“His family lives in Bohemia,” she said. “He’s married — no, he wasn’t when we met, but he’d been engaged to a society girl and didn’t tell me. He has three kids. And you. Four kids.”
“Not that I count.” I hated to be bitter, but I’d had years of practice.
“You count, sweetheart. I think maybe he had an idea that he’d try to do one thing to make things right. I had no idea, of course.”
“Well, what?” I asked. “What did he do?”
She sighed. “He left you Milkweed Mansion.”
There were a few gasps around the room, but I didn’t understand why until Ez squeaked out, “The goddamnhaunted house?”
Chapter 3
Someone suggested we take our bowls of dessert and coffees into the living room, and in that more relaxed atmosphere, I was able to sit in a corner of the couch, eat my ice cream and process the news while everyone else chatted about Milkweed Mansion.
“So supposedly a woman died in there,” Ez said. “An unhappy wife killed herself.”
“I heard she was axed by her husband. As in literally,” Gary added.
“Gary,”Aunt Ginny admonished.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.
“I thought it was a young woman who died,” Ginny added in a more sensitive tone. “Poor thing.”
“Poor thing what?” I asked. “Does anyone really know what happened there?”
“I knew the last family who lived there,” Grandma said. “I went to school with their daughter in the early 1960s before they moved away and sold the property. She said there were always strange noises, but she didn’t think the ghost was malevolent. She said she didn’t know who it was.”
“So thereisa ghost?” I was skeptical, but this wasn’t good news. “Great.”
Somehow Landon had ended up next to me again, and because my mom and my skinny grandma were crammed onto the couch with us, his jeans-clad thigh was snug against mine. His proximity was making me toasty. Or maybe it was because it was still summerlike in mid-September in Bohemia Beach. Summer didn’t really end here till late November.
But the AC was cranked, and the air was cool. It was my stupid roommate who was hot.
“When I was a kid, my brothers and I used to climb over the fence, sneak around the back of the house and try to listen for the ghost,” Landon said. “Usually we just ended up with a bunch of sand spurs stuck to our clothes and to our dog Creampuff. A big golden. It took hours to get them all out.”
I shot him a look of disbelief. “Your dog was named Creampuff?”
“Blame my mom,” Landon said. “She’s the baker.”
“That property has to be worth something,” said Jay, ever the accountant. “It’s right there in Bohemia’s historic district on a bend in the river road, on a big lot full of mature oak trees. It overlooks the lagoon on a kind of cliff. Fantastic views.”
“Yeah, but have you seen the house lately?” Landon said. “It looks like 1313 Mockingbird Lane.”
“The Munsters,”I moaned. “I’ve inherited the house fromThe Munsters.”
Landon laughed. “Only the Munsters’ house was in better shape.”
“I guess you could knock it down,” Jay said.
“No!” the Fetheroles chorused. The Fetheroles being Grandma, Mom and Aunt Ginny (who was a Fetherole before she became a Gorski and then an unexciting Jones).
I was a Fetherole, but I didn’t chorus. “Why not?” I asked.
“It’shistoric,”Aunt Ginny said.
“OK, OK.” I liked historic houses too, but I was also broke. “Is it on a national register or something?”
