Gina had had to get up then because, true to CeeCee’s prediction—though her aunt was the only one in the family who professed to be psychic—customers had begun coming in, as it was after six.

So that left only me to say, “Oh, come on, CeeCee. You wouldn’t want to be married to some old rich dude anyway. Isn’t it better to wait until you can be with someone you actually like, and support yourself?”

“Like you, you mean? Yeah, well, too bad I don’t have your luck,” CeeCee grumbled, her tone only slightly bitter. Then her violet eyes widened. “Not . . . I didn’t mean—with your dad . . .”

I smiled at her. “No. I get it. It’s true. I am lucky, in a way.”

CeeCee didn’t mean I was lucky because my dad was dead. He went out jogging one day when I was very young, and never came back (at least, not physically. He hovered at my side spiritually for years, offering unsolicited advice).

CeeCee meant what happened after that.

I didn’t find out about it until after my college graduation. That’s when Mom told me she’d invested all the Social Security benefits the government had been sending to me in Dad’s name, in addition to my portion of his surprisingly hefty life insurance policy. Mom hadn’t needed the money to raise me, since she’d had a great job as a local television news journalist, and now she’d gotten herself named as an executive producer of my stepfather Andy’s dorky home improvement show.

Or maybe it wasn’t so dorky, considering it had gone into international syndication and you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing Andy’s big handsome face on the side of a bus, urging you to try his new brand of drill bits.

After I’d graduated from college, I’d inherited the money. Mom said I could do whatever I wanted with it, except spend it “on drugs, designer clothes, or a boob job” (which I found insulting: I don’t do drugs, designer clothes are for people lacking in fashion imagination, and my boobs are as amazing as my hair).

“And don’t even think about spending it on a wedding,” Andy had added. “I know you and Jesse want to get married soon, but we’ll pay for it.”

I’d decided the wisest thing to do was keep the money where it was, invested in a combination of bonds and blue chip stocks (it turns out there is something about which I’m almost as conservative as Jesse: finances).

I did cash in a little to use for grad school, and to rent my one-bedroom apartment in Carmel Valley, not too far from where my oldest stepbrother, Jake, had bought a house with the money he’d made off an entrepreneurial venture of his own, the house he shares with Jesse.

And of course when I found the perfect couture wedding gown (but with a vintage feel) while on a girls’ weekend in San Francisco with CeeCee and our mothers two summers ago, I’d thought it worth the splurge. It’s been sitting in my closet ever since, already fitted and ready to go.

Jesse, of course, won’t let me use a penny of it to help him with his debt. He has too much pride (or overprotective nineteenth-century macho man bullshit, as I like to call it, often to his face).

CeeCee was right: I am lucky—if you can call losing your dad at a young age lucky. Yeah, I lost him, but I still got to visit with him for nearly a decade afterward.

And now I support myself while working an unpaid internship at my alma mater.

But when Jesse and I get married next year, my dad won’t be there to walk me down the aisle. I’m not a sentimental girl, but that seems kind of unlucky. I’d give all the money back if I could have my dad alive again, just for a few hours.

Or Paul dead. Either one would be great.

“What about your career?” I asked CeeCee, trying to change the subject. “At least you’ve got your dream job. Not many new college grads can say that.”

CeeCee snorted. “Oh, right. I’m finally full time at the paper, and they’ve stuck me on the police beat. Do you know what that’s like around here? Some old lady over on Sandy Point Way says this is the third day in a row tourists have taken pictures of the front of her house. She called the cops because tourists keep stopping in front of her beachfront bungalow to take photos of it! What does she expect them to do, not look at it? It’s her own fault, for living in such a freaking adorable house.”

“Be careful what you wish for, CeeCee,” I said. “You don’t want juicier crimes around here to report on, believe me. Speaking of the paper, I was wondering if you’d mind—”

“Oh, no,” CeeCee interrupted with a groan. “Not again.”

“—searching the archives,” I went on. “I tried to do it myself, but—”

“—the search function on the paper’s online edition only lists obituaries by last names,” she finished for me in a bored voice. “And you only have the first name. Or wait, let me guess: You don’t know what year the person died.”

“Um . . . both?”

“Really, Suze? Because I have nothing better to do all day?”

“CeeCee, I wouldn’t ask, if it weren’t really, really important. Her first name is Lucia, and I’m pretty sure she died in the state of California in the past ten years.”

“Oh, that narrows it down,” CeeCee said, sarcastically.

“She’s six to ten years old, tops. And I think she liked horseback riding, if that helps.”

CeeCee stared. “Wait . . . she’s a kid? Oh, Suze, I didn’t know. That’s terrible.”

I’d never explained my gift to CeeCee. Over the years, however, she—and my youngest stepbrother, David—had caught on. It had made my job a little easier, though the ludicrous story Father Dominic made up to explain Jesse’s sudden appearance in Carmel—that he was a “young Jesuit student who’d transferred to the mission from Mexico, then lost his yearning to go into the priesthood” after meeting me—nearly blew my credibility.

My mom and Andy fell for it, though, hook, line, and sinker. It’s amazing what people will believe if they want to enough.

“I know,” I said. “It’s so sad. Don’t you want to help now, Cee? Especially knowing you might keep the restless soul of a child from wandering aimlessly between life and death for centuries. And maybe even get to meet the man of your dreams, Mr. Lance Arthur Walters.”

CeeCee slammed down the lid of her laptop.