Between Seasons (22 page)

“Oh, uh…”

“Tell her… I don’t know, tell her your therapist’s name is Patrick!” he said. Sara frowned, and he shut his mouth.

“Wait, isn’t Patrick your ghost’s name?” Jules spit, eyes narrowing. She held up the index and middle finger of each hand and bent them twice as she said his name. What the Hell was that about?

Sara glanced at Patrick and then back to Jules, sighing. “Yeah.”

“Sara, what the Hell is happening here?” she demanded. “You’re acting insane. A re you… talking to dead people? Demons?”

“I’m not insane,” Sara yelled, gathering the blankets and pillow off the floor and throwing them on the bed. She huffed and turned back to Jules. “But even if I am, I’m really happy,” she said, her voice quieter. “You said it yourself.”

“Whoa. Back it up. Did you just admit you might be crazy? And wait – you really are consorting with demons? What is going on?”

Sara sat down on the mattress and pointed to the chair. “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.” Jules’ jaw clenched, and she gripped the gold crucifix around her neck.

“Fine, but just… before I say this, know I understand how nuts it’s going to sound. And I need you to keep an open mind.”

“You’re not going to tell her, are you?” Patrick asked incredulously, touching her shoulder. She cut her eyes toward him and smiled. He wanted to accept the reassurance, but there was no way this could be a good idea. Jules wouldn’t understand.
He barely understood.

Jules leaned against the door frame. “Okay.”

“I do have a ghost. His name is Patrick Boyle, and we’re, well, we’re together.”

Patrick groaned. This wasn’t going to end well.

“What do you mean, you’re
together
?” Her voice was flat, muted. The pinched look on her face made Patrick take a step back. This was going to be bad.

“Look.” Sara reached for Patrick’s hand, twining her fingers with his as Jules glared. “I know you can’t see him, but he’s right here.”

“So what you’re telling me is you’re either dating a figment of your imagination , or you’re allowing a minion of Satan put the moves on you ?” The ridicule in Jules’ voice couldn’t hide the fact that she was concerned . In a way, Patrick couldn’t blame her –Sara was essentially asking her to take a leap of faith she had no reason to make. She hadn’t been the one in the house all these months, picking out his thoughts, feeling his presence. He had no idea if she believed in good spirits – it was clear she believed in God and angels and all the other stuff that went along with that –but even if she did… how could she go there ?

Jules very obviously had a more concrete view of God than he’d ever had when he was alive. He’d believed before he’d died but only in a superficial way. He’d believed in the way that he was sure gravity held him to the ground, keeping him from spiraling off into outer space. But if some guy introduced himself as God, he wasn’t so sure he’d accept it. Rather, he would probably assume the guy was tripping... unless he could prove it.

Proof. Maybe that was the solution here. He could… well, he couldn’t do much. He could float a book through the air in front of Jules’ face, but from the look on it, he didn’t even know if that would help.

“He’s not a figment of my imagination, and there’s nothing bad or evil about him,” Sara snapped, gripping Patrick’s hand tighter.

“Explain this to me,” Jules hollered. “So, what? You and your demon lover smooch on the couch? Roll around in bed together? That i s just wrong, Sara!”

“I wish,” Patrick muttered just as Sara screeched, “You have no idea what you’re talking about! He makes me happy!”

“Right. Is he telling you to do things? Do you hear voices in your head?”

“Yeah, I tell her to steal library books,” Patrick snarked, feeling edgy.

“Shush,” Sara said, her lips curving up into a smirk for a moment. “No, it’s nothing like that.”

“This is crazy!” Jules threw her hands up and stalked across the room to stand in front of her. “What do you think is going to happen? You and your ghost or whatever this thing is will get married?”

She continued to rant, yelling about Casper babies and priests and Sara’s soul being at risk, but Patrick barely heard her. The second she mentioned getting married, he pictured Sara in a wedding dress, all white and lacy. He could see her walking slowly down the aisle, and he imagined his parents sitting in the front row, his mother dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “The Wedding March ” played in his head as she reached him, taking his hand and smiling at him so brightly. Father Thomas made the sign of the cross and started speaking.

“Oh, shut up, Jules!”

Patrick closed his eyes, wanting to hang on to the feeling of standing in front of that church with Sara. The smell of incense tickled his nose, distracting him from the screaming volley back and forth between Sara and Jules. This was one thing he didn’t miss about his life –his parents fought sometimes, just like any normal married couple, and there had always been people yelling about something. It had always given him a headache, and the all out war going on around him triggered an anxiety he could do without.

“… need help.” Jules was quieter now, and Patrick opened his eyes. Tears streamed down Sara’s face, her skin flushed. He leaned over and wiped his thumbs over her cheeks, taking the wetness with him. He hated seeing her cry, knowing it was his fault.

“I should go,” he said. “You don’t need this.”

Sara shook her head, her face morphing into a determined mask. “Don’t. You’re not the one who should leave.”

“What?” Jules asked.

Ignoring her sister, Sara pulled Patrick closer and put her arm around his waist, leaning her head against his ribs. “Jules, I need some time alone. Take my keys and drive into town. We can talk about this later.”

“Talk about it? Sara, look at you? You’re completely delusional. And if you’re not insane, you’re playing with evil forces!”

Sara stood, slipping her arm away from Patrick. “Maybe I am. I don’t care.”

Jules straightened, her face paling. “Don’t say that.” She pressed the fingers into the corners of her eyes, screwing them shut for a moment. “Okay, I am going to run out, but I’ll be back soon, like maybe an hour. I have to think.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER TEN

The slam of the downstairs front door galvanized Sara into action. She stood and launched herself into Patrick’s arms. The wetness of her tears soak ed through his shirt, and he held her until she was all cried out, trembling easing.

“That was stupid of me,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have told her.”

“No, probably not, although I love that you tried to make it seem normal.” She made it seem as though they were any other couple – he supposed they were no stranger than a genie and an astronaut, like in I Dream of Jeannie . It wasn’t on television anymore, though, so maybe it was a stupid comparison to make.

She sighed, leading him out of the bedroom and down the hall to her office. “I don’t know what to do. She’s going to talk at me until I do what she wants.”

“And what’s that?”

She turned to him, lips pruned, as she sat down in her office chair. The gray, muted light poured through the window, shadowing Sara’s face . “Uh, weren’t you listening?”

He smiled a small, rueful grin. “I blocked a lot of it out.”

Sara clicked her tongue. “I don’t blame you.” Softer, she said, “Well, she wants me to move back to Portland with Mom and Dad and then check into the hospital. I’m surprised she hasn’t insisted I make a pit stop at her church first.”

Panic curled Patrick’s fists. “Are you going to… move, I mean ?”

“No.” Her firmness calmed his churning guts, but Jules seemed like she could be just as determined, just as stubborn. “I’ll stay in this house for the rest of my life. If you’re here, this is where I’ll be.”

Scenes of all Sara would be giving up flashed in his head – the walks in the park, the snowball fights with their kids, taking drives to catch the leaves changing. It was as if they were stuck between seasons, half in one world and half in another.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure you want to do that?”

“What? Why wouldn’t I?” Her eyes hardened, chin jutting . “Do you want me to go?”

“That’s not it at all.” He crouched in front of her and put his hand on her knee. “I just… don’t want you to miss out on anything because you’re with me.”

“What am I going to miss out on?”

“We’ll never be able to go out or buy you a present,” he half-teased, trying to avoid what he really wanted to get across. The words formed in his mouth, but they didn’t want to come out. He was jumping the gun, making assumptions. Finally, he just said it.

“What if… what if we can’t have sex? I mean, I want that to be a part of our life together, and I assume you want that from a relationship too. I just don’t know if it can happen.”

She put her hand over his, wrapping her fingers around his palm, and slid it up her thigh, over her hip, across her ribs to her breast, resting it there firmly. “You can touch me. We’ll figure it out.”

She was reassuringly solid under his hand, and the steady thump of her heart beat there. It vibrated through his hand and up his arm.

“Why are you so good to me?” He took a step closer, kissing her forehead.

“How could I not be? I have problems, too, and you’re just as good to me.”

“Sara,” he said with an exasperated laugh, “I’m a ghost.
A ghost
. It’s not the same as you suffering from a bit of depression or having a crazy sister or something .”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t really care, though. I’m not going anywhere.” She moved his hand again, bringing it to her lips to kiss his knuckles. “We, uh, can’t really get more into the… other thing, at least not right now. Jules is probably coming back soon, and it just seems like a discussion that should n’t be interrupted…”

Right. Sex. The
other
thing. And yeah, should they actually come up with an answer, an interruption would be the last thing he wanted.

Sex was going to be complicated, even when he was dead. Nothing could ever be simple. His friend Andy used to joke he’d take it easy when he was dead, that he’d play hard and leave a pretty corpse. Well, Patrick may have stayed, well, maybe not pretty, but he was still al l right-looking… but his problems only seemed to compound after the stairs incident .

“We have all the time in the world.” He smiled, trying to look like he knew what the Hell he was talking about. Inside, of course, he cursed Jules for being here and fought panic because everything was so screwed up. He still had the feel of her in his hand, her nipple poking against his palm, so that was good at least.

“Good, I’m hungry. Having your sanity questioned really takes it out of you,” she joked.

The toaster popped, and Sara yanked out two piece of bread , dropping them onto a plate. “Hot,” she complained, shaking her hand and wincing.

“Yes, you are.” Patrick grinned, running his hand over the swell of her ass.
Chuckling, she buttered the toast and leaned against the counter alongside him.

“Was that your big pick-up line back in the day?”

“I didn’t need pick-up lines,” he joked. “The girls just came running.”

That hadn’t been entirely untrue. He’d never had problems getting chicks after he’d grown into his looks. Of course, he’d never met anyone quite like Sara before he’d died . He’d liked Ginny a lot but not enough to stay with her. Definitely not enough to marry her, as his dad had once suggested he consider. Sara made him feel alive, in all senses of the word. It was new and amazing, even under screwy circumstances.

“Were you, you know, popular?” she asked between bites.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t unpopular. I dated around.” He tried to keep it vague; he didn’t want to boast. He waggled his eyebrows.

“And you went out with Ginny?”

“Yeah, she was really my only serious girlfriend.”

“How long did you go out?”

“Six months. At the time it seemed like forever… “

She laughed and grabbed his wrist, pulling his arm to curl around her. “I guess everything is relative, huh?”

“Yeah, guess so.” He followed her into the living room. She opened the door and stood for a moment, gazing outside at the gray day.

“I wonder where Jules went… she didn’t take the car.”

Patrick slid down the wall inside the door and balanced his elbows on his knees. “What do you think she’s planning?”

Sara stepped around his feet and sat next to him, bumping him with her shoulder. “I’m sure she’s already been on the phone to my parents. Thank God I never told her the name of my therapist , or she probably would have been bugging the crap out of him too. Not that he can tell her anything.”

“You don’t think she’ll do anything crazy, do you?”

“Define crazy.” Sara chuckled. “I don’t think she’ll abduct me or try to force me to repent or anything.”

They were both silent, listening to the sounds of the wind rushing outside. The leaves rustled on the trees, a cooler wind than he’d been used to blowing in through the screen. Everything seemed so dire all of a sudden, and the weather mimic ked the urgency of whatever was going on.

“If I died in this house, do you think I’d stay here too?”

“Who knows?” Patrick answered. “I’m sure I’m not the only ghost in the world, but I don’t have a clue how any of it works. I’ve wondered about that myself, but I just don’t know.”

Nothing Patrick thought was true about dying had been right. Whether he really had just been forgotten , or this was all some big dream on his way to really being dead, he liked to imagine other people who died got their happy ending… their reward for living a good life on Earth. He wanted to believe his parents had gone straight to Heaven and found each other there . He hoped they hadn’t been watching him, though . Seeing him muddle through death was probably even worse than dealing with that header he took down the stairs .

“If she does try to force me home, I’m considering my options.”

“What do you mean?” As far as he knew, there really were no options other than simply refusing to go. He’d read a story once about a man being spirited off to the loony bin in the middle of the night, but it had never seemed realistic to him that shit like that could actually happen. And while Jules was the taller o f the two of them , but he just couldn’t imagine her trying to knock Sara out and drag her off.