I reached over to hug her. The tube coming out of my hand-saline drip, I guessed-restricted my movement a little. Maybe they gave me something else for the pain. I hoped. "It's okay, baby," I told my daughter. "Mommy's all right."

She turned toward Tony. "It's worse than the doctor said," she told him. "She thinks I'm three."

Tony didn't answer her, but he leaned over my bed. "I came by to look at that wall you were telling me about, and I found you on the floor in the kitchen and brought you here. They said you had a severe concussion. That's the kind where you pass out."

"Felt pretty severe," I agreed. "I hallucinated."

That seemed to stump him. "Really?"

"Yeah. I thought there were other people in the kitchen with me, fighting over whether or not they'd killed me and if we were all dead. I didn't know either one of them. But the guy was sort of cute," I said. Too late, I realized that I probably shouldn't have mentioned death or hallucinations around Melissa, but thankfully she didn't look scared.

Jeannie appeared at my feet, smirking. "That figures," she said. "If I hallucinated, I'd probably see snakes."

"What'd the doctors say about me going home?" I asked.

It was Melissa who spoke up. "They said it depended on when you woke up, and the doctor was here just a little while ago. I can go get him, if you want." She has an uncanny ability to see what needs to be done and offer to do it.

"I want," I assured her. Melissa was out the door before either of the other two adults in the room could consider stopping her.

"Hallucinations?" Tony asked.

"I certainly hope so," I told him. "They said they were dead."

"They talked, too?" Jeannie asked.

"Yeah. The girl was sort of surly, but the guy has this lilt to his voice. Almost like a British accent, but not really."

"That's it," Jeannie answered. "I'm definitely subscribing to your hallucinations."

Melissa appeared at the open door, dragging in a beleaguered-looking doctor, an older gentleman maybe in his late fifties.

"Ms. Kerby," he said. "I'm Dr. Walker. I see you're awake."

"You can't ever be sure, Doctor," I said. "I might just be dreaming you."

He didn't react. I got the impression he never reacted. It would be undignified. "Do you know what today is?"

"Your birthday?" I tried.

"What day of the week," he answered without a change in facial expression.

"It's Friday," I said.

"Do you know your name?"

"You called me *Ms. Kerby' when you came in," I said. "Isn't that sort of a giveaway?"

"Alison," Tony admonished.

"Now he's given me the rest of it," I complained to the doctor. "Alison Kerby, right?"

"Mom," Melissa said. "Stop fooling around, or they won't let you go."

Dr. Walker made a point of looking me in the eye. "She's absolutely correct," he said.

Well, that was different. "Okay," I said. "Fire away."

After correctly answering questions about the time of year, the construction of my family and the President of the United States, I was given permission to leave with a prescription for acetaminophen with codeine for pain "if needed." I chose not to tell the doctor about my hallucinations, as I didn't see that information helping me leave the hospital anytime soon.

Standing up wasn't all that easy, but since Dr. Walker was watching, I was careful about not giving in to the pounding in my head. At least my vision had cleared up-no one in the room was the least bit fuzzy.

Given all the proper paperwork and a sample of my prescription to start me off, I was wheeled to the front door at the doctor's insistence. Once you're outside, they couldn't care less if you can walk or not.

Jeannie insisted that Melissa and I spend the night at their house in Lavallette, and I offered little resistance. I was really tired and not really ready to face the site of my hallucinations just yet.

Jeannie made dinner and Melissa was very happy with the macaroni and cheese, but I wasn't in a mood to eat and didn't feel up to making very good conversation, either. I kept asking Tony about how to fix the plaster wall, and he said he really hadn't had time to make a decent evaluation, what with having to pick me up off the floor and cart me off to the emergency room while getting Jeannie to pick Melissa up from school. I commended his priorities, but my head was starting to feel like it weighed about two hundred pounds, and I just wanted to lie down. I went to the spare bedroom, but I couldn't sleep.

How much of what I remembered could I trust? I stared at the ceiling for hours pondering that one.

What had been a truly hideous evening got just a hair worse when my cell phone rang a little after midnight.

The news didn't improve when caller ID showed my mother's phone number.

Now, don't get me wrong: I love my mother. Much of the time, I even like my mother. But she has one fatal flaw that is destined to drive me completely and totally over the edge and will possibly end in violence.

She thinks everything I do is wonderful.

I know what you're thinking. Sounds nice, right? Sounds like the ultimate extension of parental approval-a mother who truly supports and adores everything you do. But it's not really like that. It's more a case of a woman who is incapable of seeing the flaws no matter how obvious they might be: If I deliberately burned my mother's house in Manalapan to the ground, she would stand outside and marvel at my ingenuity in bringing my own kerosene, and then point out to her neighbors how evenly the flames were engulfing her living room.

This left me with a discouraging choice: I could ignore the call, in which case Mom might actually show up at my door to make sure I hadn't died, or I could talk to her now, which might make me wish I had.

"Hi, Mom."

"Oh, thank God you're all right!" she gushed. "I was terrified!"

"Who called you?" I asked.

There was a catch in my mother's breath; she'd been found out. "I'm not supposed to say."

"Spill, Mom. I'll find out anyway, and you'll be a shred of your former self when I'm through."

"You're so silly," she giggled. Honestly, the woman may be in her sixties, but she still giggles. "Melissa called me."

So I'd been ratted out by my own daughter. "Melissa," I said.

"She didn't want me to worry."

"Neither did I, which is why I didn't tell you anything."

"I know," Mom said. "You're so thoughtful that way."

See what I mean?

"I'm fine, Mom," I told her. "Just a bump on the head. I have some Tylenol"-I didn't mention that my prescription also had codeine in it-"and it doesn't even hurt."

"What happened?"

I told her the story, leaving out the questionable elements like the people who weren't there, as I thought that might fall into the category of "Bad Information to Tell Someone after You've Been Hit on the Head."

She was completely aghast. "Alison! You could have been killed!"

"Don't overdramatize, Mom. I know what I'm doing."

"Of course you do. You're very capable." Sometimes I can make it work for me.

"So don't worry. I'll be fine. In fact, I'm going right back to work on the house tomorrow." I knew even as I was saying it that I shouldn't, but it came out anyway.

"Tomorrow!" my mother exclaimed. "Is that wise?"

"I'm very capable, remember?"

"I know, Ally." No one else-no one-gets to call me "Ally." And even my mother only gets away with it under duress. "Will you be there around noon?"

Oh no. There had to be some way to head this off at the pass. "I don't know, Mom. Don't plan on coming over just yet. The place isn't in shape."

"I'll keep my eyes closed. I just want to see you, and make sure you're all right."

"I promise I'll let you know if I'm not. But I have a lot of work to do in the house."

"And you'll do it brilliantly," my mother interjected. Any opportunity will do.

"Thank you. But I don't have time to give a tour yet, and there's really nothing to see. I promise I'll get Melissa to take a picture of me and e-mail it to you, okay?"

"Oh, don't be silly," Mom answered. "If you don't want me to come, I won't come yet."

"It's not that I don't want you to come. It's that I promised Melissa the place would be ready by Halloween, and that means I don't have much time." I'd made no such promise, but it had been a vague goal of mine.

"I completely understand," Mom said.

Never breathe a sigh of relief when talking to your mother. She's always going to follow up. I should have learned by now.

"But you'll need something for lunch, won't you?" she asked.

Sometimes, there is no escape.

Even with the drugs coursing their way through my bloodstream, I still couldn't sleep after I hung up with Mom. So I pulled my antiquated laptop computer up onto the bed with me and plugged in the wall connection to the Internet. Tony and Jeannie don't have Wi-Fi in the house.

I admit it: I couldn't shake the images of Imaginary Paul and Imaginary Maxie, but that seemed strange, because you usually dream about people you've at least heard about. I wondered if perhaps there were such people, and I'd dreamed about them for a reason. Google is a great way to waste time and not sleep.

So I started looking for Maxie Malone, but got no hits. I figured "Maxie" must be a nickname, but for what? I tried "Maxine" and got no responses. Then I tried "Maximus," "Max," "Mackie," "MacArthur" and "Moxie"-hey, my head was really foggy-and got nothing that went with "Malone."

A few more tries, for obituaries (Maxie had said they were dead, after all) in the Asbury Park Press or even the Star-Ledger, which doesn't really cover the shore area, turned up fruitless. And the meds were starting to kick in-I was finally getting sleepy.

I decided to give just one more news source a try; I had completely forgotten about the Harbor Haven Chronicle (it had no Web site of its own, but its content is incorporated into a regional news site, downdashore.com), the local weekly. And that was when I found something that made my head start to hurt again.

There was a mention of my address and two bodies being found on the premises in a half-page article. It identified no police sources, but referred to a Detective Harold Westmoreland visiting the scene.

The headline read, "Two Bodies Found in Local House."

I realized my jaw had dropped. I was shaking my head. I was breathing through my mouth. How could I have known that there had been two people who died in the house? Had the information been in the file, and I'd missed it? Somehow, I doubted that.

The next morning, I left a message on my mother's voice mail telling her to push back lunch for a day.

I told myself it was because I hadn't gotten much sleep.

I thanked Tony and Jeannie for their concern and their hospitality and, since my head was feeling better even without rest, laughed off their offers to drive Melissa to school. I gathered up my daughter, dropped her off where she needed to be and drove to my new house/business/ project.

And when I opened the door, the same two people were standing there, as if they hadn't moved all night, and even though my vision had cleared up, they still seemed somehow vaguely transparent and fuzzy.

I shut the door and ran for the station wagon. Then I drove to Dunkin' Donuts and called Jeannie to ask if I could stay there one more night.

Five.

"So. How much do you know about ghosts?"

Tony and Jeannie looked first at each other and then at me. The dinner I'd "made" (I'm better at ordering than cooking, mostly because my father taught me to fix houses, and my mother taught me that I was perfection incarnate) as a thank-you gift for the two nights in their house was suddenly going untouched, which would no doubt be a disappointment to the proprietor of the Golden Sun Szechuan House. Melissa could barely hear me, engrossed as she was with her friend Wendy at the far end of the table discussing Halloween costumes, since the candy-and-mask date was a little more than three weeks away (the consensus was NO DISNEY PRINCESSES!), and little girls don't spend much time listening to adults when given a choice.

Suffice it to say, Tony and Jeannie were being remarkably hospitable.

"You mean shadows left behind by paintbrushes?" Tony asked hopefully.

"No," I said. "I mean real ghosts. You know, people who are dead but don't go away."

Jeannie's eyes narrowed. "Is this about your hallucinations?"

"No!" I insisted. "Of course not. I just was watching this movie last night, and it got me thinking about ghosts."

Looking relieved, Tony and Jeannie went back to work on the sesame chicken and veggie lo mein. "Good. I was starting to plan a trip back to the emergency room, only the mental health wing this time," Tony said after swallowing.

"What movie?" Jeannie asked.

"What?"