The Other Side - J. D. Robb [143]
“You mean, find their lives again?” M.J. frowned. She stood and walked to the mantel to inspect the photos thereon. Husbands mostly. The shot in the center was of M.J. at age three, sitting on her father’s lap; his dark hair slicked back, his dark eyes wonderfully wicked and dancing happily. Her mother embraced them both from behind—blond and golden, blue eyes twinkling like sun on calm waters.
“Oh no.” She smiled. “The loss of your life is, of course, a permanent thing, sweetheart. But the dying part isn’t what’s important. It’s everything that leads up to it. And if you’re mostly satisfied with your life—content at the time of your death—then death is simply a part of the package. But murder . . . that’s unnatural . . . like suicide. Lots of issues there, let me tell you.”
Her mother’s tolerance in explaining how being a ghost—or becoming one—worked was uncharacteristic of the edgy, easily irritated mother she was accustomed to. In the past, as a child, M.J. was given adult answers to questions and was expected to look them up or fathom them out on her own . . . As an adult, she found she’d had no interest in her mother’s answers at all.
“So someone who’s been murdered would be looking for, what? Revenge against the person who killed them? What would they need to find to pass over?”
Her mother’s smooth, lovely brow furrowed as she thought of an answer. M.J. watched in silence, recalling a time long ago when she had considered her mother the most beautiful of all the princesses in the land.
She heard the words in her head in a deep male whisper and felt suddenly warm and happy and . . . entrenched in a love so deep and solid it rocked her to the core.
“Maybe revenge,” her mother speculated, drawing her back to their conversation. “Haunt the murderer, perhaps, but that still wouldn’t get them to the Other Side. They’d have to stay here to do that. No, I would think it would be more about what got them killed in the first place, some sort of explanation . . . forgiveness maybe, or just acceptance of the fact.”
“Some way to make peace with it.”
Adeline gave a short nod. “Peace. That would be nice.” She hesitated. “I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to not know what you’re looking for.”
“We’ll figure it out.” She, too, nodded, realizing that might have been the nicest thing she’d said to her mother in quite a while. “We used to be a team, remember?”
Adeline took on that same inner glow of tranquillity and delight that M.J. had seen the day before . . . the one in the picture on the mantel. Why, oh why, wasn’t she enough to make her mother shine all the time?
“The boy and his father are arriving,” Imogene announced, appearing in the room beside her sister. Despite her more youthful appearance, she had the same sad, woeful expression on her face that M.J. had come to associate with her in the past—which hadn’t been there the day before.
“Is something wrong, Aunt Imogene? Has something happened?”
She smiled kindly. “No, dear. I’m just having one of my days.”
“It’s the boy.” Adeline put her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “Children upset her.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How could you?” Still smiling, she laced her fingers with her sister’s and gave her a hug. “But don’t concern yourself with me. It’s more important to ease the boy’s fears, the poor little thing. He must be so confused.”
M.J. chuckled as she stepped to the door. “No, actually he’s not confused. He’s as certain you’re here as I am.” She turned to look at them. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
She was halfway down the wide staircase when the door knocker echoed through the lower floor. She looked over the banister to make certain Odelia was out of sight for the time being, then skipped down the last few steps and across the foyer to welcome her guests.
“Hi.” She didn’t mean to sound so exuberant, but after spending the entire morning with ghosts, real people made her feel . . . well, glad to be alive. “Welcome. Please come in.”
Ryan, clearly assuming her high spirits were for his benefit, grinned