O’Toole House Chapter 11
Another extended family dinner and Gabriella was far too conscious of James’s absence. They were at Gran’s house again and this time the event was Celia’s promotion at work. But while that was exciting and worth celebrating, it was also very clearly an excuse to get the family together. Not that Gabriella minded, but it would be so much better if James was here.
She got there early, only beaten by Celia’s daughter Penny, who had apparently come over after school while Celia took her other two girls. “Gabs, before you get settled, can you run down cellar and get me some canned tomatoes out of the pantry?” Auntie Jules asked before Gabriella had even kicked off her shoes.
Gabriella walked down the creaky cellar stairs and got all of three steps down when the cellar door opened behind her and Penny came through. “I’ll help,” she said.
“Great, thanks.”
The basement was huge and surprisingly neat, especially compared to the Banas’ basement, which she’d been blessed to have a break from. Auntie Jules had kept with Gran’s tradition and kept a large pantry in the corner of the cellar behind the stairs. Gabriella wondered vaguely at how many ghosts must be down here right this second. She passed by all of them and moved toward a shelf full of home-canned and store-bought tomatoes.
“What cases are you doing right now?” Penny asked as she inspected a box of Twinkies that might have been older than her.
Gabriella thought for a second. “Okay,” she said. “I can’t go into detail on a lot of them, but I got to cleanse a haunted bakery.”
Penny’s eyes widened. “Seriously?” she demanded, her voice squeaking with excitement. “Tell me everything!”
She opened the Twinkies and took one out, then offered the box to Gabriella, who took one too before she launched into the case she’d been on about two months earlier. It was her and Madelyn at a small bakery in downtown Leominster. They’d just opened and everything looked and smelled incredible. But apparently a previous tenant took offense at someone else being in her old storefront now that she had died.
“She had a crafting store,” Gabriella explained as she took both of their Twinkie wrappers and put them in the small trashcan by the pantry. “And after she died, no one else wanted it, so the store shut down. This was about a year ago and the storefront was empty for a while. Then the bakery moved in and had problems from the start. They kept finding damaged pastries with knitting needles jammed into them or old fabric draped over the cookies. Things like that. The spirit wouldn’t communicate with us so we had to kind of piece together what was going on. She made it pretty obvious though.”
Penny was hanging on to her every word as they walked back up the stairs with Auntie Jules’s tomatoes. “At first they thought it was a person, but they weren’t setting off any alarms. And then they hired an overnight baker who was messed with so bad on her first night that she quit. So they got us in there. All it took was a simple cleansing to get her to move on. The ghost, I mean. The overnight baker refused to come back, even after we were done.”
“Gabriella, what stories are you telling her now?” Auntie Jules asked as she took the cans.
“Just the harmless ones.”
It truly had been. She and Madelyn finished it in two days and the owners had given them a basket full of pastries as a thank you. It had been a combination American and Brazilian bakery and the basket had been a laundry basket in a previous life. Even with everyone else’s help, it had taken longer to finish the pastries than to finish the case. And Gabriella had ended up freezing the last few cakes.
James had loved this one salted caramel cookie they’d brought back. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was. But she did remember that he would offer it to every single person on staff before taking one for himself.
Maybe if she bought a dozen of them he’d eat them now. That was worth considering.
“Oh, honey, Celia told me you’re looking for a couch and a desk,” Auntie Jules said. “She’s got that old couch in the den that they’re replacing, she said Jack can bring it over.”
“You’re going to meet Jack tonight,” Penny said.
“Who’s Jack?” Gabriella asked.
There was a nonzero chance of a new cousin at any family gathering, either through marriage or birth. But she thought she would have heard about it.
“Mom’s boyfriend?” Penny said with a smirk.
Gabriella glanced at Auntie Jules, who sighed. “Celia has a new boyfriend,” she said. “He’s a very nice man and I like him a lot, even if he is a lot older than her.”
“He works for the Foundation!” Penny chirped.
“Wait,” Gabriella spun back around at Penny. “Are you talking about Agent Forester?”
Agent Forester was a Foundation security agent. He had been a major part of guarding the house against the sorceress Polly Grace the previous fall when Penny’s friend’s parents had hired her to terrorize the family over a part in the sixth grade musical.
“Yes!” Penny exclaimed.
Gabriella had quickly worked with Forester once, back when she’d first encountered Polly Grace at the Delinsky’s clothing store on the South Shore. Though she’d also seen him in passing when she and James checked in on Celia and the girls after their second encounter with Polly Grace. Forester had seemed very firm and formal at Delinsky’s, and significantly older with his large frame and long beard. But she’d seen that formality relax some when he’d been helping Celia make dinner for the girls during that followup visit.
“That’s…good for them,” Gabriella said. “I have met him a couple times. He’s a good guy.”
“Oh yeah!” Penny exclaimed.
The conversation turned from there as other family members arrived, eventually landing on the musical that had been the cause of all the trouble with Polly Grace last fall.
“Can you come, Auntie Gabbie?” Penny asked.
“When is it?”
“May tenth through thirteenth. Uncle James said he’d be there but I don’t know which day.”
“How is James doing?” Auntie Jules asked. “I texted him and he said he was fine, but that’s all I’ve heard from him.”
“He’s alright,” Gabriella said. “Taking a few weeks off of work, but we’re looking forward to him coming back.”
It wasn’t a lie. Nothing she was saying right now was a lie.
“He didn’t say anything about coming tonight,” Auntie Jules said. “So I don’t know if he is.”
Gabriella was saved from answering as Celia and Agent Forester came into the room, both of them scooping Auntie Jules into hugs and conversation. Penny started talking to her mother too, and after a quick hug and congratulations for Celia and a handshake with Agent Forester, Gabriella escaped outside for a few minutes.
Angie was out on the front porch with their older cousin Reese. Reese gave Gabriella a rib-cracking hug and Angie gave her a warmer smile than usual as she smoked a cigarette around the corner where Auntie Jules wouldn’t see.
“I was telling Angie about my new business,” Reese said. “Now that the garage is being sold.”
Reese was about Celia’s age, thirty-three or so, and lived closer to Worcester. He talked sometimes about new businesses he wanted to open and he and their cousin Ricky alternated planning these businesses together and fighting with each other over ideas. Gabriella would see what Ricky had to say about this one when he got out of his car, which had just pulled up behind hers.
“Hey!” Ricky called as he loped up the walkway. “Did this asshole tell you what his new business is?”
“You didn’t give me a chance!” Reese said.
“Hauling and liquidation!” Ricky shouted. “Fucking genius, kid!”
He hopped up on the porch and grabbed Reese in a tight side hug. Then he hugged Gabriella and Angie, barely avoiding the cigarette. “Clearing out dead people’s houses and selling their shit. And we’re going to make an app so we can sell it easier.”
He clapped Reese on the shoulder, then hurried after someone already in the house. “No we’re not,” Reese muttered. “That kid and his fucking apps. But if you know anyone who’s moving or has to sell a full house, let me know. I’ve got Manny on it too.”
One of Reese’s three brothers, Manny, worked in construction and house inspections, so he was a good person to have scoping out potential clients. “I figure you’re a good source for like, abandoned haunted houses still full of the owner’s shit and all that,” Reese said. “You and James. He’s told me about the work you do when I’m kicking his ass on the basketball court.”
The last game she’d seen between them had gone the other way around, but why bother ruining a nice conversation? “Yeah, I can keep an eye out,” she said.
Angie looked like she wanted to say something and Gabriella had a feeling it was about James. But then Reese started talking about his first few clients. She guessed it was interesting enough, but now she was distracted and it was kind of a relief when Reese’s mother yelled for him. He told them he’d be right back, then hurried into the house.
“I saw James yesterday,” Angie said as soon as he left.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I was dropping off some stuff from Della.”
God, he was frying himself. But if he had to in order to survive right now, then it was a problem to solve later. “How was he?”
Angie shrugged, brushing back her choppy blonde hair. “He said about eight words to me.”
“So, an improvement?”
Angie laughed, then got serious. “He apologized to me at one point, but he thought I was you. He said sorry for anything he did during it.”
She wasn’t going to cry here, that would lead to far too many questions. “He has nothing to be sorry for,” Gabriella said.
“That was what I figured, but he wouldn’t listen when I said that one, I’m not you, and two, you probably weren’t mad at him or whatever.”
“No.”
“Anyway, he’s not going to tell you about it, but I figured you should know.”
“Thanks.”
Angie nodded and stubbed out her cigarette in the usual flowerpot. “My dad brought chicken wings if you want any. I’m going to get some.”
Then she walked inside, leaving Gabriella alone on the porch. At least until the next round of family members got out of their cars.
