Hattie’s Spirit

I really had to hand it to Hattie Doran. She always got the last laugh. Death was no exception. But then again, why should it have been? She’d always lived her life on her terms, which makes the tale herein all the more remarkable.

Driving from Upstate New York to Cooper’s Mill, North Carolina, was a long way by car. Add to that an insistent voice coming from the passenger seat—giving directions and remarking on the changes of scenery in the past fifty years—and it made time expand as if we’d been caught up in some sort of weary travelers’ vortex. Given the fact said passenger had been dead for the past six weeks and rode shotgun as a ghost in my car, and it made for one hell of a long drive. Temporal vortices or not.

Now, I wouldn’t say Hattie was—had been—a bad person. Just the opposite. In life, she was polite, sweet, loving, and exceptionally giving. Unfortunately for her, she gave it to the wrong person at the wrong time and got her ass ran out of her hometown for the effort. In any case, that’s what I assumed since she wasn’t talking. At least about that. Which was why I found myself in a car headed to a town I’d never been, to meet relatives I’d never known. As a ghost, Hattie was another matter altogether. When she’d cast off the yoke of humanity, she’d gone for broke.

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