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Hopefully it meant he was not a killer, just somehow caught up in Joy and James’s domestic drama.

It had to be exhausting living in that kind of relationship turmoil. I wasn’t cut out for that. I liked my very stable and ordinary relationship.

Unlike Ryan when he had been alive.

I wondered if I had accidentally conjured him, because the second that thought popped into my head, he appeared in the passenger seat of my car.

“Hey, Red. Running late?”

“Yes.” I was radiating anxiety and muttering about the fact that no one would let me pull out into traffic. “Why won’t anyone let me out? So rude.”

“No one has to let you pull out. It’s active traffic. Just wait until there’s a gap.”

“I need to be at work in six minutes. I shouldn’t have met up with Sara this morning.”

“Sara? Is that the hot but crazy one?”

“I don’t think she’s crazy. Just a little stressed out.” I strained my neck to see how many cars were coming down the road. “Come on, come on.”

“You’d know something about stress. Or creating stress that doesn’t need to exist.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have bills to pay.” There was finally a gap so I turned the wheel and hit the gas.

Ryan mimed holding out for dear life. “Slow down there, Nascar.”

“Haha, you’re so funny. But seriously, Sara Murphy is just going through a transition. She had to leave New York because she ran out of money and she’s living with her parents. That’s stressful.”

“I honestly don’t care about Sara Murphy.”

I turned left on a side street, hoping to avoid hitting red lights on my way to work. I picked the street that had a school on it, so suddenly I was down to twenty miles an hour and stuck in a carpool line.

I said something I wasn’t proud of.

“I don’t really like you having a job,” Ryan said. “You’re much more tense now and that’s saying a lot.”

“One, I’ve always had a job. I just had more flexibility before. Two, you’re mean.”

Ryan laughed.

“Sara wants me to direct the play at the senior center.”

“That sounds boring.”

“It sounds stressful.”

“You don’t need more stress.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.”

“You’re really not very emotionally capable of handling much.”

I shot a glare at him.

“Eyes on the road! There’s kids everywhere!”

He startled me so much, I slammed on my brakes automatically. “Where?”

Both of our heads jerked forward when the car suddenly stopped. The car behind me tapped my bumper.