CHAPTER 35

WHAT DID PEOPLE FEEL WHEN THEY WENT HOME AFTER CHEATING ON A SPOUSE? Annie felt like shit. The minute she was out of Brian’s apartment and down on the street she was running. She ran to the corner and raised her hand for a taxi. She couldn’t find one, so she ran the six blocks home.

It was way past eight, and Dina’s last supper was already in progress. Annie came into the kitchen and found her family all seated at the table with the candles burning and the food already served. Shit, she’d forgotten it was Dina’s last night.

“Hi,” she said, her cheeks flushed with shame.

No one returned the greeting.

“Sorry I’m late. I got tied up. God, it’s freezing in here.” She shivered, then looked guiltily around the table.

Mag had her suspicious face on. Very suspicious, but that didn’t worry her. Bebe looked a little spacey. That did worry her. Ben was scarfing down chicken paillard and risotto with wild mushrooms, oblivious to everything. Nothing short of a bomb blast would get to him. Dina was all dressed up and fussing with her very last cake for the Custer family. The cake said HAPPY BIRTHDAY A TODO, covering all the birthdays she would miss down the road. Over there in Annie’s place at the chilly end of the table sat Brenda, calmly smoking a cigarette while everyone ate around her. Annie gasped at the ghost sitting in her chair. “What are you doing?”

“Eating. You didn’t expect us to wait, did you?” Mag glanced pointedly at the kitchen clock.

“Where have you been?” Brenda asked.

“I was in a meeting.” Annie shook her head at the ghost. Beat it.

“That makes every day this week.” Brenda wasn’t going.

Curly cowered under the table, growling angrily from the back of his throat.

“Oh please, I don’t want to hear about it.” Annie patted Dina on the shoulder. “What a beautiful cake. What kind?” she asked.

“Low-fat coconut from Cooking Light,” Dina said.

“My favorite. Happy birthday to you, también.”

“You don’t want to hear about what?” Mag demanded.

“I didn’t mean you. Somebody’s been smoking in here. I smell smoke.”

“Don’t look at me,” Bebe said, even though a new pink stripe in her hair said the opposite. Annie ignored the stripe and pointed at her own occupied chair.

“Right there. Someone’s smoking. Can’t you smell it?”

“Nope,” Mag said. “Did you see Bebe’s dye job?”

“She’s smoking right there,” Annie insisted.

“Oh Jesus, not that again.” Mag rolled her eyes. “There’s no one there, Mom.”

“I’m telling you she’s right there,” Annie said, as if vehement repetition would convince them.

“I’m guessing you were with your boyfriend,” Brenda said.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Annie gasped.

Ben glanced up from his eating for the first time. “What about me?” he demanded. “Aren’t I your boyfriend?”

So he was alive after all. “Oh, you,” she said. That was a thing of the past.

“What do you mean, Oh, you?”

Bebe sniggered, and Mag frowned at her sister. “What’s your problem?”

Bebe snickered some more.

“Where have you been?” Ben asked Annie with innocent eyes.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Have you been drinking?” she asked.

“No, but you have,” he said, still looking at the chicken.

Uh-oh. “Ahh, I did have a drink. One.” She went over to her chair and put her hand right through her mother to wave away the smoke. “I want to sit here, please.”

“Go ahead, who’s stopping you?” Mag muttered.

The ghost didn’t move. Dina turned around with the family camera in her hand. Dina clearly wanted to get a picture of that cake for her collection.

“Oh, good idea. Take some pictures.” Annie pointed at her mother with the smoke rising from her cigarette.

Dina snapped the picture.

“I hope it comes out,” Annie murmured, wishing that proof of her haunting could finally be established.

“I think she’s been more than drinking.” Bebe pulled on the pink section of her hair. Look at me. “The least she could do is share.”

Three of the kitchen lights went off just then, and everybody looked up.

“She’s gone now,” Annie said with satisfaction and sat down in her seat.