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ago.”
    The walls were painted in a soft sage green and the new woodwork was a complimentary crisp white. The carpeting had a botanical print with varying shades of sage green on dark wheat-colored background. Her new desk was oak and it matched the bookcases that lined one wall. She could feel the tension slip away in the peaceful surroundings.
    Dropping her briefcase and purse on the desk, she walked over to the bathroom. It too had incurred a major renovation, which was, Mary decided, a good idea since pieces of the toilet had been on the other side of the office last time she saw it.
    The bath now held a small shower stall, a sink and a toilet. The color scheme from the office was carried through in the bath, except for a flash of black next to the toilet seat. Mary cautiously moved forward to examine it. She peered over the toilet and laughed when she saw the phone installed on the wall. A sticky note posted on the phone, with Stanley’s distinctive handwriting, read, “Just in case of emergencies, Missy.”
    She grinned, pulled the note off and sat down on the closed toilet seat.
    “Testing it out, sister?”
    Her heart jumped as she turned and looked through the man standing outside her bathroom. He had probably been in his sixties when he died. His greying hair was styled in a crew cut and the face below was wide, with a strong and stubborn jaw. His nose looked like it had been broken a number of times and his broad grin advertised the wide gap between his upper teeth.
    “Excuse me?” she asked.
    He nodded toward the toilet. “Normally when you test one of those, you open the lid.”
    She looked down at the toilet and quickly stood up. “I wasn’t testing it,” she said. “I was just sitting down for a moment.”
    “Yeah, you’ll do,” he said, nodding with satisfaction.
    “I’ll do what?” she asked.
    “You’re a fighter, kid,” he said. “You don’t back down. You don’t even sweat when you see a ghost.”
    The ghost slid out of the way, as Mary walked into her office area. “So, you know you’re a ghost?”
    “Yeah,” he replied. “So does that make me a spiritual genius?”
    Chuckling, she nodded. “You want a certificate?”
    He laughed loudly. “Yeah, you’re pretty feisty.”
    She sat in her chair and turned to him, her pen ready to take notes. “What’s your story?”
    He glided over next to her and placed his beefy hands on his hips. “I need you to come with me,” he said. “I need to show you something.”
    “Okay, but you tell me your story first,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
    Shaking his head slowly, he sighed. “I can’t,” he said. “It ain’t like I don’t want to, but I can’t tell you the whole story. You just gotta trust me and know that I’m doing this for someone I love.”
    She looked into his translucent eyes. “Someone you love, huh?” she asked.
    “With all my heart,” he replied.
    She stared at him for a moment, then, making up her mind, she picked up her purse. “Are we walking or driving?”
    A slow grin spread across his face. “I think maybe this is actually gonna work,” he said, with a quick nod. “We’re walking, sister. It ain’t too far from here.”
    They left her office and Mary followed him north on Main Street. It was a strange sensation to see the facades of the historic buildings through his translucent form. The retail stores and the banks were still closed because it wasn’t yet eight o’clock, but she could smell the bakery goods from Cole’s Confectionary on the wind. The weather was typical February; piles of snow were surrounded by small puddles of water and the smell of spring was just behind the icy frost in the air.
    Turning onto Chicago Avenue, Mary looked up to the marquee of the multiplex theater to see if any of the new offerings for the week interested her. There were a few actors she would be willing to watch if they just stood in the middle of the screen and did nothing. She sighed. They