Chapter Four

“You have got to be shittin’ me,” Ashara said.

“No. Really. That’s how it happened. And I need someone to go to the police, to tell them what really happened.

Rick can’t go to prison for this. He didn’t kill his wife. The police need to know that.”

“And you think that I should just go walking on in there and tell the police that I got some new information about that white guy who killed his wife?”

“Well . . .” I paused for a moment, thinking it through.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

“And you think the cops are going to take me serious for even a minute?”

“They might,” I said lamely.

Ashara shook her head. “No. I’ll tell you what’ll happen if I go in there. They’re going to want to know how I know what I know. Then, when I tell them that some white lady ghost told me, they’re going to kick me out on my ass.”

“Then there’s got to be some way to make them believe. Not in me. I don’t care if they know about me. But maybe we can find some more evidence, something that will clear Rick.”

Ashara shook her head. “Uh-uh. No way, no how.

Whoever killed that lady might still be around. I’m not doing anything that might get his attention. You think someone like that’s just gonna let me go digging around looking for evidence? Nope. Next thing you know, I’ll be getting myself choked with some wire. No. Not happening.”

My shoulders slumped in defeat. I sighed—or did the supernatural equivalent of it, anyway. It felt like sighing to me.

“There’s nothing I can do to get you to help?”

“Nope. Not a chance. Sorry, lady. Now I’ve got to go back into the Wal-Mart and get some light bulbs.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, thanks for listening, anyway.”

“Fine. Just get out of my car.”

I did, and then watched her walk back into the store.

The only true sensitive I’d found in town, and she refused to help me. I stomped my foot on the ground and watched it sink several inches into the asphalt parking lot.

You know, it’s not like what happened to me was the usual after-death thing—if that were the case, I guessed, there’d be ghosts all over the place. But there weren’t any other ghosts anywhere in this town, as far as I could tell. And now the only person I could actually speak to had kicked me out of her car.

I’ve never really been the introspective type. But when a girl wakes up dead in Alabama, she’s got to wonder why, at least a little bit. And I was beginning to really believe that I was somehow, for some reason, supposed to keep Rick McClatchey from going to prison for his wife’s murder. This wasn’t just a Good Samaritan moment, I thought. This was my whole reason for still being on this earthly plane.

And if I was right about that, then I didn’t have to keep my promise to leave Ashara alone.

That’s how I rationalized it to myself, anyway.

So by the time Ashara got back out to her car, Wal-Mart bag of light bulbs in hand, I was waiting for her in the passenger seat.

“You know,” she said, as she got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, “you being a liar about leaving me alone don’t make me want to help you.”

“But maybe you’ll change your mind if I stick around long enough,” I said.

She just rolled her eyes and pulled out of the parking lot.

We drove to a neighborhood on the north side of town where the houses were older, a little more run down. Ashara pulled up in front of one house with peeling white siding and a slightly sagging front porch. She walked through the front door and into the living room without knocking.

“Hey, Maw-Maw,” she said, bending to kiss the old woman sitting in a recliner in front of the television.

The furniture in the room was old but well cared for. Handmade quilts covered the couch and the recliner. A rocking chair sat in another corner.

The old woman had a bun wound tight against the back of her head. Some wisps of gray hair floated around her face.

She clutched a well-worn afghan around her and peered myopically around the room through glasses as thick as the bottoms of old-fashioned Coke bottles.

“I brought your light bulbs,” Ashara said. “I’ll go change that one in the kitchen right now.” She moved through a doorway and out of sight.

Maw-Maw continued to stare around the room.

“Ashara, honey?” she called out, her voice trembling with age.

“Yes, Maw-Maw?” Ashara answered from the other room.

“Why you got a white lady haunt with you?” She pronounced the word more like “haint.”

Ashara sighed and I could practically hear her eyes rolling. “I don’t know, Maw-Maw. She found me at the Wal-Mart and now she won’t go away.”

I stared at the old woman, my eyes huge.

“She tell you what she want?” Maw-Maw asked Ashara.

“Something about some white dude killed his wife.”

“He didn’t kill his wife,” I said, loudly enough for Ashara to hear. “That’s why I need your help.”

“Well, if he didn’t do it, who did?” Maw-Maw asked me.

“You can hear me?” I asked, stunned.

“Of course I can hear you,” Maw-Maw said. “I need glasses, not a hearing aid.” I stood in the doorway, unable to think of a single thing to say.

“Well,” said Maw-Maw, “quit standing there with your mouth hanging open. You look a fool. You might as well come on in and set yourself down.”

So I did. I moved over to the couch and sat down.

That’s one of the strange things about being dead but still hanging around—I can float or I can walk. And I can sit down if I want to. I can also apparently stomp my foot right through the Wal-Mart parking lot if I get mad enough. But none of it’s really conscious.

Maw-Maw peered at me through her thick glasses. I could hear Ashara in the kitchen, dragging a chair over and clambering up onto it, unscrewing the burned-out light bulb and putting in the new one.

“So,” Maw-Maw said. “Why you haunting my granddaughter?”

“I’m not haunting her,” I explained, leaning forward earnestly. “I just need her help. She’s the only person who has actually seen me since I’ve been in Abramsville.”

Maw-Maw’s eyes narrowed. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”

I sighed. “No. I’m from Dallas.”

“So why you here?”

“I don’t know. I died in Dallas. And then I just woke up dead. In Abramsville. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know how I got here. But I saw someone kill Molly McClatchey, and it wasn’t her husband. But he’s the one they arrested.”

“She that girl got killed with a piano wire?” Maw-Maw asked.

“Yes.”

“Mm-hmm.” Maw-Maw nodded. “I saw that on the TV. They arrested him yesterday.”

“And it don’t have a damn thing to do with us,” Ashara said from the kitchen doorway.

“You watch your mouth, child,” Maw-Maw said.

“I just don’t know who else to go to,” I said.

“Hmm.” Maw-Maw’s eyes closed. Her head dropped to her chest and she began breathing deeply and regularly.

Is she asleep? I wondered.

“Okay, Maw-Maw,” Ashara said, gently touching her grandmother on the shoulder. “I’m gonna go now. You need anything else before I leave?”

Maw-Maw’s head snapped up—much more quickly than I would have expected from such an old woman. “You sit yourself down, Ashara Jones. You ain’t going nowhere until you figure out what to do with this white ghost lady.”

“Maw-Maw,” Ashara whined.

“No, ma’am.” Maw-Maw’s voice was no longer trembling. In fact, it was practically strident. “You brought this dead white lady over to my house. So you can just sit yourself down next to her and listen to what I have to say.”

Ashara sighed and sat down as far from me on the couch as she could possibly get. She crossed her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together.

“Now you listen to me, Ashara. God gave you a gift, one that you ain’t never used before. And if God didn’t want you to see no dead white ladies, you wouldn’t. But you seen this one. And heard her, too. She’s here asking for your help. And you are going to give it to her. You hear me?”

Ashara turned and glared at me. “Yeah.”

“What did you just say to me, Ashara Marie Jones?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ashara sounded resigned.

“Good.” Maw-Maw nodded to herself and wrapped her afghan around herself a little tighter. “Now you two girls get on out of here and figure out what you got to do next. My story’s about to come on the TV and I don’t want to miss any of it.”

Ashara stood up and leaned over to kiss her grandmother on the cheek. “Bye, Maw-Maw.”

Maw-Maw patted Ashara’s hand. “Thank you, baby.

You’re a good girl.”

I stood awkwardly by the door. “Thank you, ma’am,” I finally said as Ashara brushed passed me without even glancing my direction.

Maw-Maw waved her hand without looking at me.

“Good-bye, ghost lady. Don’t you go getting my Ashara in trouble.”

How was I supposed to answer that? “Um. Okay.

Bye,” I finally said.

I followed Ashara out the door, barely managing to slide my ethereal butt into the passenger seat of her car before she pulled away from the curb, tires squealing.

“I don’t have to help you just because my Maw-Maw says I do,” she said.

“I know.”

“I don’t have to help you at all.”

“I know,” I said again.

“So why are you still in my car?” Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Because you’re going to help me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I saw the way you looked when your grandmother said you had a gift from God.”

“So what?”

“You believe her. You believe you have a gift from God and if you don’t help me, you’ll feel guilty about it for the rest of your life.”

“You believe I got a gift from God?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You believe God sent you to me?” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

“I don’t know what I believe,” I said after a long, silent moment. “I mean, I used to believe in heaven. But what I got when I died was Alabama.”

“Why do you want to help this guy stay out of jail so much?” she asked. “You think if you save this guy, you might get to go to heaven?”

I let the silence drag out on that one. Finally, I said,

“Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know that he didn’t do it.” I shrugged. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

“I don’t know,” Ashara said. “People go to jail every

single day for things they didn’t do. I can’t save all of them.”

No,” I said, “but maybe you can save one.”

Ashara sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Okay. Fine.

What do you want me to do?”