The Other Side - J. D. Robb [144]
She pressed her lips together and took them as solemnly as they were offered. “Thank you, Jimmy, they’re beautiful. I . . . You know, there used to be flowers everywhere here when I was a little girl. Inside, outside. The air was sweet with them.”
“Now the air smells like apple pies.”
She closed the door, her nose sniffing. The scent was there but very faint. “Is that what that is? My aunt Odelia liked to bake. I bet she baked so many apple pies the smell is stuck in the wallpaper.”
“Na-uh. It’s stuck in the kitchen.”
“It is? Well, let’s go see why.”
He was off like a light, needing no further permission to seek out proof of his ghosts. M.J. and Ryan followed at a sedate pace.
“Thanks for doing this.” She could see his prime objective was to put his son’s mind at ease; seeing her a clear but solid second. Trying to fool one and lying to the other wasn’t how she would normally handle . . . well, any situation involving a father and his young son. But what was normal about ghosts? “I’ve tried everything I can think of. . . . I’m lost.”
“I’m no expert, but I’ve been told that their imaginations are almost as strong as their sense of reality. I thought if he came over and took a good look around, and if I got a little creative myself, maybe we could work something out.” Still, she felt like she was doing something wrong. “I’m not making any promises. Like I said, I’m not a child psychologist or anything. I mean, the last kid I had any contact with was me, and I have to tell you I was not, in general, a happy camper.”
He laughed. “So what do you really think about kids?”
“I don’t know. I think I could take one in a fair fight if it was small enough, probably, but I tend to group Roswell, the Bermuda Triangle, and kids in the same weird little mystery group.” She held the tips of her fingers together to show him.
“But you don’t hate kids, right?”
“No. I just don’t know any.” She looked at him. “Yours seems okay.”
He laughed. “Even with the ghost thing?”
She was thoughtful. “Yeah.” She especially liked that he didn’t back down when he knew he was right . . . which might also be a problem for her. “I like that he’s worried about them, where they’ll go when the house comes down.”
They entered the kitchen to find Jimmy standing near the tiled counter, arms at his sides, his expression mutinous and suspicious. “What’d you do with her?”
Okay, so maybe not a fair fight. “Well, it’s not like I killed her, Jimmy. We talked. I told her I had plans for the house and that it was time for her to leave.”
“Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know. Wherever ghosts go when they’re done being ghosts.”
“Heaven?”
She needed to think quickly . . . she wasn’t a particularly religious person, but she didn’t know what he’d been taught. She glanced at Ryan, who was watching and revealing very little.
“I’m going to say yes,” she guessed, nodding. “Odelia was a very sweet, very good person. I think she did go to heaven.”
“What about the sad one?”
“The sad one?”
“The one who watches me from the upstairs window and cries.”
“You’ve heard her crying?”
“No, but I can tell. I see her tears and then she puts her face in a paper towel or something and her shoulders shake. I can tell she’s crying.”
Her mother? No, the concept of her mother crying over a child for no reason just didn’t fit. But Imogene, who had lost her young son . . . well, watching over Jimmy every day must be a torment for her. M.J. reasserted her resolve to help the three sisters find their way out of the house, and not for the sake of the Smoothie Hut anymore.
“That would have to be my Aunt Imogene. She had a little boy a long time ago. He got sick and died. But she’s gone, too, Jimmy. They’re all gone.”
“All?” This from Ryan, who was beginning to take on the same dubious air his son had—like he couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or not, but from an entirely different perspective than his son’s.
“Jimmy