Ms. Scrooge Read online

  Tim opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He must realize on some level, I’m right. After all, she’s his mother. He must know she barely understands email.

  “Marley was happy with her,” he finally says.

  I shrug. “Even Marley made mistakes sometimes.”

  “You’re the one who made a mistake. Trust me.”

  I shake my head at him. “No. I didn’t make a mistake. Not this time.”

  Tim narrows his eyes at me. My chest aches as I remember the way he was looking at me only a few minutes ago. “Delete my number from your phone,” he says. “Don’t call me. Ever.”

  I snort. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to call you.”

  He gives me one final look. “You’re a horrible person.”

  And the next thing I hear is him slamming the door shut as he leaves my apartment.

  His words won’t stop echoing in my head. You’re a horrible person. A few minutes ago, I had cared more than anything what this man thought of me. And the truth is, I still do. I hate that he thinks I’m a horrible person. And maybe he’s right. Roberta is a really nice lady. How could I fire her right before Christmas?

  I’m a horrible person.

  But so what? Maybe I did a few things I’m not proud of today. But the fact of the matter is, I’m really good at my job. I’m going to be the next CEO of Janetta Advertising, and I’ve earned it. I’ve worked harder than anyone else in that company. And yes, maybe my social life is a disaster. Maybe I never see my only sister anymore. Maybe the only consistent physical contact I get comes from stray cats. But there’s plenty of time to fix that, if I want to.

  I’m successful. And that’s all that matters.

  Marley would be so proud of me. I just wish she were here.

  Chapter 12

  Usually after some great sex, I drop off right to sleep. I mean, I think I do. Honestly, it’s getting a little hard to remember.

  But after Tim leaves, I can’t sleep for anything. I pace around the house for a while. I dig out a container of salted caramel gelato from my freezer, which isn’t doing my cholesterol any favors, but it’s too delicious for me to care. I load up my DVD player and do a Jillian Michaels workout from my collection and discover I am woefully out of shape. I dig out my laptop and try to get a little work done for my presentation tomorrow.

  And then I lie in bed with my eyes shut tight. I try counting sheep. I try naming all the capitals in the United States. And when I run out of states, I start on countries. When none of that works, I chant to myself, “Go to sleep, Elizabeth. Go to sleep.”

  Apparently, it works. Because the next thing I know, my phone is ringing and I’m blinking sleep out of my eyes.

  I look at my watch on the nightstand. Half past three. Who the hell would call me this late? Or this early? Whatever it is. Three is a gray area.

  This person is going to get an earful, whoever they are. I pick up the phone and see that the call is actually a FaceTime request. From Marley Jacobs.

  Marley Jacobs?

  Wait.

  How is Marley Jacobs calling me? Marley is dead. She’s been dead for two months. She isn’t making any phone calls. That’s one thing I’m sure of.

  So that means somebody is playing a really tasteless joke on me.

  I consider letting it go to voicemail. But I’m not even sure how voicemail works with FaceTime. And I want to know who is doing this to me. The only way to find the culprit is to take the call.

  Before I can second-guess myself, I press the green button.

  “Elizabeth!” a familiar voice barks.

  I sit up straight in bed, clutching my phone. This is a joke somebody is playing on me. It’s obviously a joke. But at the same time, the woman whose face is filling the screen of my phone looks a whole lot like Marley Jacobs. And she sounds like her too. That’s exactly the way Marley used to say my name.

  What the hell is going on here?

  “Who is this?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Elizabeth! It’s me—Marley!” The woman, whoever she is, takes a drag off the cigarette in her left hand. Her eyelids flutter the way Marley’s always did when she was smoking. Then she blows a smoke ring, like Marley did when we went out to Bull’s Head together. “God, that’s nice. They don’t let you smoke here too often.”

  “Listen,” I say firmly. “I know you’re not really Marley. I don’t know who this is, but you have some nerve—”

  Marley lets out a laugh. When I first met her, her laugh was sharp and clear. But when she got into her mid-forties, her laugh developed a bit of a rasp at the end.

  This woman’s laugh sounds just like Marley’s.

  “Elizabeth,” she says, “I don’t blame you for being skeptical. I would be too if I were you. After all, I’m dead, right? How could we be FaceTiming? You’re right to question me.”

  The wheels in my head are turning. How could this be happening? I suppose it could be a dream. Maybe Marley is actually that burger I ate last night… or a handful of nachos. But I don’t feel like I’m dreaming. How are you supposed to know if you’re dreaming or not? Maybe I should pinch myself.

  I squeeze some of the extra skin on my thigh between my thumb and my index finger.

  Ouch!

  Okay, I’m not dreaming. So what’s going on? Maybe…

  Tim had my phone. He could have done anything to it while he had it in his hand. And it’s not like I’m his favorite person. He must’ve done this. He’s got to be responsible.

  “Tim,” I say triumphantly. “Tim Craft put you up to this somehow, whoever you are.”

  The Marley look-alike laughs again. “Tim Craft? Are you talking about Roberta’s son? Do you really think that Boy Scout did this to you? He wouldn’t. And honestly, I can’t believe you threw him out.”

  “Or maybe he slipped me a roofie and I’m hallucinating all this…”

  “Little Timmy slipped you a roofie?” The Marley lookalike snorts. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Elizabeth. That boy is a nice boy. He wouldn’t do something like that. I thought you were a better judge of character. Richard, on the other hand…”

  I shift in the bed. I was sound asleep five minutes ago, but now I’ve never been so awake in my life. I don’t know what’s going on here. But I know this can’t be Marley Jacobs. It just can’t. Marley is dead.

  “Ask me a question.” She takes another drag from her cigarette. This woman really does look a lot like her. Except she’s very pale—Marley had a year-round tan. “Ask me something only Marley would know.”

  “Okay…” I close my eyes for a moment, trying to think. “What did you get me for Christmas last year?

  The woman who looks like Marley smiles at me. “Well, that’s an easy one. I got you the first edition Wonder Woman comic book. Mint condition. It’s got the picture of her riding that white horse on the cover. I got it on eBay. I was debating between that and the Wonder Woman doll, but I thought you might think the doll was silly. I mean, it was a doll.”

  My heart is pounding in my chest. She’s right. That’s what she got me for Christmas last year. And she even mentioned the doll thing to me.

  But I still don’t believe it. How could this woman be Marley? Marley is dead, for God’s sake! I saw her body go into the ground.

  “What do you want?” I say.

  “Look, Elizabeth.” Marley’s eyes grow misty. “This place sucks. It’s like… the worst club in the city. All the time. And you never get to go home. And it’s hot. So goddamn hot. Like that time we went to Tampa for that meeting in July.”

  A lump forms in my throat. How does this woman know so much about me? “Marley…”

  “I wasted my life.” She turns her head away and her hair falls into her eyes. “You know, I was forty-nine years old when I died, and I never once was in love. Not really. I had my career and I thought that was enough, but it wasn’t.”

  For some reason, my mind goes back to those moments when I was lying in Tim’s arms after h
e screwed my brains out. I wasn’t in love with him. Not yet. But it was the first time I thought there was a chance that maybe someday…

  Why am I thinking about this? I’m never going to see him again.

  “I never had any kids,” Marley says, “but I had you, and even though I never said this, you were almost like a daughter to me. I love you, Elizabeth.” She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand that isn’t holding a cigarette and takes a shaky breath. “I don’t want you to end up here. I don’t want that for you. You’ve got a chance to turn things around.”

  “But I don’t want to turn things around.” Oh God, now I’m having a conversation with fake Marley. But it seems like her. I really feel like I’m talking to her… I missed that. “I’m happy. I’m doing great at work. I’m going to be the next CEO.”

  “I know you, Elizabeth.” She shakes her head. “I know you better than anyone, even your sister. You’re not happy. You don’t want to end up like me.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No.” She looks around, her eyes focusing on something in the distance that I can’t see. Her face fills with sudden fear. “You don’t want to end up here. Trust me.”

  A cold breeze washes over me and I shiver. “Marley,” I murmur.

  “It’s too late for me.” She frowns into the camera. “But it’s not too late for you. You still have a chance.”

  “A chance for what?”

  “A chance for something better.”

  “I’m not going to just change, Marley.”

  “Of course not.” She takes another long drag from her cigarette. “It’s not like I expected to snap my fingers and you change who you are. You’re going to need some convincing. Fortunately, I planned for that.”

  “Planned for what?”

  “Over the next two days, you’re going to get three visits. One will be from the spirit of the past, one from the spirit of the present, and one from the spirit of the future.”

  “What are you talking about, Marley?”

  Her face is grim. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

  “But—”

  I start to ask her another question, but the line goes dead.

  Chapter 13

  Just to be clear, the woman who FaceTimed me was not Marley Jacobs.

  Marley Jacobs is dead. Dead as a doornail. She’s not calling anybody. I don’t know what just happened or who did it or how they did it, but I know I did not just have a conversation with my dead boss. I don’t believe in unicorns, UFOs, and definitely not ghosts.

  Although I have to admit, what happened just now felt very real.

  There’s no chance of sleeping, of course. I have one of the most important presentations of my life in less than twelve hours, but instead of getting a decent night’s sleep, I’m lying awake in bed, trying to figure out what just happened.

  The first thing I do is try to call Marley back. When I hit the number in my phone, a voice informs me that the number is out of service. It’s the same voice I heard several weeks ago when I tried calling Marley’s number. Back then, I had been calling just to hear the sound of her voice on her voicemail message. I thought it would be reassuring.

  In any case, calling the number doesn’t give me any new information. And it’s certainly not reassuring.

  Was it a hallucination? Even though I did pinch myself, I’m not going to eliminate the possibility that it was all some sort of crazy dream. After all, I ate a lot of nachos. And those nachos were pretty loaded. Spicy foods tend to give me nightmares. Spicy foods and pickles.

  But it really did feel like it was happening. I don’t think I was dreaming.

  So that leaves one last possibility: it was all an elaborate prank.

  Let’s face it—the list of people who might be eager to play a terrible prank on me is a mile long. I’ve managed to make a lot of enemies recently. And I think that list has doubled in the last twenty-four hours. But none of those people have access to my phone. There’s only one person who has touched my phone in the last few hours.

  Tim Craft.

  He had my phone in his hand, unlocked. He hates me—that goes without saying. He had both motive and opportunity. And expertise—he’s a computer science teacher, after all. Granted, I have no clue how he could pull off such an elaborate ruse. But there’s nothing else that makes sense. Aside from the ridiculous possibility that Marley’s ghost actually called me on FaceTime.

  By the time morning rolls around, I’ve convinced myself that Tim had to be behind this. And honestly, it’s in really bad taste. Maybe there was no chance for the two of us to have a relationship together, but this is beyond low. And I’m not going to let him get away with this. He needs to know I’m onto him.

  Luckily, I never deleted his number from my phone.

  Even before the sun is up, I click on his number. There’s a distinct possibility I’m waking him up, but I don’t care anymore. It rings three times before a sleepy male voice answers, “Hello?”

  I did wake him up. Well, good. “I know what you did.”

  Tim clears his throat on the other line. “Who is this?”

  “You know who this is.”

  There’s a long pause. “Ebbie?”

  My breath catches slightly at the sound of him saying my nickname. Usually, it bugs me when people call me that. But somehow, I like the way he says it. “I know you messed with my phone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You have some nerve.”

  At this point, he’d be within his rights to hang up on me. But to his credit, he doesn’t. Is that a sign of guilt? “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That call at three in the morning? I have no idea how you did it, but it was really in bad taste. And you said I was a horrible person…”

  “Ebbie.” His voice is quiet and measured. “I didn’t call you at three in the morning. I don’t even have your number.”

  “So you’re seriously telling me you didn’t call me in the middle of the night, pretending to be Marley Jacobs?”

  There’s another pause, this one even longer than the first. “Someone called you pretending to be Marley Jacobs?”

  “Yes!” I exclaim. “On FaceTime. It’s not like I don’t miss Marley enough. But to actually pretend to be her and to make me think she’s out there somewhere and that I…”

  Oh great, now I’m crying. This is so embarrassing. Trust me—I never lose my composure like this. That’s what only a few hours of sleep will do to you.

  “Jesus, Ebbie…” His voice is softer now. “I can’t believe somebody did that to you.”

  “Really? Because you seemed to think I deserved it last night.”

  “I…” He’s quiet for a moment. “Fine. I did think that. But… Look, if somebody you work with has been messing with your phone to try to scare you, that’s a big deal. You say they were pretending to be your old boss?”

  “Yes. They made it so the call was coming from her number and everything. It was…” I shiver, remembering how real Marley looked on the screen of my phone. “It was really awful. I don’t know how they did it. Do you think the guys at the Apple store might know?”

  He snorts. “I doubt it. But… I mean, I could take a look.…”

  “You?”

  Tim is offering to help me? After last night, I was sure he would never speak to me ever again. This is a real reversal. I want to believe he’s just being a nice guy. According to Roberta, he is a good guy. But I’m the one who fired his mother. Why would he help me?

  “Sure,” he finally says. “I’ve got nothing to do during school vacation anyway.”

  I run a hand through my hair, which is a greasy mess of tangles. “When could you come over?”

  “Just give me time to shower, and I’ll drive right over. I could be there within the hour.”

  I shouldn’t let him do this. I could see how angry he was at me last night. No good could possibly come out of the two of us interacting again. Yet I’m
really freaked out over that phone call. If there’s any chance he could find out who is behind it, I’m willing to risk it.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be here.”

  Chapter 14

  Tim shows up at my door looking like I woke him up too early, dragged him out of bed, and made him rush over here. Which I suppose is exactly what happened.

  His light brown hair is as messy as it could be, given it’s pretty short. He’s wearing a button-down blue shirt, but it’s buttoned wrong—in his haste, he must have missed a button. He lets go of one of his crutches to adjust his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He still looks really hot, in spite of everything. I’d been hoping that in the light of day he might not be as attractive as he was at the bar last night. But no.

  “Thanks for coming,” I mumble. I’ve also showered and dressed in the power suit that I wear for all my important meetings, but somehow I still feel greasy and tired. I can almost feel the purple circles under my eyes. I put on my favorite power lipstick—Ruby Woo—but it doesn’t make me feel better. I would give anything to postpone this meeting by a day or two.

  He nods, not bothering with a hello. “Where is the phone?” he asks.

  I dig it out of my purse and hold it out to him, but he just looks at it. That’s when I notice the way his hands are gripping the handles of his crutches. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Gee, you think?”

  He limps over to my sofa and collapses onto it with an ungraceful plop. I unlock my phone and hand it over to him, much like last night. If he really is the one who is behind the FaceTime, I’m opening myself up to something much worse right now. But I don’t believe it was him anymore.

  “Do you want some water?” I ask.

  “No thanks.”

  “I could make you some breakfast…”

  “This won’t take long.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  I don’t know why I said that. I haven’t made myself breakfast in at least three years. I’m just throwing three years out there as an estimate—it could be as long as six or seven years. The point is, I’m not any kind of breakfast gourmet. Breakfast for me is a cup of coffee with or without a toasted bagel eaten while standing up. I’m certainly not going to impress this guy with my breakfast cooking skills.