Free Unfinished Business An Angela Panther Novel (A Chick-lit Paranormal book) (The Angela Panther Series) by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson Page B

he couldn’t touch, see or smell it, or it didn’t personally happen to him, it wasn’t real. I’m his wife and he wanted to believe me and I could almost see the little wheels spinning around in his brain, fighting to find some way to make sense out of my admission. He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say, Ang.”
    “Well, for starters you could say you believe me and you don’t plan to have me committed.”
    “I believe that you believe you’re seeing the ghost of your mother, and I promise you, I won’t ship you off to a mental hospital. Today anyway.”
    Humph. That didn’t work like I thought it would. “Jake, I don’t want you to believe that I believe. I want you to believe what I’m telling you is actually happening.”
    He put his cigarette out on the fire pit, which annoyed the daylights out of me, but I remained silent. After almost seventeen years of marriage, I’d learned to pick my battles, at least most of the time.
    He stood up, lit up another cigarette and blew the smoke toward our cherry trees. I imagined them instantly wilting from the poison. “Honey, you know me. You know I don’t really believe in all that crap.” He paced around the chairs and sat back down. He did that when he was trying to think something through.
    “You don’t need to believe in all that crap , Jake. You just need to believe in me . I’m not asking you to put aside what you’ve believed for the past forty-five years. I’m just asking you to believe that for me, it is possible.”
    We peered at each other but didn’t say a thing.
    My mother, who had stayed silent through the bulk of this conversation, thank God, groaned. “Ang, I have an idea.”
    “Okay."
    She floated behind Jake. “Tell him I know about the prostitute.”
    My mouth dropped. My eyes shot back and forth between my mother and Jake. “What’s this about a prostitute, Jake?” I might have said that just a little bit too loud, but who wouldn’t? A prostitute?
    Jake jerked his head back and forth, and I was pretty sure he was looking for my mother. “Oh my God,” he laughed. Laughed! “Holy shit, it is true. Your mother really is a ghost, isn’t she?”
    That didn’t help me understand about the prostitute, and apparently my mother found that funny too because she was doing the whole head bob laugh thing again.
    I, however, did not find it the least bit funny. “Someone had better tell me about the freaking prostitute.” I clenched my teeth so tight I think I chipped one. “Right now.”
    Jake stopped laughing, but Ma’s head still bobbed uncontrollably. “It’s not what you think, Ang. I promise.” He suddenly stood up. “Wait. Is she here? Did she just tell you about the prostitute, Angela?” He scanned the deck suspiciously.
    The issue of my mother haunting me and Jake believing it, suddenly seemed unimportant or at least less important than the fact that my husband and a prostitute were...well, I don’t know what, dammit and that’s what ticked me off.
    Finally my mother got the head bobbing under control and spoke up. “It’s okay, Ang.” She giggled again. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He got propositioned, that’s all.”
    “So you couldn’t have just said, ask him to tell you about being propositioned by the prostitute, instead, Ma?” I swear this woman loved to light a fire under my butt just because she could.
    Jake stared at me.
    I needed to learn to meditate or I’d end up on high blood pressure meds. I probably already needed them. “She said it was nothing, that you got propositioned is all.”
    He laughed again, but the humor escaped me. “You could say that." He paused. “So she’s really here, isn’t she?”
    I avoided his question because I wasn’t quite finished with the prostitute issue. “What’s so funny about being propositioned by a prostitute, Jake?”
    Ma spoke before Jake got the chance. “It was funny because the prostitute was old enough to be his grandmother." Her head