For Love or Magic

 

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Chapter 1

“Let's be clear about one thing, Seamus,” I said, giving the bull mastiff the French fry he had been whining about since I pulled it out of the bag. “Just because I'm feeding you doesn't mean you're my dog.”

I wasn't trying to be mean, but I didn't want him to start getting all attached just because I gave him a stupid French fry, either. In truth, there didn't seem to be much danger of that; he inhaled the fry and continued to remain indifferent to me, which was really best for everyone.

It was at that moment that the steering wheel in Judd's tattered old sky-blue Chevy pickup truck began to rattle. I hadn't wanted that stupid truck and I didn't particularly like it, but I'd gotten stuck with it anyway. Much like Seamus.

“C'mon, you stupid—” I banged my fist on the steering wheel, and it stopped rattling.

“Hey,” Judd admonished from the spot between me and Seamus where he crouched. “Be gentle with my girl.”

“You talking to me or the truck?” I said, giving him deadly side-eye.

He made that answer clear by patting the truck's dash. “This truck is awesome. Perfect to haul home all those garage sale chairs and tables. I'm gonna refinish them, baby, sell 'em at a yuge profit, and we'll be livin' like kings.”

“It's
huge,
not
yuge,
and you never did bring home a single piece of furniture. You couldn't keep your word if it was sewn into your underwear, and I hate this stupid truck.” To make my point, I downshifted from fifth gear to fourth, letting the gears grind as I deliberately jammed my elbow into Judd's gut.

Not that Judd had a gut anymore. He was dead.

“You do know that, right?” I said. “You're dead. I'm a widow. Move on already, would you?”

“
I've
moved on,” he said, his South Boston accent just as thick as ever. Even in death, he talked like he had a mouth full of peanut butter. “I'm dead. It's
you
who's keeping me here.”

He pronounced
here
with two syllables.
He-ah.
You'd think if I had to be haunted by the imagined ghost of my dead ex-husband, I'd at least give him a reasonable accent. British, maybe. I shot him a sideways look.

“Say ‘jolly good,'” I commanded.

He laughed. “You got a wicked sense of
yumor,
Ellie.”

“It's humor.
Hu
-mor. With an
h
.” I stuffed a fry in my mouth. Seamus whined again.

“I don't care what you say,” Judd said, and shot me a sidelong glance, his eyes glinting with
yumor
. You had to give Judd that; no matter what he was doing, he always had a great time doing it. “You still love me, and you know it.”

I glanced in the rearview and saw his cocky smile, the very smile I'd fallen for way back in the day when I was too young and stupid to know better.

“Shut up.” I gave Seamus another fry, and he wolfed it down with such enthusiasm that I had to check my hand quickly to be sure all my fingers were still there. They were. They were covered in slobber, but they were still there. With the luck I'd had lately, I guessed I should be grateful. I wiped my hands on my jeans and took the left onto Wildwood Lane, which sounded like it should be really nice, but in reality it looked like the kind of abandoned dirt road where they shoot those
the-missing-girl-was-last-seen-here
pieces for the local news.

“Are you kidding me with this, Judd?” My heart started racing in response to the panic rushing through my veins. “What the hell kind of place did you buy, anyway?”

Judd leaned forward, grinning like the charming asshole he'd been in life. “Wait for it, baby. You're gonna love it.”

“I doubt that,” I said, but when I looked to Judd, he was gone, and I was alone in
his
stupid truck with
her
goddamned dog, on my way to the only thing I had left to my name, thanks to him.

I hit my foot to the gas, a move which had little actual effect on how fast that old rust heap moved but which did provide some emotional payoff. While I was distracted, Seamus stuffed his massive nose into the fast-food bag and ripped it to shreds. My burger, wrapper and all, was gone in two bites.

“Son of a bitch.”

Seamus, as usual, ignored me.

The mailbox was not “rust-colored” as the real estate paperwork had claimed, but rather rust-
covered,
which I'd like to state for the record, is
different.
I wanted to drive past it, but unfortunately, the number 144 was clearly painted onto the wooden stake the mailbox was impaled upon, and I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen it.

“Home sweet home,” I muttered, and turned down the dirt driveway, although calling it a driveway was a little generous. It was more a visible suggestion that once or twice some sort of vehicle had accessed the house this way. The branches and leaves slapped at Judd's stupid truck and eventually cleared away to reveal the glorified shack that turned out to be the only thing my dead husband owned that his debt hadn't eaten.

Well, that, his dumb truck, and his girlfriend's dog.

I stopped the truck, turned it off, and stared at my future, such as it was.

At least you'll have a place to live,
the estate lawyer had told me last month as he closed his leather briefcase and lifted it off the table in the diner where we'd met up.
In cases where a husband leaves this kind of debt behind, I've seen widows left without anything. Or worse, with nothing,
and
bills left to pay. Considering how things could have gone, you're actually pretty lucky.

Yeah, that was me.
Lucky.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield and thinking.

“You don't suppose…” I said to Seamus. “I mean … you don't think Judd was running some kind of scam out here, do you?”

The dog, apparently uninterested in the
why
behind Judd's real estate ventures, ignored me, but my mind kept picking at the problem. Judd had traveled a bit, and like most wives of small-time con men, I hadn't asked a lot of questions for fear of getting the truth. Had he been out here, working a scam, during some of those absences? But why? Nodaway Falls, despite the name, had no real falls to boast of; there was little to no tourist traffic, and even less local industry. It was an hour and a half from Buffalo and a whisper away from the Pennsylvania border; the land itself was worth little more than Judd's stupid truck. Not to mention that there were plenty of easy pickins on the one-hour route between Taunton, the small town in southwestern Massachusetts where he'd parked me after we got married, and Boston, where the rich and stupid came to get fleeced by the smart and lazy. The drive to Nodaway Falls, which based on appearances was not a super wealthy community, was eight and a half hours. If Judd had been out here working a scam, it had been for something other than money, because nothing he'd get out here would have covered the gas.

I looked at Seamus and he panted at me, sated and slobbery in the midsummer heat. I wondered if he had eaten the girlfriend's lunches, too.

“Dumb dog,” I said, and kicked open the driver's-side door. I stepped out onto a patchy clearing that passed for a front yard, and stared at the run-down shack that was now all mine. It had shutters that were actual shutters, not just decoration, covered in peeling green paint. They might not be terrible with an updated color, maybe. The multipaned front windows were so old that even from what was passing for my front yard, I could see that they hadn't been replaced in at least fifty years. The place was small, about nine hundred square feet, with two bedrooms and one full bath. Not grand by any standards, but hell, it had a roof and a fenced side yard for Seamus, and I wasn't exactly in a position to be picky.

Seamus lumbered out of the truck and stood by my side. His head came up well past my hips. The monstrous canine was a hundred and fifty pounds, more horse than dog. What kind of woman would buy a dog like that, anyway?

Of course, I knew exactly what kind of woman. The Christy McNagle kind of woman, the kind of woman who gets her blond from a bottle and her sexual ya-yas from my husband.

Former husband,
I thought.
Dead husband.

I looked down at Seamus and contemplated him for a bit. It was nicer to think about the stupid dog than it was to think about Christy McNagle and Judd doing whatever it was they were doing together while I was oblivious and stupid.

“Go on, dog.” I nudged him with my knee. “Run around. Get some exercise.”

He looked up at me and licked his slobbering jaws, retrieving a sesame seed that had stuck to his nose. He let out a little huff of impatience and lay down in the dirt, settling his big dumb boulder of a head on his front paws.

“Yeah,” I said on a sigh. “I know how you feel.”

I stared at the house. I didn't want to open that door, didn't want to see what was inside, but I didn't want to sleep outside, either. My dusty, used-to-be-white Keds moved forward step by step, and eventually, I found myself putting the key in the lock. Before I turned it, I looked back at Seamus, who was still lying on the dirt, watching me.

“Coward,” I said, and turned the knob.

I had taken a chunk out of my dwindling checking account to hire someone to clean the place. I'd started accounts with the gas and electric companies while staying at Judd's sister's house in Providence, so at least there would be lights and hot water. It was dark inside and I hit the ancient push-button switch. To my utter surprise, it didn't set off a fire, and the ceiling dome light actually turned on, if a little reluctantly.

“See, what'd I tell you?” Judd said from over my shoulder. “It's not so bad, right? I got the furniture and appliances included in the deal.”

I ignored him. He was dead. And, according to Dr. Fliegel, he was just my imagination anyway, a hallucination I made up to work through the grief. He wasn't even a real ghost. A real ghost could tell you
why,
could explain, could apologize. All fake-ghost Judd did was the same stuff he did when he was alive; smile, charm, and lie.