Thank y'all for the reviews! I love waking up to them! Especially with this story because I know exactly how it ends since it's actually finished, and y'all are making guesses and asking questions. I love it! ~SG

Chapter 3

Now

The house on Marshall Drive looked exactly like what a little Southern house should look like. It was pale yellow with white trim, a tin roof, and a wrap-around porch. Flowering plants hung from hooks between the columns of the porch, and the house was lined with rose bushes. The yard was large and well kept, with an old oak tree out front. The trunk of the tree was surrounded by a flower bed bursting with colorful blooms, and a pair of white Adirondack chairs sat in the shade of its limbs. It even had what was probably a homemade swing, a wooden board suspended by long ropes, hanging from one strong branch. There was a gravel walkway leading from the gravel driveway to the front steps, and the entire property was protected by a white picket fence.

"Wow." Dean said as he parked on the side of the street out front, not bothering to use the driveway around the side of the house. "Why do I feel like I just drove onto the set of a country music video about lemonade and little girls in pigtails and skinny dipping in the creek in the summertime?"

"Maybe because that's exactly what this house looks like." Sam said as he climbed out of the car.

"Definitely doesn't look like the kind of place that would be haunted by a killer Casper." Dean decided as he pushed open the gate and stepped onto the path that lead from the street to the house.

Meredith had been preparing the one and only guest room for the Winchesters when they pulled up outside. She watched through the window as the shiny black Impala parked out front, and couldn't help but be impressed by it. She also couldn't help but be impressed by the two men that got out of it. They were too far away to really make out details, but they were both tall, one very much so, and as far as she could tell they were both handsome.

The doorbell rang shortly after their arrival and she left the guest room to answer the door, greeting her two guests with a grateful and welcoming smile on her face.

She wasn't all that tall, standing at about five and a half feet, but she was in good shape and her teal t-shirt and cut-off shorts showed it. She was barefoot and her long, dark brown hair was pulled away from her pretty, makeup free face in a wavy ponytail. There was a beauty mark on her upper lip and her big, brown eyes sparkled as she smiled, revealing dimples and white teeth.

"Wow." Dean said again, unable to stop himself even as he realized what he was saying. "You sure did grow up nice."

"I'm guessing that makes you Dean." she surmised, making the assumption because Dean was the only one that might remember what she looked like when she had been two. She was still smiling, but now it was more that she was amused by his greeting than relieved that he had come to rescue her. She turned that smile on the taller brother with the longer hair and the baby face. "Which means you must be Sam. I don't remember you being quite so tall."

Sam smiled, chuckling softly. "I don't remember you at all."

"Well, come on in." she said, moving aside so they could enter.

Dean was a little disappointed that she hadn't returned the compliment that he had uttered accidentally, but had meant honestly, but he ignored the slight and politely wiped his shoes on the mat before stepping into her foyer.

"You the only one here?" He asked as they walked into the living room.

Meredith nodded. "Kim's at work, and Rowan's over at a friend's house. I'm a teacher, so I get summers off."

"Kim's your sister, and Rowan's your niece?" Dean asked just to make sure, ignoring the look Sam shot him to remind him of the teasing he had dealt out earlier.

"Yes."

"Kim wasn't around back in the day, was she?"

"No." Meredith confirmed. "She's nearly a year younger than Sam. She was born right after we moved here. Why?"

Dean shrugged. "Just curious."

"You two can catch up later, Dean." Sam said. "We are here for a job, aren't we?"

"Shut up, Sammy."

Meredith snickered quietly and changed the subject, showing them to their room and then providing them with lunch once they were settled. Over the meal she explained everything she knew about what was going on.

"I have no idea who she is, or why she apparently wants me dead." she said. "But I'm pretty sure she's the one that killed my dad and Jason, and I don't want to be her next victim. I don't want my sister or niece to get hurt either."

"You said this apparent suicide thing runs in the family?" Dean asked.

Meredith nodded. "We have several ancestors that supposedly went insane and shot themselves. Some of them claimed to have seen a girl in a white dress a few days before they died. I don't know about Dad, but Jason told me that he had seen her. I didn't believe him, and then a couple days later he was dead. I found both of them."

"That sucks." Dean said bluntly, earning a look from Sam that said he couldn't believe Dean had just said that.

"Dude. Really?"

"No, he's right." Meredith said. "It did suck. Big time. I never believed they did it though."

"What about your mom?" Sam asked.

"She became a drunk after Dad died." Meredith explained. "She picked me and a friend up from school one day about five years later, and was driving us to a movie. She was drunk, but we didn't notice because she had gotten really good at hiding it. Somehow she lost control of the car and drove off a bridge into the creek. She died on impact, my friend died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and I almost died in the hospital."

Neither Winchester said anything because neither of them knew what to say.

"We were all still minors, and we ended up in foster care because we didn't have anywhere else to go." Meredith continued. "They separated us, and we all ended up in at least three houses a piece before Jason turned eighteen and managed to get custody of Kim and I. He died ten years ago, and now it's me and Kim and Rowan. And if you guys can't do something about this...ghost it'll be just Kim and Rowan."

She had been looking down at the table, but lifted her eyes as she finished speaking and settled her gaze on the two men across from her, focusing more on Dean because she had known him some when they were kids and he was the one she had talked to last night.

"You don't have anything to worry about, Meredith." Sam assured her. "We've been doing this our whole lives."

"Yeah." Dean agreed. "Ghosts are easy to gank. All we have to do is figure out who she is and where she's buried. Then we just salt and burn her bones and you're good to go."

Her eyes shifted back to Dean. "And if she was cremated instead?"

"Then we find whatever her spirit's connected to and burn it." Dean answered.

"It's just a matter of finding answers." Sam added.

"And that could take a while, right?"

The brothers exchanged a glance and then confirmed that it could take a while to find the information they were looking for. Especially since they didn't know who they were dealing with.

"So, what do we do in the meantime?" she asked.

These last few questions were the first time she had shown that she was even the tiniest bit afraid since they had arrived, and Dean suddenly felt a strong need to make her understand that he wasn't going to let anything bad happen to her.

He reached out and laid a comforting hand over her nervous one, a gesture that was more suited to Sam's style than his, but she clearly felt more of a connection to Dean. "In the meantime we stock up on salt, and we don't leave any of you alone until it's safe."

"There's two of you and three of us." she reminded him.

"We got this." Dean promised.

"You just have to trust us." Sam added.

Meredith nodded, but still looked a little freaked out.

Sam, ever the helpful gentleman, offered to clean up the kitchen for her after lunch, and Dean followed Meredith back to the living room where she surprised him with an unexpected but very welcome hug.

"What was that for?" he asked when she let go and stepped back.

"A thank you for coming to help me." she said, looking a little shy for a moment and then smiling. "And it's nice to see you again, Dean."

He smiled back. Did she really remember him from when she was two? "Yeah. It's nice to see you again too."