“I wasn’t. Where are you thinking about going?”
“North Carolina, to see my brother Tim and his family. I just feel like…like I have to get out of here.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Really?”
Savannah tucked the same escaped lock of hair behind Benny’s ear. “Home and family can be as smothering as comforting,” she said. “And I don’t just mean your mother. I mean every little familiar thing here. They remind you, and keep you locked in a place you no longer know how to get out of, with memories that hold you back.”
Benny sipped her tea. The kinship between them had always been natural, and only now did she wonder why when Savvy was tough as a steel-toed leather boot, and Benny was soft as an over-worn ballet slipper. But they both loved the farm, and growing things and—
“Why did you come north?” Benny asked.
“That you’re asking just now tells me you know.”
“You lost someone you loved.”
Savannah nodded.
“Who?”
“Everyone,” she said. “We are talking about you, Benedetta, and how you need a change of scenery. Have you told your mother?”
“I haven’t told anyone but you.”
“Good. Don’t tell anyone else until just before you leave. Bless her heart, but your mother will try to talk you out of it. You need to go. You need to find your happiness again.”
Head bowed, Benny twirled her wedding ring around and around her finger. Happiness. She had moments of it, certainly—like her week with Dan, and when she imagined holding her baby, rocking him to sleep, even changing diapers. Yet…
“It makes me feel guilty to think about being happy,” she said. “How can I ever be happy again when Henny’s dead?”
“Denying yourself happiness doesn’t bring him back to life. It only wastes yours.” Savannah hugged her from behind the chair. “Listen to me, sugar, as one who has been where you are. There are victims, and there are survivors. You are a victim. I am a survivor. Do you see the difference?”
Benny leaned into her. How many times had she wished she were more like Savannah? Moving north, buying a farm, living all on her own without any help, she lived. Every moment of every day, she lived deep in the life she built for herself, by herself. It made Benny feel weak, and sad, and too many things she had no name for.
“You live for the future,” she said. “I live in the past.”
“I like that.” Savannah straightened. “Very nicely put. And exactly right.”
“Thank you,” Benny said. “I—I’m trying.”
Savannah patted her back. “Drink your tea. When you’re done, I can use your help with the chickens.”
Benny sipped her tea growing cold in the air-conditioned office. Savannah was right. She needed out of Bitterly. New environs and a step out of the sad and easy familiarity of her life would change things. Change them back. Her rebellious spirit had contented itself on a scooter and cut hair for six years. If Benny didn’t feed it soon, it would wither away completely.
The bubbles screensaver popped up on Savannah’s computer screen. They drifted through the Savvy’s blog post about the wonders of composting, Savannah’s smiling face, the pictures of the farm. Benny leaned in and shifted the mouse, banishing the bubbles. She clicked through the comments page, checked the stats. Pride welled. People were responding positively.
One man shared a recipe for heirloom tomato and watermelon salad. “August tomatoes are best, being the sweetest of the season. Just be sure to use either red wine vinegar or white balsamic to balance the sweet.”
The comment gave Benny an idea. She clicked into the admin page, made the necessary changes and in moments, and the blog had a place to post recipes for all to share. She went back to the main-page, and there was the little ticky, ready to click. Cut, paste and Tomato and Watermelon Salad became the first of what she hoped would turn into pages of recipes. Benny smiled, clicked on the edit ticky and added August to the name of the recipe.
It had been the first month in Benny’s favorite time of year, until it became the month Henny died. Now, maybe, August would come to have a happier meaning again. She blew a trembling breath into her mug. No one but she would know the homage she made, the bit of magic she worked. Maybe Augie was manifest of her need to step out of the familiar. Maybe he was loneliness, or her rebellious spirit poking back at her.
Or maybe there was something to him after all.
Chapter 4
The Dream That in Them Lies
Few summer nights warranted more than the ceiling fan in Bitterly, Connecticut, but the day had been humid and the wet feel to the air lingered in her apartment. After tossing for an hour, Benny finally turned on the window-fan to pull in the cool night air. She stood in the generated breeze, nightgown billowing. The noise drowned out the night sounds she loved, but she had to work in the morning and doing so without sleep was not something her body could reconcile itself to these days.
Back between the sheets, Benny rolled onto her left side. According to the internet, it would increase the amount of blood and nutrients to reach her baby. Knees bent, a pillow between them, she was the model soon-to-be mother.
Less than five months to go.
The obstetrician at the childbirth clinic in East Perry gave her a November 14th due date, a sample bottle of vitamins, and an appointment schedule she had yet to keep. It took forever to get there on her scooter, and asking her mother for the car was tricky, at best.
Clarice would ask to come, then pepper her with a thousand questions when Benny told her no. During the first trimester, when she still tried to convince herself it wasn’t real, it didn’t seem to matter. But she’d been feeling something lately, a fluttering. Quickening, the internet said. She liked that word much better. It sounded ancient and magical and like it was time to get back to the clinic.
Peter?
Yes, she would ask to borrow his car. He would be satisfied with her claim she was going to the mall up in Lee. She and Tim and all their friends used to do that as kids. She would call in the morning and make an appointment. Satisfied, sleepy thoughts rode the whir of the fan out of memory. The mall. Old friends she saw almost daily. Old friends she hadn’t seen since high school. Tim. And Henny. Always Henny…
* * * *
And then they are sitting on a picnic table, leaning back on their hands, arms crisscrossed. Her head nestles onto his shoulder. His cheek rests on her hair. The ripped jeans Benny has on haven’t fit in decades. She is wearing high-top Keds. Black, of course. She always wears black, these days.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you today,” she tells him. “I had to help Savvy with the chickens.”
“It’s okay. I’m not there, anyway.”
She lifts her head from his shoulder but does not look at him. “Then where are you?”
“I’m here. With you. In this place.”
“Don’t tease me.” Now she does look. He is Henny. Her Henny as he was in his teens. She smiles. “Look at all your hair.”
He ruffles the bangs. His eyes are bright and grey as a storm cloud. “Mom says I look like the Shaggy Detective.”
“She wants you to buzz it, like Tim’s.”
“Tim’s a jock.”
“And you are not. You’re not gothboy, either.”
“No. I’m dead.”
Benny startles, pulls back. Henny is no longer a moptop teenager. His eyes do not shine. His body is broken. His face like ash and hair matted with dried blood, he stares open-mouthed.
“Damn you,” Benny screams. “If you’d been wearing your helmet—”
“How could you, Ben? With Dan? He was my best friend.”
“Don’t you dare! It’s been six years.”
“Six years is not forever. You promised me forever.”
“Henny.” Benny sobs. “Please. Please don’t do this. I love you. I miss you.”
He
slides off the picnic table. “There is nothing here,” he tells her. “No happiness. No sadness. Just…nothing.”
Henny ambles away. He looks over his shoulder, once again the teenager she remembers so well. “It’s not me. It’s you. I’m sorry, Benny.”
Reaching, sobbing, Benny cannot move. She is stuck to the picnic table, glued, stapled, stitched. She calls for him, but Henny is gone.
* * * *
Benny sobbed herself awake, sobbed his name over and over again. No. It couldn’t be Henny saying such things. He wouldn’t. Ever. She tossed aside the sheets, leapt out of bed, pulled her hoodie over her nightgown and slid her feet into her clogs. Hurried, careful, she went silently down the back steps. Helmet on, she got on her scooter and let it coast down the driveway. Only when she was on the street did she start it up.
Bitterly slept. All of it. No lights in any house but the occasional motion-sensors coming on as she passed. Through the quiet town with its faux gaslights gleaming, down South Main to the cemetery, she got off the scooter, moved the chain that had never kept her out as a kid, and would not do so now.
Benny left her scooter in the usual spot and trudged up the little hill to Henny’s grave. She kissed her fingers and touched it to Mrs. Farcus’ headstone as she passed, but spared no word for her old friend.
Moonlight turned Henny’s stone white. In daylight, it was the same storm cloud gray of his eyes. Benny moved carefully, frightened for the first time in her life to be in the cemetery after dark. Her dream evoked skeletal hands popping out of graves, grabbing her ankles and dragging her underground. As a kid, it would have excited her, and more than a bit. Now, Henny’s ashen face, the blood matting his hair, and words of his nothing-world robbed all such childhood thrill with the stark reality of her life.
By night, most of the garden flowers were closed. To Benny, they looked twisted inside-out rather than peacefully sleeping. Or it could have been the dream talking. Gathering her courage, she lowered herself to the dew-wet ground. She pushed fingers into dirt, hoping for the familiar comfort and not a skin-crawled shiver. Benny closed her eyes, sighing relief. She left her hands buried in her garden, in the sleeping flowers covering her husband’s grave.
“I know it was a dream,” she said. “You’d never scare me, or try to make me sad. But I felt you. I did. And now I can’t remember anything but the bad part.” She pulled her hands from the dirt. “I’m just so lost, Henny. For the last six years, I just went through my days. There wasn’t any real happiness, but I didn’t wallow in…”
No happiness. No sadness…It’s not me. It’s you.
“Did I do that, Henny? Did I ruin our time together? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Tears, silent and painful. Benny eased onto her side—her left side—and rested her head in the crook of her shoulder.
“I’m not stupid.” She coughed, waited for the tickle to subside. “I have lived in limbo since you died. In February, I took a step out of it and now that limbo won’t let me back in. What did I do, Henny? What the fuck did I do? I don’t want to live if living is without you.”
“Language, Benedetta. But if what you say was true, you’d never have stepped out of your limbo. You’d never have taken the chance.”
Benny came up on her elbow. “Augie?”
“Don’t look!”
“I remember.” In her periphery, Benny imagined some kind of glow. “How…how are you?”
“Dead. Much the same as I was.” He laughed, a sound like leaves skittering, then, “And how are you, Benedetta?”
Benny gasped. “You…you suddenly sound different. Like a real voice.”
“Ah, then Harriet was right.”
“Harriet? As in…?”
“Your friend. Mrs. Farcus.”
Benny resisted the urge to turn her head. “Is she…here?”
“No,” Augie said. “She’s still there. I’m not certain where I am. It is not where she is, and it is not where you are. I’ve been trying to reach this place, though. I think.”
“You really never have done this before.”
“No. And I don’t have much of an idea how I’m doing it now. Harriet said, just be. That is what I am doing. I’m being.”
Knees drawn to her chest, Benny rested her chin to them. “Mrs. Farcus. Harriet.” She sniffed, wiped her drying tears. “This is all very strange, Augie. I’m inclined to think I’m asleep in the cemetery, dreaming on my husband’s grave.”
“Then let us make it a good dream, shall we?”
“I’d appreciate it. I just had a really bad one.”
“About your husband, Henderson.”
“Henny,” she corrected. “He hated to be called Henderson. Yeah, about him. He…you sure he’s not here? Or where Mrs. Farcus is?”
“I’m sorry, but yes, I am sure. Only me. Only Harriet. I am stuck here. She chooses to remain. Bitterly is where her soul belongs.”
“Then there is something to heaven and hell. To souls and all.”
“I couldn’t say now any more than I could when I was alive and very Catholic. If there is a God and a Devil, I’ve never met them. I’ve come to understand that humans try very hard to explain the inexplicable, and often fail miserably. Just be, Harriet says. It is good advice, don’t you think?”
Benny giggled. “Maybe she is God.”
“You could be right. I am certain she is eavesdropping. She will let me know.”
“Then…she hears me when I talk to her?”
“She says she has been listening to you since you were a child.”
“That’s so cool. How about you?”
“How about me, what?”
“How long have you been listening to me ramble to the tombstones?”
Augie didn’t answer.
“Augie? Are you still there?”
“I am here. I…I don’t know how to answer you. Time…it is not…I don’t know how to explain it. It does not exist, at least, not in the same way. I have never thought about it before. Or maybe I have. I don’t remember. I have been so long in that other place, or perhaps it’s only moments.”
“Do you remember the year you died?”
“I died. And now I’m here. And there is someone named Harriet…”
“Yes, Harriet Farcus. Is something wrong?”
“I…I do not know.”
“Just be,” Benny suggested. “Like Harriet said.”
Her lower back had begun to ache. Between her and the wet, cold ground was a thin layer of cotton nightgown. While she waited for Augie to reorient himself, Benny unzipped her hoodie, slipped her arms free and laid it out on the ground. The faded and long-since retired Grim Reaper logo, only discernable for her love of the character and her memories, grinned up at her. Tim had gotten her the hoodie for Christmas when she was sixteen, even though he teased her for her style sense, or lack thereof. As if Tim knew anything about style with his unwavering choice of polo shirts and cargo pants.
On her back, arms behind her head, she kept her eyes on the stars swirling in an eternal sky above just in case Augie was still there. She shivered without the warmth of the hoodie on her bare skin. Gooseflesh prickled up the back of her neck, tightened her nipples uncomfortably. Benny palmed them for warmth.
“Do not cover up on my account.”
Her eyes widened and she almost looked August’s way. “I thought you were gone.”
“Ah, no. Just being, as you suggested. And enjoying the view.”
Benny’s cheeks warmed, but she smiled discreetly.
“So…you can see me?”
“Of course.”
“But I can’t see you.”
“It seems to be the way of it.”
“That’s hardly fair.”
“Neither is it fair for you to be alive and lovely and for me to be dead and unable to show my appreciation for your…loveliness.”
Benny let go of her breasts. If he could see her, he could also s
ee how thin her nightgown was, and that she wasn’t wearing underwear. A grin itched at her lips. It lit the smallest bundle of kindling under the young woman who would have lifted the bit of cloth away to stand naked in the moonlight in the event it were possible to seduce a ghost. With a slightly sad but almost satisfied sigh, Benny sat up and put the hoodie back on. “I should get home,” she said. “I must seem a crazy person, lying in the grass, in a cemetery, talking to a ghost.”
“I am the ghost, and the only one who knows you are doing so. But it is not good for a young woman to be wandering about so late at night, in so secluded a place. Bad things can happen.”
“This is Bitterly.” She zipped her hoodie up to the neck. “If you lived here, you know better. Nothing bad ever happens.”
“Not true, Benedetta. When I was a young man, a girl was murdered. Beaten horribly and then drowned in the river.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. Her name was Matilda Tully.”
“Matilda?” Benny gasped. “As in Tilly?”
“I do believe she was called Tilly. Yes, Tilly Tully. I was a newcomer to Bitterly compared to my wife’s family. At the time and never actually knew her. Why? Was she a relative of yours?”
“No, but there’s a rock along the river, just north of town, called Tilly Rock, named for a girl who drowned. You can’t be a kid in Bitterly without being dared to swim to it.”
“And did you take such a dare, Benedetta?”
“Of course. It’s just a story.”
“Indeed it is, but your story is wrong. A girl was murdered by a spurned lover, her father blamed until they found her shoes hidden under the floorboards of her lover’s house. Her father was released, but the man was never apprehended.”
“Her shoes?” Goosebumps rose on Benny’s arms. “This is really…I wonder if…”
“You wonder if what?” he asked.
Prickles of electricity were crackling up Benny’s spine now. She stood up, clutching her hoodie closer. “Do you remember when she was killed?”
Augie was silent a moment, then, “I believe it was October. Yes. Before Halloween. No children were allowed to tricks-or-treats that year.”
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