Excerpt Unsettled Spirits by Sophie Weeks

Description:

Sarah Markham always assumed that the Ivy League was her ticket to a new life. But after graduating from Harvard at the height of the Great Recession, she finds herself with no job offers and not much hope. That all changes when she enters a bookshop owned by Samuel, an eccentric intellectual who offers her not just a job, but also a place to stay. Sarah soon discovers a small catch though: her room is haunted by Lucy Larch, an opinionated and strong-willed ghost from the 1940s. As Sarah tries to help Lucy move on, she meets handsome Irishman Ian Flynn and falls in love, but her insecurities soon threaten every relationship she’s built. 

As Sarah grapples with questions of faith, love, and identity, she must learn to embrace not just the spirits of the present, but the haunting pain of the past. Can she accept her past, and more importantly herself, in order to let love in?

EXCERPT:

Sarah began, against her will, weaving an odd little fantasy of introducing him to her father, then cut herself short and stared down at the wine list. Then she shoved it at him abruptly before remembering they were having coffee. Cursing her own stupidity, she tried to snatch it back and ended up, to her mind, looking about as stupid as it was possible to look when he airily picked it up out of her reach and said, “What a good idea. Do you like Viognier?”

Sarah gazed at him blankly. “I haven't a clue. I only like the red if there's chocolate as well.”

“It's a taste that requires a certain self-important masochism to develop,” he said with a smile so sweet that Sarah's chest felt tight and she wanted very badly to touch him again, so much so that she folded her hands to restrain herself.

“Do you drink it, then?” Then she realized how odd that sounded. “I mean—”

“I like,” he replied very precisely, “red wine when there is something else to balance it. Your chocolate sounds perfect.”

“Even if it was peanut M&Ms?”

“Especially if it were peanut M&Ms,” he laughed. “For a more sophisticated crowd, almond M&Ms. You don't want to look déclassé.” There was a pause in their conversation as the waiter arrived, and Ian ordered some kind of wine that was beyond Sarah's limited acquaintance with the stuff.

“Show off my roots, you mean?”

But he missed the idiom and peered at her hair. “Oh, is it bleached?”

Sarah was mortified, more embarrassed at this gaffe of his than at her own stupidity. It was one thing to act like an idiot, another to induce idiocy in others. “I meant the other kind.” Then she added, “And it isn't, no.” She bent her head gravely to show him.

He flushed for a moment, and Sarah's heart went out to him in a spirit of mutual awkwardness. “I beg your pardon,” he began. “We don't know anything but potato roots at home.”

###

Sarah took her purchases home.

Beginning to unpack them into the tiny refrigerator, she said, “Lucy, stop stalking me. You can stay here as long as you stop hiding.”

Lucy popped out and said, “But your face is so good. Every time.”

“Yes. Every time I look freaked out. Is that nice to do to me?”

“I suppose not.” Lucy peered over her shoulder, careful not to touch. “What did you get?”

“Stuff,” Sarah said, reaching into the game hen for its tiny giblets before sticking it in a battered pie tin and into the oven. She sat down with a small bowl of cream, whisking it with a fork. “Have you talked to Ian?” She tried to sound casual.

“I shouldn't think you'd want me to,” Lucy replied.

“Why not?”

“Well, what if he should fall in love with me? I am awfully pretty, after all.”

Sarah's face darkened some at the implicit comparison with her own plainness. “If he's so stupid as to fall in love with a corpse . . .”

“I am not a corpse!” It was Lucy's turn to be upset. “I'm a spirit.”

“All the same. If he's that stupid, he might as well fall in love with you.” Sarah was whisking very hard.

Lucy huffed and was silent for a time, then finally said, “Pax?”

“All right.”

“Only when are you going to talk to him about me?” Lucy asked with unusual meekness.

“I don't know.” Sarah sighed. “At first I wanted him to know me better so he wouldn't think I was crazy. And now he knows me better and I'm sure he'd think I was crazy.”

“Was it so bad?” Lucy asked sympathetically.

“Terrible,” Sarah confessed. “Lucy, I don't know how to do this at all. I don't know what men want. I don't . . . I don't know how to talk . . .”

“What do you mean, you don't know how to talk? You just say things.”

“Only with him I say stupid things. Or I can't think of anything to say at all.”

“Oh, just be charming. You know, effervescent.”

“No, Lucy,” Sarah said patiently. “I definitely don't know.”

“Well, let's practice. I'll be Ian.” Lucy leered at her. “Faith and begorra, you're prettier than me toothless mother!”

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About the author:

Sophie Weeks was born in Phoenix, Arizona, Sophie Weeks received a Masters degree in English Literature from Mills College in 2006 and completed her PhD in Victorian Literature at Rice University in 2013. Sophie resides in Payson, Arizona with three furry miscreants, who are wanted in multiple states for criminal adorableness. She is also the author of Outside the Spotlight.

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