It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis (Good To The Last Death #1) - Robyn Peterman Page 0,14

helped tremendously. I knew it was most likely my subconscious speaking, but I preferred to pretend it was Steve.

Laughing dude simply watched me. No one could clue me in about the Ouija board. I’d just order it online and have it delivered. It might not work, but what could it hurt? I hoped it wouldn’t hurt. If my squatters could communicate, all hell could possibly break loose.

Whatever.

At least it was proactive.

Chapter Four

I didn’t like ham salad sandwiches. I hated them. After going to the petting zoo at the state fair a few years back and getting attached to the baby piglets, I’d sworn off pork. It was alarming to Steve, since he considered bacon a food group. However, I never gave him guff for eating Wilber and he didn’t give me crap for not. Pork was a subject where we agreed to disagree. I missed our disagreements. I missed him.

Nope. Not going there today.

No time to wallow.

Today was my birthday. I was making food for my party. Food that I wasn’t going to eat, but food nonetheless.

Basically, I’d become a vegetarian over the past few weeks. Eating meat while sitting with decomposing specters at the dinner table was impossible and gross. The upside was that I was saving money at the grocery store. Meat was expensive. Ham wasn’t allowed in the house now—tonight was the exception because Jennifer and June loved my ham salad.

Actually, all my girlfriends loved my ham salad sandwiches. I’d been ordered to make them for the party. Each gal was bringing a dish. It would be laid-back and simple, just the way I liked it. Using Gram’s secret recipe—which meant adding Miracle Whip, sliced dill pickles and a teaspoon of sugar to the chopped ham—I put the salad together without really looking at it. I felt less guilty that way.

“Hi there,” I said, glancing up to find laughing dead dude staring longingly at the ham salad.

Most of the ghosts had disappeared like I’d requested. Laughing dude and a few others remained. He sat at the kitchen table and watched me with interest. In an hour, I’d insist he and the stragglers leave too, but strangely, I enjoyed laughing dead dude’s company. I was probably close to cracking completely. Right now, I didn’t care. Laughing dude was growing on me whether he was real or not.

“Are you hungry?” I asked, knitting my brows in concern.

Could dead people be hungry? Could they eat?

Laughing dude shook his partially deteriorated head no, but pointed at the salad.

“Umm… it’s ham,” I said as he grew alarmingly more animated. “You like ham?”

I mean, I could make him a sandwich and place it in front of him. Maybe he just wanted to feel like someone cared. I knew the feeling. There was a shitload of ham salad. It didn’t matter if I wasted a little bit. I was Southern. I didn’t know how to make small batches of anything. It was a mortal sin in Georgia to run out of food at a party. I had no plans to commit any kind of sin this evening—hence my no-drinking plan.

“Sssssssssssss,” laughing dude said, pointing at the ham.

I quickly made him a sandwich as he continued to hiss. He didn’t scare me. What I perceived as his hunger made me want to cry.

Why hadn’t he moved on? Why hadn’t any of the dead people who were hanging out moved on? Wait. Was this what happened when you died? You just hung out and haunted random houses? You found a freak like me who could see you and moved in?

How completely depressing.

“Here you go,” I said, putting the plate in front of him. Grabbing a cloth napkin and pouring him a glass of lemonade, I sat down and waited to see what would happen.

If he ate it, I was in trouble. My grocery bill would skyrocket if dead people could eat. There was no way I would starve them. It was bad enough that their body parts were falling off. Not feeding them would be inhumane—not that they were technically human anymore. If dead people could eat, I was screwed.

“Sssssssssss,” laughing dude said, pointed at the sandwich. “Sssssssss.”

“It’s ham,” I told him. “Ham salad. Same stuff that’s in the bowl.”

“Ssssssss,” he said, making a motion to remove the top piece of bread.

Of course, he couldn’t do it. He tried. His hand went right through the sandwich each time. The ghosts were a mystery to me in so many ways. Half the time they seemed corporeal and