Love At First Fright

1

Rosemary was ten years old the first time she saw a ghost. She’d been sipping a cream soda in the cosy wallpapered kitchen of her grandmother’s house, the overhead fan struggling to create even a feeble breeze in the sticky Georgia heat. Her parents never let her have soda, so that’s how Rosemary knew, fingers tracing the strawberry pattern on the tablecloth, that the thing they’d all been dreading had finally happened: her grandmother had passed away.

Not that she quite understood what that meant in practice. Characters died in books all the time, but that didn’t count, because you could just start the book from scratch and they’d be alive again. In real life she supposed it would be different.

But then Rosemary’s grandmother walked into the kitchen. Rosemary looked up at her; she certainly didn’t look like she was dying. If anything, there was more colour in her cheeks, and her hair wasn’t parchment white anymore but a fiery red, just like Rosemary’s own. Even the wrinkles etched around her eyes appeared to have shallowed and smoothed.

She didn’t look like the ghosts in the stories Rosemary read, either—there were no white bedsheets in sight—but there was a softening in the air around her, a sort of glowing haze that enveloped her as she reached out a hand and ruffled Rosemary’s ruddy waves.

“Hey, honey,” Nana said.

“Are you a ghost?” Rosemary blurted out. “Or an angel?” She’d been taught about angels in Sunday school, but she read books about ghosts and monsters when no one was looking.

Her nana chuckled, looking down at herself.

“Well, I don’t have wings, so let’s say I’m a ghost. But listen, honey, I don’t have long before I go.”

“Go where?”

“Somewhere good and peaceful, I think. Do you want to do a little cooking before I go? Maybe we make your mama some of my strawberry jam to cheer her up.”

She pulled Rosemary out of her chair with arms much stronger than she remembered. Years—and many ghostly experiences—later, Rosemary would understand that this was because her grandmother had died only moments before.

Tying an apron around Rosemary, Nana instructed her to fetch some measuring bowls from the cupboards, and to grab a fresh punnet of strawberries from the fridge.

“These ones still have little bugs on them, that’s how you know they’re fresh.” Her grandmother pointed them out, then showed Rosemary how to properly wash and cut the strawberries.

They spent the next hour or so making a batch of her nana’s strawberry jam. The air in the kitchen grew sweet with sugar and the tanginess of the fruit, and Rosemary licked sweet strawberry juice off her fingers.

“Half sugar, half fruit, and then a little bit of lemon juice to seal it all up,” her grandmother explained, leaning against the counter as Rosemary stirred the bubbling concoction.

“I’ve always loved this kitchen,” Nana said, running a hand on the wooden countertop. “I used to bake with your mama here all the time when she was as little as you.”

“I’m not that little.”

“Of course not, honey.” Her nana looked wistfully out of the window to the overgrown yard. “You see that tree? The short, stubby-looking one?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Every spring we’d get redwing blackbirds coming to visit, and they would spend all morning singing in that tree. You can tell they aren’t normal blackbirds because they have a badge of red and gold on their breasts. Such pretty birds. You tell your mama that’s where I want to be.”

Rosemary’s grandmother had been a bit of an amateur ornithologist in her time, a hobby which Rosemary’s mama thought was a little silly, but Rosemary secretly loved.

“Will we still be able to visit you?” Rosemary asked.

Her grandmother frowned.

“You can visit me at that tree, or at my grave, but I won’t be here, not like this.” She sighed.

“What is it, Nana?”

“Oh, I just realised this is the last time I get to see this view. Someone is going to need to water my rosebushes.”

Her nana pressed a feather-light kiss to her cheek. “I wish I could have stayed longer to see you grow up into a young woman, but you’re going to be fine, aren’t you?” She gave Rosemary a knowing look. “And listen, honey, I think it’s best if you don’t tell anyone about this.”

“About making jam?”

“No, you can tell them about the jam. But most people can’t see ghosts, and some might not understand. Some of them might not believe you when you tell them I helped you. I don’t want you to get into any trouble, understand?”

Rosemary nodded and then asked, “Could you see ghosts too?”

“I could. That’s why I wanted to see you before I left. Not many people have this gift, so unless you tell a ghost you can see them, they won’t know. But lots of them have interesting stories, especially the really old ones. I got this jam recipe from an old pastry chef who lived over in Keller.” She grinned, and Rosemary grinned back.

Tilting their heads over the pot, they sniffed the almost buttery sweetness of the jam.

“One final touch to make it perfect,” her grandmother said, pulling a little brown glass jar out of a cupboard. “The trick to the perfect strawberry jam is a teaspoon of rosewater.”

The heady scent of roses wafted through the kitchen.

Rosemary felt it then, a swoop in the pit of her stomach followed by a soft absence. Despite the summer heat, the kitchen felt colder. Her nana was gone.

“Rosemary, what are you doing?” Her mother burst into the kitchen, hauling Rosemary off the stool she was standing on, switching off the gas. Her dad hovered in the doorway, aggressively swiping tears from his cheeks.

“What were you—Were you making jam?” Her mother looked at the pot and the pile of strawberry stems on the counter. She sniffed the air.

“Did you add rosewater to it?” She looked at her daughter, confusion and incredulity on her face.

“It was Nana’s secret recipe.”

At the mention of her mother, Rosemary’s mom crumpled and pulled her daughter to her.

“Sweetheart, I’m not angry about the jam. But there’s something I need to tell you, okay? Why don’t you come with me and we go sit on Nana’s garden swing for a bit?”

As they left the kitchen, Rosemary stole a glance over her shoulder at the empty kitchen behind her, the steam rising from the cooling pot of jam, and knew she had just inherited a strange, but exciting, secret.

The ghost Rosemary was watching now was much younger than her grandmother’s ghost had been, nineteen years ago. Unlike her grandmother’s ghost, this one was greying at the edges and had a semitranslucence to it. She’d clearly been around for a while.

She was wearing a chunky knit cardigan that looked distinctly ’80s to Rosemary’s eye, though she couldn’t be sure, and was reading a bodice-ripping Regency romance over the shoulder of another customer in the bookstore. Most ghosts had the ability to hold physical objects but tried to avoid spooking the living folks around them (although not always). Accidentally revealing yourself could end up with ghost-hunting television shows asking you to knock three times if you were present, when all you wanted was to be left in peace.

Rosemary would bet that when the store closed, this ghost would be here flipping through books all night. As afterlives went, it was a pretty sweet deal.

“I think we’ll open up the floor to questions now. Does anyone have anything they’d like to ask our terrifying trio here?” Max, bookseller extraordinaire and today’s panel moderator, asked the crowd seated in the horror section of Tickled Ink bookstore, snapping Rosemary back to reality. She sucked in a breath, quietly enough that it wouldn’t be picked up by the microphone. She reminded herself that she’d prepared for this; she knew there would be a Q&A. Rosemary rattled through her mental Rolodex of possible questions—she would be fine. The rational part of her brain knew that she was just waiting for her anxiety to catch up. Another breath, slower exhale. She glanced at the clock. Probably less than ten minutes to go of the event, maybe nine. She could do nine minutes.

Max had asked Rosemary to be on the panel to—in their own words—“bring the conversation into the twenty-first century,” and she didn’t blame them.

Tickled Ink was her local indie bookstore in Brooklyn and was perhaps Rosemary’s favourite place on earth, aside from her writing beanbag chair. Thanks to Max, both the horror and romance sections—the two most important sections of a bookstore, if you asked Rosemary—were exceptionally well curated.