Ghostly Tours

Chapter Seven

"I want more. I want to find my strength in more than just the day to day," she muttered to Sedward. "I want to get close to the divine—find my way, grow as a person. I was a strong person as Susan. I should be even stronger now. I can be."

"Missed you stax," Sedward said.

"Missed you too," Susanna sang as she unpacked her suitcase. "Missed you like the whole world."

The singsong morphed into a popular country love song as she stripped and stepped into the shower. The words of the song echoed in the cubicle. Tears flowed with the water—tears of joy, tears of pain, tears of grief, tears of answers and relief.

A deep voice sang along with her. For a moment, she thought Sedward had found someone to imitate, but then her eyes popped open as she recognized that voice.

"Oh no," she screamed. "Not you again. You have a habit of visiting me when I'm naked," she moaned at her blue-eyed ghost.

He smiled, for yes, he could smile quite well, and sang along.

She shrugged and continued to shower, turning her back to him. They were supposed to be moving on, so why was he still here?

She couldn't ignore the spurts of joy entering her being. Even if it wasn't the tangible, in-the-flesh Shane, it was still him, and she'd missed him. Hence the grieving tears.

"Please remember me when you're out walking," he belted out the Tim McGraw song she'd begun.

"And I can't hurt you anymore..." she added at the end of the verse.

"Please remember me..." he put in the chorus.

They sang together and the words made her cry but she washed them away. Once again, he held the towel out for her—this time an opulant plum with glittery embroidery. "Where do you get these things?" she mumbled.

He engulfed her in the towel and she longed to lean up against his chest. But he slipped away in the air to the corner of the room. She dried herself and grabbed her terrycloth gown hanging on the back of the door. He followed her to her room this time and she didn't say anything. Next to her bed was a novel by one of her favorite authors and a mug of steaming hot milk with honey.

"How did you know?"

He hovered at the foot of the bed, staring at her, unblinking.

"Know what?"

"What I like. I'm Susanna. You don't know me in this life. I'm different. I'm a new me."

"Instincts, I suppose," he said.

"Why are you here?" she eventually asked after she'd sipped the soothing hot drink and laid her head back on a fluffy, large pillow he'd put against the wall because she didn't have a headboard for her bed—she'd been using an old mattress for years.

He blinked at her for so long, that she wasn't sure if he'd heard her. Maybe ghosts didn't get everything; the communication could be broken as they were on different wavelengths.

"It didn't work," he said.

"What didn't work?"

"The letter."

She gulped. "You read it?"

"Yes. The hotel staff, Ryan, Jessica, they all tried to help me. Everyone, including you, wanted me to find release from my curse."

"I don't understand."

"My therapist thought that if we cleared any karma, if we forgave each other, the tie between us would be broken and we could find closure. I thought it was the pain we'd caused each other, well, especially the pain I'd caused you, that had held me captive. When I read how you'd forgiven me, Susie, and Susanna, I felt free. It was such a release."