Twelve Months of Kristal: 50 Loving States Maine

And Rodge’s words melt that angry look right off Melvin’s face.

“I love you too,” he says. “Kiss me again?”

Rodge steps back to him and slowly lowers his head. He then kisses Melvin so sweetly. By the time he’s done, my heart is a puddle of goo.

This time when Rodge steps back, he looks over at Hayato. “What did my mother think of that?” he asks.

“She was…very happy. Crying,” Hayato answers.

“Was?” Rodge asks.

Hayato gives him an apologetic head bow. “She faded halfway through the second kiss. You are happy now. And that meant she could pass on.”

“Oh…” A few emotions pass over Rodge’s face. “I just wish I could have thanked her.”

“I am sure she knew you were grateful,” Hayato answers.

I can’t help beaming as I watch the exchange. My heart is so full, and I couldn’t be prouder of Hayato.

But Melvin scrunches his face at Hayato. “Who are you again?”

“That’s Hayato. Get this, he’s a Japanese billionaire who talks to ghosts,” Rodge tells him. “He told me my mom was here and wanted me to let you in.”

Melvin inclines his head with a quizzical look. “You only let me in because a guest who claims to talk to ghosts told you to…”

“They prefer the term spirits,” I interject.

“So you all believe this man can see ghosts, too,” Melvin says, looking at us like we’re crazy. “I see…”

Melvin cuts his eyes away from Rodge like he’s now having second thoughts about their big romantic moment.

“Yes, they all believe me,” Hayato says, a proud smile almost making it to his face.

But then he turns back to Melvin and resets his voice to neutral. “And right now, one of them is telling me you always wipe your hands on your pants instead of using the hand dryers in the dining room toilet.”

Everyone looks to Melvin, who blushes. “I hate the sound hand dryers make. I mean, at least I wash them.”

“Actually, one of the spirits is saying…” Hayato begins.

“Okay, okay, I believe you!” Melvin yells out before Hayato can finish.

And we all burst out laughing.

32

Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)

“Hello?” The man who answers my calls sounds like he’s been waking and baking since the 70s.

I put the phone on speaker so that I can be hands-free. “Hi, is this Mr. Norman Rothwell?”

“You can drop the Mr. But yeah, this is Norm.”

“Hi, Norm,” I say cheerily. “I’m calling on behalf of Sara Jane McClintock.”

“Who? The only Sara Jane McClintock I know died in a sailing accident over fifty years ago!”

“Yes, that’s her. And she asked me to tell you…”

I pick up the notes Hayato gave me.

“She knows you were too busy kissing some moofy below deck to notice your girlfriend fell overboard. Everybody else felt sorry for you, but she knows the truth.”

“Wha…What? How did you know that?”

After making over a dozen of these calls today, I’ve learned to push past all the questions. Like… Who are you? Are you serious? And so, so many, how do you know that’s?

I mean, it’s not like they’d believe me if I told them.

“Also, your record deal falling through and you never getting to live out your rock star dreams even though you had rad hair? That’s because Sara Jane’s been cursing you every day from beyond the grave. With ah…career ruin, and apparently, several venereal diseases.”

“So, she’s the reason I keep on getting crabs!”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I wince at the next note. But I’ve come this far, so I might as well get it over with. “She also wants me to say fuck you, you tiny dick pothead.”

“Wait! That’s all she had to say to me?” he says, sounding offended. But then he asks, “Is she still a stone-cold fox?”

I glance at Hayato, who’s staring into what I’ve learned isn’t the distance this afternoon. A few more seconds pass, then he makes the hand sign we established to mean a ghost has successfully faded.

I let out a relieved breath, glad to have that done.

“Okay, have a nice rest of your day. Bye,” I say to Shaggy Senior.

“Wait, you can’t just hang up on me. What else did she say? How does she l—”

Proving him wrong about me not being able to hang up, I hit the call end button.

Then I grin at Hayato. “I hope she heard the part where he called her a stone-cold fox before she faded.”

“She did,” Hayato answers, his expression faintly amused. “She looked very pleased when she faded.”

“I’m glad… please tell me she really was the last one.”

I’d saved the worst call—or at least the one that went the most against my character for last. But the list of calls had already been expanded twice.

Once when a groundskeeper who’d been hermiting away in the boiler room made his way upstairs after hearing all the ghosts chattering about “the oriental who could see sheets.” And once when Declan was able to find the great-granddaughter of the son the robber baron had never acknowledged on one of those ancestry sites.