Molly Harper - Better Homes and Hauntings

Catherine didn’t answer, her face never wavering as she stared through him, as if he were beneath her notice, undeserving of her time. This was the face of the lady of the manor. And Jack Donovan’s incorporeal ass was about to get evicted.

Deacon crawled over to Nina, blood dripping down his temple and staining his collar. He scooped her up from the floor, cradling her in his lap. He checked her bruised neck, her eyes, her forehead, kissing each place as he assured himself that she was breathing. She was alive. He wouldn’t suffer the fate of his great-great-grandfather, finding that the woman he loved had been murdered in his home. Nina tucked her battered face against the curve of his shoulder. She blinked sleepily at the spectacle before them, unsure whether she was imagining these odd white figures and their ethereal glow.

Catherine hovered protectively between Deacon and Jack, silently staring down the evil spirit.

“Even now, you won’t speak to me?” Jack hissed. “After all that I’ve done for you? After the vengeance I took in your name, destroying the Whitneys’ line and their fortunes? I deserve more than this, Catherine. I deserve what you denied us in life. I deserve your love. We can be happy together here, in this house I built for you.”

Catherine glanced down at Nina and Deacon, clutched together on the widow’s walk floor. She smiled gently at Deacon, threading her fingers through his curly hair, sending a chill down his back. “I couldn’t see my Gerald. He’d already moved on,” she murmured in a gravelly smoker’s tenor, the afterlife result of being strangled, Deacon supposed. She sent Jack a disdainful look. “Why would I want to be trapped here with him ?”

“Catherine!” Jack howled. “You can’t just ignore me. You can’t do this to me again!”

Catherine stroked a hand down Nina’s bruised cheek, making Nina shudder from the cold touch. “I needed to hold on for my children, for the generations of children to come. I needed you to understand the truth of what happened to me, to my Gerald. I couldn’t let them believe that I’d abandoned them. You came from a family rooted in love. Now that you’ve seen that, I can rest.”

Jack shouted, enraged, and flew toward her, arms outstretched. Catherine looked almost bored as she simply raised her palm, stopping him in his ghostly tracks. She drifted closer, and her fingers curled around his near-transparent throat and tightened, reducing his furious growls to a squelched grunt.

Her once bell-like voice came out as a rasping whisper: “You deserve nothing .”

Jack struggled against Catherine’s hold, striking out at her with all of the energy he possessed. But she had waited too long for this moment. Her eyes went completely black with the force of her intention as she concentrated on snuffing out Jack’s presence from her home. Jack’s fury seemed to drain away as he saw the hatred in his “true love’s” face. She despised him. She stared at him, through him, seeing nothing. He was nothing to her.

Catherine kept her grip on his throat, repeating, “You deserve nothing,” over and over as Jack’s form faded. It collapsed on itself, condensing into a tiny white star that blipped out like a defective twinkle light.

“You saw that, too, right?” Deacon whispered, staring up at the triumphant, pearlescent form of his ancestor.

Nina’s eyes fluttered shut. “We should put that on a T-shirt,” she muttered.

Catherine turned toward Deacon, smiling sweetly at him. She tilted her head as she studied her great-great-grandson and the woman he clasped to his chest. Deacon felt as if he should say something, but he wasn’t sure what. What exactly did one say to one’s deceased great-great-grandmother after solving the mystery of her century-old murder?

He waved awkwardly, carefully shifting Nina’s weight. “Hi.”

Brilliant.

Nina’s eyes snapped open when she heard Dotty shriek, “Deacon!” from downstairs.

Catherine’s silence was filled by the thundering footfalls of several people running up the widow’s walk steps. Dotty and Jake burst through the stairwell, only to skid to a cartoon halt when they saw the ghostly figure hovering near their friends. Cindy appeared behind them, calling, “Are they OK? Are they O—Oh!”

Catherine’s gentle smile broadened to an all-out grin. She floated closer to Dotty, cupping her hands around her great-great-granddaughter’s cheeks. Over Catherine’s insubstantial shoulder, Jake saw a small light flickering into a solid mass. It grew into a male shape with piercing dark eyes and a lopsided grin. The man was older, wearing a long tailored coat and what Jake was sure were very fashionable sideburns when Gerald Whitney had lived.

“Catherine,” he whispered reverently.

Catherine turned to see her long-dead husband, letting out a hoarse, triumphant cry. She moved so quickly to throw herself into his arms that Jake’s eyes couldn’t track her.

“Can you come home now?” Gerald asked. Catherine laughed, and the light surrounding the two forms grew brighter as their lips connected.

Cindy sighed, wrapping her arms around Jake’s waist as the figures turned together across the roof. When they finally broke apart, the spirits turned to the younger people. Gerald gave his great-great-grandchildren and their friends a fond wink, wrapping his arms around his wife and burying his face against her neck. Catherine leaned into his embrace.

The couple’s white-hot glow brightened that much more, a blinding supernova of celestial light. Deacon threw his arm over his eyes and shielded Nina from the glare. Jake pushed Dotty and Cindy behind him.

Catherine’s paper-thin whisper sounded against the background of the group’s labored breathing: “Be happy.”

With that, the light winked out as if a switch had been flipped. They all blinked into the sudden darkness. Dotty wiped at her cheeks, tears trailing down her face. Jake surreptitiously wiped his own eyes until a smirking Cindy handed him her blue handkerchief.

For her part, Nina was too exhausted to digest the mind-boggling wonder of what she’d just witnessed. For right now, she wanted a shower and a stiff drink . . . and maybe a CAT scan. She would try to sort through how she felt about watching two souls cross over into the afterlife at another time.

“Tell me you hit that little button on your watch,” she said.

“Way ahead of you,” Deacon murmured into her hair. “I really love you, woman. But you’re never allowed on this roof again, OK?”

“No problem.” She sighed. “Love you, too.”

“Everybody OK?” Jake asked.

Deacon said, “Nina—” but the patient in question interrupted him.

“I’m concussed,” Nina told him, her eyes closed. “A lot.”

“Nina’s concussed,” Deacon said. “And I think my ancestor sent Jack Donovan to hell.”

“What about him?” Cindy asked, nudging at the unconscious Rick with her foot.

Deacon winced. “I forgot he was there.”

“He’s breathing,” Cindy said, kneeling over him. “Damn it.”

“Some people have all the luck,” Nina muttered.

NINA PLACED A bouquet of lilies and rosemary at the feet of the memorial statue of Catherine Whitney, standing tall, smiling with her hands open and slightly outstretched. A perfect circle of low-slung white begonias surrounded a wide round bed of forget-me-nots. Wide stone benches flanked the little blue flowers. They’d moved the solarium statue of the children outdoors, so that the figure of Catherine seemed to be watching over them as they played.

The artist Deacon had commissioned to carve the stone figure had worked double overtime to finish it. The team gathered around the statue, watching as Deacon and Jake attached a plaque to the base: “In Loving Memory of Catherine Whitney, Cherished Wife of Gerald, Mother of Josephine and Gerald, Jr., Taken from Us Too Soon.”