Chapter 6: The Ghost That Didn't Come

At two in the morning I woke up to the sound of Mom walking in circles.

It was the slow sound of slippers going from the stove to the window and back.

She had not slept a full night in ten years, and for nine and a half of them I had been the cure.

I took the white bedsheet off my bed without thinking about it.

I was halfway down the stairs before I remembered I was closed.

The kitchen light was on.

Mom sat at the table in her robe with a cup of tea gone cold and the laptop open to the badger video.

She was reading the comments.

Every time a new one loaded she flinched, and then she scrolled down and read the next.

One of them said, "Somebody check on that poor mother," and she read that one aloud to the empty room.

I stood in the doorway with the sheet over my arm.

She looked up and saw it, and her whole face softened.

"Oh, honey," she said. "You don't have to."

"I know."

That was where the bit started.

I pulled the sheet over my head, stood very straight, and said in my deepest ghost voice, "Carolyn Halvorson."

"Oh no," Mom said, already smiling.

"Your request for an early grave has been..."

I stopped.

The sheet was over my face, and it was warm and white and smelled like detergent.

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