Dead Living (Spirit Caller Book 5) by Krista D Ball

I was going to keep my mouth shut like a good little girl because Mrs. Saunders has earned the right to eat whatever the hell she wants.
    We moved Millie into Amy's first. Millie didn’t have much in the way of stuff, having sold or given away everything when she moved into the seniors’ home. Still, she had some personal items and moving her from one town to another to live with a stranger was becoming stressful for her, so I’d enlisted one of her grandchildren from Stephenville.
    Now, for the record, I say I enlisted him. Dema says I used “shaming tactics” and Jeremy said my mother would have been proud of the guilt trip I pulled. Well, I'm so very sorry, but if your elderly grandmother is living in a senior’s home where no one ever visits her and is moving in with strangers who care more about her then you do, well, you deserve to feel guilty.
    So  there.
    Sweet mercy of my Ancestors, I really am turning into my mother.
    Moving Mrs. Saunders was an entirely different matter, however. She had over seventy years of stuff accumulated and there was no way all of that was going to move to Amy’s. For the time being, we only packed the stuff she absolutely needed and would go through everything later.
    The For Sale sign went up on her front lawn. The figure was heartbreakingly low, but property just wasn’t worth anything here in the middle of nowhere. The realtor told me it was a good price for the area and the house would eventually sell. She reminded me I was used to big city prices, and Mrs. Saunders wasn't being ripped off. She was probably right. My condo in Edmonton sold for a small fortune, but that was Alberta during the boom. This place was down the road from the middle of nowhere.
    Still, it broke me to see that sign go up. I watched the realtor’s son hammer the wooden post into the ground, the terrifying low price written in black marker at the bottom. I tugged my jacket tighter against the wind and the rain, and tried giving the young man a smile, but my heart wasn’t in it. He gave me a nod before heading back into his truck, off to his next task.
    I sobbed before his truck was even out of sight. How lonely was I going to be, now that she wasn’t next door? Why did people have to get old?
    Jeremy eventually came out with an umbrella to shield me from the wind. He put his arm around me and whispered it was all for the best. Blah blah blah. I knew that already. It didn’t make the change sting less.
    In the privacy of our embrace, I allowed myself to say the words that had been haunting me the entire time. “This means I’m closer to losing her than I’d like to admit.”
    “Oh, honey,” he said and help me tighter. “I know she means a lot to you, but you haven’t lost her yet. Let’s make sure we visit her as often as we can, okay?”
    “I'm not ready to lose her.” I wept into his chest.
    “She's not gone yet.”
    I never let Mrs. Saunders see me sad. That was my burden, not hers. Once the building supplies were gathered, I was put in charge of the odds and sods shopping the next time Jeremy had to go to Corner Brook. Millie gave me a little money, as did Mrs. Saunders. Mrs. Saunders's husband had had a good job, leaving her a nice pension. Millie only lived off government pensions, so Mrs. Saunders and Amy slipped me even more on the sly, on the strict promise I wouldn't tell anyone.
    And most of my neighbours slipped me a twenty and told me the same thing.
    And most of Amy’s neighbours did the same.
    Now, compared to the rest of the world, Canada really does have some of the best social safety net programs around. It’s also true that many single, elderly women live well below the poverty line. So I might have also accidently slipped a couple of my own fifties into the roll of cash I’d been given to do the shopping with. And Irene and Amanda might have done the same. And Connie, too.
    And Jeremy might have made me take his credit card, just in case.
    It should come as no great