Eleanor
January 11th
Being dead's a funny thing. I could walk the streets of Haven all day and no one saw me. I was still mortified at how I died. Really, to have fallen down the stairs and broken my neck when I was startled. Of all the stupid ways to go. I much would have preferred dying of a heart attack in extreme old age. What worried me is that I hadn't seen the light, seen my dead parents, my late husband, or pretty much seen anything that they claim you are supposed to find on the other side. The night I died, I'd yelled at the Chief that I wasn't dead, despite my body being in front of both of us. He didn't hear me. I'd gone to find Julia, hoping for some mystical connection to my daughter that would allow her to see me, and found out she couldn't. She ignored me dead as much as she'd ignored me alive.
So now I was stuck living my life as a dead woman. It wasn't much different than living it as a live one. It wasn't like I could walk through walls and enter people's houses willy-nilly. I could slip in if someone left a door open too long. That's how I found out much more about Madam Hilsef's sex life than I ever needed to know. Haven's psychic appeared to have decided laying the cards wasn't as lucrative as laying the customers. I always thought she was a phony, but now I knew she was a very flexible phony. I gathered from her activities that she didn't "sense" my ghostly presence.
Cats seemed to see me, and like me. I went down to the fish market one day and a whole herd of them came up to me. I couldn't do much with cats, though by that time I was getting squirrelly enough to try to spell out a message with them. Too bad the cats had different ideas. They left when one of the workers put down food for them. Dogs didn't like me as much, but put up with me. I tried to evaluate my options and resources and came up with nothing. I asked God why the hell he'd done this to me, and he didn't answer, either.
Failing to find heaven, hell, or purgatory, and with little hope of ever attaining one of them, I set about people watching. I saw all sorts of interesting things. Bill's face as his wife told him there'd be another McShaw, Dave cowering from Max, and Vince then threaten him. Privately, I'd put my money on Vince, if I could still bet. I watched Nathan grieve the loss of Garland, and watched him protect Audrey from the other Audrey, though she'd be might upset if she'd known what he done. I watched Duke struggle with love leashing him to the town he wanted to hate. And I watched my daughter.
Something had seemed off about Julia ever since she got back to town. I knew she was a grown woman, and I'd tried to give her space. It had never been enough in life, and then she always blamed me for her fear or failures. But she was even more bitter when she came back, as if I was to blame from some horrible thing she lived through in the middle-east. Her soul had become darker, and it was like she didn't know how to deal with her anger. When she took Duke out the cemetery, I knew there'd be trouble. I saw something twisted and dark in her enjoy Duke's fear when he realized there were a lot of us that had the tattoo.
My daughter and I had a tumultuous relationship. I was a strong woman, and I'd raised Julia to be one as well. However, she didn't always appreciate my methods, nor did I appreciate her attitude. Still, I'd been proud of her, and had told her so. After she returned from her Doctors Without Borders stint, she was different. It was like we couldn't speak to each other at all anymore. We may have had our differences, but we'd always been able to air them. Since she'd gotten back, she'd shut me out. Now I watched a stranger perform a subtle dance, manipulating everyone she touched. I feared for my friends' lives.
I could see how it would work out now, with her maneuvering starting. Julia would be protected by Nathan, Haven's white knight, while she manipulated everyone else. She'd cozy up to Audrey and she'd start dropping more pieces of information to make Audrey feel like the whole town was working against her. Duke, who never needed help when it came to distrusting people, had already been given information that there were lots of us with the tattoo, and I saw sadly that he'd begun listing out names of folks to watch. I don't know if I should be happy he had added Julia to the list or not. The boy did need to learn to trust, and I thought Audrey'd teach him, but she was on his list of suspects too.
I knew that the cycle was coming full circle again. Garland and I were no longer able to help them, and it was killing me, or would be if I wasn't already dead. I was worried that Dave and Vince wouldn't be able to agree long enough to ensure that Audrey, Nathan, and Duke worked as a team to unravel the mystery that is Haven. I was afraid that all would be lost if they couldn't pull together. I wondered if they realized what they fought for.
Right then there was nothing I could do about it but watch it all unfold.