The Other Side

“Are you rehearsing for a play or something?” the man asked, giving her a better explanation than nuts—not that it was any of his business in the first place.

Unless he was standing on something, she gauged him at close to six feet, his dark hair clipped short and neat; the lack of fashionable facial hair a plus in her book. But it was the way his eyes flashed from angry to intrigued that popped her defenses in place.

“Because my six-year-old son heard you talking to yourself, and now he thinks you’re able to speak to the ghosts that he thinks live in that old house.” He frowned again. “Come to think of it, what are you doing over there? I didn’t know the place was for sale.”

“It’s not, and I don’t have to explain anything to you.” She hesitated. “Sorry about your little boy though. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

The tough-soft paradox of her nature fascinated him. He shook his head. “He wasn’t upset. I was. He’s been obsessed with the ghosts since we moved in here two years ago. At least once or twice a week he’ll come in and tell me one walked across the yard looking for apples. I come out, there’s nothing here. I explain there’s no such thing as ghosts, distract him with other things like the doctor told me to, and he’s right back at it the next week. At least today he had someone else back here besides the ghost.”

She turned back and glanced first at his smile and his outstretched hand, then at the unruly gone-to-seed-and-weed flowerbed below and decided just to wave a hand from where she was. “Hi. M. J. Biderman.”

Now in reflex mode, her molars ground against each other, and she growled as she stomped her right foot in disgust. She stared at him as if he were a hideous six-headed snake. “How do you know that?”

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” He laughed, the light in his eyes dancing. “Your mother told me. She said you were a little touchy about it.”

“Ridiculous names are the Hedbo curse.” She didn’t need to, of course, but she automatically held the screen door open for Odelia because her arms were full.

“No.” She grimaced at him, not wanting to enjoy the fact that he was enjoying himself at her expense. But her name was ludicrous. How could anyone hear it and not laugh? “I was born a Calvert. My father died. My mother married Larry Biderman, who adopted me before she divorced him and married Michael Moore, who I refused to let adopt me because he already had four kids and it was the only way for me to stand apart from them until my mother finally dumped him for Jonathan Shaw, who insisted I call him Uncle Jon instead of Dad because it made him feel old. I was in my early twenties by then anyway, so”—she shrugged—“I just stuck with Biderman.”

“Mother, how could you?” she asked before the door was closed completely. “Is nothing sacred to you? Telling family secrets to perfect strangers . . . Who else have you told?”

“Oh posh, your name is not a family secret, darling.” She waved diamond-encrusted fingers in the air. “It comes from the Latin Mabel, meaning lovable, as both your father and I believed you to be the moment we laid eyes on you.” She threw her arms out wide. “And you filled us with such joy. What else could we name you but Maribelle Joy?”

“You would have hated Mabel much more than Maribelle, darling, trust me. Besides, you looked like a Maribelle Joy as a child. A little fairy named Maribelle Joy, with your soft brown curls and your big green eyes and you were so perfect . . . everything was so perfect. It was the happiest time of my life. Just you, me, and your daddy.”

Adeline sighed contentedly, and a look of happiness and . . . peace settled in the fine slopes and planes of a face that had always been beautiful and animated but now radiated with an inner glow and verve M.J. couldn’t recall seeing before.

“But then Daddy died in the accident, and I could never quite live up to your expectations, could I? Instead of the perky, cheerleader-type daughter you wanted, you got a shy, awkward math nerd.”

“It’s more wrong to meddle in my life simply because it doesn’t meet with your standards, Mother.” Also, Adeline hadn’t denied M.J.’s original statement—that she’d never once lived up to her mother’s expectations. Despite the fact that she’d known this for most of her life, it hurt. A lot. “I have a headache. I’m going for a walk.”

She walked down the hill into the town of Johnnie’s Bend, noting how far up the hill the town had spread in the past few years. Hedbo Street, named after the man and the house, had been rezoned for commercial use and was now an oddly appealing mix of older homes and new businesses of every kind.

She didn’t expect to recognize anyone; she hadn’t lived in Johnnie’s Bend for years and hadn’t attended school there as a child for more than a few months or a single academic year between her mother’s marriages. So it was a surprise to her when halfway through the club sandwich she ordered at King’s Café, she heard her name ring out loud and clear.

She flinched and began to slide deeper into the shadow of her booth before she saw who was calling her and decided to stand her ground. She shook her head at Ryan Doyle, refusing to answer to that name, and picked up another triangle of the first food she’d eaten all day—it was going a long way to curing her headache.

He waved and patted the shoulders of other people he knew as he made his way across the room to her table. With laughter still ringing in his voice, he tried to cajole her.

“Ah, come on, don’t be mad. It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Tell you what—we came in for hot fudge sundaes. Let us buy you one.”

“My son, Jimmy.” He half turned and, sure enough, standing behind him was a small boy with shaggy black hair and wide, almond-shaped brown eyes that looked much too clever and much too old to belong to someone his age. He had on a multicolored striped T-shirt and denim shorts and his feet— below bone-thin legs with bandaged knees—were encased in red sneakers with no socks. She thought it ironic that she knew three ghosts who didn’t make her as anxious as this one little boy did. “Jimmy, this is the lady you heard talking this morning. Ms. Biderman. I told you she wasn’t a ghost.”

Jimmy narrowed his eyes and studied her assiduously as his father urged him into the booth and to move farther down the bench so he could follow.

“Okay, so the burning question on our minds is”—he wagged his hand between him and his son—“what happened to the cool backhoe?”

“The . . . oh, Mr. Brown’s machine . . . Well, he decided not to use it after all. Or at least not right now. We’re going to try to recycle what we can from the house first. Go Green.” She chanted the slogan lamely. The kid was still watching her. What went on in a head that small? “He tells me there’s a use for everything—even asphalt roofing is reused for hot-mix paving, and people will pay big money for some of the fine carpentry inside the house.”

“No.” Her answer was too quick and too sharp. “I mean, I have no emotional attachment to the place. A few memories from my childhood, maybe, but it was more my mother’s touch-stone than mine. A place she loved and came back to when she needed to feel safe. I don’t have those sorts of feelings for the place.” She lowered her eyes from Ryan’s intense gaze to Jimmy’s—time for first contact? “And next summer you’ll have a Smoothie Hut in your own backyard. How about that?”

He tipped his head to one side and considered his answer. Suddenly his enormous brown eyes began to fill with tears, and his chin quivered. M.J. was so appalled he might as well have been growing extra appendages.

“What will happen to them?” he whimpered. “If you tear down their house and put up a Smoothie Hut, where will they go? Can they stay at the Smoothie Hut?”

“Hey, champ.” Ryan put his arm around his son and tried to soothe him. “What’s all this? Don’t you want a Smoothie Hut next door?”

“Ah. You’re not worried that we won’t be having hot fudge sundaes anymore, are you? Cuz you know I can’t live for more than a week without one, right?”

“My guess is they’ll be coming to our house, hoping to get free smoothies out of me.” He chucked good-naturedly and glanced at M.J. as he smoothed dark hair from his son’s face. “I’ll have to get a second job—”

“Not those friends!” The boy was distraught now. “The ladies, Dad, the ladies who live in the house. Where will they go?” Once again he launched himself at his father’s chest. And the sisters thought Adeline was dramatic. “Where will they go if she smashes down their house? Tell her to don’t do it, Dad.”

It didn’t matter how he’d come to know there was more than one ghost in the house—whether Odelia had told him or if all three of them had been outside the house and talked to him—she thought it was cruel of them to make themselves known to him and couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been frightened at first. Terrified, maybe. And yet now he was concerned with their welfare?

“Jimbo.” Gently, he took the boy by the shoulders and held him away to look at his face. “Is this about those ghosts again?” Jimmy nodded, and M.J. chewed a little faster. Ryan sighed and sent an apologetic look her way. “You see what I mean? I’ve done everything I can to convince him there are no ghosts in that house. Would you mind giving it a try?”

The expression he gave her was beseeching; he was counting on her to tell the boy the truth. Her gaze gravitated to Jimmy’s . . . which was all but daring her to lie . . . because he already knew the truth. Instinctively, she knew this was a deal-breaker with the boy. Tell the truth and become an adult he can respect and trust or lie and become subhuman slime. And this mattered to her, why?

She nodded, looked down at her plate as she replaced her food and gathered her thoughts. Why was this suddenly her problem to deal with? Her mother and aunts should never have contacted Jimmy. Of course, once they found what they’d lost in the house and were free to cross over to the Other Side, this would no longer be a problem—for Jimmy or for her. The sisters would be gone, and the house would come down. So, as far as she could tell, her choices were few. She had to help the ghosts find what they had lost, and she needed to convince Jimmy that they had better places to go.

“Well, I don’t know that much about ghosts.” She saw Ryan’s face change in her peripheral vision as she directed herself to the boy. He’d just have to think she was humoring the boy to prove their point . . . well, his point, anyway. “But maybe if you come over tomorrow afternoon, you’ll see that that big old house isn’t as scary . . . or worth saving . . . as you might think.”

“Good.” He was sort of cute in a fuzzy-puppy-on-a-thick-leash sort of way . . . from her side of the table. “Come after lunch and bring a flashlight.”