Free Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy by JENNIFER ALLISON Page A

wife of a soldier who had died?
    â€œYes, I don’t doubt that it was a ghost,” Mary Louise repeated. “We have a ghost here in this house, too.”
    â€œNot anymore,” said Darla, tersely. “He’s gone now.”
    â€œDarla used to see him. She had quite a gift for seeing ghosts when she was a little girl.”
    â€œShe did?!” Gilda was fascinated.
    â€œMom, do you have to talk about this?”
    â€œHoney, Gilda is interested in ghosts.”
    Darla sighed. Her knee bounced nervously.
    â€œAnyway,” Mary Louise continued, “when Darla was younger, she used to tell me about a little ‘ghostly friend’ she would see in our house. She said he slept in her bed.”
    â€œNo,” Darla countered, “he slept on the floor in my room.”
    â€œI just assumed it was a typical imaginary friend,” Darla’s mother continued, “but then Darla began to tell me details about this boy’s entire life.” She eyed the lapful of crumbs on Darla’s shorts and handed her daughter a napkin across the coffee table. “Darla said his name was Tom, and that he had been killed, and that he died in our house.
    â€œWell, I thought this was a little strange. And Darla kept going on and on about this boy. I was beginning to worry, because she kept talking about him and by now she was getting a bit older— too old for an imaginary friend , I thought. So finally I decided I might as well do some research to find out whether a boy fitting her description had ever lived in this house. I went down to the historical society and looked through newspaper articles and records. And what do you know: One of the families who lived here actually did have a boy who was killed. He was hit by a stagecoach. We think he must have died in Darla’s bedroom.”
    Gilda observed Darla, who was busy breaking another cookie into tiny pieces. She hates talking about this stuff, Gilda thought. But why? Gilda realized that she also felt a sudden pang of jealousy toward Darla. This seventh grader had access to what seemed a veritable cornucopia of ghosts in St. Augustine, and she apparently had been born with the gift of psychic abilities without even having to try to develop them. Gilda had been working hard for years, and still she had to rely on dreams, hunches, and a healthy dose of traditional detective work rather than clear visions of ghosts to solve her mysteries. What would it be like to see and hear a ghost so clearly that he or she became an actual friend ? And what would it be like to have a mother who took enough interest in ghost hunting to actually seek out some useful information about a haunting instead of saying that it was just a “spooky game”?
    On the other hand, Gilda thought, if Mom ever tried to help me solve a mystery, I’d probably just get annoyed with her.
    â€œThat’s an amazing story,” said Gilda. “And it sounds like you have a pretty strong psychic talent, Darla.”
    â€œNot anymore,” said Darla. “It kind of stopped.”
    This was interesting. Could you lose psychic abilities the way some people forgot entire languages when they stopped speaking them? “Any idea why it stopped?”
    Darla shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
    â€œAfter I realized that Darla had actually seen a ghost,” said Mary Louise, stirring her sweet tea with a long spoon, “a lot of people around here wanted to talk to her about it. In fact, one of those ghost-hunter television shows even came to our house to do a feature! It was very exciting.” She paused and stared at Darla, who was brushing crumbs from her lap onto the floor. “But maybe it was all too much; Darla was a little shy—”
    â€œI wasn’t shy, Mom; I just didn’t see the ghost when everyone wanted me to.”
    Gilda wondered whether even ghost hunting could become a chore like doing math homework once adults