Homing by Stephanie Domet Page B

“I definitely have a ghost. I’d say seeing him is a pretty clear symptom.” An old man who was browsing in the stacks gave her a dirty look and held his finger up to his mouth. “Sorry,” she whispered, then rolled her eyes when he turned away.
    She hurried back to her seat with the book. Her stack of cook-books sat naggingly beside her notes. She had a deadline she’d already pushed three times. She cracked the cover of “How To Deal With Ghosts” and spent just enough time reading it to formulate a plan. At five o’clock, before Joan shooed her out and locked the doors behind her, she borrowed the book and stowed it in her bag, alongside her recipe notes, her plan for freeing Nathan humming in her mind as she rushed from the library.
    â€œI have to tell Nathan his story,” she told Charlotte over a very spicy caesar at the Fish Tank.
    â€œSurely to god he knows his own story,” Charlotte said. “He’s a ghost for the love of Mike, don’t they have access to everything?”
    â€œNot according to this book,” Leah said. “Not if they’re just hanging around. It means they’re a bit lost, a bit confused. I mean, if he were haunting his own house, that’d be understandable, you know? He should want to be close to Rebecca, he should want to watch over her. But he’s thousands of kilometres off course even for that. Let alone for just settling easily into the afterlife.”
    â€œWhat about the all-night card parties?” Charlotte said, “what about the endless meatballs?”
    Leah grimaced, sipped her drink. “Yeah. You know, I think I extrapolated that stuff.”
    â€œExtrapolated,” Charlotte said, blinking. “You mean the pennies from heaven are not falling from some cosmic Rummoli game?”
    â€œAre you making fun of me now?” Leah asked. “I can never tell if you’re fucking making fun of me.” She turned on her high chair.
    â€œCan I get another drink?” she said to the passing barkeep. “I’m going to need at least another drink, here.”
    Nelson nodded and looked at Charlotte, who nodded back. “Yeah,” she said, “looks like it’s fixing to be a long night.”
    â€œLook,” Leah said, as patiently as she could. “I don’t know about the meatballs, okay? I don’t know about the white clothes, and I don’t know about the heavenly Rummoli game. I would like to think things work that way, but I can’t be certain. When I really think about it, I’m pretty sure all Psychic Sue told me was that when he got there he was sick, and they looked after him till he got better.”
    â€œWho’re they?” Charlotte asked, slurping caesar through a straw. She coughed. “Gah. Spicy.”
    â€œI don’t know who they are. Could be my grandparents and my aunt Mary, could be angelic paramedics, could be God himself for that matter. Sue didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask. She did say Mary came to get him, because my grandmother was getting things ready. I took that to mean meatballs and Rummoli. I don’t think that’s out of line, frankly, and I have to say, it’s an image I like. So, I don’t know. If that’s what the afterlife was like and I had the option, that’s where I’d stay, especially if my grandmother was doing the cooking.”
    â€œMaybe Nathan didn’t have the option.
    â€œMaybe not indeed,” Leah said. “This is what I’m thinking.
    â€œWhy don’t you just ask him?” Charlotte asked.
    Leah shook her head. “Nah, he doesn’t really like questions. He puts his hands up like I’m the paparazzi or something.”
    Charlotte hooted. She looked around. “Is he here now?”
    â€œYou gotta quit it with that,” Leah said, shaking her head.
    â€œCome on, Leah. Just tell me, is he here right now?”
    Leah took a deep