It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis (Good To The Last Death #1) - Robyn Peterman Page 0,42

them?” I yelled right back at her.

The feeling of déjà vu washed over me with sickening clarity. Gideon’s comment in the park rang in my mind. “You have no clue who or what you are. You’re just walking around completely ignorant. Unbelievable.”

Did he know? Impossible. However, I thought communicating with the dead was impossible. Not to mention, gluing appendages back on defied basically everything.

Taking a deep breath and calming myself, I realized yelling was only going to bring a nurse to the room to see what was going on. I didn’t need interruptions. I needed answers. “What happens if I touch the ghosts?” I asked. Since I’d already done it, I might as well hear the ugly results of what I’d done and what to expect.

“I don’t know,” Gram whispered, taking my chin in her hands and searching my face with worried eyes. “I have no clue. I just know my mamma said never to touch ’em. That’s what I taught your mamma and what I should have taught you.”

“Am I going to die?” I asked.

“Everyone’s gonna die, child,” she said, running her hands over my arms and checking my skin. “Dying ain’t nothing to get your knickers in a knot over. We have no control over it.”

What was she looking for? Marks maybe? Bites? Had I been right about the zombie thing?

“I meant soon. Am I going to die soon?”

“I hope not,” Gram said, not making me feel very reassured. “Just stop touching ’em.”

The logic wasn’t sound. If this was truly my gift now, I needed to handle it my way. The backup of dead people at my house was becoming a problem. Something told me a Ouija board wasn’t going to cut it.

“Gram, I’ve already touched them,” I pointed out, letting my anger at the woman I adored go. “I’m fine. I actually feel better than I have in years. I don’t have to wear glasses anymore.”

“You can’t see three feet in front of you without glasses,” Gram said, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Well, I can now. When you hit midlife, stuff changes,” I told her, trying to convince myself as well. “Eyesight changes all the time.”

“For the worse, Daisy,” Gram muttered, still sounding troubled.

“Or for the better in my case,” I said.

“Possibly,” she replied. “You still need to get ’em out of your house.”

“Not sure how I’m going to do that. New ones show up daily. Where did you… umm… counsel the dead?”

“At the church,” Gram said. “That’s why I went to all those dang depressing funerals. If someone was sticking around, I’d get ’em at the church and be done with it.”

“Did you ever break and enter?” I asked, curious if the job consisted of illegal activity.

She shook her head and laughed. “Can’t say as I ever did, baby. Never ran around hell’s half acre for the dead. You don’t need to either. Mostly, I just passed on messages to loved ones.”

“How?”

“Sometimes a note, postmarked before the person died. Occasionally a gift sent… again, postmarked before the deceased left this realm. On the rare occasion, I delivered the message myself. Most folks aren’t real receptive to messages from the beyond, but there are some who welcome it. I’ve got all the stuff you need to forge a postmark in the bottom drawer of the dresser over there. You’re gonna take that with you today.”

“So, you never got arrested?”

“Nope. Never,” she said, shaking her head. “And I don’t want to hear about you livin’ on the edge like that. Real hard to use ‘a dead person asked me to do it’ as an excuse in court.”

Gram had an excellent point. However, I couldn’t imagine my time with Sam going any other way than it had. Deciding to keep that information to myself, I pressed Gram for more.

“Wait, did you say there are other lines of Death Counselors? Like other families?”

“I said that I was certain another line would take over,” she corrected me. “I’m guessin’ now I was wrong. Clearly, I can’t find my butt with both hands in my back pockets.”

“So, there are others like us?” I honestly couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with a straight face. But after the last month with the dead squatters, yesterday’s near-death experience inside Sam’s mind and the misdemeanor I’d committed this morning, I was taking it all pretty seriously.

“I don’t rightly know,” she admitted. “I suppose I hoped there were.”

“Okay,” I said, racking my brain for more questions. I had a million and couldn’t think of one. Well, I