-8-

Lydia cursed as, once more, her independent search for the people who sold Delia those poisonous asps which killed her, led nowhere. But then the police had already stumbled across dead end upon dead end, and so was she.

Personally, she wasn't that shocked by this; many scammers learnt how to cover their tracks very well and knew how to hide themselves. But after she had given the cops unfettered access to her stepmother's records and computer, which contained the details behind the purchase and the websites she had quickly trawled to find those asps in the first place, Lydia was on the verge of just giving up.

Delia had wanted a refund of all things, like that would help her, but Lydia was doing it out of justice, really since Delia was the only parental figure in her life left now her dad had been killed after a plane crashed dropped him in the sea and a shark then killed him, and she had rarely seen her own mother after she and dad divorced 30 years ago.

The only good news she had from this mess was the asps themselves had been caught after Lydia quickly called the cops and warned them of the danger, even showing them the proof. The cops were in the house for a good 3 hours, but they'd been thorough enough to gather the records Delia had left behind to help - what helped them the most was Delia's habit of leaving things open for everyone to find - them find the scammers since there was a high chance they'd do this again and more people would be killed from snake venom. Nobody else was hurt, that was the main thing - even now, Lydia shuddered as she thought about what could have been, all because of Delia's incessant need for drama.

Why, of all the mourning rituals she had to perform, did she have to use an Ancient Egyptian one where live snakes were involved? Why couldn't she have just found something different, more safe?

Oh, yeah, that's right….Delia was an artist, and she wanted to capture the most breathtaking effect possible. But now Lydia was faced with the mammoth task of picking up the pieces, she had to go through all of Delia's documents and sort through them and arrange for a funeral while announcing to the world at large what happened to her; the miracle was that was largely unnecessary, since Delia had been live-streaming the ritual and so everyone watching knew she had been bitten although some believed it to be for dramatic effect and she was still alive, although the clue she hadn't gotten up and was still should've been a massive hint.

'No matter how old she gets, Delia still manages to make things complicated….,' Lydia thought to herself with a tired shake of her head.

"Mum?"

Lydia turned and smiled when she saw her only daughter padding slowly towards her. "Hey, sweetie. You okay?" She asked.

Astrid nodded, and Lydia was just glad the one good thing that came out of the whole mess which began with her latest show which was interrupted by Bee- no, she had no intention of even thinking the trickster demon's name in her mind in case saying it actually - oh, to hell with it, Beetlejuice in the audience and spooking her into actually walking off in a panic, before she discovered what happened to her father at Delia's art gallery.

Lydia's relationship with her daughter had always been a fantastic one, but that changed when Richard, Astrid's dad, was killed in an accident while he was in the Amazon. Astrid didn't have Lydia's awareness her father was perfectly fine in the afterlife where he would live on, and one day they'd join him, but it had been affecting her badly since she had so many painful regrets. She and Richard…their relationship had been crumbling for a long time even before the accident. It didn't help occasionally she had visions and feelings of Beetlejuice's presence which had haunted her ever since their near marriage, 30 years ago.

Richard hadn't known about her encounter with Beetlejuice, so as a result there was plenty of tension at times. It was that same fragility that caused Lydia to say yes to Rory when the sleazy con man had asked her to marry him.

Astrid took a seat near her and looked at Lydia's laptop. "Any luck finding those people who sold those snakes to Delia?"

"No," Lydia replied with a sigh. "But I didn't expect anything. It was definitely a scam. The good news - well the only good news - is the two snakes she bought were caught and nobody else was hurt." But Lydia looked pointedly at her daughter. "I get the feeling that's not what you wanted to talk about."

Astrid sighed at how well her mother could see through her. "No, it's not. I just want to know….why is it you didn't…y'know, react much to dad's death?"

Lydia sighed, only under her breath since things between herself and her daughter had become better since she pulled Astrid off the soul train in the afterlife. "Don't think I didn't, Astrid," she warned the teenage girl. "Believe me, I was shrieking on the inside. Like I told you at the cemetery, my relationship with your father had been falling apart for a while," Lydia bit her lip as she remembered the cause of the fights while Astrid had been at school or out with friends or her grandparents. "Your father might have loved horror movies, but living with someone who could see ghosts was something else. As time passed, well Richard became as sceptical as you. It led to some….nasty fights…it didn't help I was sometimes away seeing the shows and visiting haunted places. Okay, most of them were faked, but that doesn't matter now. He saw me leaving as a sign I was giving up on our family, and that hurt."

Astrid didn't say a word since she too had resented her mother for being away for so long.

Lydia went on, "But I planned to make it all up to you. I was going to take a year or two off, and I was hoping we could spend more time together, but then the accident happened and your father died. I was in shock when I heard the news, and all of those arguments, the shouting, the horrifying things we said to each other came pouring out and it was all I could hear in my mind, and I just couldn't function by myself, never mind talk to you. I was grieving myself, Astrid, I might see ghosts but I hadn't wanted your father to die. When he did," Lydia closed her eyes and looked away, totally unsure of how she could actually put this, "all my hopes to make it up to him went down in flames. D'you really think for a moment it was easy for me to lose my husband and not see him? I missed him as well, you're not alone, Astrid!"

Astrid was taken aback by the venom in her mother's voice and for the first time she was upset with herself for not considering for an instant how her mother felt beyond how calmly she had taken it.

"I tried so hard, so hard, to see him, Astrid. I looked everywhere I could think of; our favourite spots, our home, our favourite cinema. But he wasn't there. On top of that, I was so shaken I checked myself into that stupid camp where I met Rory, and we seemed to click. I wanted company because my dad was going on his bird-watching trips and didn't have a clue how to talk to me, Delia was dealing with her art shows and you had lost it with me and resented me," Lydia paused and gave her a hard, pointed look. "Do you blame me for gravitating towards Rory now?"

Astrid had felt hurt before, now she felt physically sick for thinking more for herself and not thinking of her mother. The whole afterlife thing and seeing ghosts were real and meeting Beetlejuice who tried to marry her mother had changed things, but the defining moment had been meeting her dad in the afterlife, and him telling both her and her mother to move on and to try to get along even if he wasn't there… Well, Astrid was going to make the effort.

But what had lifted her heart before Jeremy nearly took her life was how her mother had risked everything and nearly married Beetlejuice to find her.

"No, I don't," Astrid said quietly, looking down for a second. "Mum, would you have married Rory?"

"No," the question received such a quick answer Lydia herself fell silent. Delia and Astrid had never liked Rory, and to be honest he had been condescending and dismissive and always tried to spin things in a manner that suited himself, but Lydia hadn't liked it when Rory had just taken over.

Astrid blinked in shock. "Y-you wouldn't? But I thought he was the love of your life?"

"No, he wasn't. You are, Astrid. When I met Rory, I was dealing with the loss of your father and the loss of our own relationship. We clicked and he seemed to be everything I needed, but Rory took over my life, and he was suddenly acting like the manager of my show and I didn't like it, not one little bit, but I didn't know how to get rid of him. I was beginning to build up my mental strength when I got news your grandpa had died. But when he proposed marriage, I was horrified he would even think of doing it at the wake of all places, but I was building up my strength to tell him to get out of my life, for good," Lydia said honestly.

She had always tried to keep Rory in a certain place, at arm's length, but the final straw had been in the church when she had seen the influencers there instead of friends and family. The fact he had packed the church with influencers instead of friends told her all she needed to know, that Rory was not someone she wanted to be with and besides after seeing Richard again, Lydia had healed a great deal.

Lydia looked down. "It was guilt that held me back from truly understanding what you were coping with, sweetie. Guilt I couldn't see your dad, guilt our marriage had been torn to bits."

Tears sparkled in Astrid's eyes and before she registered it, she hugged her mother quickly. "I'm sorry, Mum," she hugged and the two Deetz girls cried as they held each other.

-8-

"When did you realise you could see ghosts?" Astrid asked as they sat on the couch drinking hot rum-laced hot chocolate and eating candy.

"A couple of days after my family moved in here, around your age," Lydia replied as she smiled mistily as she remembered those days, "Your grandpa loved this house and instantly felt relaxed, I loved it too, even saying I could live here. Delia didn't like it. She was the city type rather than someone who could live anywhere. On top of that, she wanted to see her equally narcissistic friends. I was taking photos outside of the whole moving thing when I took a photo of the attic window. And I saw two people looking down. I didn't recognise them. I asked what happened to the family who lived here first, and learnt they'd drowned. After that Barbara and Adam tried to get us out of here."

"Why?" Astrid asked.

"Because Delia and dad were both rebuilding the house in their own styles, and Delia was determined to strip the simple style favoured by Adam and Barbara and replace it with the help of one of her interior designer friends."

Astrid flinched. "And they tried to haunt them?"

"It didn't work; Barbara and Adam tried everything, even using sheets, but that didn't work. In the end, they called in….you know who," a haunted look crept over Lydia's face as she remembered Beetlejuice, "He terrorised our family, Astrid. He tried making me marry him because he wanted out into our world."

"But he did save me, Mum," Astrid pointed out.

Lydia had to admit Astrid had a point, but she had never liked the way Beetlejuice had so much control over them and being able to take control of their bodies had never been pleasant. "Yeah, I'm grateful for that…because if Jeremy had succeeded," she closed her eyes and tears trickled down her face, "I would never be able to live with myself. You're all I have left now."

Astrid went over and hugged her mother. "Do you think we're gonna meet you know who again?"

"I don't know," Lydia whispered.