Faye walked to the window and looked over at the house. “You left the lights on. Do you want me to turn them off?”
“It may be too dangerous.”
“I’ll enter at the upper reaches of the house and work my way down.”
“Say hello to Jon for me.”
Faye blushed and disappeared.
~
Kiki stared across at Alan. He was trying to find the right bottle of wine to go with their meal. Kiki didn’t care, but she knew Alan did. He was constantly working hard to learn the social graces that many of his clients learned at their nanny’s knee. He ordered and made a face after the waiter left.
“I’m never sure. Ms. Wells said to look at the most expensive and then at the cheapest and find something in the middle.”
“I’m going to take that advice when I’m next in your situation,” Kiki said. “Thank you, Alan, for being here with me, and for rescuing me from possession.”
“It took me years to find you. I can’t let a demon ghost take you away from me.”
“Can I go back tomorrow?” Kiki asked.
“No.”
“You said Cid and Jesse locked up the ghost,” Kiki argued.
“We’ve been over this. Until the ghost is destroyed, it will always be a threat to you.”
“But I know about it now…”
Alan reached over and grabbed Kiki’s hand. “I’m sorry this has happened to you. I realize you’re starting to resent my interference. You need to stay away because if I had arrived a half an hour later, you may be facing a murder charge right now.”
Kiki pulled her hand away and sat back. “But it would have been the demon ghost inside of me who killed Cid, not me!”
“I still represent a young man who was possessed by a demon. Under the influence of the demon, he killed his family with an axe. Even though the demon was exorcised, he’s still in prison, and he’ll die in prison. There’s not a judge I know of that would let me put up a possession defense. The best I could do was an insanity plea, and you would end up locked up in a facility the rest of your life.”
“I didn’t realize. I’m sorry, I didn’t think these things through.”
“Did you get ahold of Wayne?”
“Yes. The guys pulled a late night and worked most of the day today. If there hadn’t been a leak in the foundation, they would have the place almost ready for my inspection.”
“I’ll look at the contract to see if you’re responsible for fixing the leak in the foundation.”
“I was told no outside work. But it’s affecting the inside,” Kiki ruminated. “I’ll give the Atwater lawyer a call after we finish our investigation tomorrow.”
“So you’re staying?” Alan asked.
“Yes. This seems to be the best place for me right now. But that’s not why I’m staying.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you, Alan, and I’m enjoying spending time with you. Granted, I’d rather be swinging a hammer than reading boring pamphlet after boring pamphlet about Congressman Atwater.”
“I’d rather be cuddling up in front of the television and watching you yell at the guys on This Old House.”
Kiki blushed. “I’m wasn’t yelling, just offering constructive criticism.”
~
Sally sat in the big wingback chair and gazed out at the lake. She could see lights moving slowly to and from the ice shanties in the middle of the lake. She’d never been ice fishing and wondered what freezing in the dead of winter, staring down into a hole you cut into the ice had going for it? She turned off her lights to see the outside better and to feel less like she was in a fishbowl.
Sally closed her eyes and reflected on her conversation with Dr. Myer and her brief conversation after with Carl.
“You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” he said. “I can take you back home and have Mama look after you.”
“No, I want to be here.”
“This isn’t all about Cid is it?”
“No. It’s about me. Carl, I want to get better. If I can’t get better, then I want a plan so I can work, play, and love without risk to those I’m with.”
“I’m proud of you, Sally.”
Sally hugged Carl, and then she let him leave her. He had work to do, and she’d feel better if Cid had Carl around. He was strong as an ox and very able. He could fix anything but a broken mind. She’d had a crush on him when she first came to Mama Lee’s house. He was the dashing college boy who insisted anyone could learn geometry, even a blue-eyed leggy girl.
A month into their relationship, it became evident that Carl only saw her as a little sister. Sally cried her eyes out privately in her room, and then she moved on. It was too easy to move on. Her parents had taught her that. It was harder being the one left than the one leaving. They died, depriving Sally of having them feel the weight of their daughter leaving them.
Dr. Myer only touched briefly on her parents. “Sally, they made you and nurtured you. They didn’t plan on dying. Accidents happen.”
“There are very few accidents in the world. It wasn’t an accident that brought that burning building down around me,” Sally said.
“That’s right. And this is where we will start, as soon as I get your medication balanced.”
“I don’t like taking pills.”
“I don’t like prescribing them, but sometimes they help for a while, until we can train you to calm yourself down. I don’t want to mislead you. You’re not going to wake up one morning into a Hallmark movie. But with hard work, you and I will find
