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nothing I could do to help her. I wouldn’t have been cruel enough to tell her that the answers just didn’t matteranyway. The past was the past and dead was dead. But my perspective had changed. I had been able to “do things.” I had been able to help—maybe just a little, and while the historical facts hadn’t been altered, little changes had been made, little changes that somehow helped the ghosts deal with their tragic situations, though I didn’t totally understand what that meant. It didn’t matter that I never knew the end results. I was glad to be of some small assistance.
    I looked at her, squeezed her hand as I smiled, and said,“Maybe.”

Chapter 2

    I made it back to bed at around 4:00 A . M . , able to easily fall back to sleep and catch a couple more hours’ rest. That was something else that had changed. My visits with the ghosts didn’t keep me up all night. I didn’t spend as much time worrying about them or trying to figure out exactly what I could do for them. I wanted to help if I could, but I was beginning to take them more in stride. But as I swung my legs off my bed again, happy that I wasn’t too worn out, I recognized my own casual attitude and a chill zipped up my back.
    â€œThese are ghosts we’re talking about,” I said aloud to myself. “They are beings that aren’t supposed to exist. I should never, ever consider them just another part of my day or night, or as something not to worry about.”
    My words were greeted by silence. I looked at the doorway and took a big sniff just to see if, perhaps, someone might have appeared. No unusual or strong smells. No scentof woodsmoke. No cowboy-hat-clad silhouette filling the space. No Jerome.
    My first ghost, Jerome Cowbender, and I had formed a complicated relationship. I had a crush on the old dead cowboy; I was pretty sure he had a crush on me. Of course, as a
real
relationship, it could never work; ghosts and live people should probably not develop crushes on each other. The heart does what the heart does, though, no matter how much you will it not to.
    I thought I’d gotten better. During Jerome’s last visit, I hadn’t kissed him on the lips—this was a good start. I told him we needed to quit flirting. He’d agreed.
    Fortunately my live boyfriend, Cliff, and I had continued to expand our relationship. Things had only gotten better and better between the two of us. We’d been high school sweethearts, but a decade or so later, after a few career changes, post his marriage and divorce and his return to Broken Rope, we had what I thought was a bright new outlook on the kind of couple we could be. Things were going great.
    Except for one thing. Okay, well, maybe two.
    The first one was that Cliff was a smart guy and he had sensed that something wasn’t quite right. I’d tried not to let my weird and probably morally corrupt feelings for the dead ghost (whom he could neither see nor communicate with) show. I’d tried to make those feelings disappear, actually. But Cliff had picked up on the fact that there was something “in between” us, something keeping me from jumping all the way into what Cliff and I could be. I told him that the “something” wasn’t his imagination, but it also wasn’t something he needed to be concerned about. There was a very weird component in my life that might make me seem distracted, but it didn’t changehow I felt about him. I even offered to tell him what it was if he really, truly wanted to know. But he needed to be more than one hundred percent sure he wanted to know because—and I said this a million times—it was unquestionably weird. Before he left for the weekend, he mentioned that he decided he wanted to know the full story, and he wanted to hear it this week when he got back. My mind was working double-time to try to figure out the best way to tell him the truth. I was