The Ghostly Grounds: Disaster and Dessert (A Canine Casper Cozy Mystery—Book 6)

CHAPTER ONE

Come home.

That’s what Marie had written back to her mother in response to the postcard that had arrived at June Manor several weeks ago. Marie had sent it not even knowing if her nomadic mother would get it. And even if she did, Abagail Fortune would have no way of knowing it was from her daughter and not her aunt, June.

Come home.

It seemed so poetic and dumb all at the same time. But now that Marie was standing at the front door, looking out to a mother she had not seen in over thirty years, those two words seemed to hold an impossible amount of weight.

“Mom?” Marie said.

Abagail Fortune tilted her head slightly and tears filled her eyes immediately. “Marie? My God, Marie, is that you?”

Marie did not trust herself to speak, so she only nodded as her mother stepped into June Manor and wrapped her arms around her. Marie’s first reaction was to pull away, to distance herself from the woman that had abandoned her and her father—the woman that had never bothered to locate her or to find her. It was almost like hugging a stranger for a moment. After all, the only reason she was standing here right now was because she had sent a postcard to June and apparently thought June was the one that had written back the simple two-word response.

Oh God,

Marie thought.

She doesn’t even know June is dead…

But then Marie slowly gave in to the craving she’d been feeling for some faraway ghost since the age of twelve, when her mother had stepped out of her life. She returned the hug and thought it felt strange; there was a sense of closure—of a book being closed and another one being immediately opened. Despite this sensation, there was still a degree of hurt, though. She’d waited so long…wondering if this moment would ever arrive and now that it was here she was still angry. She hadn’t quite expected that.

“Marie,” her mother gasped as she broke the hug and looked her daughter in the eyes for the first time in nearly three decades. “What are you doing here? Visiting Aunt June?”

“Sort of,” Marie said, still not quite trusting herself to speak. “What are

you

doing here?”

“Well, I sent a postcard to June and she responded back with a very plain and simple message—which is not like June. She just said to come home. I figured something was wrong and then…and then here

you

are.” She stopped here, pausing for a moment and then looked inside the house for the first time, looking behind Marie. “Is everything okay here?”

Not exactly the ideal way to speak with your mother for the first time in thirty years,

Marie thought. But she knew what she had to do. As if sensing some great sadness in the air, Boo came trotting to the door from elsewhere inside the house; her dog had become the closest thing she’d had to family over the past six or seven months, and he seemed to know it.

“Come in, Mom,” Marie said. She surprised herself when she reached out and took her mother’s hand. “There are some things I need to tell you.”

The half hour that followed was sad, joyous, and a little surreal for Marie. She found herself sitting in the very room she’d once daydreamed in while her mother and Aunt June gossiped and laughed. Only now, she was sitting in Aunt June’s chair and her mother was right across from her. And while her Great Aunt June was absent from the picture, her presence was very much felt. It did not take long for the very loaded question to come up. Hearing it from her mother’s mouth was about the same as hearing a shotgun blast in the same room.

“So where’s June?” Abagail asked.

“Mom…I don’t know how to tell you this. She…well, Aunt June passed away.”

The joy on her mother’s face slowly crumpled. The tears were coming before the joy was completely gone. Abagail placed a hand to her mouth and let out a little gasp. Marie found herself sitting rigidly in her seat, not sure how her mother would react to the news.

“How?” Abagail finally managed to get out.

Marie spoke slowly, wanting to give her mother time to understand it and process it all at the same time. She told her mother about getting the call from Sherriff Miles (still a deputy back then) and the news she had received from Aunt June’s lawyer when she arrived in town for the funeral. By then, the tears were still spilling but Abagail seemed to have control of herself.

“She left the house to me,” Marie said. “And the moment I moved in…well, my life was pretty shaken up.”

“So…this house is yours now?”

“Yeah. I’ve been running it as a bed and breakfast for the past several months.”

The look of excitement and pride on her mother’s face was something she had never expected to see. In the awed silence that followed, Posey came quietly into the room, asking no questions and making no comments; she simply served the women tea and made her way back towards the dining room, Marie could sense her lurking just at the edges, perhaps making sure any guests that happened to come down did not disturb the conversation. Marie supposed Posey had also become something very much like family. Rebeka, too.

Maybe,

she thought as Boo lay at her feet and Posey quietly spoke with a guest in the kitchen,

I have more family than I thought.

“How’s business?” Abagail asked, wiping the tears away. Marie was sure there would be more questions about June later, but for now it seemed her mother was trying to choose joy. Or maybe she was trying to avoid the fact that June had died and she had been nowhere nearby to know about it.

“It’s been very good,” she said. “That hasn’t always been the case, but…well, it’s a pretty long story.”

Abagail nodded, looking around the room and sipping from her tea before turning her eyes back to Marie. “I won’t lie,” she said, fighting off more tears. “It makes for a pretty terrible Christmas surprise to heat about June, but you…seeing

you

is just about the best gift I could ever get.”

“Don’t do that, Mom,” Marie said. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She looked to her mother, standing just to the right of the Christmas tree she and Robbie had put up about a week ago. Her mind wanted to go to Robbie and latch on to how she had basically dismissed him the previous night, but her entire brain was bogged down with thoughts of her mother. Her life felt as if it had been turned upside down and now she needed to find out if she wanted to flip it right-side up again.

“Don’t do what?” Abagail asked.

“Pretend you missed me…that you’re happy to see me.”

“But I am!” She nearly yelled this response and Marie was surprised and a little guilt-stricken to see genuine hurt in her mother’s face.

“You left, Mom,” Marie said. She was on her feet now, too, though she could not quite remember standing. “You left me and Dad, and when Dad died, I barely saw you out of the corner of my eye at his funeral. And I’ve heard

nothing

from you. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead…not until I came here.”

“Here?” Abagail asked.

“I found some of your postcards. Aunt June kept them and—,” she stopped here, her heart still trying to decide on anger, reconciliation, or sadness. Currently, it was grasping for all and Marie simply couldn’t handle it. “You know what? No. I can’t do this with you right now. I’m not answering

your

questions. I have far too many for you.”

“Okay, so ask them.”

“Why did you do it?” Marie asked before her mother had even finished her sentence.

“The easy answer is because I was selfish. But there is a larger answer at play, too. One that I don’t know you’ll understand.”

“A larger answer that had you travelling all over the world?” Marie contested. “Seems to me you just wanted away from the responsibilities of a family and wanted to go off and live this adventurous life. I guess a husband and daughter just held you back from all of that, huh?”

Abagail nodded, looking away from Marie. “I suppose I deserve that. But no…my main purpose was not to just live up some marvelous life that I didn’t think you and your father would allow. I had to…”

She stopped here and Marie could tell that she was struggling with something. It was more than just looking for the right words; it appeared that she was trying to make the decision to say what was on her mind. In the end, she decided to say it. When she did, she still could not look directly at Marie. Instead, she looked at the Christmas tree, as if she’d found a particular ornament that had caught her attention.

“I had to find out some things about myself,” she finally finished.

“Don’t make me puke,” Marie said. “You needed to travel the world for

thirty years

to find yourself?”

“No, not like that. Not in the cheesy poetic way. No. There’s something I needed to come to terms with and…God, I don’t know.”

Marie thought of those post cards, of her simple little response of

Come home

and, God forgive her, she wished she’d never sent the damned thing. At least a little bit; there was still that young girl inside of her that had missed her mother desperately.

“You know what, Mom,” Marie said. “It’s been thirty years without you. I think I can spend the next thirty the same way. So maybe you should—”

“Wait,” Abagail said. “Hold on. How long have you lived here?”

Marie rolled her eyes at her mother’s flippant question. “Almost seven months now.”

Abagail eyed her daughter in a cautious sort of way and then looked around the room—not only around the room, but also out into the hallway, into the dining room and the attached hall.

“So then, you know by now, I’d think, right?”

“Know what?” Marie asked, irritated.

For the first time since Marie had started speaking about Aunt June’s passing, Abagail Fortune smiled. It was a thin smile and made her look rather striking. It also made her look like the sort of woman that was very good at keeping secrets.

“You mean to tell me you’ve been here for seven months and you haven’t seen a ghost yet?”

Marie wasn’t sure what to say or what to think. Her first thought was that her mother was lying to her. Surely she’d heard some of June’s stories about the house and was trying to play on her emotions. But at the same time, she thought of the diaries she’d found in the hidden upstairs room. Her mother had been mentioned a few times and there were a hell of a lot of ghosts in those diaries.

“Marie?”

Marie blinked, startled. She wondered how long she’d been lost in her own thoughts. She found her mother still looking at her, uncertain.

“Marie…do you have it, too?”

“Have what?” she asked. Her voice was soft and quiet, and she knew the answer before her mother spoke it.

“I don’t know,” Abagail said. “I suppose some might call it a gift. I think

gift

is an odd word for it, but I don’t know what else to call it. But what I mean is…you can sense them, can’t you? The dead?”

Marie was shocked when she found herself nodding. As she nodded, her mother’s eyes started to brim with tears. “Can you…can you

see

them? Can you interact with them?”

Now Marie felt her own tears coming on and she had no idea why. All she knew for sure was that her mother was stepping towards her and tears were coming down her cheeks. She did not look sad, but almost happy. And for reasons Marie could not understand, she wanted her mother to hold her again. Just two minutes ago, she’d wanted her mother out of the house. And now…now what? The mention of ghosts had done something—the mention of a

gift.

“I would have never imagined it…” Abagail said. “To think I’ve spent all of this time looking for answers and they’ve been right here, with you, all along.”