True Indigo: A Tipsy Collins Novel

Book 4: Tipsy Collins Series

by Stephanie Alexander

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

"Five Stars...The fourth and final installment of the Tipsy Collins series...beautifully wraps up the characters' journeys with a blend of paranormal intrigue and life lessons..." -Readers' Favorite

Things have been going great for Tipsy Collins, the Lowcountry’s favorite clairvoyant artistic genius. Her kids are happy and healthy, she’s producing and selling her celebrated paintings, and she’s engaged to the love of her life, psychiatrist Scott Brandt. Everyone in Tipsy’s life seems content, except Henry Mott, her mercurial supernatural roommate and wannabe literary virtuoso.

Henry has been brooding for over a century, but lately, his discontent has gone into overdrive. His famous temper is out of control and he can’t write a single sentence. Henry’s malaise and its accompanying destruction threaten to complicate Tipsy and Scott’s family blending while her ex-husband haplessly navigates a second marriage crisis. As Henry slowly loses his mind, a series of unexplainable events has Tipsy combing through ghostly memories, meeting new friends and reuniting with old ones, exploring and testing the supernatural limits, and, as always, learning some priceless life lessons.

True Indigo is the highly anticipated fourth and final installment in the award-winning Tipsy Collins Series.

 

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Release date: September 19, 2023

Publisher: Bublish, Incorporated

Print pages: 432

Sample

Chapter 1 

After Tipsy Collins exorcised the restless spirits of the Doctor Rene Bonneau House, she experienced a two-year ghostbusting dry spell. As had been the case throughout her thirty-eight years of life, she saw random phantoms as she zipped around Charleston, chauffeuring children and delivering artwork to clients. Any such sighting induced curiosity in her, and no small amount of guilt. Since her divorce, life had doled out many lessons, including supernatural ones. Tipsy knew how to free ghosts from their hauntings, but life was hectic enough. She had no time to seek out spirits in limbo or ruminate on mysterious, gruesome deaths.

That’s what she told herself, anyway. Each night, before she swan-dived into a pool of dream-soaked sleep, anonymous pale faces flitted through her mind.

Morose, befuddled, hysterical, catatonic.

Each one a distinct being, with a unique reaction to a confoundingly permanent existence.

Each troubled mind hiding personal narratives—auto-necro-graphies, if you will—that could set them free.

Stories that Tipsy could release.

In those brief moments, Tipsy wondered if she was letting her abilities go to waste, but she couldn’t perseverate herself into an existential crisis, because she’d never been busier. She was producing and selling her celebrated artwork at a record pace. Her three kids—Ayers, now twelve years old, and twins Mary Pratt and Olivia Grace, easing into double digits at ten—were evolving into productive members of society with their own onerous schedules. Her relationship with Dr. Scott Brandt, MD, had evolved from unexpected meet-cute in the psych ward, to whirlwind romance (briefly interrupted by Tipsy’s early relationship jitters and resulting meltdown) to the best thing that had ever happened to them. A month ago, Scott got down on one knee at the end of Mount Pleasant’s Pitt Street Bridge and popped the question. Now Tipsy was running around town with a pretty emerald ring on her finger while they planned a small wedding and gradually combined households with their collective five kiddos. Even her relationship with her irascible ex-husband, the Big Ayers to her son’s Little A, was humming along like an old Toyota. Clunks and whistles now and then, but it got their family from point A to point B.

Everything was joyfully complicated, but supernaturally speaking, things had been kind of dead, haha. As Miss Austen might say, however, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a clairvoyant with a spectral roommate cannot avoid unearthly challenges forever. And so, on a Monday morning in early April, Tipsy unexpectedly hopped back on the supernatural roller coaster.

She dropped her kids at school, drove home to her house on Bennett Street in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant, and came upon the familiar ghost of Henry Mott on her front porch. He sat at the glass-topped table, his enigmatically handsome face and bright red, tousled hair half-hidden behind a mason jar full of sunflowers.

The sight of him surprised her. Of late, the perpetually brooding Henry had been increasingly reclusive.

“Hey, Mott,” she said, as she walked up the porch stairs. “Haven’t seen you much lately. How's

it going?”

Henry stared into Tipsy’s old laptop. It was glitchy and slow, but he needed only a single Word document. She didn’t understand exactly how Henry was typing his magnum opus, the novel he referred to as THE GREAT STORY. She assumed he manipulated the keys with his telekinetic power.

When he didn’t reply, she crossed the porch and pulled out the chair beside him. She’d lived with Henry for four years, and knew he sometimes needed to be drawn—ahem, yanked—out of his shell. Before she could sit, he minimized his Word document. She glimpsed her own reflection in the darkened screen before Henry snapped the computer shut. Wavy chocolate brown hair. Big gray eyes. Her professional artist’s attire (Scott’s old Tennessee Vols sweatshirt and cheap paint-splattered leggings).

“I hate to disturb a fellow creative at work,” she said, “but I haven’t had an update on THE GREAT STORY—”

“I’m mid-sentence, Tipsy.” He hunkered over the closed computer like a hangry badger guarding a dead mouse.

“You want to catch up when you reach a good stopping point?”

“Not especially.”

“Jeez, Henry. Are you pissed at me for some reason?”

“No. I’m very busy. I’m—damnit. The electricity is almost depleted in this thing.” He looked around. “Where’s the plugger?”

Tipsy picked up the charger and plugged it into the wall. She started to insert the charging end into the computer’s port, but unseen forces ripped the cord from her hands.

“I can do it,” said Henry, as the wire floated toward the charging port. It poked and prodded, but his telekinesis couldn’t find the right path.

“Let me help—”

“I said no!” The supernatural force of his annoyance wobbled the mason jar. The sunflowers jiggled, as if trembling in fear of Henry’s famous temper.

“Watch those flowers. You don’t want your computer getting wet—”

“You’ve told me that a

thousand times!”

Tipsy scowled at him. “What is your problem?”

“You—you’re trying to look at my work!”

“I promised I’d never look at your work without your permission.”

“You may have secret, voyeuristic ways of looking! With your powers, or through the Interwebs!”

“It’s the Internet, and I can’t use my powers to look into a computer. Computers are the opposite of supernatural.”

“I’ve seen what computers can do. I watched The Matrix with you and Scott!”

“That’s just a movie—”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“What the heck? If anyone is yelling, it’s you—”

“Argh!” Henry grabbed two handfuls of his crimson hair and pulled. His edges blurred, until his white button-down shirt and tan pants blended into a smear of beige. The mason jar and the computer shot across the table, stopped, and spun in place. The laptop opened and started beeping and chirping like a robotic squirrel. It rotated itself over the table’s edge and thwacked against the wooden floorboards. As Tipsy stooped to pick it up, the whirling mason jar succumbed to gravity. Tepid water doused Tipsy’s right arm and splashed her face. She flinched and spun to protect the computer.

With her chin on her chest, and the computer still open, she couldn’t help but see the screen. One large black character in the middle of an empty expanse of glowing white.

A single question mark, in fifty-something point font.

The computer wrenched itself from her hands and floated toward Henry. He grimaced as it gently landed on the table. “Is it broken?” he asked.

“No. They can usually tolerate that kind of fall, but you’re lucky it’s dry.”

She wiped her eyes on her sweatshirt sleeve, but the question mark lingered in a yellow outline behind her eyelids. Henry claimed to be mid-sentence, but the sentence

hadn’t made it to the screen.

There were no sentences at all. No flowery run-ons. No clumsy phrases, or heated subject-verb disagreements. No dangling modifiers, comma splices, or improperly conclusionary prepositions. Not even a lonely fragment, waiting to discover its own ending.

Henry spent hours in front of that computer. What had he been doing all this time?

Despite her curiosity, she refused to subject herself to his hissy fit. “Let me know when you’re in a better mood,” she said, with her hand on the doorknob.

“Tipsy, I’m sorry.”

She looked back at him. His grumpy, irritable frown had morphed into a sad, pensive one.

“I’m not angry with you,” he continued. “I’ve been difficult lately—”

“You’re always difficult. This is not your run-of-the-mill disagreeableness.”

He rested his elbows on the table and glared into the Microsoft abyss. She took in his furrowed brow, trembling hands, and the weary set of his shoulders. Dark circles always lined his eyes, as if a nearsighted makeup artist had applied his smokey shadow in the wrong place. Today’s blue-gray smudges were worse than usual. He looked like he’d had a run in with a UFC fighter.

If he wasn’t already dead, I’d say he looks near it, said Tipsy’s Granna, straight from her own head. Granna was long dead, but Tipsy had inherited her psychic powers. In life, they’d been able to communicate without speaking. Miraculously, Granna’s death hadn’t severed their connection.

I hear you, Granna, said Tipsy. He acted like a jackass, but I feel bad for him.

Tipsy returned to the table. “What’s really bothering you, Henry?”

He looked up at her. “Something is not right. I have no bodily fibers, of course, but if I did, I’d say something is amiss in every fiber of my being.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I. But something

is very, very wrong.”

***

Tipsy collected the strewn sunflowers, walked into the kitchen, and refilled the mason jar with water. She left the jar on the window ledge above the sink, where it would be safe from Henry’s volatility. She changed into a dry sweatshirt—this one, emblazoned with a scowling rooster, represented her own alma mater—and returned to the porch.

She sat across from Henry. “You going to spill it?”

“I already did. I assume that’s why you left it inside.”

“I mean what’s happening with you. Or not happening, given what I saw on that computer. Accidentally saw. You know I’d never—”

“It’s fine. Have your look.”

The open computer spun around. The question mark floated on stark white, like the official flag of the State of Confusion. Tipsy lowered the screen’s brightness. “Maybe your brain isn’t used to typing.”

Henry’s brow wrinkled and the keyboard keys clicked and clacked. Words appeared below the question mark.

TYPING IS EASY. I ENJOY IT.

The cursor moved around the screen. The words bolded themselves, changed from black to red to neon green, and then switched fonts from Comic Sans to Helvetica. Tipsy shrugged. “Okay. Typing isn’t the problem.”

“You know I’ve written many short stories,” said Henry. “Some decent poetry. And yet, after over a century of trying, and umpteen promising ideas, I’ve never finished a novel. I have no trouble starting. The challenge is in the finishing. I get about seventy pages in and I fall into a plot hole. Like stepping into an abandoned cliché mine, or through an open manhole into a sewer of improbable situations and superfluous characters with no legitimate motivation.”

“I’m not a writer, but isn’t that what second drafts are for?”

“Perhaps for some wordsmiths, but I’ve never managed to climb out of those chasms, or find a rescue ladder in the form of a workable plot outline. It never fails—I start off with a bang, and run out of gunpowder. Lately, though, I haven’t written so much as an opening line.”

“I see you working regularly, so you’re putting in effort. You must have written something since I gave you this computer.”

“Over the past two years, I’ve started over at least five times, given up, and erased the whole lot.”

“You don’t have to delete everything! You can save those drafts and return to them.”

“No, my friend. I know when my own work is, pardon my language, a pile of steaming cow offal. I conducted my last grand obliteration over a month ago. That’s when things got truly…bleak. Nothing but silence in my head, as if my internal narrator smoked too many cigars and lost his voice.”

“Hence the question mark.”

“Yes. When I close my eyes, I see nothing but that damnable, glowing white void. I had to fill it up with something.”

“I felt the same way when I had painter’s block. Blank canvases all in my head. I wish you’d talked to me about it, instead of hiding out or giving me an attitude. I would have tried to help you, or at least commiserated.”

“I’m truly sorry. In life, I attempted to shelter my loved ones from my turbulent emotions. When I recognized them, anyway. Oftentimes, my melancholia consumed me. You saw that side of me when you moved into this house after Miss Callie passed on, and found me and my sweet Jane.”

Tipsy nodded. During her first summer in the house, she’d witnessed Henry’s cold, neglectful, sometimes outright cruel treatment of his wife, Jane Robinette Mott. She’d observed them in person (ghostly person, of course) and she’d also used her paranormal talents to peruse Jane and Henry’s memories. Solving Jane and Henry’s murder had taught Tipsy how to set ghosts free. Unlike Henry, Jane had long since moved on to the next phase of her afterlife.

“From what I’ve seen, you were a real piece of work in life, and in death, but you’ve changed over the past few years,” she said. “If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be one of my best friends. These days, you’re like, a paragon of wisdom and loyalty. You’re my sounding board for everything.”

“I don’t know what a sounding board is, but I sense you’re trying to flatter me out of this foul mood.”

“I’m serious. I tell you everything that’s going on in my life. I thought you reciprocated about your death, but instead you’ve been shutting me out. All over a creative brain block, which is something I totally understand. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

“It’s not just about the writer’s block. I also meant to avoid your…questions.”

“About THE GREAT STORY?”

“Yes, but also about the message.”

“Jane’s message? From the next…plane?” Tipsy always struggled to understand the destination of ghosts who moved on, but two years ago, Henry had unexpectedly received a supernatural voicemail from that unknowable place. Before she moved on herself, Catherine Porcher, the teenage schizophrenic psychic (say that three times fast) who had haunted the Bonneau House, had delivered a message from Jane. Only Henry had heard the message,

, and at first, Tipsy had questioned him about its content on a daily basis. After months of his deflection, she’d given up, under the assumption that he found it too painful to share.

“Come on, Henry,” she said. “I’d like to hear something from Jane, too, but if you truly don’t want to discuss it, I would have let it go.”

“You shouldn’t have to let it go. Jane is my wife, but she’s your friend.”

“Then why have you been so tightlipped about it?”

“It drove me zonkers—”

“Bonkers.”

“—that I couldn’t understand it. The woman I love found a way to reach me through space and time, and I can’t decipher what she’s telling me.”

“I got the impression your rewriting of THE GREAT STORY had something to do with Jane’s message.”

“I thought so, too. I tried to incorporate what I thought she may have meant into new versions of THE GREAT STORY, but I got nowhere.” He looked past the porch rails, into the awakening garden. The budding tea roses that always found their way through the porch steps. Creeping wisteria vines, so old they had knobby wooden trunks, like true trees. Two cracked cement bird baths and patchy flower beds. Bedraggled boxy hedges.

His dark blue eyes stopped on the towering magnolia tree at the edge of the property. The magnolia had its species’ trademark broad, shiny leaves, but its horizontal profile and cumbersome, low slung limbs were reminiscent of a live oak. A glorious arboreal hybrid, and the centerpiece of the yard. Jane had planted it a century ago.

“Perhaps it’s all interwoven, like the limbs of Janie’s tree,” said Henry. “I can’t write. I can’t understand her message. And lately, I can’t breathe.”

“But you don’t breathe.”

“I don’t, but it still feels like I’m suffocating. Something is crushing me. Weighing me down. It’s becoming more difficult to leave the house.”

Unlike most spirits, who were tied to their haunting place, Henry’s lifetime clairvoyance allowed him to leave Miss Callie’s house for short periods of time. After thirty minutes or so, however, the house’s paranormal magnetism pulled him back.

“Harder to leave in the first place?” asked Tipsy. “Or more painful when the house calls you back?”

“Both. Leaving itself takes more effort, as if I’m jumping rope while wearing a suit of armor. Once I escape, I feel the house’s walls closing in on me after a quarter of an hour, even if I’m standing on the wide open beach on Sullivan’s Island at low tide.”

Sounds like a recipe for serious cabin fever, said Granna.

As if validating Granna’s observation, Henry said, “Traveling helps me regain my mental clarity. Now I’m experiencing all these contrarian emotions, and I can’t even get the relief of a stroll along the Battery.”

Tipsy felt like Scott sizing up a new patient during a psychiatric consult. She held up her hand and started counting on her fingers. “Sadness, irritability, writer’s block, frustration over Jane’s message, lack of mobility…any other symptoms?”

“My thoughts are like soap bubbles,” he said. “I can balance them on my fingers for a moment, but then they burst. I’m afraid I’m losing the parts of my mind that I recovered over the past four years.”

“I don’t understand why this would be happening now.” Tipsy stood and paced the porch. “You’ve been haunting this house for a century. There are only so many variables, and Jane’s message is the most obvious one.” She stopped and planted both hands on her hips. “It’s time to fess up about the message, even if you don’t understand it.”

“I won’t argue with you. I’m getting nowhere on my own.” Henry twirled one finger and the computer spun in his direction. The keys resumed clicking and clacking, and then the computer magically faced Tipsy again. Henry had deleted the giant question mark, reduced the font, and typed up a few sentences. Tipsy squinted to read the words, as he’d changed them into a swirly script. The kind of writing one might find on the back of an old black and white photo.

 

Henry, my love, more than anything I want peace for you, but you must understand our whole story. There’s more to it than either of us know. We can only truly be at peace if you understand everything.

 

“Is this exactly what Jane said?” asked Tipsy, as she looked up at him.

“Catherine said that she memorized it, word for word. She seemed very sure of herself.”

Tipsy traced her finger along the words. “Jane wants you to be at peace. You’ve always sensed that, right?”

“Yes. That’s why I believe she wanted me to finish my book before I move on. She knows how I’ve suffered over my literary failures. Do you think the message is about my novel?”

“Honestly…no. It doesn’t sound like she’s referencing fiction. She said our story—so, y’all’s story. But don’t y’all already understand your story? Haven’t you felt at peace since you learned the truth about your deaths?” Tipsy shrugged. “Your gloomy, moody version of peace.”

“I’ve never felt as peaceful as I did those first few years after you helped us discover the truth. Not in my life, nor in my death.” He shrugged. “Apparently, my peace was fleeting.”

“But how can there be more to your deaths? Being murdered is pretty definitive, and we know what happened. Your death, and the events that led up to it. You remembered your lost week.” Like all ghosts, when Tipsy met him, Henry had no recollection of the last week or so of his life.

“I don’t remember everything that happened during the week before my death. It’s like…if I ask you what happened on an important birthday, or a specific holiday celebration. Do you remember all the details? Perhaps you wouldn’t recall a conversation from that day until someone reminded you of it.”

“Henry, this is really complicated. So many supernatural what-ifs.” Tipsy folded her arms over her chest. “You know I love you. I’ll miss the hell out of you, and I want you to be at peace as much as Jane does. But the time has come for you to move on.”

“Definitely not.”

“Huh? Why? You’ve always said that you’d move on in time. Now you have reasons to go. Imminent loss of sanity being the most pressing one.” 

“Are you sure you’re not pushing me to evacuate the house before Dr. Brandt and his children move in?”

“You know Scott and I already discussed your lingering presence. He’s good with it, or we wouldn’t be buying the house.”

In a stroke of incredible fortune, as Tipsy and Scott were getting hot-housing-market anxiety, Miss Callie’s house had become an option. Tipsy’s landlord and former brother-in-law, Jimmy Lathrop, had finally settled the lawsuit over his late mother’s estate. His siblings agreed to fire-sale the place, as is. That meant a 1960’s kitchen, tiny bathrooms, no closets, leaky roof, flood-prone backyard, cracked driveway, wood floors in need of refinishing, the aforementioned overgrown landscaping, and a questionably stable foundation. Tipsy and Scott were willing to live through years of renovations to get the size and location, and with a sale pending on Scott’s house and the stroke of a few pens, they had Miss Callie’s house under contract. They’d scheduled the Big Move in phases, starting after their Memorial Day weekend wedding.

“I told Scott you’d move on eventually,” said Tipsy. “He’s accepted the idea that you come with the house. Like the hideous linoleum and the drafty windows.”

“I like Dr. Brandt, but I find it hard to believe he’s thrilled by the idea of sharing his home and his new family with another man that he can’t see.”

“I mean…yeah, but…” Tipsy knew that Scott also liked Henry, as much as realistically possible, since the two men could never actually meet. It had crossed her mind that Scott found the whole haunted house thing weird, but he had assured her that he was onboard. She repeated his sentiments. “It’s all good. He’s onboard.”

“Hmm.” Henry’s noncommittal response hinted at doubt, but other matters were more pressing. “Jane said we need to understand our whole story, so that means she needs to understand, too. What if she’s in distress on the other side, and the only way to help her is to discover…whatever she wants me to discover?” He shook his head. “No. I’m not going

anywhere.”

“I can’t answer those questions, but you can’t sit in this house and do nothing.”

“Exactly.” He stood and walked straight through the computer and the table. The computer beeped and shut down, as if he’d tweaked an invisible electrical field. “With every mystery we’ve solved,” he said, “we’ve spoken with others to get information. The living, and the dead. There’s one person left in this world with a connection to me and Jane.”

“Proctor James,” said Tipsy. The man who had killed Jane and Henry. Who—as far as Tipsy knew—still haunted the graveyard at St. Philip’s Church.

“If he knows Jane is in need, perhaps he’ll help me.”

“It’s possible. There’s no doubt that Proctor loved Jane to the point of obsession—uh, you okay?”

Henry’s face reddened like a strawberry in the sun, and his jaw worked like he was chewing a hunk of tough beef jerky. He tugged at his collar. Tipsy thought he might rip his shirt off. A freaky idea, as she’d never considered whether ghosts could be naked.

I hope not. That would be so awkward—
Tipsy! Focus! said Granna. Talk the man down before he moves on to his pants.

“Henry…it’s okay. Shhhh…shhhh…shhhh…” She instinctively shushed him like a newborn infant. If possible, she would have picked him up and bounced him on her hip.

The shush-and-bounce routine had always worked wonders on her babies, and even sans bouncing, it worked on Henry, too. “I’m…fine,” he said. “I’m…alright.” His face gradually blanched to his normal pallor, the shade Tipsy thought of as undead white. He let go of his collar. “But it’s difficult to hear you speak of her and him.”

“Are you sure you can handle seeing him?”

He nodded. Given the skinny line of his pressed-together lips, she wasn’t convinced, but she couldn’t think of any other way to kick off this mystery. “Okay. If you’re set on it. It does seem likely that Proctor will remember something from that last week of y’all’s lives. He may even know more than you do—”

The computer rattled against the table again, and the ancient ceiling fan squeaked into motion

motion above their heads. The whole fixture wobbled in its gaping socket. Tipsy added porch fans to the list of household items to be replaced. She moved out from under it. “You’re in a bad place,” she said. “How about if I go first, and talk to him?”

“Noooooo.” Through some herculean effort, Henry got control of himself, and the fan’s menacing whirring stopped. “I must visit him myself. But I’d appreciate your company, and your discerning opinion. Can we go tomorrow? I need to rest, if I’m to make the trip downtown.”

“I can meet you at St. Philip’s after I drop Little A at school.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll go now, and try to prepare myself. Will you put my computer away after it’s properly charged?” Henry had mastered some IT terminology—computer, laptop, cursor, wi-fi, mouse—but it was still strange to hear her friend use such modern lingo.

She nodded, and Henry Mott disappeared into his supernatural repose like an email sent into cyberspace.

***

Over the past two years, Tipsy’s dear friends Shelby Patterson Callahan, Pamella Brewton, and Jillian Porcher Yates had overseen her artistic renaissance. Each woman had her own powerhouse personality and lofty social connections, and thanks to their collective efforts, prestigious galleries in Charleston, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, and Seattle had shown Tipsy’s work. Accolades rolled in, demand grew, and her prices ticked up. In addition to supplying multiple galleries, she managed a constant stream of commission work. She had no complaints about her success, but she’d gone from tossing a few balls in the air to professional juggler. The learning curve was steep, like the hill Granna bemoaned climbing on her childhood walk to school. In other words, one hell of a country mile.

In the early days of Tipsy’s career, she’d spent most of her waking hours drawing or painting. Her painter’s block had coincided with the most physically grueling years of motherhood. As a result, she’d never carried such a heavy artistic load while also managing a family.

She’d developed a frenetic routine: drop off kids at school, squeeze in some exercise, spend four or five hours painting, pick up the kids, run said kids to after school activities, make dinner while monitoring homework, bedtime routine, paint again if she still had any functioning brain cells, shower and pass out. Nothing slowed down when she wasn’t actively painting or wrangling kids. She still had to coordinate and monitor every aspect of the children’s schedules (academics, extracurriculars, healthcare, and social lives), including keeping Big Ayers informed about what was happening and what role he needed to play. She ran errands, scheduled appointments, made phone calls, answered texts and emails. She managed the business side of her artwork, which included billing, taxes, cashflow in and out of her business account, coordinating with clients and galleries, and at least attempting to regularly post artwork and monitor comments on social media.

Tipsy’s form of painting was not manual labor. She did not stand on a twenty-foot ladder in a hundred degree heat and slather Sherwin-Williams on planked wood siding. Still, her body was showing strain. Being on her feet all

day literally got on her nerves. The ache of carpal tunnel syndrome had settled into her right wrist, and the sciatic nerve pain that had plagued her throughout her pregnancies returned with a vengeance. It ran from the middle of her back, down through her right hip, and into her right calf.

The idea of slowing down never crossed her mind. She’d always dreamed of being an in-demand artist, and even with their very comfortable combined income and the house’s as-is state, Tipsy and Scott had stretched to purchase Miss Callie’s house. Her substantial contributions to their family coffers eased her mind, even as they wreaked havoc on her back.

Stretching eased the discomfort temporarily, so she’d perfected some amateur contortionist moves. She promised herself, Scott, and Pamella that she’d join a yoga studio, but a daily hour of namaste seemed an indulgence. Instead, she continued to run and lift weights, which provided the most bang for her workout buck. On the morning Henry confessed his inexplicable problems, she took thirty minutes she didn’t have and hit the pavement.

Clipped thoughts kept time with the rhythm of her own footfalls. Jane’s message. Writer’s block. Slipping sanity. Anxiety, depression, can-tank-er-ous-ness. Blended family. Blended family. Blended family. Since the day she found Henry Mott existing in her house, his problems had been her problems. By extension, his problems would soon be Scott’s.

Ugh, Granna. It’s going to be stressful enough moving three more people into the house. Now we’re also dealing with Henry’s mysterious malaise and the destruction that may accompany it.

Wait till Dr. Brandt comes home to his neatly folded underwear strewn across the bedroom, or his beloved Swiffer splintered into pieces like a used toothpick.

That will go over like an overweight pelican with one wing. Tipsy scowled as a bead of sweat dripped off her nose. Hell, Henry himself might not enjoy another alpha male in his house, plus the added chaos of two more kids.

Reality is, Henry should move on sooner than later. For everyone’s sake.

I will really miss that undead fool, but given the big picture, you’re right.

Her heart hurt at the thought of never seeing Henry again, but even her big ol’ house could feel crowded with seven living people and one dead one residing inside

it. She was fixing to create one jacked up version of the Brady Bunch, especially if the resident ghost started destroying the furnishings. Henry Mott was no Alice Nelson.

With visions of airborne boxer briefs dancing in her head, Tipsy sprinted toward the corner of Venning and Bennett Streets. She slowed for her cooldown walk, then paused on her driveway to stretch her perfidious nerves. She grabbed her right knee in her left hand and pulled it across her midsection. She clung to her picket fence with her right hand and sunk into a squat until her eyes watered.

“You okay over there? That looks darn uncomfortable.”

Tipsy looked up. A woman stood beside a red Cadillac parked in front of her next door neighbor’s house.

“I’m fine, thanks,” said Tipsy. “Just working out some kinks—”

At the sight of the woman’s face, déjà vu washed over Tipsy. She was a wiry African American lady who appeared to be about seventy years old. Her long salt and pepper braids framed her round face, and pink glasses outlined her dark eyes. She wore a short-sleeved white button down shirt, a long skirt with a blue floral pattern, and flat sandals.

The Walking Lady! Tipsy thought.

The woman flinched, as if Tipsy had shouted at her, then her polite smile widened to a warm grin. A voice spoke up in Tipsy’s mind. She’s heard it once before, on Rifle Range Road. Look who it is! Is that what you call me?

Tipsy unfurled her contorted limbs. “Yes. Since I see you walking on Rifle Range Road all the time.”

“I remember you. There was traffic, and you were thinking hard, and—”

“You spoke to me. Told me I wasn’t alone with…you know.”

“The ghosts,” said the woman, matter-of-factly.

“Right. I’m getting used to talking about them, but it’s still weird.”

“I’ve had a few more decades to get comfortable with it. What’s your name, honey?”

“Tipsy Collins. I live right here.” She pointed up at her house.

“I’m Helen Stokes. Nice to meet you. I’m dropping off dry cleaning for Mr. Quattlebaum.”

“Mr. Q. had another

bad fall, didn’t he?”

“Yes. His family finally convinced him to give up driving. He can’t pick up his shirts. He’s been a customer of ours forever. My family owns Stokes Cleaning and Alterations on Coleman Boulevard.”

“Ah! I don’t have a lot of dry cleaning in my line of work, but I’ve had dresses cleaned there. Everyone is always super friendly.”

“Nice to hear. My son runs the business. I go in a few days a week to help out—”

“That’s where you’re always walking!”

Helen nodded. “I help with bookkeeping and things. But I’m a busybody. Always have been. I told Mr. Q.’s daughter I’d drop off his clean shirts and pick up the dirty ones.”

“That’s nice of you. It’s sweet how he dresses up every day. I used to see him puttering around the neighborhood in a suit and fedora, but not so much anymore.”

“That’s the old generation. Sharp dressed men.”

“I know all about men like that. There’s a ghost in my house. Henry Mott, circa 1923.”

“Tall, red-headed fellow?”

“Yes!”

“I saw him on your porch when I picked up Mr. Q.’s shirts last week. He struck me as a bit gloomy.”

“Oh, he is. He’s even more gloomy than usual lately and…” A loose light bulb sputtered in Tipsy’s head. She screwed it in tighter, and spoke. “Hey—random thought. Henry is having some issues that I don’t quite understand. Maybe we could have a cup coffee and discuss? Since, as you said, you’ve been at this for longer than me.”

“Sure,” said Helen. “I’d be happy to—”

A buzzing roar cut Helen off. Only a chainsaw or a biblical plague of locusts could produce such a sound. ...