Megan opened her eyes and tried to orient herself. Why was she in the living room? On the couch? She turned her head and smiled at Andrea’s sleeping form. Her sister’s makeup smeared across the pale silk pillow. Tan foundation and black eyeliner painted a trail to her face.
It all came back to her in a flash. She’d panicked at the thought of sleeping in her bed, of falling back into the comfort of calling for Aaron. Andrea had promised to stay, and they’d sat on the couch talking until the sky turned from black to the barest shade of gray. As gray as Jack O’Malley’s eyes.
She shook her head to clear the image of the man from her brain. It didn’t help. Jack was larger than life. He’d commanded the room with his Ghost Releasers team and in the heat of the chaos last night. Would he be as commanding in bed? What? Where did that thought come from?
Blushing, she whipped around in case her sister awoke, as if she’d be able to read her lustful thoughts just by looking at her. Feeling the heat in her face, she might. Her gaze searched the room for anything to take her mind away from temptation.
Her glance caught the torn wedding pictures in a pile on the coffee table. Her heart lurched. She felt like a cheating wife. How could she let Aaron go when his scent still covered her sheets? When his kisses still heated her lips?
Her sheets. She could at least do something about that right now. She strode to the bedroom and ripped them off the mattress. Gathering them in her arms, she held her breath until she’d dumped them into the washing machine. Pouring in the liquid and slamming down the lid felt like slamming shut the casket on her deceased husband. Again.
Tears formed in her eyes and she angrily swiped at them. Enough already. Everyone said it was time to move on. Maybe it was time she listened to them. Even in the olden days, widows lost their black clothing after a year.
Deciding now was as good a time as any, Megan marched from room to room collecting the pictures of Aaron. She didn’t need constant reminders, she’d never forget him. He’d been her first love. Her breath caught on a sob. He just couldn’t be the only, the last. Twenty-four was too young to bury herself too. Checking on Andrea once more, she tiptoed to the spare room, her arms full of picture frames.
She made sure to check for the tricycle and step around it. Opening the bin, she cried at the flag in the case Aaron’s parents had bought for her after the funeral. The oak case cradled the flag from his coffin. Her hands trembled as she pulled it out of the bin and placed the case on the floor. She ran her fingers over his dress uniform. Taking the pictures, she tucked them into the bin and closed the lid. Picking up the flag case, she hugged it to her chest and left the room, closing the door silently behind her.
Andrea stirred on the couch as she placed the flag case on the fireplace mantel. She stared at it until she heard footsteps and felt her sister’s arm around her shoulders.
“It looks right there.”
“I wasn’t ready to have it there before,” she whispered. “I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing it every day, knowing what it stood for.”
Andrea turned her around and grasped her shoulders in a gentle but firm manner. “You gave your husband in service to this country. You both earned that flag and all it represents. Be proud of him, Megan. But please! Live your life.”
She wiped her wet cheeks. Would the crying ever stop? “I’m trying, Andrea. Really I am.”
They hugged. “I know you are,” her sister whispered in her ear. “I’m so proud of you.”
“For what?” she said, stepping back.
“For last night. If that is what has been going on here, I’m glad you went to Ghost Releasers. That was some scary shit. I don’t think I would have been able to handle it all by myself.”
Her sister didn’t know the half of it. She’d told no one of what she’d seen when that voice had boomed ‘mine’ across the room. She shuddered. No, it was time to move on and be in the world of the living. Ghosts and spirits could have that other world. She wanted her feet firmly in this one.
Andrea dragged Megan to the kitchen. “Let’s get some breakfast. You look like you haven’t eaten in days. No more fainting while I’m around.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she piped up, saluting her sister.
Soon, the aroma of coffee, bacon, and toast filled the kitchen. She sat at the table and watched as Andrea moved from stove to counter to table like a waitress in a diner and not like the high-priced lawyer she was.
“You have some skills there, sis.”
“Just don’t tell Mom. I doubt the woman has seen her own kitchen in decades. The food just appears. Poof!”
“We are accumulating a mountain of stuff not to tell our mother,” she said. “Ghosts and paranormal activity and our own cooking.”
Megan sobered at the thought of the wildness of the paranormal activity and Luke Tremaine’s glee at the thought of televising it all.
“You don’t think Ghost Releasers would go back on their word, do you?”
Andrea shook her head as she came to the table with two glasses of orange juice and sat down by Megan. “No way. First, everything I’ve heard of O’Malley, he is a man of his word. Second, we’d sue his ass from here to Hades.”
Megan gulped down her juice, the liquid coating her dry throat. The citrus tang of oranges burst on her tongue. As if she hadn’t tasted food in days, each flavor blossomed. Racking her brain, she struggled to remember her last meal.
The images were lost in a blur of erotic images and her sick need for Aaron’s ghost to have sex with her. She shivered, her knees knocking under the table. How had her simple life become so twisted?
“I’ve been hiding,” she cried.
“From what?” Andrea asked.
“The living. Life. Everything. I buried myself with my dead husband.”
Her sobs echoed in the large room. Their shrillness bombarding her with its edge of insanity. Thank God, Andrea had been willing to pull her back from the precipice.
“Will you stay here while I take a shower?”
Her sister’s nod was enough to get her up and running to the bathroom. “I’ll eat as soon as I get out,” she yelled back over her shoulder.
“I’ll warm it up in the microwave as soon as you get done.”
She turned on the faucet and gathered some clothes in her room. Her gaze swept the bedroom. No shadows lurked in the corners as sunlight flooded the area in a golden bath.
Striding through the foggy bathroom, she stripped, and climbed into the shower. The hot spray pelted her body, bringing tingles to her skin. She shampooed, she body-washed, she scrubbed every inch of her skin.
She turned off the water with a twist of her wrist and wrapped a large towel around her wet body. A new Megan stepped out of the shower. One who didn’t glance around the room for ghosts. One who didn’t shirk from the fogged over mirror before she swiped a hand across it and eyed her rosy-pink face. Her eyes brightened and glowed a light blue. Faint circles remained under them, but a few nights of decent sleep would get rid of them. As if deciding to take back her life had cleansed her body and mind as much as the Ghost Releasers had the house, she smiled at her image.
Once at the table with her hair wrapped in a towel and her body covered with a comfortable sweat suit, she worked through her breakfast in minutes. The flavors exploded in her mouth. The coffee was deep and rich. The bacon was crisp and juicy. The toast was nicely browned and coated in butter. Even the sunshine seemed more mellow and friendly, as if the sun were an entity with personality. Sunlight chased the shadows from every corner of the room.
Her gaze swept the bare walls with nothing but nails to show where all her pictures had been. “Let’s go shopping,” she said. “I want something bright and cheerful for the walls.”
Andrea looked around. “Where are all the pictures? You didn’t throw them away, did you? We meant for you to move on, not forget Aaron.”
Megan laughed at her sister’s shocked face. “I took care of them. They are safe.”
Her sister frowned. “Safe? You put them in that room, didn’t you?”
“I’ve told you not to mention the room.”
“If you let me see it, I could help you. Once we got started, it would get easier.”
Andrea grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let go, even when Megan tried to pull away.
“Sweetheart, just because you live in a nice house and put everything into a tidy little bin doesn’t make you any less a hoarder than those people on television with rooms that need a rake and dump truck to clean out.”
She cried. “I can’t get rid of my things. They are my personality. They are pieces of me. They are what I am. They aren’t perfect, but they are mine.”
Her sister sat up straight and stared her in the eye. “You are not a collection of things. You are the memories in your head. The things you love in your heart. Your experiences. Your talents. Not a bin of pom-poms from high school. Not a room full of clutter. If that stuff went up in flames tomorrow, you would still be Megan Trent and all that means.”
She yanked her hand away and swiped her tears off her cheeks. She touched her finger to her temple and then her chest. “I know it in here, I just haven’t managed it in here yet.”
Andrea smiled with tears in her eyes as if she knew she was fighting a losing battle. “Mother says shopping cures everything. Let’s go shopping.”