Reborn Yesterday (Phenomenal Fate 1)

Really, they’d only ever had one option. Knuckle down and keep going, a decision that had relieved Ginny greatly. The home might be a heap, but it was her home. One her father had built into a neighborhood landmark and managed to make a happy place, despite the dead bodies downstairs. She didn’t want to watch everything he’d worked for crumble when she was more than capable of keeping the doors open. There had to be a reason he’d spent countless hours patiently teaching her the family trade, right?

A loud crash above Ginny’s head made her drop the fork she was using to scramble her eggs. She tapped her fingers on the counter for several beats while deciding what to do. Larissa had a no wake ups, no matter the hour rule and expected Ginny to adhere to it. Okay, expected was a kind way of saying Larissa tended to throw hairbrushes or half-full glasses of water at Ginny if she even crept past her bedroom door to reach the bathroom. Many a full-to-bursting bladder had been endured since she’d been sharing a living space with her stepmother.

However. The silence that followed the loud crash convinced Ginny to leave her uncooked eggs on the counter and tiptoe slowly up the stairs.

P. Lynn Funeral Home consisted of three floors. The underground morgue, the first floor above it, which held the office, lobby and viewing areas. On the same middle floor, inaccessible to the public, was their small kitchen and dining room that could be reached through a locked corridor. Upstairs, on the top floor, lay the bedrooms. Three of them. One for Larissa, one for Ginny and an empty one Larissa used as a secondary closet.

On her way up the stairs, Ginny flexed her fingers at her sides, although no amount of warming up her digits would help catch any flying objects. Ginny was hopelessly unathletic. In middle school gym class, she’d earned the moniker No Win Gin on account of her being the kiss of death to whichever team had the misfortune of picking her last. It was just another way she’d become synonymous with bad luck around the neighborhood.

There was no sense in being tragic over it.

She had a legion of old movies to keep her company—To Catch a Thief was on the agenda for tonight—a place to live and herbs for her eggs. She could sew a mean dress. And while her profession might make people uncomfortable with their own mortality, she felt the opposite about it. People came to her on their worst day and she guided them through a process they often knew nothing about. In a way, she felt a little like a soft landing safety net for mourners who walked through the front door of P. Lynn Funeral Home. In that spirit, she often opened her meetings with a bright and cheerful, “How would you like to celebrate their life?”

An image of Jonas projected itself onto the back of her eyelids and she gave a prolonged blink to absorb it greedily. Had Jonas been given a funeral? Technically, he was dead, even if she’d never met anyone who’d crackled with more…existence.

Vitality.

Sexy sexiness.

Would he come back today? She couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t. Where their one magical encounter was their first and last one. She’d dreamed of his eyes and the touch of his fingers in her hair. Replayed their conversations over and over in her mind so she’d never forget them. His voice was stuck in her head like a favorite song.

Was it pathetic that she’d deemed their encounter monumental? That’s how it felt. She was like one of those people who claimed they’d seen God while in a coma. No one would believe her, but she’d been forever changed nonetheless.

Come back, Jonas, she said in a mental whisper, somehow positive he’d hear.

Would he listen?

Ginny deftly avoided the creaky hallway floorboard and approached Larissa’s room. The hair on the back of her neck rose the closer she got. Her stepmother never failed to sleep with the television on at medium volume, usually tuned to the shopping network, but silence reigned from the other side of the door. There wasn’t so much as a snore or a rustle of sheets.

“Curious,” Ginny whispered, her big toes climbing over one another on the carpet. “Mmmm.” She crept closer. “Larissa?”

She ducked on instinct, in preparation for a shrill screech or perhaps her father’s brass urn crashing through the closed door and rendering her unconscious. Throwing an urn would definitely be a first for Larissa, but totally in keeping with her escalating behavior. Best to be on guard.

After several more moments of quiet ticked past, Ginny straightened and closed the remaining distance to the door, curling her palm around the knob and turning. At this stage, she was definitely starting to worry.