“Well, that was really embarrassing,” I said to Ryan an hour and a half later when all the paperwork had been sorted out from my fender bender and I had handed over my insurance information. As I headed across the parking lot for the second time, the midday sun had me digging for my sunglasses.

“If you’re going to have a traffic accident, you might as well do it in the police station parking lot. Cuts down on your wait time.”

We were clearly both pretty philosophical about the whole thing.

My phone rang. I checked the screen. “Hey, it’s my sister calling from Texas. Let me grab this.”

“Hello?” I leaned against my no-longer-perky SUV. The back end looked like a crushed soft drink can.

“Hey, cutie, what’s up?” My sister Jen chirps when she talks on the phone. She has one of those personalities that are always set on high energy and loud volume. She is never angry, never cries, and has zero competitive drive. She also has a nice, albeit boring husband, four kids under the age of six, and a suburban house in Dallas.

Not a desperate housewife in the least, she thinks that my life will have no meaning whatsoever until she sees me happily reproducing like her.

“I just had a car accident, nothing major, but I’m tired from all the paperwork and stuff. Can I call you back tonight?”

“Geez, sure. But before you hang up I wanted to let you know I told a friend about you and he’ll be sending you a message. He’s really cute and his name is Ted. He’s an accountant in Rockwall.”

Deciding to play hopeful, I asked, “And he’s transferring to Cleveland and needs me to recommend a great real estate agent for him and his wife?”

“No, you goof. He’s single and veeerrry interested in you after I showed him the picture of you on your website. I figured you can chat on social media and in text or whatever and get to know each other. With your favorite sister giving you an excuse to come down to Texas every couple of months, there’s no reason this relationship couldn’t work.”

It was all so simple to Jen. I guess technically it could work if I wanted it to. Except for maybe a million reasons. Starting with my love for a dead man complicating any blossoming amore with Ted, the Rockwall accountant. “Jenni,” I said, because she hates it when I call her that. “I appreciate the thought, but please don’t direct single men to my website. I don’t need help finding dates.”

“When was the last time you went on a date? Seriously. When Jasmine was born?”

Jasmine was my six-year-old niece. “Hey! Now don’t be insulting.” I turned slightly so Ryan couldn’t hear me. He was sitting on the hood of my car, looking thoughtful. Probably not even listening, but it paid to be cautious.

“There was David.” For a minute, I had almost even thought I could fall in love with David, the electrical engineer.

“That was two years ago!”

Picky, picky.

“You have got to get over Ryan, Bailey. I’m serious. It is so not healthy for you to still be pining over him.”

I wasn’t. Sheesh. Obsessing maybe, but not pining. Pining was pathetic. Obsessing was pro-active.

“Gotta go, Jenni. Love to you and Doug and the kids.”

“Call me tonight,” she yelled. “And remember the time difference.”

“Got it.” She reminded me she was on Central time every single time we talked. I’m sure that in the grand scheme of things one hour made no difference in the time-space continuum, but Jen seemed to think so.

“How’s Jen?” Ryan asked when I hung up, his eyes closed, face tilted back to the sun like he could actually feel its warmth. Hell, maybe he could, for all I knew.

“Good. She had another baby. Finally got a boy.”

“What is that, like her twelfth kid?”

“Fourth. They’re still sticking to the “J” theme. Jacob joined Jasmine, Jessica, and Jordan.”

“Wow. Or should I say jeez.”

My thoughts exactly. “All right, let’s go. I suck at this crime solving thing, don’t I? Two days and I’ve accomplished nothing except to get drunk and hit the chief’s Honda.”

But Ryan didn’t leap off the hood. He just shook his head. “We know a lot more now, babe. A lot more.”

“I don’t know anything.” Truer words were never spoken.

But an hour later the one thing I knew was that Ryan’s organizational system was about as bloated and illogical as the US government. There were six—count them, six—boxes of receipts, paid bills, and old bank checks rammed into a closet in his basement like it was 1999. In these very large, very heavy, bins o’ crap, we were supposed to find the single cellphone bill from the month he died, which Ryan was about fifty percent sure “would be in the front box”.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a filing cabinet? Paperless online billing, for goodness sake?” I asked, my neck screaming in agony from being hunched over for thirty minutes straight sifting through the mess one piece of paper at a time.

It didn’t help that Ryan was bodiless, and unable to move objects. Couldn’t pull his weight, if you will.

“I don’t like giving out my bank account info online.”

“What are you, my grandmother? It’s perfectly safe.”

“They invented chip cards because it wasn’t, and that still doesn’t prevent fraud.”

He did have a point. My eyes landed on the item in my hand, quickly scanning it. “Motts applesauce, bananas, frozen foods, frozen foods, frozen foods… Why in the hell do you keep your grocery store receipts? And why do you eat like a twelve-year-old?”

Ryan gave a shrug. “Stop judging. And I don’t know. It’s a receipt. You keep receipts. Stop wasting time reading stuff like that. You know what a cellphone bill looks like and it doesn’t look like that.”

He was taking a tone with me. I was sure it was because he had to just stand there, pacing back and forth, glancing at the items on top. But there was no need to get cranky.

“I’m just saying that a little organization wouldn’t hurt. I mean, why is this check for The Bounce House stuck inside an electric bill? And what is The Bounce House?” That sounded just wrong to me.

“That’s where I get my hair cut,” he said, with perfect nonchalance.

“Your haircuts cost two-hundred-and-thirty-seven dollars? Wow. Maybe I should change careers.” To exotic dancer, which had to be the service offered by something called The Bounce House.

He actually had the nerve to shrug. “They let me run a tab, then I pay every six months.”

“You are such a liar.” I shifted through a stack of bank statements. Ryan ran his checkbook a little close, month to month. He needed help creating a budget and some decent banking software. Or he would, if he were still alive. I sighed.

“Fine, you caught me.” With a grin, he shook his head. “That was for the uh, entertainment, for a bachelor party. One of the detectives got married last year. Poor sap.”

“What’s wrong with marriage?” I asked, suddenly melancholy.

“Nothing, if you like being nagged and only want to have sex once a month.”

I didn’t see what was wrong with that. Once a month would actually be a statistical improvement for me. One hundred percent. “How many times a month were you having sex?”

“Please.” He gave me that bragging man look. “On average? Five times a week.”

“Considering that you were usually with me at least three or four days a week, you are seriously lying.” I dropped the pile of bank statements. “You know, how do we even know your mom put the phone bill in here? The bill would have come after you died, not before.”

Ryan gave me a blank look. “Oh. Damn, you’re right. I’m losing my edge. All this screwing around up there, filing paperwork and taking classes, has my brain turning soft.”

I stood up, cracked my back and neck, and reached for my purse. “We should have done this in the first place.” Plucking a phone bill for the wrong month out of the neat piles I had started to create, I dialed on my own phone.

Five minutes of hold music later, I had a rep asking if he could assist me. “Hi, this is Mrs. Conroy. My son passed away last February, and we closed his account. But I need statements for January and February to file his taxes. Our extension from the IRS only goes until August fifteenth, so can you fax those to me?”

“Account number, please.”

I read it off and smirked at Ryan, who looked amused.

“Can you confirm your address and the account holder’s mother’s maiden name? Which would be your maiden name, I guess.” The rep chuckled.

Chuckling right back, I said, “My maiden name? Right, of course.” Then I gave Ryan a pointed look.

“Fox.”

“It’s Fox,” I said, wondering if I really sounded like a fifty-five-year-old woman, since this man had no problem accepting me as Ryan’s mother. That was a creepy thought. Maybe premature voice aging would be an incentive to quit vaping once and for all.

After giving him Ryan’s address and a fax number, cellphone guy assured me I would have it that afternoon, and I hung up, feeling rather impressed with myself. “It’s being faxed to me.”

I must not have kept the smugness out of my voice because he rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, yeah, you’re all that, Bailey. We got it.”

“Do you want my help or not?” I asked, full of phony indignation.

Ryan gave me that goofy grin, where I knew if he had been able to, he would have grabbed me, tossed me under his arm, thrown me around a little, and ruffled my hair. He settled for twisting his features into gruesome contortions that made me laugh.

“I want all your stuff, baby.” He rolled that right into a ZZ Top imitation. “Give me all your lovin’, all your hugs and kisses too.”

It made me laugh, despite the crick in my neck. “No kissing, sorry.”

But suddenly he stopped playing air guitar and looked at me, puzzled.

“What?”

“I don’t know… Something just flashed in my head, like a memory of something. But I lost it before I could put my finger on it.”

Damn. My face flushed. What if he was talking about that kiss? I turned and started picking up the piles of papers and shoving them back into the box. “That happens to me all the time. Like a déjà vu thing. Maybe if will come back to you later.”

Plunging me into hell.

“You’re probably right. And I need to bug out of here. I’ll catch back up with you later when you’ve gotten the phone records.”

“When?” I asked, picturing Ryan popping into my bathroom when I was doing something unmentionable.

“I don’t know. Call me once you’ve gotten it and I’ll come over.”

This gave me pause. “Call you? How the hell am I supposed to call you?”

“You click your heels three times and say ‘there’s no man like Ryan’.”

“Not.” That was so not happening.

“Okay, seriously, just call my cell.”

“Your cell?” I raised an eyebrow. “The cellphone that was turned off six months ago? How could that work?”

“I don’t know, but it does.” He pulled it out of his pocket and shook it for emphasis. “They use it to call me all the time—I bet it works for you too, since you’re my contact.”

I wasn’t buying it. So I scrolled though my contacts until I found his name. I had never been able to make myself delete it. “It’s ringing.”

A second later, Ryan’s phone chirped a whimsical version of Greensleeves.

“Nice ringtone.” And quite different from the no-nonsense flat out ring he used to have.

“Thanks. It fits the new image better.” He swiped his screen. “Hello, The Grateful Dead speaking.”

“You’re so weird.” Hanging up on him, I finished cleaning up the papers and shoved the box back into the closet and shut the door.

“That’s why you love me, right?”

“No, I love you because I’m stupid.” Which was as close to the truth as I was willing to skirt.

“You said it, not me.” Ryan threw his phone up in the air and caught it. “Hey, what would happen if I tossed my cellphone to you? I mean, is it real or is it a ghost phone?”

“I can only imagine.”

He arched it through the air. It hit my arm. Not as a solid mass, but as a wisp of air as it passed through my skin. My flesh. My bone. And dropped onto the ground.

I yelped.

“Whoa,” Ryan said. “That was a little weird.”

“A little?” I grabbed my chest, rubbing it to encourage my heart to start beating again. “Don’t do that again.”

Bending over, he scooped up the phone. “Maybe I should have read my manual a little more closely. Some of this stuff is probably explained in there.”

“Manual? What, like instructions for the afterlife?”

“Yep. It’s a textbook that came with my Intro to Death class. But you know I don’t read anything that isn’t Sports Illustrated. So I haven’t really checked it out yet.”

“Why don’t you do that tonight?” The mere thought of proceeding without directions had my shoulders stiffening. I am a slot A into slot B kind of girl. Give me a step-by-step and life is good.

Without directions, there is only chaos.

Ryan just rolled his eyes. “I’ll skim it if I have time.”

“Like you’re so damn busy?”

“I got class tonight, I told you that.”

Then he blew me a rude, obnoxious, sexy, smacking kiss and he was gone.

I was left with boxes of receipts, growing confusion, and a desperate sense that my life as a babbling, eccentric spinster had just begun.

Marner was in my driveway again when I went home to check my fax for the phone records.

“Shoot.” It couldn’t be good that he was sitting there at two in the afternoon. Easing my SUV snugly behind his truck again, I decided to pretend like I knew nothing about anything. Ever.

“Hi,” I said brightly, smiling with teeth as I stepped out into the driveway. “What brings you by? Late lunch? How about Chinese today?”

My clever ruse of distracting him with food didn’t work. Probably because I sounded like a demented Barbie. And the breathy voice didn’t suit me. For me to act sexy and perky was like raising a guilty flag.

He had gotten out of his car immediately, though he was looking at the sky. I got the feeling he was counting in his head. Or praying.

“Bailey?” His voice was very, very even. Quiet. Hard.

He sounded so much like my father I almost said, “Yes, sir.” Fortunately I caught myself and said, “That’s me.”

“Why the hell were you at the station today asking DeAngelo how someone could fake a suicide?”

“Um…” I dropped the faux cheeriness. “Look, don’t be mad at me.”

“That would be the understatement of the goddamn year.” Even as his fists clenched, his voice stayed low and deadly. His jaw locked into a scowl and I became aware that he was much taller and much stronger than me.

I decided that he would be a very scary cop to encounter in a dark alley when you’d ticked him off. It wasn’t a stretch to picture him unleashing that contained fury to the serious detriment of the ticker-offer. Without even realizing it, I stepped back a foot and clutched my Burberry purse in front of me.

“I’m writing a book.”

“What?” Incredulity crossed his face and his shoulders relaxed a little. “You don’t really expect me to believe that line you fed to DeAngelo, do you?”

“No.” I sighed. Turned my sandals a little on the concrete and opened my purse. This called for a hit on Skinny Winnie, which was the utterly ridiculous name I had given my electronic cigarette. I spoke down into the depths of my purse as I searched for it. But of course I didn’t have it, because I was determined to quit so it was at home. But what I did find was gold. It was an old pack of actual legit cigarettes. Apparently I hadn’t used this bag in quite some time. There were two still inside it. I drew one out and stroked it like a kitten’s fur. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to stir up trouble or anything. I just thought that DeAngelo could tell me some things about Ryan. But at least I was discreet.”

That earned me a snort. “Yeah, sure, discreet my ass. DeAngelo’s telling the whole damn station that you’re writing a book about sex and murder and asked him for help with both.”

“Ah!” Abandoning my search for a lighter, I glanced up in horror. “That’s not true! I was just asking about murder that looks like suicide. He offered his help with my sex scenes, which I turned down, several times and he said he was joking and that he has a girlfriend. He wasn’t much help, honestly.”

“Because there is no book.”

“No. I turned him down because I can’t even fathom acting out anything sexual with that guy.” Holy crap, I found a lighter in the exterior pocket of my purse. I lifted the cigarette to my lips, not even sure why I was doing it other than the undeniable—I was nervous, exhausted, emotionally drained. And possibly going insane. There was still no actual proof that 1) Ryan had committed suicide and 2) that his ghost was actually appearing to me.

“But there is no book.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” I admitted sheepishly.

“I said I’d look into the case. You could have trusted me to give you answers, not go to a loose cannon like DeAngelo, for Chrissake.”

The case. He meant Ryan. Confident that Marner had released most of his anger, I studied him. “You won’t tell me everything, Marner, and you know it.” My words were muffled because of the dangling cigarette, but still decipherable. I flicked the lighter and nothing happened. The filter tasted stale in my mouth but I forged ahead. “Would you give me pictures of the scene?”

“Hell no.”

“Would you give me the autopsy report?”

“No.” His shifted from one foot to the other, looking stubborn and appalled.

“Do you believe me that it could have been murder?” I tried to light my cigarette again but Fate seemed to be telling me to knock it off.

“No. I don’t believe that.”

“I rest my case.” I flicked the lighter for the third time and the wind blew out the flame. “Damn.”

Marner reached out and snatched the lighter from me. I thought he was going to toss it into my bushes or something, but instead he just cupped his hand up next to my cigarette to shield it from the wind and used his other to flick on the lighter. Startled, I just stood there for a second, staring at his chest, aware that his leg was bumping mine. Then my cigarette caught, I sucked in with gratitude, and he moved away, dropping the lighter back into my purse.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling guilty and not sure why. It had been Ryan’s idea to see DeAngelo, yet I felt like I had betrayed Marner. Hurt him. I blew out the smoke. Holy tobacco. The smell was overpowering, as was the rush of nicotine.

“Did DeAngelo give you crime scene photos, the autopsy report?”

“No.” I watched the tip of my cigarette burning next to my thigh and wondered what to say. I settled for, “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to cause trouble for you.”

He sighed. “Did you ever think there might be a reason I don’t tell you everything? Like maybe I’m trying to protect you?”

That pricked my independent woman nerve. “What decade is this? I don’t need to be protected.”

“No? Well, have it your way. Before he died, Ryan was having a relationship with a former prostitute. And the autopsy showed he was using.”

“Using what?” I sputtered. A prostitute? That was a disgusting visual. Was Marner insane?

“Using drugs, Bailey. Remember that knee surgery he had last summer? Well, from the toxicology report it looks like he was abusing his pain meds. He had a shit-ton of Vicodin and Xanax in his system. Why do you think the department kept a tight lid on info about Ryan’s death? We were trying to prevent the media from catching wind of any of this. I’m sure Mrs. Conroy would not appreciate hearing on the evening news that her son was popping pills and hanging with a hooker.”

Even as I shook my head and tried to form words through my shock, I knew this was wrong. It had to be wrong. Ryan didn’t say anything about a prostitute. And drugs? That was ridiculous. “Marner…”

He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned in closer. His voice was soft, soothing. “I’m sorry. But it’s true. Good people get hooked on that stuff. It doesn’t change anything about how we should remember him.”

I tried to say something, but only managed to make a choking sob. I felt two tears trickle down my cheeks.

“Shh.” His thumbs wiped my cheeks. “It’s okay. Ryan made some bad choices and sadly, he paid the price. But he was still Ryan, and he was my friend, and I am going to protect his family. But you need to find some way to move on, babe.”

He’d never called me babe before. It was Ryan’s nickname for me.

“Marner…” No other words were forming. I felt just heartsick, scared. If what Marner was saying was true, than I had to be imagining Ryan. But I couldn’t be imagining Ryan. It was too real, and I wasn’t that crazy. Hovering a bit on the edge, but not completely out to lunch. Which meant the only other alternative was that Ryan was lying to me. “No.”

“Bailey.” Marner wrapped his arms around me completely and pulled me against his chest. My cheek squished against his jacket, my lip hitting the smooth button on his white shirt. I lay there, numb, not sure what to do.

“We’ll never know for sure what was going on with Ryan, but obviously something was wrong if he was using and involved with a woman like Hannah, who knows every drug dealer in town. Sometimes there just aren’t any answers and we have to accept that.”

His hand was rubbing my back and I felt disconnected from my body. Like I was floating over myself, dizzy and spinning in circles. It had to be the nicotine. I let the cigarette drop from my fingers onto the driveway. Smoking it wasn’t satisfying. It didn’t have the same thrill it used to. Now it felt like I was trying too hard.

“I’m sorry, Marner.” I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for, but it seemed important to say that.

He must have understand I meant for the whole situation en masse, for the cold lonely fact that where we’d once been three, there were now only two of us. His lips brushed the top of my head.

“I know, babe. I’m sorry too. Sorrier than I’ve ever been.”