Page 33 of Mourner for Hire
“It’s cute,” I say as we approach the beach cottage
“There’s a key under the mat,” Annabelle says, following closely behind.
There’s this pit of fear lodged in my gut that I’m somehow able to ignore because her presence—even in the afterlife—is comforting. My brain is telling me to run for the hills, to find a priest, an exorcist, or even a padded room. And yet, here I am, reluctantly stepping into what feels like a different realm—all for the sake of a paycheck.
I curse my younger self for playing with Ouija boards at sleepovers.
The mat saysBeach Please,and I laugh as I peel up the corner, quickly discovering said key is nowhere to be found.
“It’s not here.”
“Hmm,” she thinks aloud, eyes roaming over the front of the building. “Try that old terracotta pot.”
I do and come up empty-handed.
“In the flower box?”
Nope.
“That stone over there… No, the other one.”
Again, nothing.
“Maybe it’s buried in the sand.”
“Lovely. If only I had brought my sand toys.” My tone is dripping in irritated sarcasm, but it makes her laugh.
“Well, help me find it,” she says, sifting through the sand. Sort of. Being a ghost is weird. She can grab inanimate objects but only sometimes. Or halfway, if that makes sense. When she wrote with a pen last night, she could hold it. But with sand, she just makes it drift—the grains of sand moving like a breeze is passing through.
I reluctantly drop to my knees and help her dig. “This isn’t on the list.”
“Oh, quit complaining. At least you aren’t dead!”
She laughs at her own joke, and so do I. She’s annoyingly charming.
We run our fingers through the sand for a few minutes with no luck.
“You won’t find it.”
His voice makes me freeze, sending icicles down my spine—even more than his ghost of a mother.
I stand quickly, the blood draining from my head and making me dizzy. As I whirl around, I’m met with furious eyes, a tight jaw, and tense shoulders.
“Hey,” I choke out.
“Leave, Vada.”
I clear my throat. “You see, the thing is, I want to, but your mom?—”
“I don’t care what my mom asked you to do. She’s gone, and I don’t need your help with any of the shit on her list.” His voice booms even though he isn’t yelling.
“Language!” Annabelle scolds with her hands on her hips.
My gaze snaps to hers and then back to his. I watch his eyesfollow where I was just looking, and then hescowls at me. He can’t hear her.
“Tell him that is no way to speak to a lady,” Annabelle says.
I ignore her so I don’t look completely insane. Instead, I try to reason with him. “Look, Dominic, I get that this is weird, and if I had known you were Annabelle’s son, I wouldn’t have agreed to this, and I still don’t want to. But I did sign up for a job, and I have a hundred percent completion rate at this point, and I don’t want to ruin it.”
