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I bite down on my lip, unsure of how to respond—other than the obvious. But I’m pretty sure stripping down to nothing might land me in the brig—with Ransom and nothing but a pair of handcuffs between us.
Oh, so tempting.
“Well, we sure had a great time in Honey Hollow,” I start. “I mean, getting away to see your cousin was a vacation for the books, wouldn’t you say?”
That corpse I stumbled on cinched the deal as far as cementing that trip as one for the record books. Not to mention the fact I met his cousin’s wife, Lottie Lemon, a woman who shares my ability to see the dead. Although, Ransom doesn’t know that little supernatural tidbit about me just yet, and I’m pretty sure I’d like to keep it that way from now until I’m a ghost myself. It’s not exactly something I ever thought I’d use as a personal description, and I’m slow to get behind it as a concept in general.
“Honey what?” He looks mildly confused as he cranes his neck past me, and I glance that way to see a spindly blonde somewhere in her sixties I’d venture to guess.
She’s a looker with birdlike features, thin lips, and short permed hair. She’s wearing a red dress that stands out like a siren and she seems to be scanning the crowd herself with a nervous twitch.
“I’ll be back, sweetheart,” he says. “Get ready to dust off that birthday suit for me. I plan on continuing right where we left off.” He darts into the crowd, disappearing as quick as an apparition, and I stand there, stunned.
Dust off my birthday suit? Is that a crack at my age?
The jovial crowd around me grows that much more boisterous by the moment, imbibing in champagne as the ship charges toward the expansive blue horizon.
I shake my head in Ransom’s wake.
What in the world has gotten into him?
That denim outfit?
All that talk about my birthday suit?
And the fact he didn’t recall Honey Hollow makes me wonder what in the heck has hijacked his mind. I bet dollars to donuts there’s some big crime ring on board, or some nefarious situation that’s threatening homeland security.
Ransom is sharp as a tack and twice as tenacious when it comes to his job. If something has commandeered his attention, it’s for a good reason.
My name is Trixie Troublefield, I’m barreling toward fifty, stand at an average height of five-five, and have blonde medium-length hair with bangs. Okay, so I might have more gray hair than I do blonde these days, but who’s counting? Just a few months ago I said au revoir to my mom jeans and traded them in for an entire wardrobe of gauzy dresses that can double as a yurt. I’ve gone from restricting calories to inhaling them in mass quantities—preferably in the form of lava cake.
Last January, my husband of twenty-five years, Stanton, surprised me by way of herding what felt like an entire cheerleading team into our bedroom—ironically wearing nothing but their birthday suits—and once I caught them all in the naked act, I kicked both him and our marriage to the curb.
Now I’m halfway through my divorce and living on the Emerald Queen full-time as their resident art instructor. I also pen a travel blog, Suddenly Single—What a Trip! It’s sort of a throwback to the diaries of yesteryear, but this modern rendition eschews a lock and invites the general public to read along. And boy, do they ever.
I’ve amassed quite the following of fellow divorcees who find my antics somewhat amusing. Some may hail me as their queen, but I’ve yet to put on a crown. Truth be told, I’m still feeling my way around this new Stanton-free world, and it feels as if I’m doing it with a blindfold in a room that won’t stop spinning.
That hasn’t stopped me from spilling the details of my new life to my so-called fandom. Actually, I haven’t held back many, if any, details about my life in that so-called public diary. And my readers have made no secret of the fact they’re ravenous for more details about Handsome Ransom. But I think I’ll leave out the details of our latest hippy-inspired run-in, seeing that I’m still not quite sure what to make of it myself.
Speaking of details, there’s one more detail about me and it’s not so average.
I can see the dead.
Yes. The dead. As in disembodied folk who are well past their prime and yet are living it up on the other side.
It’s more or less a newfound quirk that started a few months back when a bottle of moonshine smacked me on the head. It’s a long, sordid story, but on the bright side, the women that were warring over that bottle are now two of my closest friends. In fact, there they are now, bustling their way over.
Bess Chatterley is a redheaded eighty-something-year-old woman with a no-nonsense dress code that consists of sundresses and jewel-toned pantsuits. She was once a home ec teacher before her husband traded her in for a new model—several new models to be exact as he trotted around town behind her back, so she traded him in for this cruise ship.
And by her side is Nettie Butterworth, also a woman in her eighties, but that’s where the similarities between the two end. Nettie is a free spirit with a shock of gray hair that rises above her head like a storm front, and her love of muumuus is only rivaled by her love of a good buffet. Come to think of it, her affection for culinary treats is something both she and Bess have in common, and you can add me to that delicious equation myself.
“If it isn’t Trixie Lookin’ for Troublefield,” Nettie says as they come upon me. “Don’t tell me you’ve started hunting for a body without us.”
Okay, so maybe Nettie’s love of muumuus and food has been slightly usurped by her love of stumbling upon bodies. And I may have stumbled upon my fair share of them, too. According to that woman I met in Honey Hollow, Lottie Lemon, my penchant for stumbling upon a corpse may be directly tied to my new ability to see the disembodied. Apparently, the universe has tagged me as some sort of a crime-fighting amateur sleuth, and boy, did the universe ever tap the wrong person for the job. I have zero desire to be roped into another active homicide investigation, let alone be the one to discover the dead.
“Would you stop?” Bess elbows the woman who is her unofficial, rather official best friend. Bess has her crimson hair spun into a bun and she’s donned a cranberry pantsuit for the night—her usual fare for our first dinner on the ship. Both Bess and Nettie ventured out to Honey Hollow with Ransom and me. It turns out, Honey Hollow was Bess’ hometown. “We’re not finding any more corpses. I can go the rest of my life without seeing another body.”
Nettie huffs, “Which explains the lack of action in your cabin.” She irons out the front of her pink and green muumuu with her hands. “Unlike some people, I’m actively seeking to entertain a guest later this evening. Bonus points if they’re still breathing.”
