Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
The backyard, or more like the taller weed patch soon-to-be backyard, is practically deserted, as most of the tradespeople are working in the house. They’re all communicating and working well together, even though there are quite a few bodies jammed into a small structure.
There’s one tall, scraggly, half-dead tree in the backyard, rising above the waist-deep sea of weeds off to the left of the house. It literally is half dead, with the left portion of the tree bearing nothing but scraggly branches while the right is fully leafed out with green, wavering leaves.
I don’t see Victoria until I’ve cleared the weeds and am almost standing right under the tree. She’s sitting behind it, her back propped against the bark, but she’s not facing the house. Her face is flushed with the heat, and her arms are wrapped around her knees, which she has pulled into her chest.
She looks up at me, her dark eyes big and sad, glistening and soft like wet velvet.
My pulse kicks at the side of my neck, and my stomach clenches like I had a backyard weed salad for lunch, only to find out they weren’t edible and that I sucked at foraging. I drop down beside her immediately, sitting right there in the weedy dirt and crushing weeds under me such that they release their noxious, pepper-strong aroma.
“Hey.” For all the reading I’ve done and all the poetry I profess to love, that’s all that comes out. I close my eyes and curl my hands into fists behind my back, then relax them slowly. “I…are you okay?”
She shakes her head without looking at me. She’s staring off into the distance, beyond a sagging barbed wire fence that likely separates her property from a field of swaying green plants—some crop or other, though I’m no expert.
“Want to tell me what’s up? If it’s the house…if I’ve overstepped or done something wrong, I’ll…I’ll make it right. You don’t have to worry about that. If it’s the money, I promise we’ll make it work.”
She shakes her head again and sinks her teeth into her lip so hard that my dick kicks in my jeans, which makes me feel like a total douchecanoe. Right now is not the time for dick-kicking.
“I…it’s just…I keep thinking my great-aunt would turn over in her grave if she knew what I was doing to the house and the yard. She was the most crotchety, cantankerous person in the world. She hated people. Hated our family even. She always wanted to be alone and never did any repairs to the house. She just left it as it was. She also hardly ever went into town. She was a real recluse. She told my parents that if she ever got put into a home, she was come back to haunt them. It got so bad, though, that she was a danger to herself. She had dementia at the end, and they had to put her into one. Granted, it was amazing. The people were so nice there, and they took such good care of her. We visited all the time. But she never forgave us, though. Her lucid moments were spent spewing hate and promising to haunt, haunt, haunt us. That’s why everyone says the house is haunted. It was so run down that when my parents tried to get rid of it, seeing as great-aunt Elinore still left it to them because she always did secretly love my mom because my mom was the only person who kept contact with her, ever, they didn’t get a single offer.” She turns her wet earthy eyes up, looking straight at me. “Do you think she’d be pissed to see it transformed? Do you believe in ghosts? This morning, when the raccoon came crashing through the roof, I heard this rattling up there, and I had an image of her ghost coming for me.”
“Good god. Ghosts…I…I don’t know. Never had a run-in with one.” Unless you count my family because we’re basically ghosts ourselves, but over the past few years, a few of us have become more human and left the life, even going so far as to have a child, in Ransom’s case. “Uh, I think, I think she’d be…well, I really can’t say. If she loved the house, wouldn’t she be happy to see it restored and lived in again?”
Victoria snorts. “I have no idea. I think she hated the house too. She was so, so unhappy. I feel like some of that is still lingering in the house. Aside from the scary moldy toilet, there are other bad vibes in there.”
“Nah.” I shrug. “We’ll chase those all away for you. If you like, I can call in another group, someone who specializes in aura cleansing.”
That finally earns me a smile, which puts the pep right back in my step. Or rather, the spit right back in my sit. The sweet right back in my heartbeat?