Chapter 13: Believable as a Ghost

My mother-in-law read the first page of the folder with her lips moving slightly, as she did with menus.

"Linnea Frost," she said. "Thirty years old. Born in Dayton, Ohio."

Linnea's spoon stopped in the air.

"Her real name is on the second page," my mother-in-law went on. "I won't read it at my table. It's a perfectly good name."

She drew out a glossy sheet and laid it face up on the cloth.

It was a headshot of Linnea in a pale blue scrub top, smiling at a stethoscope.

Under it, in capital letters, the agency had printed: WARM. APPROACHABLE. BELIEVABLE AS A NURSE, A BEST FRIEND, OR A GHOST.

"That isn't me," Linnea said.

"The ear is yours."

Under the table, something touched my knuckles.

It was Phillip's hand.

It was cold, and a little damp, and it did not take mine so much as hold on to it.

I let it.

I told myself that was for the sake of the scene.

"You told my son you spent the spring in Amalfi," my mother-in-law said, "teaching English to fishermen's children."

"I did."

"I sent a man to Amalfi. He asked at the school, the church and the ferry office. Everyone was very polite, and no one had heard of you."

She turned a page.

"So I had him look in New Jersey. For eleven weeks this spring you played the maid in a dinner-theater murder mystery in Paramus."

"That was a day job," Linnea said.

"You die before the salad."

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