Alone!
Clint Eberhart, the evil spirit, wasn’t with him! Wasn’t inside him!
Billy had to think.
Who else does Eberhart want dead?
He already gave Mee Maw a heart attack. Now he wants to hunt down this Jennings family. But what about the rest of the O’Claire clan? What about me?
And Aidan!
Oh, no. What about Aidan? What if he wants to kill my son?
Billy raced over to Spratling Manor.
He saw his ex-wife’s car parked out front in the same circular driveway where his parents—Tommy and Alice—had been shot twenty-five years earlier.
Billy hated this place, but he had to do this, had to do what was right. He had to protect his son.
An antique Cadillac crawled out from behind a vine-covered brick wall. Billy climbed down from his pickup truck and hurried across the weedy driveway to confront the chauffeur.
“Excuse me? Sir?”
The sleepy-eyed old man tilted his head slightly.
“I’m looking for Sharon.”
“What?”
“Does Sharon still work here?”
“Who?” The chauffeur looked confused.
“Sharon!” he shouted at the old man.
“Billy?”
Sharon was on the front porch. She was dressed in a puke green nurse’s smock.
Billy ran over to her, but she gave him the palm of her hand.
“Hold on, Billy.”
He froze.
“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t ever want to see you again!”
“I know. But you’ve got to listen to me. Just this one last time.”
“Billy,” Sharon said impatiently, “it’s Monday and we need to take Miss Spratling into town and then out to her memorial. If you have something to say, you better say it fast!”
“Don’t ever let me near my son.” He said it as quickly as he could. “Don’teverletmenearmyson!” He repeated it even faster.
“I don’t get this, Billy. Ever since the divorce, you’ve been pestering me: ‘Let me see Aidan.’ Now you’re telling me to keep you away?”
“Yes! No matter what I say. No matter what I do. Don’t let me anywhere near Aidan, okay?”
“My, my, my. Who is this?”
The old bag, Gerda Spratling, appeared on the porch behind Sharon. She was wearing some sort of long black gown and a black veil that covered her face. She raised it to smile flirtatiously at Billy and give him a queasy stomach.
He tried hard to smile back. It wasn’t easy to do when a wrinkled old prune was giving you goo-goo eyes.
“Sharon?” Miss Spratling crowed dryly. “Who is this handsome young man? Your boyfriend, perchance?”
“No, ma’am.” Sharon’s ears burned red. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Not in the least. You are rather homely.” Miss Spratling took a step forward. “Have we met before?” she asked Billy. “You look so familiar…especially around the eyes.”
Billy took off his sweat-stained baseball cap. “I’m just a friend of Sharon’s.”
“A friend, eh?” The old lady hunched her head toward her shoulder. “My, my, my.”
“Well, I have to go.”
“So soon?” Miss Spratling fluttered her eyelids. “You will call again, won’t you, Mr…. I’m sorry; I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“O’Claire. Billy O’Claire.”
Gerda Spratling cringed at the name.
O’Claire. Just like Mary O’Claire—the lying guttersnipe who walked off that bus and told all those horrible lies about Clint Eberhart.
She should have hated anyone named O’Claire.
But this charming boy named Billy was just too handsome to hate—almost too handsome to resist.
With such soulful blue, blue eyes.
Judy decided not to tell anybody else about the ghosts.
It would only scare Zack, and her new husband didn’t really believe in “goofy stuff” like goblins and ghouls. Even if George didn’t think she was crazy, Judy still didn’t want to talk to him about ghosts because he had one of his own. So did Zack. In fact, they shared the same one. How could you talk to people about the ghosts you thought you’d chatted with when they both wished they could talk one more time with just one: their late wife, their dead mother?
The ghost sightings would remain Judy’s secret. If she needed to talk to somebody about it, Mrs. Emerson would be more than happy to oblige.
Judy was out in the woods near the big stump, tamping down the soil around a newly planted rosebush, when George came out to join her.
“Hey,” she said. “All packed?”
“Yeah. What are you up to?”
“Putting in a couple rosebushes.”
“Neat. Have you seen Zack? I promised him I’d pound a few nails before I took off for the airport.”
“He and Davy went swimming again. They have a secret lagoon.”
George smiled. “Really? I had one of those when I was his age.”
“I think this one’s really a cow pond.”
“Yeah. Mine was, too. There was this big boulder you could dive off of. We called it Dead Man’s Bluff.”
They heard the crunch of gravel under tires—cars pulling off the road.
“Well, here she comes,” Judy said. “Right on schedule.”
George peered through the trees, down to the highway. “I remember seeing that Cadillac when I was a kid. They used to drive it up the middle of the road. Thought they owned the streets as well as everybody’s souls.”
“George? Behave. Promise?”
“Yes, dear.”
There were three cars parked on the shoulder of the highway this week. The Cadillac, the Hyundai, and, a new addition, a maroon Lincoln Town Car. Judy saw the feeble old chauffeur climb out of the big-bumpered Caddy and shuffle around to the right rear door.
A dark-haired young priest stepped around to the trunk of the Lincoln and disappeared under the lid. When he emerged, he was carrying a four-foot-tall resin statue.
“Oh, boy,” mumbled George. “Is that a birdbath?”
Judy shushed him.
“Hello again,” Judy called out cheerfully as Miss Spratling and the priest trudged up the woodsy slope to the stump. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Mrs. Jennings,” the old woman said. Her voice was dry ice.
“What a pretty statue,” Judy said to the priest, a man she had never met before.
“Thank you,” he panted.
Miss Spratling cleared her throat. Loudly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Judy. “Miss Spratling, I’d like you to meet my husband, George Jennings. He grew up here in North Chester.”
George extended his hand. “I’m very pleased to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Spratling.”
Miss Spratling clucked her tongue. “My, my, my. You’re just like your father, aren’t you? All la-di-da and polite. Just like your father.”
“Excuse me?”
The old woman pointed her gnarled finger at Judy’s new planting. “What is that?”
“A white rosebush.”
“Pull it out of the ground this instant! That’s where the statue is meant to go!”
“Whoa!” said George. “Take it easy, Miss Spratling. My wife was simply trying to—”
“I will not have you two defiling sacred ground!”
“And I will not have you telling us what we can and cannot do on our own property.”
“This is not your property, Mr. Jennings! Clint Eberhart purchased this soil with his soul!”
“Is that so? I’m a lawyer, so I’ll need to see the deed and title report.”
Miss Spratling scowled, then seethed.
The priest dabbed his brow with a linen handkerchief. “I just came to bless the statue,” he said. “To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary.”
“The anniversary of what?” George demanded.
Miss Spratling’s lips quivered.
“The accident,” said Judy.