“Did it scare you?”
“Kind of, yeah. But then I was sitting here on the couch and he came right over and stood next to me.”
“Was it cold? They always say it’s cold when a ghost is around.” Was she humoring me or just looking for a good story?
“Not particularly. But I was so alarmed that I wasn’t really thinking in terms of the science around it.”
She nodded. “I can understand that.” She looked at me. “Has there been anything else?” Her gaze was penetrating. It felt like she was on to me.
I took another glug of the champagne. It was taking the edge off, loosening my reserve. I sighed heavily and closed my eyes for a moment. “Okay, yes, there are a couple more things.”
She reached wordlessly for the champagne.
I handed it over.
“Tell me,” she said.
“It sounds nuts.”
“You think the rest of this doesn’t?”
I had to laugh. Of course it did. I was, as they say, in for a penny, so I might as well go in for a pound. “Actually, yes, I think all of it does. But you know I’m a sane person, I’m not given to wild imaginings.”
“True.”
“And I’m grieving, obviously, I know that, but not to the point of losing my grip on reality.”
“All right…”
“Seriously!”
“Okay!”
“So the thing is, when I first got here, there was this kid running on the beach with a kite. He looked just like Jamie did when he was young. That is, almost exactly like Jamie did when he was young. When he passed me, he didn’t even acknowledge me. Like, he didn’t even notice me. I think it was Ben. Sort of an echo of Ben from a long time ago.”
Her face screwed into an expression of extreme skepticism. “All this based on the fact that he looks kind of like a young Jamie or Ben and ignored you when he passed? No offense, but why would he stop and chat with some weird old lady who was watching him? I’d teach my kids to keep walking from a stranger too.”
I gave a laugh. “Actually, that’s exactly what I thought at the time. So that was when I first got here, but when I tried to get Dolly to go into the house, she was … resistant.”
“It probably smelled funny.” She heard what she’d just said and backpedaled quickly. “Not because of … you know … but because it’s been closed up for years. It was probably musty and dark and unappealing to her. A dog would probably much rather run on the beach.”
“She comes with me wherever I go. She didn’t want to even cross the threshold and come in. I even mentioned T-R-E-A-T-S.”
From the floor, Dolly raised her head. I avoided eye contact so she’d think she’d imagined the word. I think it was the E sound that got her attention.
Kristin tipped the bottle to her mouth, then drew it away. “Bad news. We’re out of champagne. I need more wine for this conversation.”
“Not to worry.” I got up and went into the kitchen. There was a jug of red in the cabinet. I’d bought it for cooking, but it wasn’t bad for drinking either (I followed the old rule of thumb not to cook with anything you wouldn’t drink), so I brought it back out with a couple of coffee mugs. “We’re going classy. White, champagne, now red, from mugs. Can’t say I don’t know how to entertain.”
“That is for damn sure.” She watched as I glugged the wine into the mugs and set the bottle aside.
“Cheers.” I handed her a mug.
She took it and tapped mine. “Cheers. Now. You were saying that Dolly wouldn’t come inside with you. Which I don’t think is necessarily all that great as evidence goes.”
“Right, right, but she’s been acting weird in general.”
“She’s a dog in a strange place. She probably doesn’t even remember it here.”
“I don’t buy that.” I took a sip and set the wine down. “So are you ready for a really weird one?”
“Always.” She moved forward on her seat.
I told her about the pebbles on the window and teenage Ben being out there to meet phantom me, then the walk to the boardwalk. “I know this all sounds like something from Back to the Future, and I don’t get it, but it’s true,” I concluded. “Everything was like an echo of the past, almost like watching a movie. I could see the details, but I couldn’t touch anything or feel anything.”
“Huh.” She drained her mug. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
I shook my head. I shouldn’t have brought any of this up, it just made me sound crazy. Good thing I hadn’t gotten to the part where he talked to me. “Nothing else going on besides the flood and the ornery plumber. Oh, and Jamie’s staying, which I’m thrilled about. He’s at the boardwalk now, but he should be back soon.”
“Get him to spend some time away from the harlot?” No one was a fan of Roxy’s. Everyone saw how she manipulated Jamie, although at a certain point he had to take responsibility for that himself. In fact, that time had probably already come and gone.
Still, I had to admit I was glad he’d be away from her.
Kristin yawned broadly. “I am bushed. What’s on the agenda for tomorrow, chickie?”
“Painting. And painting. And maybe some painting.”
“Should we paint as well?”
I mocked surprise. “I think that’s a great idea!”
“Let’s do it.” She glanced at the clock. “After midnight! We’ve been sitting here forever! I’ve got to scram.” She started to pick up the various glasses we’d used throughout the night.
I put a hand on hers. “No, no, I’ll take care of this. You just go to bed. You need to rest up so I can work you to death.”
She tapped her temple with her index finger. “Good thinking.”
I nodded with a smile.
“Where should I sleep?”
“You’ve got two choices, Jamie’s in his room now so you can have either the small guest room, or”—I hesitated—“the master bedroom. I made the beds in both.”
“The master bedroom where Ben…”
“That’s the one.”
She took a short breath. “That sounds fine by me. I don’t believe in anything sinister. And if he wants to come talk to me, he can!”
I knew she was taking the room to normalize the idea of it for me. And, truth be told, it kind of did. Ben would no longer be the last one who’d slept in there.
Plus, given my last interaction with him—which I couldn’t imagine admitting to Kristin or to anyone—I was feeling a lot less afraid and a lot more curious. Eager, even, for a revisit.
If only I knew how to summon him. All I’d been doing before—each time I’d seen him—was sitting and minding my own business. Feeling kind of sad about him, admittedly, but not sobbing to the world and making deals with God to return him to me.
Just minding my own business. So I guessed I’d do that again.
Chapter Twenty
Willa
Nothing happened.
The next morning, I woke up to bright sunshine streaming in and the smell of coffee and bacon drifting upstairs. Kristin was up.
I contemplated the shower, then decided there was no point since I’d be working, so I pulled my hair back into a straight ponytail and wedged myself into some paint-splattered jeans I’d left in the closet from the last time I’d had a painting urge, about ten years and fifteen pounds ago. I didn’t have a clean painting shirt, however, so I went downstairs to get one from the master bedroom closet.
“Hey, sexy,” Kristin said, catching a glimpse of me as she closed the fridge door. “You didn’t have to get all dressed up for me!”
“Don’t get excited, I’m just looking for painting clothes.”
“Tease.”
“Hey, man, if you want to paint naked, you’re entirely welcome to.”
She took a cookie sheet of bacon out of the oven. “It would probably be easier to clean up.”
“Oh, yeah, the clothes have to be throwaways. I was going to grab one of Ben’s old shirts, I�
��ll get you one too.”
“Thank you, dahlink.” She gave a half bow. “Then come on in; breakfast is getting cold.”
It wasn’t so easy picking which of Ben’s shirts I was willing to ruin permanently. Once I started looking at them, I could remember so many occasions involving each—the Ralph Lauren blue button-down I’d gotten him for Christmas, the white Halston he could never keep clean, the white JCPenney backups for the Halston. Things he’d worn on holidays, ordinary days, whatever. The things that were here weren’t his first-tier choices; those were still at home. But he had a decent selection, considering that he rarely had to dress in anything other than shorts and a polo or Hawaiian shirt around here. And I wasn’t about to ruin any of those Hawaiian shirts. Maybe Jamie would want them one day. If not, well, I’d deal with it then.
I could always throw things out later, but I could never retrieve them once they were gone.
“Now, that is gonna look hot on you.”
I knew the voice before I even turned and looked.
Ben was leaning on the bedpost, arms casually crossed in front of him. A body language expert would have said he was closing himself off. Was he closing himself off from me now? In death?
As if on cue, he uncrossed his arms and ambled toward me, looking me up and down. “Go ahead, put it on.”
“You’re being creepy,” I whispered, secretly delighted that he was here and being exactly that way. It was more flirtatious than creepy, but it had always been fun to give him shit.
“I know it.” He gave a low whistle. “I like you just like this, but you really should put the shirt on, the plumber is coming to prep the table.”
“How do you know?” I put the shirt on and buttoned it up. One of the Penney’s ones. I’d gotten one out for Kristin too.
“Come on, I’ve got a few advantages in this state.”
“Willa!” Kristin called. “Come on! What’s taking so long?”
“I just—I can’t decide which ones to get rid of,” I improvised. I looked at Ben, exasperated. “I’m sorry, just give me a minute.”
She came to the doorway. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. Take all the time you need. I’m just worried that the popovers will get cold, but everything else is fine.”
“Popovers?” I loved popovers, though at the moment I wasn’t sure if I was up to eating much at all.
“I know they’re your favorite.”
I moved carefully, casually, over next to Ben to see if she would notice anything, since she had clearly not seen him like I did.
He watched me, amused. Honestly, he was like Cary Grant in one of those old screwball comedies.
“She’s not going to see me,” he said, but it was like a secret, from the side of his mouth and half under his breath.
“Then why are you whispering?” I asked through my teeth.
“What?” Kristin looked puzzled.
“I said I’ll be right in. I’d hate to miss out on popovers.”
“And bacon and, if the grocery store is to be believed, real Café du Monde coffee with chicory.”
It did smell good. “Sounds great! I’ll be right there.”
She turned and went back into the kitchen, but it was still only a few yards away.
“Why can’t she see you?” I whispered harshly.
He shrugged. “Because I’m here for you.”
“Will Jamie be able to see you if you’re here when he is?”
Sadness crossed Ben’s expression and broke my heart. God, it was awful to think that even in the afterlife there could be longing and missing and sadness. “He cannot,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know what it takes or what makes me visible to you and no one else, I only know that’s how it is.”
“Maybe it’s because I am the only one stupid enough to keep on trying to undo what’s done.” I was careful to keep my voice down, and glad when I heard Kristin turn on the radio in the kitchen. NPR drowned me out, I was sure. “I didn’t come here expecting to see you, but on some level I think I was more glad than surprised at it. Like on some level I wanted to. Knew it.”
He smiled. “I’ve been around you the whole time.”
“You have? Ever since you…” Damn it, I hated saying it. I hated saying he’d died. Even three years later it was so hard to believe that it sounded, it felt, like a lie to me
“Yeah, but not quite how you think. I wasn’t watching your every move, like Santa Claus, tallying up what I thought was right or wrong or good or bad. And I’m not watching you in the bathroom or”—he looked at me significantly—“the bedroom.”
“Good lord, nothing is happening there, I swear it.” I was so eager to reassure him that I overcompensated. “There has been no one since you, absolutely no one. I can’t even imagine it.”
He tilted his head and looked penetratingly into my eyes. “But that’s not what I want, Willa.”
“I … I don’t … What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you to give up on love and life and sex and all the good stuff just because I’m gone.”
It’s hard to explain the feeling of abandonment those words gave me. If his words were meant to reassure me—and on the surface I could see how they were—they only served to make me feel more alone. Less cared for. Unclaimed and unwanted by all, including the man I had been mourning for three years. “Thanks,” was all I could say, and it came out more bitter than I would have liked.
“Sweetheart.” He dipped low and spoke right into my ear. “I want you to be happy. Wouldn’t you want the same for me if our roles were reversed?”
“No!” I said, too loud. “Absolutely not! I would be furious and I would use whatever life force I could to break you and your new girlfriend up, I wouldn’t just be showing old movies to freak you out.”
“Old movies?”
I ignored his question. How else could I describe the visions he’d been in? It didn’t even matter. “The fact that you can so casually suggest that I should be banging some other guy shows me that you don’t care about me nearly as much as I care about you. What, was there someone here you were hoping to get your mitts on if something happened to me?” I gasped. “Or is there someone else now? Is that something you can do … on the other side? Is it Brigitte Bardot? You always thought she was so hot.”
“Brigitte Bardot is still alive.”
“She is?” Was she? Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I could remember a mean article online talking about celebrities who’d aged badly and she was on the list. Maybe that was why I’d come up with her name: because I didn’t want to give him a thirty-six-year-old Marilyn Monroe ghost, or Princess Diana. “Well, whatever, you’re dodging the point.”
“And you’re being silly.” He seemed totally unfazed by my outburst. “Go into the kitchen before Kristin starts to wonder what you’re doing in here with my clothes.”
“I don’t want to. I want to stay with you.”
He chuckled. I remembered that chuckle so well. “Then come on.” He held out his hand and I reached for it, though I felt virtually nothing. We went into the kitchen, and Kristin turned from the counter, where she was chopping fruit.
“There you are!” She reached over and turned the radio down. Fortunately, she didn’t appear to have heard us. Me. She hadn’t heard me. She’d never hear him. “You know, that local grocery store has outrageous produce. Look at this stuff! Even the pineapple seems like someone just picked it off the tree.” She turned and leaned against the counter. “They come off of trees, right? Huh, I never thought about it.”
“They grow underground like potatoes,” Ben said, showing the telltale dimple he always got when he told a lie.
“No, they don’t!”
Kristin looked at me. “Then, what? A bush? Obviously they aren’t root fruits, growing down like potatoes or garlic.”
“Obviously not.” I flashed Ben a look. “I think they’re just, like, plants, you know? Like a pineapple plant. It would look like a tropical growth
of some sort in Florida, you know?”
“Hmm.” She appeared to consider this, then shrugged. “Well, absent pineapple growths around here, these things are amazingly fresh. Go take a seat, let me serve you, milady.”
“Such service!” I cried. “Ben never did anything like this!”
“I brought you McDonald’s in bed every Mother’s Day!” he objected. “Jamie and I.”
“I guess I’m a better husband than Ben,” Kristin said lightly, then looked immediately ashamed. “Oh, god, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I think you are.”
“Horse hockey,” he said next to me.
Kristin brought a plate over to me—fresh fruit salad, a popover with butter and preserves, bacon, and a cup of coffee, already with cream, just how I liked it. She set it down, then stopped and ran her hands over her arms. “Jeez, there is a draft in here, do you feel that?” She looked around, presumably for a duct or ceiling fan running, but there was nothing to be seen.
“Windows,” I said quickly. “They’re a bit drafty.” They weren’t. They were double-paned. Ben had made sure of that because of the winds at the beach.
“Good one,” Ben said on a sigh. “I’m a draft now.”
I flashed him a look. “You are.”
“I’m what?” Kristin asked, looking up with surprise at my hissy tone.
“Right in the draft.” I raised a hand in the path between the window and Kristin. “I can feel it now.”
“There.” She nodded, her lips in a thin line. “I’m not crazy. We have to put that on the list of things to do. I guess we’ll have to call a guy.”
“Call a guy? Just any guy?”
“You know certain jobs require a guy. I’d say just about anything around the house qualifies.”
“Okay, well, I think we can make it by with a little draft. We have bigger fish to fry first. Like painting.”
“I’m on it!” She stood up and took her dishes to the sink. “Actually, Will, I have to say, the place is really looking lovely. It’s sad seeing all these packed boxes around, but it’s time to move on. We had loads of fun here over the years, though, didn’t we?”
Every Time You Go Away Page 13