"I am officially tired."
Chuck watched as Ned plopped himself down on the couch across the room. "You're getting to comfortable at the Pie Hole," she replied, opening the window to let the let summer breeze in. "If making pies all die is enough to wear you out, I can't imagine how tired you're going to be when Emerson finally get back from his vacation."
"Hey, it's not like this was a normal day. The neighborhood festival brought record business. I didn't even have a minute to sit down."
"Yeah, I know. I was waiting tables with Olive, remember?"
"I'm just saying, it was busy."
"Well, yeah," Chuck continued, sitting on the floor next to the couch. "But it still wasn't as exhausting as chasing murderers and solving crimes."
"A lot more monotonous, though," Ned said. "I never thought I'd miss fighting crime and risking my life every day."
"You got used to being a superhero."
He groaned. "I am not a superhero."
"You are."
"I'm not!"
"You have a superpower! You fight evil!"
"It's not a superpower!"
"You touch dead people and they come back to life and it helps you solve murders. That. Is. A. Superpower," Chuck said, punctuating her argument with a nod and a smile, satisfied that she had won.
"Okay, it might be a power," Ned conceded. "But it's not very super. Really, in pretty much all of our cases, it really hasn't helped that much."
"What do you mean?"
"It's just a little weird that even though I can literally asked the victims who murdered them, we still end up having to go through a complicated investigation," Ned explained.
"Huh. It is kind of weird that in all the time we've been doing this we haven't had a single time where it was as simple as the victim just telling us who did it and that person getting arrested."
"Emerson thinks it's because you waste our minute."
"That isn't true!"
Ned chuckled. "I didn't say it was, I just said that it was what Emerson said."
"Well, I don't waste the minute. It's not my fault that dead people can't be more specific," Chuck pouted.
"Hey, don't be sad. Don't do sad face. I said I didn't agree with Emerson. I like that you try to give them one last piece of comfort before they're gone forever. It's… nice."
Chuck smiled at Ned warmly. "Well, I'm glad someone appreciates it."
"I do," Ned said as his eyelids grew heavier. "And I appreciate you helping at the Pie Hole, too. All the time, but especially today. Olive's a great waitress, but when we get really busy and she gets really stressed she can get… scary with the customers."
"Speaking of Olive, I've been thinking…" Chuck ventured hesitantly. "It's just… we're so close with her. She's practically family, you know? And it just seems wrong that we're so close with her and we're keeping so many secrets from her. I've been thinking about it and I just can't figure out why we're keeping these secrets from her. She's already proven that we can trust her, and you know she'll love us no matter what, and she'd do anything for us. So I really think that-"
The sound of Ned's snoring startled Chuck out of her rambling.
"We should tell her," Chuck finished quietly to herself.
She watched Ned for a few moments as he slept, thinking. Finally, she nodded decisively and stood, covering Ned with the blanket from the back of the couch. She wrapped the edge of the blanket around her hand and brushed the hair back from Ned's forehead. "We will be finishing this conversation tomorrow," she whispered before head back to the bedroom.
Even though Ned was fast asleep and oblivious to Chuck's words, a feeling of trepidating began to develop inside of him.
THE END