But it's there. Just because I haven't told anyone doesn't mean it isn't there, all the time, lurking in the back of my mind, like one of those 'N Sync songs you can't get out of your head.

And I have to tell you, it makes the idea of going out with other guys seem like ... well, a big waste of time.

So I didn't jump at the chance to go out with Paul Slater (though if you ask me, having dinner with him and his parents and his little brother hardly qualifies as going out). Instead, I went home and had dinner with my own parents and brothers. Well, stepbrothers, anyway.

Dinner in the Ackerman household was always this very big deal ... until Andy started working on installing the hot tub. Since then, he has slacked off considerably in the culinary department, let me tell you. And since my mom is hardly what you'd call a cook, we've been enjoying a lot of takeout lately. I thought we had hit rock bottom the night before, when we'd actually ordered from Peninsula Pizza, the place Sleepy works nights as a delivery guy.

But I didn't know how bad it could get until I walked in that night and saw a red-and-white bucket sitting in the middle of the table.

"Don't start," my mother said when she noticed me.

I just shook my head. "I guess if you peel the skin off, it's not that bad for you."

"Give it to me," Dopey said, glopping semi-congealed mashed potatoes onto his plate. "I'll eat your skin."

I could hardly control my gag reflex after that offer, but I managed, and I was reading the nutritional literature that came with our meal - "The Colonel has never forgotten the delicious aromas that used to float from his mother's kitchen on the plantation back when he was a boy" - when I remembered the tin box, the contents of which had also been advertised as having a delicious aroma.

"Hey," I said. "So what was in that box you guys dug up?"

Dopey made a face. "Nothing. Bunch of old letters."

Andy looked sadly at his son. The truth is, I think even my stepfather has begun to realize what I have known since the day I met him: that his middle son is a bohunk.

"Not just a bunch of old letters, Brad," Andy said. "They're quite old, dated around the time this house was built - 1850. They're in extremely poor condition - falling apart, actually. I was thinking of taking them over to the historical society. They might want them, in spite of the condition. Or" - Andy looked at me - "I thought Father Dominic might be interested. You know what a history buff he is."

Father Dom is a history buff, all right, but only because, as a mediator, like me, he has a tendency to run into people who have actually lived through historical events like the Alamo and the Lewis and Clark expedition. You know, folks who take the phrase Been there, done that to a whole new level.

"I'll give him a call," I said as I accidentally dropped a piece of chicken into my lap, where it was immediately vacuumed up by the Ackermans' enormous dog, Max, who maintains a watchful position at my side during every meal.

It was only when Dopey chortled that I realized I'd said the wrong thing. Never having been a normal teenage girl, it is sometimes hard for me to imitate one. And normal teenage girls do not, I know, give their high school principals calls on any sort of regular basis.

I glared at Dopey from across the table.

"I was going to call him anyway," I said, "to find out what I'm supposed to do with the leftover cash from our class trip to Great America."

"I'll take it," Sleepy joked. Why did my mother have to marry into a family of comedians?

"Can I see them?" I asked, pointedly ignoring both my stepbrothers.

"See what, honey?" Andy asked me.

For a moment I forgot what we were talking about. Honey? Andy had never called me honey before. What was going on here? Were we - I shudder to think it - bonding? Excuse me, I already have one father, even if he is dead. He still pops by to visit me all too often.

"I think she means the letters," my mother said, apparently not even noticing what her husband had just called me.

"Oh, sure," Andy said. "They're in our room."

"Our room" is the bedroom Andy and my mother sleep in. I try never to go in there, because, well, frankly, the whole thing grosses me out. Yeah, sure, I'm glad that my mom's finally happy, after ten years of mourning the death of my dad. But does that mean I want to actually see her in bed with her new husband, watching West Wing? No thank you.

Still, after dinner, I steeled myself and went in there. My mom was at her dressing table taking off her makeup. She has to go to bed very early in order to be up in time for her stint on the morning news.

"Oh, hi, sweetie," my mom said to me in a dazed, I'm-busy kind of way. "They're over there, I think."

I looked where she pointed on top of Andy's dresser and found the metal box Dopey had dug up along with a lot of other guy-type stuff, like loose change and matches and receipts.

Anyway, Andy had tried to clean the box up, and he'd done a pretty good job of it. You could read almost all the writing on it.

Which was kind of unfortunate, because what the writing said was way politically incorrect. Try new Red Injun cigars! it urged. There was even a picture of this very proud-looking Native American clutching a fistful of cigars where his bow and quiver ought to have been. The delicious aroma will tempt even the choosiest smoker. As with all our products, quality assured.

That was it. No surgeon general's warning about how smoking can kill. Nothing about fetal birth weight. Still, it was kind of strange how advertising from before they had TV - before they even had radio - was still basically the same as advertising today. Only, you know, now we know that naming your product after a race of people will probably offend them.

I opened the box and found the letters inside. Andy was right about their poor condition. They were so yellowed that you could hardly peel them apart without having pieces crumble off. They had, I could see, been tied together with a ribbon, a silk one, which might have been another color once, but was now an ugly brown.

There was a stack of letters, maybe five or six in all, in the box. I can't tell you, as I picked up the first one, what I thought I'd see. But I guess a part of me knew all along what I was going to find.

Even so, when I'd carefully unfolded the first one and read the words Dear Hector, I still felt like somebody had snuck up behind me and kicked me.

I had to sit down. I sank down into one of the armchairs my mom and Andy keep by the fireplace in their room, my eyes still glued to the yellowed page in front of me.

Jesse. These letters were to Jesse.

"Suze?" My mom glanced at me curiously. She was rubbing cream into her face. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," I said in a strangled voice. "Is it okay ... is it okay if I just sit here and read these for a minute?"

My mom began to slop cream onto her hands. "Of course," she said. "You're sure you're all right? You look a little ... pale."

"I'm great," I lied. "Just great."

Dear Hector, the first letter said. The handwriting was beautiful - loopy and old-fashioned, the kind of handwriting Sister Ernestine, back at school, used. I could read it quite easily, despite the fact that the letter was dated May 8,1850.

Eighteen fifty! That was the year our house had been built, the first year it was in business as a boarding house for travelers to the Monterey Peninsula area. The year - I knew from when Doc and I looked it up - that Jesse, or Hector (which is his real name; can you imagine? I mean, Hector) had mysteriously disappeared.

Though I happen to know there hadn't been anything mysterious about it. He'd been murdered in this very house ... in fact, in my bedroom upstairs. Which is why, for the past century and a half, he's been hanging out there, waiting for ...

Waiting for what?

Waiting for you, said a small voice in the back of my head. A mediator, to find these letters and avenge his death, so he can move on to wherever it is he's supposed to go next.

The thought struck me with terror. Really. It made my hands go all sweaty, even though it was cool in my mom and Andy's room, what with the air conditioning being on full blast. The back of my neck started feeling prickly and gross.

I forced myself to look back down at the letter. If Jesse was meant to move on, well, then I was just going to have to help him do it. That's my job, after all.

Except that I couldn't help thinking about Father Dom. A fellow mediator, he had admitted to me a few months ago that he had once had the misfortune to fall in love with a ghost, back when he'd been my age. Things hadn't worked out - how could they? - and he'd become a priest.

Got that? A priest. Okay? That's how bad it had been. That's how hard the loss had been to get over. He’d become a priest.

Frankly, I don't see how I could ever become a nun. For one thing, I'm not even Catholic. And for another, I don't look very good with my hair pulled back. Really. That's why I've always avoided ponytails and headbands.

Stop it, I said to myself. Just stop it and read.

I read.

The letter was from someone called Maria. I don't know much about Jesse's life before he died - he's not exactly big on discussing it - but I do know that Maria de Silva was the name of the girl Jesse had been on his way to marry when he'd disappeared. Some cousin of his. I'd seen a picture of her once in a book. She was pretty hot, you know, for a girl in a hoop skirt who lived before plastic surgery. Or Maybelline.