Free Wine & Roses by Susan R. Hughes

see her with a new man in her life. Had Jason been feeling better, Abby might have wound up back at his house with him, but she was glad all the same to be headed home. Contented but bone-tired, she looked forward to a full night’s sleep.
    As she pressed the gas pedal to cross the intersection, something caught her eye and she stopped the car abruptly, leaning her forehead against the window to gaze up at the inn’s second floor.A figure stood framed in the window of the darkened room directly above the pub. It looked like a young woman wearing a loose garment, possibly a billowy dress or a nightgown, her long dark hair hanging about her shoulders. There was something strange about the figure that kept Abby rooted to the spot, her car idling in the middle of the empty intersection. She pressed the button to lower the window, hoping to get a better look—but by the time she was able to poke her head out into the clear night air, the woman had vanished.
    For another long moment Abby remained still, staring up at the empty window as she tried to puzzle out what was bothering her about the woman she’d seen. As she slowly came to grasp what is was, her heart began to pound heavily, and immediately she came to doubt her memory of what she’d seen only moments before.
    The sudden blare of a car horn from behind jolted her, spurring her to drive forward. She pulled over by the curb next to the inn, cutting the engine, and sat for a few minutes, contemplating whether to go inside or just drive home and get the sleep she obviously needed.
    Abby, get ahold of herself. It was just a guest looking out the window. Go home to bed and forget about it.
    She grasped the key in the ignition, began to turn it, then dropped her hand. How would she sleep tonight without at least checking into it?
    Tucking the key into her purse, Abby finally stepped out of her car and headed into the inn. She found the night manager, Oscar, tidying the front desk.
    “Evening, Abby. How was the launch?”
    “Not bad,” she replied uneasily, clutching her purse to her chest as she considered her next move.
    “What brings you by?” The burly Englishman eyed her with curiosity as he continued to shuffle a handful of papers into a neat stack.
    Her heart having resumed its normal pace, Abby began to feel foolish for coming in. But now that she was here, she might as well tell him why. “I saw someone in the window upstairs just now. A woman. It was just … sort of strange.”
    Oscar’s gaze narrowed. “How so?”
    Abby hesitated, sinking her teeth into her lower lip. How could she explain that the woman she saw in the window looked … well … sort of transparent ? The woman had been standing between the pane and the closed curtains, but Abby could have sworn that the portion of the curtain that should have been behind the figure, blocked from view, was somehow still visible. But how could it be? Surely it must have been a trick of the light—or a trick of the darkness.
    “I don’t know,” she ended up replying. “Who’s staying in the room directly above?”
    “An older couple,” Oscar said. “But they’ve gone out to the theatre.”
    “This woman looked young to me.”
    Oscar’s thick black brows notched up slightly. “You’re not the first one to see her,” he said casually.
    Abby stared at him. “Surely you’re not suggesting it was the ghost of Rebecca Norris.”
    Oscar leaned across the desk, holding her gaze with a sober look. “Abby, I put no stock in ghost stories before I took this job. But I’ve seen things and heard things here that I can’t explain. The other night, a chair in one of the rooms was rocking all by itself. Back and forth in a steady rhythm, like someone was sitting in it.” He gestured with his hand, emulating the motion. “I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw it.”
    Abby frowned at him; though dubious, she felt the flesh on her arms prickle at his words. “Maybe there was a draft.”
    “There