Safely behind closed doors in the Rose Room, Bella grabs the tissue box from the nightstand and plunks herself down on the window seat, ready to let the tears flow.
Beyond the screens, rain is falling softly, pattering through the trees. But somehow, the deluge that had swamped Bella’s eyes just moments ago seems to have evaporated.
It’s just as well. A good cry might be cathartic for a few minutes, but it won’t change her predicament. She can’t prevent Grant from selling Valley View any more than she was able to prevent their landlord from selling the building back in Bedford after Sam died.
She’s going to be homeless again, and jobless.
‘Really?’ She shakes her head. ‘Really?’
How is this even possible? How is it fair?
Fair? You know better than that, Bella Blue. Life isn’t fair. If it were, we’d still be together, raising our boy.
It’s exactly what Sam would say if he were here. That, and stay strong.
‘I will,’ she whispers. ‘Just like I promised.’
A strong person doesn’t allow things to happen to her. She makes things happen.
She puts aside the tissue box, stands, and starts pacing. There must be some way to preserve her home, and her livelihood. It can’t be impossible.
All right, then, what are your options?
First, and most obvious: persuade Grant not to sell.
But why wouldn’t he? He’s got qualified buyers ready to make an offer.
Forget option number one.
Option number two: convince Candace and Tommy to buy Valley View as a guesthouse instead of a private residence, to pay Bella to keep managing it, and allow her to keep living here free of charge.
Scratch option number two. This is their dream house. Why would they share it with Bella, Max, a couple of cats and a horde of strangers?
What she needs is an idea that doesn’t hinge on other people’s actions. She has to take charge of the situation and do whatever it would take to keep Valley View as her home and as an income-generator.
Whatever it would take?
It would take buying the place herself.
OK, so that’s option number three – and the only one that’s viable.
But is it?
She’d have to find a way around the Dale’s real-estate requirements. She might even have to become a spiritualist.
And she’d have to come up with a large sum of money, very quickly. But how?
Her debt load and credit score ensure that no bank would ever give her a loan.
She’d need to win the lottery, or Max needs to find that pirate treasure he’s always hunting in the backyard, or …
She remembers the hefty check Millicent had given her.
What if …?
‘No!’
It’s out of the question. That money is for Max. For his college education.
Still …
If Millicent knew what was going on, she’d probably tell Bella to use the money to secure their future at Valley View, and then, when the guesthouse is consistently turning a profit, pay it back into the college fund.
When it’s turning a profit? Don’t you mean if?
It’s a mighty big if, at that.
But the longer she lives here, the more she believes in its potential. This is the largest and most alluring guesthouse in the area, always fully booked in the summer. The key is to lure guests in the off-season; to make Valley View a destination in and of itself.
That means funneling more time and money into advertising and marketing and into the four R’s: restoration, renovation, repairs and replacements. Bella’s never been able to get Grant fully on board, but if she had the freedom to make the big decisions, without interference from an unenthusiastic absentee owner …
I can do it. I know I can make this into a successful business.
If only Millicent would return her call. This can’t wait until after she’s back from her honeymoon. Candace and Tommy are willing to make a deal with Grant now.
Bella goes over to her jewelry box to find the check. Lifting the lid, she expects to see the envelope right on top where she’d left it.
It isn’t here.
How can that be? She clearly remembers taking it from the study, worried it might blow off the desk in the breeze from the fan, or that someone would steal it. Thinking it would be safer in her jewelry box, she’d brought it right upst—
No, that’s not right.
She’d been about to do that when Grant showed up.
Reaching into her back pocket, she finds the envelope and heaves a sigh of relief.
She quickly takes out the check and unfolds it.
It’s made out to Isabella Jordan in her mother-in-law’s perfect penmanship.
Does it make sense to save the money for something her son can’t even use for another decade when he’s about to lose the roof over his head today? Isn’t it up to Bella to ensure that he has the bare necessities?
Millicent would be none the wiser if she borrowed it, just temporarily.
Neither would Max.
Anyway, it’s his money, and Bella is certain that he’d want her to do anything in her power to keep them here.
Really? A seven-year-old is capable of rationalizing that decision?
Of course not.
She pictures Max, at eighteen, storming out of her life upon discovering that his education has come to a screeching halt because Bella had absconded with the tuition money Sam’s mother had so generously provided.
This should be enough for Max to go wherever he chooses.
‘It will be,’ she promises Millicent.
She folds the check, puts it into the jewelry box, and closes the lid with a thud.
Using it for anything but Max’s college fund is out of the question.
‘It’ll be OK. Just keep thinking,’ she tells the woman in the bureau mirror, who gazes back so bleakly that Bella turns away.
Her gaze falls on her phone, still on the bed where she’d tossed it when Grant knocked.
She walks over, picks it up, and finds that there’s a new message from Unknown.
It’s Sam.
It’s a response to the question she’d asked right before she’d gone downstairs: Who is this?
‘You aren’t Sam,’ she mutters, and starts typing again.
Leave me alone.
As soon as she hits Send, she regrets it. She knows better than to engage.
Oh, well. Maybe Unknown gave up on her and won’t even see it.
But three pulsating dots appear instantaneously, confirming that her anonymous texter is still lurking like a bully in an alley.
‘Never let him know he’s getting to you,’ she’d counseled Max and Jiffy when that boy at school was picking on them. ‘That’s what he wants. Just ignore him. Turn your back and walk away. He’ll get bored and move on.’
Jiffy had shaken his head. ‘Kevin Beamer never gets bored and moves on. He always thinks up more mean stuff to do.’
Wait a minute. Kevin … Beamer?
Before she can focus on that, a follow-up message comes in: Bella, it’s Sam. I swear.
‘No,’ she mutters. ‘No way. You’re not Sam. Sam is dead.’
Another message whooshes in, as if this person can see and hear her, alone in this empty room.
Please believe me.
She shakes her head, typing No, and sending it.
It’s just kids, goofing around – the modern equivalent of a crank phone call. Thanks to modern technology, there’s a sure way to put an end to this. All she has to do is block incoming texts from this person.
‘Then why don’t you?’ she asks herself aloud, though she knows the answer.
A part of her – a lonely, foolish, wistful part of her; a remnant of the old, fragile Bella – wants to believe that it really is Sam.
Not just here, now, on the other end of the phone, but Sunday morning at the airport, too.
Sam’s apparition. Sam’s spirit.
A year of living in Lily Dale will do that to a person, she supposes. It will allow you to entertain the idea that the soul outlasts the body and that anyone – any old person, even Bella Jordan – really can communicate with a lost loved one.
It would be so comforting to think that she really has finally figured out how to breach the gap between this world and the next.
Comforting?
It would be sheer lunacy.
About to block the message-sender, she sees that there’s another new text from him.
How can I convince you?
Ah, that’s easy.
You can’t.
A moment passes.
Another.
She exhales.
Then he’s typing again, this depraved stranger who wants to hurt her; this creep who’s trying to undercut every hard-won shred of healing in her soul.
She writes, Stop.
She hits Send. Her message crisscrosses with an incoming one.
Her breath catches in her throat.
I was at the airport on Sunday.
‘What?’ she whispers, shaking her head. ‘How do you know that?’
Another message has already rocketed in.
You saw me. You both did. You and Max.
She’d told no one other than Drew and Odelia. Neither of them would dream of doing something like this to her. Not in a trillion years. And there’s no way anyone else can possibly—
‘Jiffy.’
Of course.
Jiffy, who’d told Drew.
Jiffy, who’d insisted he doesn’t have his phone.
Jiffy, who’s downstairs with her son at this very moment.
It doesn’t feel like something a seven-year-old would do.
But this is Jiffy. He has a genius IQ, has her phone number, and is undoubtedly tech-savvy enough to conceal his.
She hurries from the room, remembering to lock the door behind her this time.
When she reaches the first floor, the parlor is empty. Good. The last thing she wants is to be dragged back into Grant’s conversation with Candace and Tommy about their impending purchase of Valley View.
They can’t have come to terms so quickly. They must have moved the discussion elsewhere – probably the study, as the French doors are closed, but now isn’t the time to investigate. Now is the time to catch Jiffy Arden red-handed.
A new message has come in, beneath the one about Sam at the airport.
You can’t deny it. You know you saw me, Bella.
She pauses to ask: Your ghost?
Jiffy, like anyone here in the Dale, will bristle at the wording. How many times has he said, ‘By the way, Bella, it’s not ghost. It’s Spirit.’
As the dots again begin to pulsate in the message window, she scurries on toward the back of the house. Past the breakfast room where the guests are chattering; past the dining room, where Chance and Spidey are sitting on the window seat, watching the rain; past the mudroom, where the pups are quiet.
Another message: Not my ghost.
Ah, he’s still typing, undoubtedly, about to reprimand her phrasing. It’s Spirit.
Approaching the kitchen, she hears Jiffy, sotto voce: ‘Because you can’t tell your mom, Max! It’s a private secret!’
Bella’s stomach flip-flops. It’s one thing for Jiffy to send those texts, thinking it’s a harmless practical joke, but her own son? Max should know better.
She glances down at her phone to ensure that Jiffy’s still in the midst of typing. Yes. The dots are there.
Stepping over the threshold into the kitchen, she finds the boys sitting at the table, right where she left them. Their cereal bowls are now empty.
So are Jiffy’s hands.
She exhales. He doesn’t have his phone. He’s not texting her.
But someone is.
She looks down just as a new message pops up from Unknown.
I’m not dead. I’m alive.