be more than enough for anybody.”
A woman seated near the window got up to leave and I recognized Lucy Mortimer. She saw me at the same time and veered toward us, tucking the book she’d been reading into her purse. Wearing a shirtwaist dress in a forgettable blue and tan print, and with her slightly frizzy hair loose around her face, she looked very different than she had last night.
“Grace!” she said, stopping beside our table, oblivious to the server trying to slide past her with a loaded tray.
“Good morning, Lucy,” Mom said.
“Hello,” Lucy said absently, so caught up in whatever she wanted to say that she barely acknowledged Mom and Althea and Stella. She twisted an opal ring around her pinkie. “Did you hear? They’re accusing Cyril of trying to kill that high school boy!” Her voice rose and people at a nearby table looked over.