I almost choked on my surprise. "Why?"
"What's he saying?" Mrs. Wiggam asked. "What does that good-for-nothing lump want now? My life?" She stood and offered her wrists to him like a platter of biscuits. "Take it! Isn't that what you want to do? Fetch a knife from the kitchen and end it all here. Go on!"
He laughed, a grating, humorless laugh. "Tell her I don't want to take her with me. Eternity is a long time and I'd prefer to spend as much of it as I can without her." "Is that why you're leaving?" I asked.
Mrs. Wiggam, sensing her blood would not be spilled by the ghost of her dead husband, lowered her arms. She sat back down in her chair, smoothed her skirt over her lap and gave my sister a polite smile as if nothing was untoward. Celia didn't return it.
"I'm leaving because I'm tired of haunting her," Barnaby Wiggam said. "No, actually I'm just tired of her. This is only fun for so long and I've realized something important these last few days." He picked his way across the messy floor and removed the painting of the lighthouse from the wall. The sea in the picture was calm and the sun shone on the redbrown rocks and the white sail of a ship in the distance. "As much as I wanted to hurt her, I couldn't bring myself to do it. It's not in my nature." He returned the painting to its hook on the wall and stood back to admire it. "It's strange, don't you think, Miss Chambers?"
"What is?" The painting? It looked lovely to me, peaceful.
"That the characteristics of who we were during life, our essence if you like, are carried with us to our death. Up there, in the Waiting Area, there are thousands of souls waiting to cross over, each one of them as unique as they were in life. Did you know the Otherworld is segmented?" I nodded. "The segment we're assigned to depends on how good we were when we were alive. A scale of worth if you like." He looked down at the flour-covered rug. "I don't know what the segment where the rotten ones go is like and I don't want to know." He thrust his triple chins at his widow. "I've never committed a mortal sin so I'm quite sure I won't end up in the worst section. However I'm not so good that I'll help her clean up."
I stared down at my folded hands in my lap. Jacob too had been a good person in his lifetime. Even George thought so and he hadn't been his friend. As Mr. Wiggam said, a good nature in life meant a good nature in death too. That didn't change. Jacob hadn't changed. Everyone told me he'd been kind when he was alive-a little unobservant of those around him, but never mean. He'd never harm anyone on purpose. It was the same in death. He wouldn't hurt me. Couldn't. I knew that to the depths of my soul.