Chapter 20
-Wrigley-
Cash takes a deep breath, his eyes squeezed shut before snapping them open. “I’m ready,” he says after a moment. Squeezing his hand, I smooth my thumb across the back of his hand. “Ok babe. You tell me if you want to go at any point ok?” I check again before knocking on the front door.
A familiar woman with dark red wavy hair pulls the door open and her eyes immediately fill with tears. “I’m so glad you two made it,” Cash’s mother says gently, her fingers twitching at her sides slightly.
She wants to touch him. She wants to hug her son. But she will wait until Cash makes the first move.
In the end, we did call her and Cash talked to her on the phone. I explained about how I am able to make him solid, about how other people can then touch him. And just like I had expected, she was overjoyed.
She cried, of course she cried (and she’s crying now too) but she was clearly happy too. It was the right decision for Cash to reach out to his family again.
My boyfriend steps forwards, his hand still in mine as he gently touches his mother’s arm. She beams at him, taking a cautious step forwards towards her son. I let go of Cash’s hand, keeping my other hand on his back. I turn around slightly to give them some kind of privacy as they hug; I mean otherwise I’m just creepily standing over my boyfriend’s shoulder as he hugs his mum whom he hasn’t seen in around two and a half years.
I try and tune out of the conversation as they greet each other, suddenly feeling like I’m intruding on an important moment for the two of them. And then Cash is pulling me into a hug and I think he’s crying and oh my god he’s crying is he ok?!
He looks happy though. And I know that he is; he’s just…well he’s dead and he just managed to hug his mum again. This is a monumental moment for him. This is a monumental moment for everyone.
“Thank you so much, Spiritualist Johanneson. Thank you for bringing my son back to me,” Cash’s mother, Cate, says as she pulls me into a hug. I’m frozen for a moment, quite literally thinking what the hell did I even do? It’s not like I’m actually a spiritualist with any power; I’m just a liar.
A scammer.
A fake.
A charlatan.
I pat Cate’s back, pulling away from her slightly. “Please, just call me Wrigley. I’m not a spiritualist anymore.”
Cash snaps his gaze to mine, and I recognise the understanding there. He knows the real meaning of what I just said; he knows what I want.
I don’t want to be a charlatan, I don’t want to pretend to be something I’m not. I want a normal job to go with my normal life. My normal life aside from the fact that my boyfriend is a ghost. And I know that my ghost boyfriend will help me achieve this normal life that I want.
I know that he will always be by my side.
—————
-Cash-
Wrigley and I go to visit my family every weekend to begin with whilst my sisters, father and mother slowly get used to seeing me again. It’s weird for me too, but where I’ve been able to watch them since I died, they never knew that I was even here.
That I even still existed.
It’s hard at first, having to say goodbye to them at the end every time. But, it gets easier and easier knowing that I’ll be able to see them again soon anyway.
Plus, Wrigley does help make things easier too. He’s always there to check on me, to see how things are going. To see how I am. He still acts like a little bitch half of the time, but he’s always completely serious when he asks me how I’m doing.
So like this, we’ve been supporting each other. He’s been helping me reconnect with my family whilst we look for jobs for him together. And there’s also one more thing he’s been wanting to do.
Wrigley Johanneson wants to see his mother.
His friends bring it up sometimes, about how long it has been since he last visited her, offering him support for when he eventually goes to see her. We all know that he misses her, that he desperately wants to be with his mother again.
And occasionally his sister calls to berate him about being a ‘bad son’ or some shit like that. I hate her, it really doesn’t seem like she ever does or says anything nice to Wrigley. And he always says that this is just her way of dealing with the grief of the loss of their father, but that doesn’t give her the right to treat their mother like a burden or take her anger out on Wrigley.
So Wrigley gave himself a goal: he will go see his mother once he has a new job. Once he is able to become someone he is happy with. I already think that he’s incredible, but my opinions of him are biased and irrelevant anyway.
Wrigley wants to see his mother and give her some good news about his life. He wants her to be proud of him, and although I’m sure she already is, for Wrigley, it feels like there is something that he must prove to his mother.
And I think that he just wants to prove to her that he’s doing well. I think that he wants her to see him when he’s happy and feeling positive about the future, and not when he’s being bogged down with the grief in his past.
Because although the pain from his father’s death will follow him and his family forever, that doesn’t mean that it has to play a large role in his life anymore.
I never realised that his father’s passing did influence his current life so much, until Wrigley told me why he had been a charlatan spiritualist for so long. It was because of his mother.
He was doing it for her, because she hoped that one day, Wrigley would be able to bring his father’s ghost back to her. She believed that by having her son become a spiritualist, then her connection to my world would be stronger, and thus the chances of seeing her husband would be greater.
But we all know that that’s not how that works. We all know that she would never see him again. And now, Wrigley is ready to tell her that he has chosen his own life, and that he is happy with it. And he’s hoping that by showing his mother how much he has moved on, she will try to do the same.
He just wants his mother back.
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