by Glory Lennon

Created on: December 08, 2009

Violet’s in Bloom, Chapter 10: Learn Something New Every Day

It was amazing how many kids in Catalpa Valley knew Richard and consequently knew he was a ghost. Richard was stopped five times  near the ice cream freezer and about ten times in the candy aisle all the while searching for Violet with mounting desperation. These kids remembered him from all the coaching he’d done over the years. They weren’t nearly as astonished to see him come back as a ghost as he was that they seemed to take talking to a ghost very much in stride. It was as if they did it all the time. Perhaps they did.

"My dad’s a ghost too, Coach Bennett," Frankie Gleason told him, smiling so he showed his one missing tooth.

Richard smiled down at the seven year old ruffling his hair. He knew Frankie’s dad went off to war and never came back. "Is he?"

"Uh-huh, he comes at night to talk to me," Frankie told him matter-of-factly. "I don’t miss him so much no more."

"That’s real good, Frankie," he said now seeing a virtual swarm of little leaguers who had just spotted him and were coming towards him. Not wanting to take any more time out to chat with these kids and having visions of Violet being accosted by Victor he passed right through the shelf displaying every kind of chocolate bar imaginable and emerged in the cereal aisle accidentally passing through a woman who was reaching up to get a box of cereal. She shivered so violently as Richard went through her that she knocked several boxes off the shelf to rain down on her head.

Forgetting he couldn’t be heard he apologetically muttered, "Real sorry about that, Conny," before going through the next shelf. The woman looked around expecting to see the person who apologized and frowned confusedly when she saw only her baby sitting peacefully in the cart pointing to the shelf Richard just plowed through.

This aisle was crowded too but still no Violet. It wasn’t until Richard went into the pasta aisle that he caught a glimpse of her coat by the dairy section and he made towards it. What he saw there made his blood boil. At least it felt like it. He didn’t suppose ghosts had any blood, did they?

"What the hell are you doing with my Violet!" he shouted, coming up to Victor and getting right in his face. Of course, the man didn’t flinch as he couldn’t exactly see him nor feel him and he definitely didn’t hear him. None of that registered in Richard at the moment. He just

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