“Everett. What was it that you did, exactly?”
“I, uh...” Everett reaches behind him and rubs his neck—a gesture that he either picked up from or passed down to Charlie. “I might have... sort of... pushed the lady down the stairs?”
Gretchen freezes with her hand inside the bread bag. “You what?”
“Not the whole way down! Just... three steps, give or take?”
“Everett! You cannot push people down the stairs, that couldkillsomeone!”
“I know, I know, it’s not great. But I panicked! They wereloving the place. Talking about making our room into a nursery, how their future children would have so much fun growing up with the goats, color options for redoing the kitchen cabinets. They could really see themselves here, and none of the repairs the property needs seemed to worry them so... I... well...”
“So you panicked and pushed a woman down the stairs?”
“Yes. Pretty much... that’s—” He nods. “Yes.”
Gretchen looks Everett in the eye. “You cannot hurt people,” she says, emphasizing her words with the butter knife in her hand.
He flinches despite the knife’s dullness and the fact that he can’t be stabbed (much to Gretchen’s current chagrin). “Okay, okay.” He pauses. “Although... a mysterious death would probably make this place pretty hard to sell, huh?”
“Everett Jebediah Waybill.” Though it seemed morbid at the time, Gretchen is grateful she agreed to stroll out to the small family graveyard on the edge of the property this morning to see his headstone. Scoldings really are more potent when you include a middle name.
“I’m just saying! I watched this episode ofDatelineonce and—”
“That’s it. No TV for the rest of the day. It’s clearly rotting your brain.”
“But Gretchen,” he whines. “I wanted to startBridgertontonight.”
She stabs the knife into the mayo. “Attempted murderers don’t get to watchBridgerton.”
“I was just trying to help.”
“Well, you took it way too far.”
Everett puts his hands on his hips. “It’s your fault, you know.”
“Excuse me? It’smyfault? How do you figure?”
“I wouldn’t have needed to do anything if you were doing abetter job of convincing Charlie not to sell. Geez, Gretch. You’ve spent the week you’ve been here—”
“Four days,” she corrects.
“—bumbling around, just hoping Charlie will suddenly believe you, and it’s not going to happen. Some flimflam lady you are! I thought you would be able to help, but so far there doesn’t seem to be any point in having you here.”
“Go to your—our—myroom,” she shouts, gesturing toward the stairs with the knife. A glob of mayonnaise catapults across the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear a word from you until after dinner.” Gretchen feels like she’s playing the mom in a family sitcom. Except instead of a rebellious teenager, she’s dealing with an inadvertently malicious himbo ghost. One apparently quite skilled at homing in on the barely healed part of her heart and ripping off the scab.
“Fine,” he shouts back. But since he can’t stomp off to express his displeasure, he reaches out and waves his hand through Gretchen’s arm. Cold bursts through her bloodstream, and her fingers go instantly numb. She barely manages to direct her hand back over the counter before the butter knife falls from it, hitting the butcher block with akonk.
“Dammit!” she yells as his lips form a perfect O of shock at her anger. “That’s the way you wanna play this? Fine! No TV for aweek!”
Everett dashes away, and only when he’s somewhere on the second floor does Gretchen hear, “That’s not fair! You’re so mean!”
At the same time, Charlie returns to the kitchen and asks, “What the hell is going on in here?”
“Your ghost cousin a million times removed or whatever is a dickbag.” It feels like she’s really glossing over the whole Everett-could-have-killed-someone-today thing, but why would Charlie believe her about that when he hasn’t believed her about anything else? “He’s banned from TV for a week. So if you see it on and I’m not around, turn it off.” She remembers suddenly her unfulfilled promise to talk to Charlie about leaving the TV on for Everett and hastily adds, “But, uh, don’t otherwise. After his punishment is over, I mean. It’s the only thing that keeps him entertained and away from me.”
“So you’re the one who keeps leaving the TV on all the time?”
“Like I said, it keeps Everett busy and out of my hair. So please leave it on. Except for this week. When you should turn it off.”
