Hello everyone - so glad to see people taking a liking to the story; I've taken some creative liberties with certain historical references about First Nations and Quebecois interaction, however it is all in service of the narrative and done so with as much respect and understanding as possible. Enjoy the next chapter!

'Okay, we've got fruit, nuts and more fruit, some pumpkins and the good sugar, which I suppose makes a difference even though it's getting cooked, but I'm not the chef so what do I know?'

Sam gathered the cloth grocery bags from the back seat of the car, then stopped as she started towards the house. The last time she'd gone to town for the grocery run she'd come back to see Pete and Flower waiting for her by the gate, having come back from their morning hike on the grounds and greeting her like two sweet puppies waiting for their human to come home and play. For all she knew today they could be there again, grinning their cheerful grins and she'd have no clue; the idea that she could go back to living unaware of them made her spirits dampen and there was no time for tears today. Tears could wait, fall festival guests would not.

But as Sam walked up to the main door, the silence was so lonely. It started out feeling so peaceful, just Jay and herself out in the country; after her accident the tranquil little hideaway had felt invaded, like having a whole gang of new neighbours on a remote little island of calm. Then as she'd done when plunked down into her journalism classes at university with a bunch of strangers, she found her way with the people around her, forming friendships and inside jokes until one night one of those friends who'd worked on the campus newspaper with her invited her to be a last-minute plus one to a friend's birthday dinner and her attention had been caught by the birthday boy's roommate with the insanely beautiful eyes and delightfully geeky sense of humour. Three nights later, she was on a date with him at the restaurant where he was doing a culinary school co-op and that, as the historians said, was that.

Fumbling a little with her keys, Sam manoeuvred the bags and unlocked the door, the melancholy returning when she saw nothing, smelled the intoxicating yeasty tangy of bread dough rising, and heard only the sounds of an exasperated Jay.

'Guys, seriously I have a lot to keep doing right now, I'm on a deadline. No, that's not meant to be an insult. Hey, hey, Isaac? You wanna keep smelling coffee in the morning? Then quit it!'

'Your kitchen elf is back,' Sam called out, hoping her bright tone would help dispel Jay's cranky mood. She couldn't help but pout a little when she walked in the kitchen and saw the look in his eyes. 'The kids causing trouble while I was out?'

'Oh you have no idea…okay, yeah, actually you have the best idea,' Jay told her as he cut scone dough with his pastry ring to make them as even as possible. 'Start washing up the fruit and I'll tell you all about the de-light-full morning I've had so far.'

'Babe, I was gone all of what, two hours tops,' she told her husband as she followed his instructions and began to rinse berries and stone fruit.

'Honestly, I don't know why we don't pay teachers like movie stars if that's what they have to get up and face every day.'

'And when we have our own kids in the future, we'll get to go through it all over again.'

'That's different, they won't be older than my great-grand-parents.'

'Hey I resent that!' Trevor, who'd popped in just in time to see if his request for apricot rugelach had made the cut, pressed an ephemeral hand to his equally vaporous chest. 'I'll always be thirty-three!'

'You were thirty-three in two-thousand and two, Trevor, that means if you'd lived you'd be over fifty now,' Jay retorted as he rolled out his rough-puffy pastry dough one final time before chilling it. 'In theory, you're old enough to be Sam's dad.'

'Du-ude,' the finance bro moaned indignantly, while Sam snickered at Jay's tone.

'Let me guess, Trevor's non-existent panties are in a bunch because you called him a geezer,' she giggled, then shook her head. 'Trev, my man, remember that all the good smells coming from the kitchen today are going to be courtesy of the guy you're nagging right now.'

'Yeah, I know, Mom,' Trevor started to snit, which made Jay laugh even more and he clammed up. 'What's that Sass? I … right…okay, let's go…do that…that thing…'

He backed out of the kitchen through the wall, only to be replaced by Pete and Hetty.

'My goodness, Jay, you have been hard at work, no thanks to your bride scarpering off,' she observed with a haughty sniff, saddened that her Lady Living couldn't her chiding.

'She didn't scarper, Hetty, I sent her on a supply run.'

'Ah, yeah, my wife would always do that to me whenever she didn't want me underfoot either,' Pete nodded, 'of course, she would usually have her mother there to help her and then I had no problem getting out of the house.'

'Hey, Jay, I thought I heard Sam come back, did you remember to ask her to get the maple syrup to go with the plum ice cream?' Sass appeared through the wall, and Jay fought to grind his teeth in impatience. 'It's the most authentic way to make it even though we did more like a fresh syrup on ice cold snow thing thanks to the Quebecois traders but since you don't have a snow-cone maker-'

'Alright, that's enough,' Jay started, slamming his palms into the sticky dough, which Sam knew to be a sign he was on his last marble before they were all gone. 'Sass, yes, Sam got the maple syrup. Pete, Hetty? Go do something else so I can concentrate, and pass the word on that if anyone wants to eat, they can damn well do so when I decide!'

'Well, that was simply uncalled for!' Hetty patted at the base of her throat, gave Pete a little elbow nudge in the ribs.

'Agreed, you definitely need to reread that chapter in the friendship manual.'

'You know, in my tribe, if someone who's supposed to be a caretaker snapped like that, they'd be sent into the forest with nothing but a knife and their wits and be expected to survive a whole week without the help of the village.'

'Guys, I-'

But before Jay could stammer out any kind of apology, the trio turned on their collective vaporous heels and sailed through the walls. Alone with his slimy guilt and embarrassed shame, he turned back to his dough and worked quietly until he heard his

'Damn, Jay, no need to be so mean,' Sam muttered as she drained berries in the sink, started on the apples. 'They have feelings too.'

'Well, they're crowding my work space and we need to get things done.'

'They have feelings too,' she repeated, 'and consider that the first living person they've been able to connect with in ages suddenly lost the ability to do so only to have their replacement bark like a guard dog at them at almost every turn.'

'Yeah…'

'And remember how you felt when your D&D friends booted you from the group, how you felt when they didn't know you could still hear them?'

'Yeah…' Jay repeated, the guilt and shame growing in his gut like bloomed yeast.

'So.' Sam turned to him, stilled his hands that had begun to viciously tromp the delicate dough with the rolling pin. 'Why don't you go make amends with them?'

'Babe, we don't have time-'

'We have time,' she reassured him firmly. 'There's always time for doing the right thing.'

'Seriously? I'm up to my elbows in butter right now, and you want me to go have feelings-sharing time with the Ghost Gang?'

'The longer you let it go, the worse it gets, you know that. Remember when you got that burn on your hand just after we started dating?'

Jay shuddered at the memory when he'd thought it was nothing more than a run of the mill wrist-sizzle after bumping a saute pan in the kitchen at his culinary school co-op placement and it had turned into a bad infection requiring several rounds of antibiotics and a dermatology consultation. He bumped his head against hers so his hands would say kitchen-prepped.

'Why are you always right? It's very irritating.'

'Not always.' Sam kissed his cheek, passed him a hand-towel. 'If it were me, I'd just mash the apples like potatoes to make pie.'

'That- it- I don't have the energy to unpack that right now, I gotta go apologize to our friends.'

Jay left the kitchen, for a fraction of a moment wishing he could just go through the walls like Hetty, Pete and the rest of them had done as it would make this feel less like a walk of shame. The noise of the tv coming from the family room meant that Trevor hadn't yet turned off the set and it was now tuned to The Price is Right. He'd learned from Sam they liked the game show as the pricing helped many of them become accustomed to how prices for goods changed and rose with time, the bright colours appealing to Flower and Thor, with all aspects of its various competitions appealing to the rest of the gang.

'Guys, can we talk?' he asked, his stomach clenching when he was roundly ignored. 'Guys?'

'I'm sorry, do you hear someone speaking?' Pete asked, looking around at the others to make a point.

'Thorfinn hear nothing but whiny little man,' the Viking declared.

'But that can't be, as the chef of the house is far too consumed with his projects to have any spare time for us whatsoever,' Isaac intoned with somehow even more snootiness than he routinely used. 'Is it possible he's decided to descend his lofty ivory tower to mingle with us filthy poltergeists?'

'Or maybe that even if we're ghosts we still feel plenty?' Alberta added. 'Kinda like how Gary here is going to be feeling the burn on that new home gym?'

'Such fascinating equipment, an electric gazelle runner that offers training through a small interactive screen. And from the girth of that gentleman, it seems he'll need all the training he can afford,' Hetty marveled.

'I hope the green guy wins, go green!' Flower cheered; the cheer turned to a squawk of protest when Jay simply marched over and pressed the power button on the side of the screen to turn it off. 'Hey, man, we were watching that!'

'Family meeting time,' Jay declared; he'd heard Sam use the term for the crew when they were getting to be too much so he decided to tear a page out of her playbook since between the two of them she was indeed the expert. 'I've got all day, guys, so the sooner we talk, the sooner we have a house full of yummy smells again.'

'Like that walnut honey cake again?' Pete inquired, making the others groan, Alberta adding in a hissing whisper, 'some iron-clad vault you are, Pete.'

'I'm really sorry how I spoke to you all, and I promise I'm not a bad guy-'

'We know you're actually a great guy,' Trevor interrupted, 'the kind of guy that, I'm kinda not too proud to say, but you'd have been bullied by me and my co-workers because we hated how the things we wanted to be you already were.'

'Aww, thanks Trev,' Jay smiled, then shook his head lightly to get back on track. 'The point is, I have no idea how to manage a whole lotta people like you.'

'But you're trying to make this place a B&B, aren't you? You're going to have to be a lot more diplomatic with your guests than you've been with us,' Isaac reminded him, 'you'll need their paying fees, not to mention their good reviews on Yap-dot-com.'

It took Jay a moment to realize he meant Yelp, but decided to roll with it as Isaac had a very valid point, and Alberta was piping up to add her two cents.

'It will only serve to hurt your business if you're gruff with them, no matter how it makes your eyes smolder.'

'Thorfinn agree with Alberta,' Thorfinn added, 'both about guests and smoldering eyes. Sam say they like campfire embers and she is right.'

'Right, and as long as I'm here with you guys, I think I could learn from you,' Jay replied, and saw everyone in the room visibly perk up. 'I need to practice my people skills beyond the kitchen and I think you could help with that.'

'Well, the sarcasm needs to go, for one,' Hetty began, 'and certainly your language needs cleaning up as a whole.'

'And maybe invest in some suits or at the very least some kind of polo and khakis, make you look like you're the man in charge,' Trevor added.

'Perhaps a few more push-ups after you finish your daily run about the property, to help keep that chiseled physique. To be an attractive spokesmodel for your business,' Isaac added hastily.

'I meant you could give me tips on how to sell our stuff at the festival. What will make it-'

'Sparkle and shine?' Flower offered, and Jay snapped his fingers, pointed in her direction.

'Exactly.'

'Now that we can help with, give it a little pizazz.' Alberta gave a happy little shimmy. 'You want us to help write the menu board, do a little jingle?'

'In a manner of speaking. I gotta get back to the kitchen and each of you gets a turn to be in there as something comes out of the oven and give me your opinion on how it smells first so we can help Sam write the menu board.'

'So like anonymous reviewers?' Trevor made an impressed face. 'I like it.'

'While you're waiting, I want you guys to talk about the most popular breakfast, lunch and dessert items from when you were alive. Then we're going to share it with Sam and she can help do the selling about the history side of Woodstone.'

'Little man is proving his honour,' Thorfinn decided, 'he admit mistake, make amends, and want our help.'

'Agreed,' Hetty declared, 'very well, Jay, whom do you propose will be the first to offer input?'

'That's up to you,' Jay told them, then whipped around when he heard a crash from the kitchen followed by Sam swearing. 'I better go make sure she hasn't killed my pastry.'