The red-headed
Irish ghost in Fairy Dusted actively haunts the recently
completed Treehouse Inn, which sits on the same property where Maureen
Kilpatrick and her husband were raising 14 rowdy boys until she died soon after
giving birth to a baby daughter she named Erin. Now the playful ghost restlessly
searches for the daughter taken from her to be raised by nuns. When Maureen
took the 49er cap she faithfully wears didn't know it belonged to her
great-grandson Drew O'Malley, she just knew the man searching for his cap was
often prone to kiss the pretty auburn-haired woman sharing their room at the
Inn.
Sarah: Hello. Where do
you hail from?
Maureen: Killarney, in
Ireland. Why do ya ask?
Sarah: My son Charles
has a 49er's cap like yours, but I'm sad to say the rest of your outfit looks a
little worse for wear.
Maureen: These old rags?
They're so threadbare ya can practically see through them. I should have tossed
them before the turn of the last century.
Sarah: Which one? No,
don't answer that, it's as inappropriate as asking a lady her age. I know what
you mean about your dress, though. I had favorites, too, but I
don't go out much anymore, and some days forget to put on makeup, but not
today. Later I have an appointment with my favorite stylist at the Haunted Hair
Salon. I'm hoping she can do something about this thinning, straggly hair. If
my neighbors on Harding Place saw me looking like this I'd be the laughing
stock.
Maureen: Appearance no
longer matters as much after yar dead.
Sarah: True. Do
you have family nearby?
Maureen: In this country?
No, except for the great grandson I mentioned. He lives in San Francisco, the
rest of my family in Ireland. It was Drew who loaned me this stylish cap I saw
you admiring when I first floated into this room. Once his baby is born, I'm
moving on to a higher place to spend eternity with my daughter Erin.
Sarah: That's nice. I'll
be leaving soon, too. Now that Amy and Charles are happily married there's no
need for me to stick around. Amy's daughter Marta is the reason my son was
finally able to reenter the house where I died. That child is so upbeat about
everything my Charles is finally coming out of his shell and no longer needs a
ghost around.
Maureen: Funny how quickly
things change, isn't it?
Sarah: It's not funny to
no longer feel needed, though.
Maureen: Tell me about it.
Drew's wife Jill might as well have told me to get lost in the note she left
me, but once I got over my hurt, I realized she was right. Passing through
walls has its advantages, but like everything else when you've been around as
long as I have, even passing through walls undetected gets old.
Sarah: I'm thinking
about staking claim to that big cumulonimbus cloud I see forming on the horizon
and opening a retirement home for unemployed ghosts. Perhaps you'd like to be
the first occupant of my new enterprise? But not with you looking a hundred
years old, dear. How long since you smoothed on a little lip gloss? I don't
want you scaring off possible guests.
Maureen: Will it be
alright if I still wear Drew's cap?
You can visit
Toni on the following links:
Fairy Dusted and Decisive
Moments can be download from:
Or here:
Or from your
favorite eBook store.
To satisfy
the requirements for her Master's Degree in fine art photography, Amy
Millington needs to photograph Charles Harding's childhood home, but that
boarded-up house holds painful memories for Charles.
Without
those photographs Amy cannot secure her young daughter Marta's future. Charles
denies the gutsy widow’s request. No one enters the house where his parents
were shot when he was four.
She sees
his sorrow and decides to teach him to have fun. In doing so, he learns to
appreciate her art and eventually allows her inside his house. He refuses to
enter, until the day Marta gets lost there and Charles releases Marta from the
secret room where she discovers his mother's long-lost suicide note.
Knowing the
reason his mother shot his father, then turned the gun on herself, frees
Charles from his past, but can he free Amy from her past and teach her to love
again?
Bio: Toni
Noel's love of books started in childhood, when her mother first read The
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew to her. She helped start church
libraries in two rural Tennessee towns and appeared before her city council to
urge a site be purchased. The councilman for her district invited her to turn
the second shovel of dirt at the groundbreaking for the new library. Toni's
fondest dream, to see one of her safe-haven-for-the-heart novels available
for checkout there may soon be fulfilled. Her first release Law Breakers and Love Makers will be
released in print in November.
Welcome to the shadows, Toni!
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