Jane Austen Made Me Do It by Laurel Ann Nattress Page A

okay?”
    â€œThen why do you stay?” asked the apparition.
    Cate found herself getting defensive. “I have a salary, I have benefits—”
    â€œBenefits?”
    â€œNever mind that.” What would a nineteenth-century ghost understand? “The point is, thanks to this, I have enough to live comfortably on my own.”
    â€œAn independence,” mused the apparition. “Not something at which one would sneer. Even so …” She seated herself on a chair that wasn’t there and looked thoughtfully at a fire that wasn’t lit. “Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling, it ought not, it cannot be, the greatest.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Cate asked.
    â€œWe have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. If your mind mislikes this current employment, trust it.” She looked earnestly at Cate. “There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails,human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better.”
    â€œUm, what?” said Cate.
    â€œThere will be better,” translated the ghost. “Do not resign yourself too soon.”
    Maybe there was some truth to that. Sure, she whined a lot, but when was the last time she had made any attempt to take an actual hand in her own destiny?
    â€œI won’t,” said Cate decidedly. “I’ll talk to Fred. Either he gives me something of real substance to do, or I’m out.”
    The apparition looked as though she only understood about half of that, but she gamely nodded her encouragement. “And what of your—forgive me, I’ve forgot the gentleman’s name.”
    â€œHal,” said Cate absently. “Hal.”
    Did she still want Hal? She had, she realized, gotten into the habit of having a crush on him, like having her hair parted on the left side or carrying her bag on her right shoulder.
    â€œYou find him not what you believed him to be,” the apparition deduced sagely.
    This was all getting a little too close to home. And from a ghost. For a moment, Cate had almost forgotten she was a ghost.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Cate said apologetically, “I’ve been talking and talking at you and I don’t even know who you are.”
    The ghost smiled pleasantly. “No matter. Close quarters make for quick friends. I am Miss Austen. And you are?”
    â€œMiss … did you say ‘Austen’?”
    â€œYes,” said the specter. “Miss Jane Austen.”
    What was it Mr. Morland Tilney-Tilney had said? Something about a lady novelist coming to Northanger and spreading lies. Something beginning with a vowel …
    Cate remembered the one picture she had seen of Jane Austen,on a Barnes & Noble bag. It had been strangely out of proportion, awkwardly drawn. The authoress’s eyes had seemed to squint—although that might have been a fold in the bag—her lips had been pressed tightly together, and there had been a frilly cap covering her dark hair. She had looked, in Cate’s opinion, more disgruntled than anything else, as though miffed at finding herself rendered in green and beige and used to convey other people’s books.
    This woman, on the other hand, was young and vibrant, with shiny hair and a sparkle in her eye. Or maybe that was just the gold from the cabinet showing through her transparent face.
    â€œAnd you are?” asked the ghost who claimed to be Jane Austen.
    Why? Why her? Cate was sure there were plenty of people who would be delighted to be visited by the ghost of Jane Austen. Cate had been a poli sci major. She had read Rawls and Nozick, not … what else had Austen written? Five hundred pounds and a room of one’s own; no, that was that depressing woman who’d drowned herself. Cate