Free The Woman Next Door by T. M. Wright

by the intrusion. She considered not answering, and waiting for whoever it was to go away, but decided that her private thoughts weren't leading her anywhere, that, indeed, they were tending toward the depressive.
    She wheeled herself to the door, turned the knob. "Stand back, please," she said, because Tim had installed the door so that it opened outward, toward the back of the small porch. She heard shuffling noises on the porch. She pushed the door open.
    The woman was about Christine's age, maybe a year or two older, Christine thought, and quite tall. She had the kind of soft, fair prettiness that would endure well into old age.
    "Hi," she said, and smiled warmly. "My name's Becky Foster. We're neighbors."
    It was a proclamation obviously designed as an invitation to friendship. Christine's smile in return was spontaneous. She wheeled her chair backward a few feet. "Come in, please." And she was suddenly happy for the intrusion.
    Â 
    "W e live in a haunted house," Becky Foster explained. They were in the living room, Becky in Tim's old recliner, Christine facing her from a few feet away. "But then," Becky continued matter-of-factly, "everyone in Cornhill lives in a haunted house."
    "I'm fascinated," Christine said, grinning. "Do I live in a haunted house, too?"
    "It can't be helped." She held her hands out to the side, palms up in a gesture of helplessness. "You buy the house, you buy the ghost. Now, let me see . . . ." She pretended to think a moment. "Oh, yes. Your ghost—this is all true—is the ghost of a woman who was killed here about thirty years ago, over thirty years ago: nineteen fifty. She was doing something in what was then the kitchen. I got all this from people like George Fox and Irene Norton. They've been here a long, long time, Christine. They're practically fixtures in Cornhill, like the streetlamps." She paused, then: "Where was I? Oh, yes, your ghost. As I was saying, she was doing something in the kitchen, something very domestic, I'm sure, and it was winter, and there was all this snow piled up on the roof—"
    "Don't tell me, Becky. You'll scare me to death."
    "No I won't; you look pretty tough." Christine liked that. Becky continued: "Lots of snow, must have been ten feet of it." She paused, put her hand up as if to stop herself. "No, that's a gross exaggeration, a gross exaggeration. There was no more than five feet of snow on the roof—that's what George told me. Anyway, however much it was, it was enough to cave the roof in, and there she was, this nice domestic woman doing her crude domestic thing in her tiny kitchen, and whoosh!—the roof fell right on top of her."
    "That's horrible; the poor woman!"
    "Oh, she was poor. Everyone in Cornhill was poor in nineteen fifty. But, tell me, have you . . . felt her around this place? You know, thought someone was watching you, felt her presence lurking in doorways, that sort of thing?"
    "No, but I'm sure I will now."
    "I don't think so. You see, when I moved in about six years ago, I was told all about my ghost—a Confederate soldier, George Fox said. A spy. He made it all the way to my house—no one knows what his mission was; he probably had a lover up here—then he died of pneumonia in what turned out to be my living room. I've never seen him, though God knows I've looked. So I wouldn't worry. There may be a hundred ghosts in Cornhill, a thousand, but no one has actually seen one in the flesh, so to speak." She paused to change the subject. "So, tell me, what do you do?"
    "Do?"
    "To keep yourself sane."
    "Oh. I paint. At least I used to."
    "Why used to? Don't tell me you've given it up."
    "I guess you could say I'm in a slump. From moving, I suppose."
    "Am I prying?"
    "Yes, but I don't mind."
    "You're very honest. That's good—so am I. Maybe we'll get along." She glanced around. "I don't see any of your work up."
    "You should have seen our other place. I doubt there was a square inch of free wall space. But here .