Page 6 of First Street (Harbor View Cozy Fantasy #1)

Chapter Four

Skye

“Jo,” I gasped. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“We need to talk. Come upstairs.”

There she stood—Josephine Fitzgerald—looking as solid and alive as anyone in Harbor View. Her piercing eyes met mine, and the faint scent of lavender drifted in the air around her. But this time, she’d snuck up on me.

She had quite a history, our resident ghost. Over the years, Jo had told me everything—every vivid, painful detail of her life...and her death.

She’d been part of this house for over a century.

Back in the early 1900s, this had been her refuge.

Her best friend Esme Brooks’ home. By the time America got into World War I, she was a true flapper in spirit and style.

Jo defied the life she was born into. She laughed off society’s rules.

Flaunted expectations. Ran from her family.

The Fitzgeralds were old-money New York.

Cold, rigid, and obsessed with appearances.

To them, love didn’t matter. Only status did.

So, when Jo fell for Henry Stewart—a man who didn’t meet their standards—they made their disapproval brutally clear.

When he went off to fight in France, they used the opportunity to find her a husband. Someone of their own class.

But rather than marry the man her parents had chosen, Jo fled. She came here, to Harbor View, to wait for Henry.

But death found her first.

The Spanish flu, what Jo always called the ‘Blue Death’, swept in and took her.

She remained where she died. A spirit bound not by tragedy alone, but by memory. By love. Trapped in the one place she’d finally felt free.

She didn’t seem to mind, though.

Esme, Jo’s closest friend here in the village, had been Clare’s grandmother. For reasons she never shared, Jo had only ever revealed herself to the women in this family. And even though I was adopted, she accepted me without hesitation. She appeared to me, spoke to me, became a friend.

My mother, on the other hand, liked to dismiss Jo as a spoiled, demanding socialite from a bygone era. But that was just Clare’s usual, starchy facade. Deep down, they got along just fine. Two strong-willed women who pretended not to care, while caring deeply.

That was Clare for you. Aside from Arthur—and Bernie Doyle, her mover, handyman, and jack-of-all-trades—she rarely showed her warmer side to anyone in Harbor View, living or otherwise.

I used to think her grouchiness was a kind of armor, something she put on to protect herself and keep the world at arm’s length.

But beneath it all, this village was the only place she ever truly belonged.

She loved this house. She loved the antique business she’d built from nothing almost fifty years ago.

I’d come back to Harbor View with a plan. Sell the house and the business. Wrap up the memories and the rest of it and move on. But now, I was almost ashamed to think I hadn’t once considered what would happen to Jo.

I didn’t know many ghosts. But I knew Jo. Even in death, she carried all the feelings, moods, and stubborn conviction of someone very much alive.

How would Jo feel about someone else living in the house?

She wasn’t exactly living here, but she was still occupying the place.

And this had been her dear friend Esme’s home.

We were Esme’s family descendants, including Clare’s adoption of me.

But now, for the first time, Jo would be forced to deal with new, unrelated people.

Would she reveal herself to the next owners?

Accept them? Or maybe she’d become one of those mischievous spirits, unseen but always present.

New England towns were full of them—ghosts who lingered in houses and barns and graveyards, playing tricks, refusing to fade into oblivion.

Would Jo be one of those? A whisper in a hallway, a flickering lightbulb in the bathroom, a kitchen cabinet or door opening and shutting on its own, a creaking stair in the dead of night, a ghostly image in the background of a photo.

Or would she...well, cross over? Jo had always refused to talk about it. Truthfully, as I was growing up, I’d never wanted her to leave.

“Come upstairs now, Skye,” Jo said again.

I glanced at her. Of course, she hadn’t changed, not since the first time I saw her.

She stood now at the foot of the stairs, poised and expectant.

Her burgundy silk sheath dress clung gracefully to her slender frame, simple yet unmistakably elegant.

The fringed hem fell just below her knees in true flapper fashion.

Her hair, set in loose, glossy waves, framed her face in a way that made her look like she’d stepped straight out of a sepia-toned photograph with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald.

From the kitchen, I could hear Arthur and Ocean talking, two living voices grounding me in the present.

“I have to order their food first,” I murmured, tapping on an app and pulling up the pizza place Arthur had recommended.

“No onions or peppers for him,” Jo said. “He likes mushrooms or just plain cheese these days.”

“Since when did you become an expert on Arthur’s pizza preferences? You don’t even let him see you.”

“Since he and your mother started having dinner here or at his place five nights a week.”

It warmed my heart to know Clare hadn’t always been alone. I lived on the other side of the country, and we didn’t talk or visit as often as she would’ve liked. Still, it was comforting to know she had Arthur. Someone in her corner. Someone who cared.

I tapped the screen and ordered a cheese pizza for delivery.

“Come up to my room.”

“You mean, my room,” I corrected.

“Oh, no. You surrendered possession when you moved away,” Jo said.

And then, she melted away before my eyes.

There were a few odd things about living with a ghost. Okay, more than a few. It had taken a while for me to get my head around it all when I was a kid.

First of all, Jo was nowhere and everywhere at once. But only in this house. She decided when she wanted to have a physical presence. When she wanted to be seen, it was like having a living person in the room with me.

She’d been so gentle when she first introduced herself.

Clare had just brought me here. It started with a whisper in my ear in the first few weeks, usually as I drifted off to sleep.

Occasionally, a fleeting reflection in the mirror while I brushed my hair.

Once, I came upstairs after dinner to find the books on my shelf rearranged alphabetically, by author’s name.

During storms, she’d tap out the seconds between lightning and thunder on the windowpane.

The funny thing is, I was never afraid of Jo. Even after she fully revealed herself and became part of my daily life. Other kids had imaginary friends. I had a real ghost.

Clare was surprised Jo had introduced herself so soon after I moved in. But right then and there, she made one thing very clear. We didn’t talk about our resident spirit to anyone else.

Except Arthur. He understood. After all, his bookstore had a ghost of its own.

Henry Stewart, Jo’s intended, had been haunting the place across the street since the early 1920s.

The strange part? Arthur couldn’t see our Jo...and Clare and I couldn’t see his Henry.

I learned early on that was just how it worked with our two ghosts. First Street was little more than a lane, but it was enough to separate the two star-crossed lovers. Trapped in the two houses, they were apparently fated to forever reach but never touch, forever waiting but never reuniting.

Anyway, even after almost twenty years of being with Rhys, I’d still kept to my promise. I never mentioned her to either my husband or our daughter.

“Are you coming?” Jo’s impatient voice was in my ear.

“Jeez, Jo. I’m coming. Keep your shirt on.”

“You sound like your mother.”

I went quickly up the stairs and entered the guest room. It had been my bedroom. Long before that, it had been the room where Jo had died while staying with Esme.

Though more than two decades had passed since I moved out, Clare had kept the room almost exactly as I’d left it.

My posters still hung on the walls, and the old bookcase stood by the window.

The only major change was the bed. My childhood twin had been replaced with a queen-size bed, the one Rhys and I used whenever we visited.

And there were two new additions since our last stay.

By the window stood a long, freestanding oval mirror, one of my mother’s favorite silk scarves draped casually over the top.

And in the far corner, an antique mahogany secretary desk with carved ball-and-claw feet.

The glass-doored upper cabinet had mullioned panels and adjustable shelves.

The lower section was open, its sloped writing surface pulled down to reveal pigeonholes and tiny drawers inside.

The one window had already been opened by Ocean. As I stepped fully into the room, the door swung shut behind me.

And not from any breeze.

It was Jo. She wanted privacy.

She appeared before me, one hand on her hip. “Clare’s been gone for ten days. What took you so long?”

“So you brought me up here to chew me out?”

“In my day, you could have taken a slow train from California and still gotten to Connecticut before this.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and shook my head.

“Some of us have real lives and real responsibilities, Jo.” I knew that she was upset about Clare being gone.

But being a ghost and knowing what the afterlife was like, she should be dealing with it better than I could.

Besides, Jo was strong-willed, but she also had the sweetest disposition.

I’d never seen her cross, if this was how I could describe her mood now. “I’m here now. What’s wrong?”

“What did they tell you about what happened?”

Things started clicking into place. She couldn’t watch the news, or have someone casually stop by to fill her in. Her only sources of information were my mother, who was gone. And me.

“Arthur said she had dinner at his house and came home around eight,” I said.

“Sometime after that, she went out to the carriage house to check on something. Arthur found her the next morning when he came by to return her platter. She didn’t answer the front door, so he went into the barn.

That’s where he found her. The EMTs said she must have tripped and hit her head. ”

“No. No. No. I was afraid of that.” Jo started pacing. “They’re making it out to be an accident. That’s not what happened.”

I sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”

“She did come back around eight. We were chatting in the sitting room. She was going on about the terrible casserole Arthur made for dinner. It was something I’d never even heard of.” Jo wrinkled her nose. “What in heaven’s name is tofu?”

That was the thing about talking to a ghost from another century. She loved to talk, but was often out of touch with the modern world. Tangents were par for the course. My mother never had long conversations with Jo while I lived here. I, on the other hand, usually enjoyed them.

Until now.

“Jo, get to the point.”

Her tone changed.

“Someone was in the barn.”

I froze. “What do you mean, someone was in there?”

“We saw him come in from the street. Clare switched off the kitchen lights so we could see better. We watched from the back window as he opened the barn door and went inside.” Jo paused, shaking her head.

“Now that I think about it, the intruder could’ve been a woman.

Hard to say. They were wearing one of those heavy hooded shirts.

Not exactly stylish, but I see them often enough from the window. Every delivery person seems to?—”

“Jo, what happened?” I cut in.

“We saw him...or her...go in,” she said slowly. “And Clare went out to check.”

I shot to my feet. “She just went out there? To confront someone? Why didn’t she call 911? Or Arthur? Or anyone?”

Jo huffed. “You know your mother, hard as a walnut shell. She’d wait for Hades to freeze over before asking for help.

Five snowstorms last year, and she shoveled the entire sidewalk and driveway herself.

Every single time. And the gutters! Did you know they were clogged?

She hauled out a ladder and climbed up there like she was twenty.

Arthur was beside himself when he saw her.

And Bernie? The handyman? That man was fuming.

Called her cheap and swore she was trying to starve him out of house and home. ”

“Jo, focus ,” I said, pressing my fingers to my temples. “Please. Tell me what happened.”

Jo nodded and continued.

“Clare went into the barn,” she said quietly, her voice almost a whisper. “And I never saw her again. But a few minutes later, I did see that dark, hooded figure slip out and run down the street.”