Chapter 5
About an hour later Kelly and David still sat at the kitchen table, now littered with dishes. Kelly, realizing that she hadn’t yet eaten, had produced the pancake mix, but David had actually done the cooking.
“I’m good at pancakes,” he said. “Look, no matter what the recipe for the mix says, you always add an egg, and just a bit less water. Like this.” He had taken the bowl and mix out of her hands and made himself at home in the kitchen. Kelly had cooked the bacon, only burning it slightly, and located the syrup in the back of a cupboard, while David wielded the flipper on the pancakes. And they were good, Kelly had to admit, better than the ones she usually made.
Now they sat, the sticky plates pushed to one side, staring at Kelly’s picture of the little ghost.
“I still can’t believe it,” David said. “In spite of what you’ve told me, I still can’t really believe it. I always thought that ghosts would be tall white things in sheets, not a little girl looking so real. Maybe we’re having some sort of hallucination.”
“I don’t know, David, but I don’t see how that could happen. I mean, we don’t have much in common, the three of us who have seen her—you, me and Miss Overton.”
“Maybe we should work on developing more things in common then,” he said.
Kelly grinned at him, wickedly. “Oh, you mean you would like to get to know Miss O.? Well, I’ll be pleased to introduce you.”
“Come on, you know what I mean.” David looked down at the picture again, hiding his eyes from her. “You and I are the only two around here who aren’t over thirty or under ten. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been lonely even in the short time I’ve been here. Aren’t you too? Lonely?”
At his direct question, Kelly’s grin faded. “Yes. I guess I am, but I’m at school most of the time, and when I get home there’s housework and dinner to get ready, and my painting—and Dad, when I get to see him.”
“Well, if you cook all the meals the way you did that bacon, maybe you should spend less time on your painting and more in the kitchen! Your art work is good, but I’m not so sure about your cooking.”
Kelly was thinking quickly, searching for a reply to David’s remark about her cooking, when, for the third time that day, the doorbell rang. She went to answer it and returned to the kitchen with the Terpen twins trailing behind her.
“David, this is Trisha and Tommy. They live two houses down.”
The twins stared at David, then looked at each other and giggled. “Is he your boyfriend, Kelly?” asked Trisha.
“Trisha!”
David looked seriously at the twins. “Of course not,” he said. “People with red hair sometimes have very bad tempers. Do you think she’d be a good girlfriend.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tommy. “Kelly’s okay, I guess, if you like girls. I think girls are dumb.”
“They are not,” said Trisha.
“They are too.”
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
Kelly stepped in before the argument could become physical, something that happened frequently when the twins had a disagreement. “Come on, you two, stop that. Do you want some orange juice?”
“Sure. You got any pancakes left?” Tommy had inspected the sticky plates and deduced what had been served for breakfast.
“Yeah. We like pancakes, but Mom never makes them.” Trisha wiped syrup from the edge of a plate and popped her finger in her mouth.
“There’s lots of mix left,” David said, standing up. “I’ll make you some pancakes if you like, but no arguing while you’re here.”
The twins solemnly agreed, then sat down, watching and waiting while David once again mixed, poured and cooked. Kelly brought two glasses of juice and set them in front of the twins. “Were you looking for Dad?” she asked. She had always found the twins difficult. Either they both talked at once, loudly, or they both kept silent. Either way, a conversation with them was always a challenge.
“Yes,” said Trisha.
“No,” said Tommy.
“Well, sort of,” they finished together.
It was quiet for a while, the twins anxiously eyeing David’s progress at the stove, Kelly wondering what crisis had brought the children to her house this time, and how soon she could get rid of them. The silence continued for what seemed like hours, broken only by David’s soft whistling as he flipped pancakes.
“There you go.” As he set two plates heaped with pancakes in front of them, Trisha caught sight of Kelly’s painting of the little ghost. It had been on the table right in front of the twins ever since they sat down, but they had been too interested in watching David cook pancakes to notice it.
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