by Glory Lennon

Created on: March 09, 2009   Last Updated: October 11, 2009

Violet's in Bloom: Chapter 1: Who ya gonna call?

Seven months later

"This isn't gonna work for me," Richard muttered as he paced in irritation beside Violet's bed on which she lay gently weeping. He ran his hands through his already-tousled, wavy, dark blond hair then stuffed them into the back pockets of his faded jeans and stared morosely at her shaking form.

"Oh, Richard, why did you have to go? I miss you so," Violet mumbled, her chest heaving with every tear slipping down her face.

This utterance broke his heart for the thousandth. "Baby, I'm right here. I haven't left. I can't leave you. You won't let me. If you would just sleep you would know that. I could tell you," he explained, his voice full of anguish but she could hear none of this. Ghosts can rarely make themselves heard.

In an act of desperation he climbed into the bed beside her and spooned her just like they used to do practically every night of their married life. "Assume the sleeping position," he had said more times than can be counted and she would grab his hand and hold it over her heart and they would fall into peaceful slumber this way. But she wasn't doing that now. She couldn't feel him as she once did. She couldn't sleep without him either.

"I'm so cold without you," she whispered as a fresh batch of tears made their appearance and seeped into the already drenched pillow.

This was torture indeed. This, Richard thought miserably, must be purgatory. He pulled away from her again and paced around the room. What was he going to do? His wife- or should he say widow?- was misery itself. Grief was killing her and him, too, all over again. He couldn't help her. He had no idea how. Even all this time later this ghost thing was new to him. Weeks and days, months and years, even minutes and hours were all the same to disembodied spirits.

Something had to give or he would be eternally stuck between heaven and hell. But what to do?

He needed help desperately. But who? It wasn't as though he could call up Ghost Busters so he could be exercised out of here. Besides that, Violet needed him. Correction; she needed someone alive to give her reason to go on.

He stopped in front of the chest of drawers which still held his clothes and saw the dozens of family photos in silver and porcelain frames. There he sat with the kids on his lap when they were tiny tots. Then they were all fishing at the river's edge at Somerset Hill. In another he was hugging Violet on their wedding day. In the next he and Freddy

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