Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) Read Free

it’s not like that at all,” I said quickly. I wasn’t approaching this from the right angle. I decided to put the focus on me. “I wasn’t feeling well early this morning, so Jeremy was up with me.”
    “Are you all right?”
    “I must have eaten something bad. Once my stomach settled down, we went back to bed. Then we overslept.”
    “Oh my god, are you pregnant?”
    “Oh, for the love of God! Seriously?”
    The problem with everyone knowing each other is that, well, everyone knows each other. She laughed heartily and said, “Were you being naughty?”
    “I’m so not going to answer that.”
    Amanda laughed again and I was so grateful she couldn’t see my blushing cheeks through the phone. “So, honestly, he’s okay?”
    “He’s very okay,” I said.
    Amanda laughed more. “Now that Jeremy’s a bit more settled, we need to do another Murder Mystery night.”
    I agreed. Our last Murder Mystery was a lot of fun. Jeremy did so well, and it improved his morale greatly. We entered into a little chit-chat before Amanda said Jeremy had just pulled up, so she’d let me go. No doubt she’d also interrogate him the same way she just did with me.
    I hung up the phone, I did the dishes. By doing the dishes, I mean I shoved them all into my dishwasher without rinsing or scraping them. Then, I dumped a bunch of dishwasher powder into the machine, and put it on the “max wash” setting. Which, incidentally, was the only setting that still worked on the old thing.
    Jeremy hated that I did dishes that way but I was trying to get the damn contraption to die. Jeremy didn’t think we needed a new one because we had a “perfectly” working dishwasher. I wanted one that didn’t sound like a tropical storm was landing. I live next to the bleeping Atlantic Ocean. I know what a tropical storm sounds like…and it sounds like that damn dishwasher.
    I smiled to myself. Was this what normal life was like? No spirits. No paranormal or supernatural weird crap. Just couples bickering over an appliance. I could get used to this.
    I gathered up some of the French toast from breakfast on a plate and wrapped it in plastic wrap. I dressed in quasi-clean clothes and shoved my feet into my rubber boats. Then I trekked across my large yard to Mrs. Saunders’s house to drop off some French toast. Jeremy loved the old lady as much as I did and often made her extras. It also gave me an additional excuse to check on her every day.
    Mrs. Saunders’s house was in need of a paint job. The roof was still solid, at least, but the paint was starting to peel off the wooden boards now. She had been anxious about hiring someone to paint the house, but Jeremy offered up the services of some of the Mounties. They’d come over and scrape all of the old paint off the house; a tedious and carpal tunnel syndrome-inducing activity. Then, she could pay Amy’s brother-in-law to paint the house. He wouldn’t overcharge her and he’d do a good job.
    Plus, he’d charge less because we’d have done all of the horrible work.
    Depending on Mrs. Saunders’s mood, I’d bring it up again with Amy there. We could do it in the late spring, which could give her enough time to decide if she wanted to change the colour of the house.
    Mrs. Saunders’s granddaughter, Amy, and I had been sharing the heavy lifting of helping Mrs. Saunders stay independent in her own home. I’d learned a lot about myself in looking after Mrs. Saunders. I never cared about learning to cook, for example, nor did I care about nutrition. Kraft Dinner and wieners were fine by me. But, the old lady was a diabetic and had high blood pressure, so needed to be on a special diet.
    I even took a couple of cooking classes in Corner Brook. Jeremy used to see a specialist for his hip and a therapist for his PTSD, so I coordinated a few courses around being in the city. We’d stay overnight at one of Mrs. Saunders’s many grandchildren’s houses (who were all very happy to help out their