The Reason Read online

  Tears sting my eyes. "No!"

  "Yes, Kendall."

  "But ... but ... I have so many questions. I want to know my father's name. I want to know where you're from. How I can find my blood relatives. Who am I?"

  "You're Kendall Moorehead. Beloved and treasured daughter of two angels, David and Sarah, who have given you a life I never could have."

  "Oh, come on! Emily ... Mom..."

  She giggles like a girl. "All in due time. Patience, my dear."

  Man, I totally hate when grownups tell me that. Like I can't handle the truth. Who are they, Colonel Jessep?

  "Why do you have to go?" I ask softly.

  "Because for the first time, Kendall..." Emily pauses and then stares up at the ceiling. "I see the light. It's vibrant and intoxicating and I want to go into it now. I want to be at peace."

  "I want you to too." I know I'm a selfish cow wanting her to stay. "I can't do this without you. I can't ghost hunt and do psychic readings. I certainly can't face Sherry Biddison tonight."

  It's almost as if her finger lifts my chin and her face is directly in front of me. Eyes that match my own gaze down at me, warming my insides. "You can do anything, Kendall. Sherry's not as bad as you're giving her credit for. She's misguided and confused. She needs you to lead her into the light, just like you've done for me. Do what God intended for you, my sweet."

  With that, her wispy lips graze my forehead in a tingle I sense in my toes. The tears I shed are for our lost relationship, the closeness we could have shared, but mostly out of gratitude for having a guiding spirit with me all these years.

  "Always love and appreciate the Mooreheads. I can't tell you not to search out our family. Please do remember the ones who chose you."

  "I promise, Mom."

  And just like that, Emily Faulkner, my spirit guide, my first apparition—my birth mother—dissolves away, like so many other ghosts that I have helped. Only this is the most important one ever.

  For the moment, the loneliness is palpable. Like a part of me is gone.

  "I'll make you proud of me. I'll fight the good fight tonight and cross Sherry Biddison over. I won't let anything stop me."

  I love you, Kendall... and then she's gone.

  Emily is finally at peace.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "ARE YOU GOING TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS, KENDALL?" Celia asks.

  I stare up at the grand staircase in Mayor Shy's mansion. The same steps I tumbled down to my near death thanks to Sherry Biddison. I won't let her hatefulness and resentment stop me this time. I have to get through this for everyone's sake, especially my own.

  "I'm on it, Celia."

  "Okay. Base camp is set up, Becca's got the recorders in place, Taylor's wired all of the hot spots with the infrared cameras, and we're ready to go."

  A mustiness fills the air, tickling my nose with a time long gone by. A time when women didn't have the rights that men did. An era of discord between nations. Brother against brother. Families against families, all for the love of cotton, slaves, and arrogance, as Rhett Butler so aptly put it. How does Sherry Biddison fit into this puzzle? What is keeping her here? I aim to find out so we can end this once and for all. 'Cause, damn it ... I need a break. I can't keep up this pace. I've got midterms next week. I've got college apps I need to start filling out. And I have a long-lost family I need to begin searching for.

  After tonight.

  "Is everyone ready?" I ask. We have more people on our hunt tonight. Loreen and Father Massimo are here for protection. Loreen sprayed each of us with her sage and holy water mixture. Father Mass said a prayer and blessed us all with the sign of the cross on each forehead. I've been praying non-stop since I made the executive decision to do this one more time. God is with me ... and Emily's strength flows through my veins.

  Shelby-Nichole sits back, taking it all in but afraid to get more involved after what happened last time. Her boyfriend—well, I think they're now boyfriend and girlfriend—Colton stays by her side. Intuition tells me that he totally digs her and thinks she's the coolest person ever. He doesn't want anything to jeopardize her well-being. Sort of like my Jason, who, despite having to hop a flight westward to Alaska with his father and sister tomorrow night, is here with me.

  Mayor Shy is dressed in jeans and a sparkly tank top, as if she's showing these spirits that they won't alter her life. However, I know different. She has been in touch with relatives in California and wants nothing more than to pack up Shelby-Nichole and get the hell out of Dodge ... or Radisson, as the case may be. Civic duty and a promise to her deceased husband, Mayer, keeps her riveted in place as we try to rid this house of the troubled spirit that so needs to slip into the light and into eternal peace.

  "We have one more person joining us tonight," Loreen says to me with a nudge in my side.

  In the doorway stands my mother. Not Emily, but Sarah Moorehead. Her usual nurse's couture has been replaced by jeans and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt.

  Our hands unite and she draws me to her. "I'm here for you, baby. Anything you need."

  "Just you," I say muffled into her chest. "Don't be scared by what you might see tonight. I'm surrounded by my friends and the proper supervision. And now that you're here, Mom, I'm not so frightened."

  "I love you so much, Kendall. I couldn't love you more if I had grown you in my belly. You're a part of me. You are my daughter."

  "I know, Mommy."

  Her free hand runs through my hair, which I've pulled back from my face with tiny clips. I have to be able to see everything clearly, whether it's psychically or for real. No surprises tonight. No beeyotch of a ghost is going to catch me off-guard again.

  An hour later, we have plenty of temperature spikes, some EMF activity, and a handful of semi-discernible EVPs; however, no sign of Sherry Biddison.

  Celia adjusts on the carpet next to me, setting her K-II meter on the floor and stretching her long legs out. "You know, this is the thing that all the millions of fans of the paranormal TV shows don't understand. You don't sit here for half an hour—twenty-two minutes if you take out the commercials—and get evidence upon evidence. This is tedious and often boring work."

  Taylor clicks her tongue. "I prefer this to attempted murder on my friends."

  Becca bites her bottom lip. "This might not be a popular thing to suggest, considering what happened the last time we were here, but I think we need to return to the upstairs landing. That's where Sherry showed herself before. I guarantee you we'll see her there again."

  "I agree," Loreen says.

  Reluctantly, I follow my group up the carpeted stairs, trying to cram down the creepy sensation slithering up my back.

  No sooner do we get settled than Loreen begins to feel something. "She's near."

  Well, then she needs to stay the hell away from me. I'm as locked up as a foreclosed home. I will not allow this spirit to enter me tonight. I will not grant her access to any part of my body, mind, or soul. All I can do is try to talk some sense into her if she shows herself.

  "Kendall, are you going to attempt to channel?" Loreen asks.

  "No," I say firmly. An apparition begins to take shape three feet in front of me. I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid to look at it at first. Then I remember Emily's instructions, that I've got to face this and do what God intended for me.

  "Sherry Biddison," I begin. "I know you're here."

  "Spike on the EMF," Celia reports.

  Taylor adds, "I'm seeing streaks of light over there on the infrared camera."

  "Keep it up, Kendall." Loreen's encouragement warms me and gives me daring.

  "Talk to us, Sherry. Quit being such a royal bitch and just tell me your story. You've hurt Mayor Shy, you've scared the shit out of Shelby-Nichole, and you put me in intensive care for four days. We're all women. Part of the sisterhood, ya know? We can work this out."

  Loreen's eyes roll up in her head and she begins to shake. Bless her heart—she's taking on the channeling because she knows I'm not physi
cally strong enough for it. I can, however, initiate the interview.

  Scooting over to my friend, I ask, "Sherry, are you with us?"

  The voice that leaves Loreen's lips isn't Loreen's at all. It's scratchy and deeper. It's definitely Sherry Biddison in our midst.

  "Why are you back?" Sherry bellows out, through Loreen.

  "Because ... we have unfinished business."

  I see the temperature gauge on Celia's computer screen indicate a severe drop in the area. This ghost is doing her best to manifest to me by using the energy around us.

  "I'm tired. So ... tired," she says.

  I soften my approach. "Then let us help you."

  "You'll just lock me up like they did," Sherry says.

  "Who locked you up?"

  "My parents did when I fell in love with a boy in town who had to go off and fight the war. I was with child and they were ashamed." Loreen rocks back and forth, moaning and groaning with Sherry's obvious burden. "They took my baby from me. They kept me hidden from the town."

  Good God, people were horrible to each other back in the olden days. Would we still be locking one another up and stealing babies and such if we didn't have television, video games, and the Internet? How did we survive as a culture with such obsolete mores and codes governing our family lives? No wonder Sherry's pissed off at the entire human race. I suppose I would be too.

  Then I think of my birth mother. Of Emily. Where was she going, all pregnant like that with me, so many years ago? Was she fleeing an abusive relationship? Was she ashamed of her predicament? Are people seriously that terrible to one another now?

  I shake these thoughts out of my head. It's not about me right now. I'm starting to actually hurt for Sherry Biddison. The woman can only give what she received herself. Abuse, hatred, and suffering. These things begat more of the same in her life, it seemed.

  "Sherry ... how long did they have you locked up?"

  Loreen's eyes shift about as if she—Sherry—is deciding whether to trust me or not.

  "Please, Sherry."

  "Six. Six years."

  "Oh, dear Lord," Taylor says, clasping her hand over her mouth.

  That's completely insane. I try to reach out with my psychic feelings to let Sherry know how appalled we are by this bit of news. It's not something you read in the annals of city history. Taint like that only gets covered up, hidden in a memory attic of its own.

  "Who did this to you?"

  "My own parents!"

  "Okay, now that's just sick," Becca comments. I couldn't agree more.

  Sherry's voice softens some as we're beginning to get to her. "It was only after the War of Northern Aggression that I was allowed outside. By then, I knew nothing of the outside world. The days of cotillions and handsome suitors were over. What lay ahead for the South was turmoil and the task of cleaning up the men's mess of war. We had very little food. No security in our lives. I returned to the attic, watching as a tattered town began to rebuild and wondering if I would ever find my place within it."

  Loreen breathes heavily, gasping a bit as Sherry seems to be making herself comfortable in my friend's skin. Then Loreen's own voice breaks through. "Keep going, Kendall. You're helping."

  Taylor continues to take pictures of Loreen using the burst mode on her camera. It's a bit of a psychotic photo shoot, but there's no telling what might materialize when we review it.

  The closer I stare at Loreen, the more I see that it's not her face at all. It's the weathered, aged, bitter face of Sherry Biddison when she was older. The one who pushed me down the stairs in an attempt to end my life. I have to forgive her that, though. I honestly don't think she meant to harm me, per se. The malady of insanity still boils within, even in death.

  Celia pipes up. "How did you come to be First Lady of this town that you so feared?"

  Sherry's sadistic laugh tumbles from Loreen's lips. "Ahh-ha-ha-ha ... arrangements of man. In an exchange for some very strategic farmland on the outskirts of the city, my own father traded me in near prostitution to a half-breed."

  "An Indian?" Taylor asks.

  "No! A half Yankee!"

  Are we back to that? It's amazing America succeeded, with the regions of our country so divided. "Was he a Union soldier?"

  Loreen bobs and weaves, catching herself with her palms on the floor. "Southern born. West Point educated. Served in the Twentieth Maine. Harlan Biddison. Came back to his roots to help the South rebound after she fell so ingloriously."

  "There's a portrait of him in the formal dining room," Donn informs us. "He was known in our city records as a good and decent man."

  I remember pieces of the story now. "And you had a son with him, right, Sherry?"

  "Aye. My Harlan Jr. He was mine and no one was going to take him away from me. I overcame the madness to take care of him. He was my world."

  Becca whispers low to me. "I'm sure he was one hell of a mama's boy."

  "No kidding," Jason says.

  "Shhh." I don't want anything to push Sherry away when we're so close with her. My heart aches with the suffering the woman experienced. Thuds in my chest reverberate into my head, causing an anvil of a migraine. It seems to press against my temporal lobe, squeezing out all logic and sensibility. "I need to think," I say.

  My fingers fly to my temples, rubbing away at the empathic site. A doctor I'm not, but the diagnosis is becoming clear to me. Something is pressing against Sherry's brain. Certain blood vessels in the head aren't receiving enough oxygen, thus leading to her madness. Of course, it didn't help that her family locked her away. In later years, when she was a wife and mother, the pressure built on a daily basis, turning her into a deranged being.

  Loreen's hands fly to her head as well. She rubs hard as if connected to what I'm picking up. Today, a CT scan could easily find the problem. Chemo, radiation, surgery, or even laser treatment might be able to destroy such a manifestation of runaway cell division.

  In one simple word. "Cancer," I say in a hissed breath.

  Celia flinches. "Poor woman. She had no clue about her madness."

  "Apparently not." With all the energy I can allow my still-healing body to project, I mentally beg Sherry to show herself to me. In seconds, the transparent figure of the sad woman manifests before me.

  "Ho. Ly. Shiite Muslim!" Celia exclaims. "I-I-I ... am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

  "Très excellent!" Taylor joins in. She grabs her video camera and points it in the direction we are all—and I mean every single one of us in the room, including my mother, who gasps audibly—seeing the apparition of Sherry Biddison.

  My mom speaks up. "Cancer would have been near impossible to diagnose properly in those days. From the talk of her madness, it could have been that the pressure was so intense in her skull from the tumor that she had no way to control her actions."

  "Thanks, Mom." I face the apparition that is now taking full shape.

  "She's there, right?" Celia asks.

  "Yep. Your first. Welcome to my world."

  Sherry apparently releases Loreen from the channeling session because Loreen collapses into Massimo's arms and startles awake.

  "You're okay, Loreen," he says, so comfortingly. "I've got you."

  Sherry Biddison has a captive audience. We are all paying rapt attention, watching her float about four inches off the ground. Donn's mouth hangs open, and Shelby-Nichole too moves in to get a better look. It's not every day a normal—nonsensitive—person is treated to an FBA. That's Celia tech talk for full-body apparition. (Okay, so she wasn't the one who coined it, but that's who I learned it from.)

  "Why did you try to hurt your daughter-in-law, Virgilian?" I ask to the ghost's face.

  Sherry frowns. "She took away my Harlan Jr."

  "Not really," I note. "She only married him and gave him a child."

  "He-he-he was all I had," she says, so eerily quiet that I get chill bumps on my arms. Only now do I realize that the tumor coupled with the madness of being locked away was more
than Sherry could stand. With no medicine to help her, she gave in to her neurosis.

  It's so clear to me. If we could have had this convo the last time we were here, I might not have been attacked and injured so badly. Then again, I wouldn't have had the experience with Grandma Ethel and Emily that I had. I wouldn't have learned the truth about my life. And I wouldn't have a future quest in life as strong as the one I have now.

  "You have to forgive yourself, Sherry. You have to let go of the hatred. You have to release the hurt built up inside of you."

  My team gathers around, everyone still in awe of the figure before us. It's like no one is breathing or even thinking as they wait to see what is next.

  Even now, it's apparent: Sherry trusts no one.

  I walk toward her bravely, knowing she could very well take a pop at me again. "I understand what you're feeling, Sherry—I too have been lied to all of my life." I try not to look at Mom because I have no need to hurt her. However, her motherly eyes touch me and she smiles. She's aware of what I have to do here.

  Another step in Sherry's direction. "You have to trust your family, though, to protect you and do the things they feel are in your best interest when you're too young to understand yourself. It may not seem right at the time—and I don't condone your parents locking you away—but you must forgive. Not only your parents but your husband for whatever his intentions were and your son for sharing his love with someone else."

  Celia clears her throat slightly. "Ummm ... like, hi, Sherry. Celia Nichols here. I did some research on Mayor Biddison and his son, who followed in his footsteps as a mayor of Radisson." Her hands shake nervously as she continues. "Did you know that the baby Virgilian was carrying was a little girl? She and Harlan Jr. named her Sherilyn, in your honor."

  Sherry breaks down in tears. "Lord have mercy. After what I tried to do to her?"

  "You were her family," I say. "She only wanted what was best."

  An obviously moved Sherry puts her hands to her chest. "I wanted her to suffer the pain and heartache I'd felt. I'd done so many things wrong, and I suppose I wasn't responsible for everything I did—with this cancer you say I had. I am truly sorry for what I did to Virgilian. This is why I have been stuck in this manor. Day in and day out of watching happy families, needing them to be in as much pain as I was in. That was wrong of me."