Chapter 4

ATLANTA, Jennifer Jenson watched the premier of the new season of The Voice with her husband.

Some of the blind auditions were OS's and EB's. The judges didn’t know they were listening to the dead until they turned around and were faced with a large laptop screen instead of a live person.

The three judges were the usual living ones—Levine, Shelton, Green, and Aguilera. But each one of them had two coaches that would work with their singing team. One out of each of the pairs was promised to be OS’s. Their identities hadn’t been announced yet. But people speculated. 

Michael Jackson?

Buddy Holly?

A lot of people thought one of the coaches would be Whitney Houston. That was the buzz on Twitter. 

Jennifer loved all of it. She loved this new world they lived in. 

***

She had been one of the first to get a message. No one knew about that. Even after it all became very public, Jennifer kept her early conversations private.

There had been this week when she had all these self-doubts.

She had alway wondered if she had a good singing voice. When she was alone, she'd sing, and the voice she heard was beautiful. It was like one of those contestants who'd be fought over by three or four judges. But no one else in the world had ever validated what she imagined might be true.

It could have been because she rarely sang in front of anyone. And when she did, she was often nervous. Her voice quivered and cracked.

Yet there had been a few rare times when she felt relaxed in front of Phillip. She hadn't given him an official performance or anything. She just would sing when they happened to be in the same room together. 

Sometimes she'd sing in the shower while he was there with her in the master bathroom. 

He never said anything.

One time, she felt she sang particularly well. She sang that Idina Menzel song from Frozen. She had been quite impressed with herself and hoped that Phillip would be impressed too.

She had wanted him to say something.

He didn't.

After she had sung a few lines, he had turned on the TV and then turned up the volume. She thought of singing over the TV people but decided….

Well, what was the point?

She thought maybe she had been wrong. Maybe people heard their own voice differently than other people heard it. Maybe all people heard their voices as she heard her own. Maybe that's why complete failures appeared on reality competitions. Maybe they weren’t doing it, because they enjoyed looking like buffoons. Maybe like her, they really believed they had talent.

***

After the bathroom incident, Jennifer had vowed to stop making a fool out of herself. She stopped singing. She didn't want to be a pathetic, delusional fool.

Then one day, she had been on the computer. She decided to see if there was any good celebrity gossip on Twitter. She scrolled through the updates; saw that Adam Levine had forgotten to bring his slutty jean shorts to something called Coachella and Vanessa Williams had reunited with some trumpet player.

Jennifer had also seen updates from her children. Taylor gushed over a soap opera. Arthur promoted Bernard's guest appearance on Sherlock, and Zoe had linked to a video on YouTube.

Then as she was scrolling through Twitter, she saw a Tweet.. Why did you stop singing? You need to sing more. I love your voice.

Jennifer hadn’t thought much of it. She saw it so fast and figured it was someone talking to someone else. Although she'd admit that she had wished it was written about her.

She kept looking through Twitter messages.

Then she saw: Jennifer, you have a beautiful voice.

You know what she thought then? She thought it was Phillip sending the message. He was playing a joke; a nice joke. It was his way of saying, Yes, I notice that you sing. Yes, you sing well. Yes, I've noticed that you've stopped singing.

She hadn’t wondered how he did it. At least not at first. Then she had come to her senses. 

First of all, such behavior was so unlike Phillip. She couldn't remember the last time he had given her a compliment. 

Second, as far as she knew, he didn't have a Twitter account or know how to use Twitter. 

Third, how would he know she was on Twitter at that moment? He was away at a meeting.

Like most people in her situation, Jennifer questioned her sanity and their home's security. Like some people in her situation, her imagination ran a bit amuck. She thought maybe her guardian angel was looking out for her. She liked that idea. Later she'd learn, in some ways, she was somewhat right about the angel thing.

 ***

Jennifer had eventually learned the story of who sent her the message.

When she was a child, in the 1970's, Jennifer and her family had moved to a house in Madison, Wisconsin.

What Jennifer, and her sister, hadn’t known (but her parents had) was that a teenager had been murdered in the house by her own father...only three years prior to Jennifer's family moving in.

That teenager was Trisha Morrisey. She had haunted the house. But not in a bad way.

No one had ever suspected she was there.

She was a nice ghost; though a bit of a stalker. She had a certain fondness for ten-year-old Jennifer.

Contrary to what some people might believe, Trisha hadn't been stuck to the house. She could leave anytime. She had followed Jennifer pretty much everywhere.

She went to school with Jennifer. She went to birthday parties. She went to doctor's appointments. She went to Girl Scout meetings. 

She never followed her into the bathroom, though. She also always exited the area when Jennifer was about to do "sex things." And there were times in Jennifer's life when these "sex things" happened quite often.

Trisha saw Jennifer's happiest moments and her saddest. She saw times when Jennifer was lonely and wished she could do something to let Jennifer know she wasn't alone.

"I really wanted to reach out to you," she had later explained. "But I couldn't." She sounded very apologetic when she explained this. Regretful.

Another thing Trisha admitted was this. "I wanted to stop your wedding. I wanted you to know that the only person Phillip loves is himself. Though when you first met him, I fell for his charm too." She laughed shyly. "I even had a bit of a crush on him."

Jennifer got somewhat defensive at this but probably not as much as she should have. "He's a good guy." That's all she had said. She knew she should have probably said more.

Phillip was a very good guy. He didn’t drink or abuse any drugs. He was gentle in bed. He had never cheated on her. He never looked at pornography. He never raised a hand to her. He was very generous. He did so much charity work.

He had helped her mom when she had cancer. He never asked for anything in return. 

So he was a bit stingy with compliments. Maybe he truly didn’t like her singing. He couldn’t be faulted for that. It wasn’t like Jennifer wanted fake flattery.

Anyway, If he was stingy with compliments, he made up for it in diamonds... and emeralds. He loved buying her beautiful things. And Jennifer loved having them. Trisha's opinion wasn’t gospel. She was wrong about Phillip, so it was possible that she was also wrong about Jennifer’s singing.

Phillip didn’t know about Trisha. She was keeping that a secret from him. It could be because Trisha wasn’t team Phillip, and she worried Trisha would be upfront about that. It could also be the fact that Phillip was resentful that he himself hadn’t heard from more not-living people.

He had helped a ton of people. He paid hospital bills, bought plane tickets, helped pay for weddings, helped pay for college tuitions, and had given out grants. Some of the recipients had passed on...or their parents had done so. Phillip wanted to hear from them. Though they had all thanked him while living, he thought now that they had a second chance, they should thank him again.

He was especially angry with Jennifer's mother, since he had paid most of her medical bills. She had had lousy insurance.

In one of his foul moods he had said, "Your mother is an ungrateful bitch."

 When Mom was alive, he had called her "Mom." After she died, she was always referred to as "Your Mother".

Jennifer hadn’t spoken to her mother much either. She talked to her once. The conversation had been short and sweet. 

Actually, it was sad.

Her mother had tears in her eyes, and she seemed in a hurry to leave. She also seemed somewhat stern, as if she disapproved of Jennifer.

Anyway, Phillip apologized for his harsh words. Not right away. When he had first ranted and Jennifer burst into tears, he responded by saying. "If it weren't for me, your mother would have had a much shorter life. And a much more painful one."

Jennifer had gone into her office and slammed the door. She cried.

Later he came in and said he was sorry. He said he shouldn't have blown up like that. He shouldn't have been so harsh.

He explained himself: He had worked very hard throughout his life. Because of this, he had a lot of money. The best part of having that money was he could help people. All he wanted in return was gratitude. When he didn't receive that gratitude, it hurt him to the core.

He asked Jennifer if she understood.

She said she did. It made sense.

She apologized on behalf of her mother.

Continue to Chapter Five 

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