As the weeks crawled by and fall turned into winter, the reactions in Fendersburg wavered slowly back and forth. Glad the Ghost was gone, because it meant he wasn't interfering with their lives. Glad the Ghost was letting them grow up and think for themselves. Suddenly, the Ghost showing up to fix or prevent every minor catastrophe was seen as interference with the rights and freedoms of the people of Fendersburg. Then someone would make a mistake, cause an accident, take a stupid risk, essentially thumb their nose at the warnings of people with more common sense, and suddenly everyone was furious again. The Ghost had no right to abandon his responsibilities. The race resumed to blame someone for driving the Ghost away.
There was always someone who spoke with an almost homesick fondness for the days when the Ghost showed up within a few seconds of a call for help or the sound of squealing brakes. Girls who had never been within a hundred yards of the Ghost talked about the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, feeling his arm around them as he carried them away from danger. Jane wondered how many times she could hear such outright lies in her shop before she became physically ill. As time went on, the worst of the airhead liars got into fights with each other over who the Ghost would have dated and eventually married.
She found some amusement in the torments Otis went through, when people remembered the broad hints he had dropped that he was the Ghost. Girls wanted him to prove his secret identity. People wanted him to pay for damage that he, as the Ghost, hadn't prevented.
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