He did. “I can’t talk about it,” I said to him, only into the phone. I could see Kristin in the front room, halfheartedly messing around with a paint brush to kill time until I came back in and she could grill me. She had her eye on me, could probably see every move I made.
“Why not?”
“Because everyone would think I was crazy and she’d be worried about me forever.”
“To the contrary,” he said. “I think she’d understand what you’re going through a lot better and it would help you power on.”
“Why can’t you just show yourself?” I was careful to keep my voice down so all Kristin could hear, hopefully, was my voice instead of my words.
He shrugged. “I can’t, I don’t have any control over that.” I could see how that would be a pretty unique frustration.
“How can I be the only one?”
“I guess you are the most important one.”
My face flushed with reluctant pleasure. “Okay, but still. I think you need to help me out here.”
Kristin came to the door. “Are you all right?” she asked.
I put my hand over the receiver. “Fine, fine. It’s just … a … plumbing thing?”
She raised an eyebrow. Nothing got by her. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Telling.” I shook my head and returned to the phone as if it were Dave Macmillan. “So you can’t show up, say, now? Right now?” My eyes were fastened on Ben.
“Nope. I’m as here as I can get.”
Kristin was still looking at me, so I gestured toward Ben with my free hand. “Do you see anything unusual?” I asked her.
“What? No. Where?”
“Right here?” I made a vague motion toward him.
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“This is impossible,” I said, then tightened my grip on the phone. “I’ll hold, yes.”
“You’re a terrible actress, you know that?” Ben pointed out unnecessarily. That had always been the case. I could barely convince someone of the truth. “If I’d known you were such a bad actress I never would have been jealous over you.”
That melted me a little. Finally a tiny nugget of romance. Unhealthy romance, perhaps, but still—better than the let-me-find-you-a-new-husband variety. “Oh, you were jealous?” I asked automatically.
“Who are you talking to?” Kristin demanded.
I pointed at the phone and mouthed, Plumber.
“He’s jealous?” She looked very skeptical. “Of what, other plumbers? Did you cheat on him with an electrician?”
Ben laughed. “Good one. Don’t let the lawn guy find out or he might tell the contractor.”
“Oh, very funny,” I said to him/the phone.
“That is not the plumber,” she went on. “There is no way that is the plumber.”
“It is! Shh!” I felt Kristin’s eyes on me and turned my attention as if to the phone. “Yes, I can be here in the—”
I was interrupted by the phone ringing. Right in my ear. Right while I was talking, or pretending to talk, to my plumber.
The jig was up.
Kristin crossed her arms.
“Bad luck,” I heard Ben say. “I have to say, I thought it was really smart of you to pretend to be on the phone, but you should have turned the ringer off.”
“I know,” I rasped, then looked back at Kristin.
“You weren’t talking to the plumber,” she said. She’d always had a very keen sense of the obvious.
I shook my head.
“You weren’t talking to anyone. On the phone, anyway.”
“No.”
She raised an eyebrow, but then she looked again where I had asked her to. “Is someone here?”
“Not exactly.” I winced.
“I have to be honest, you’re kind of scaring me.” She looked at me, then next to me, and back into my eyes. “Do you need some sort of help? Counseling? Maybe”—she paused—“a restful stay somewhere?”
I took a deep breath, then went to the couch and sat down, dropping my head in my hands. What on earth was I supposed to do now?
She sat down next to me. “I know I should probably be walking on eggshells right now and trying, carefully, to figure out what the hell is wrong with you, but you’d save us both a lot of time and sanity if you just told me. What is going on?”
“Ben is here.”
A tense silence settled between us and stretched.
“Ben.”
I nodded, then clapped my hands together and stood up. “Feel better? Does that answer all your questions?” I laughed lightly. “Is the conversation over now?”
She bit her thumbnail for a moment and stood up too, pacing in front of me. “Wait a minute, just a minute, this is okay. I mean, it’s kind of normal. You’re talking to Ben. Okay, is he answering?”
“I’m answering.”
“He’s answering.”
“He’s answering,” she echoed both of us. “Okay.”
“He has been for a few weeks.”
“So he’s…” Kristin nervously gestured toward the space next to me. “Ben’s there right now? And he can hear us?”
“Yes. Well, not there.” I indicated. “He’s there.” Then to him I said, “Can’t you do something to show her you’re here?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, maybe you can move a pillow?”
“I don’t know how to react,” Kristin said.
“I know.” I shrugged. “I don’t either. But it’s true. It’s one hundred percent true.”
“And there’s nothing else going on?” She reached over and felt my forehead.
I had to laugh. “Insanity doesn’t give you a fever,” I said. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”
“A fever can give you insanity,” she countered.
“I’m not insane!”
“I want to believe you!”
“Don’t fight,” Ben said. “That is the least productive thing right now.”
“Then do something,” I said, no longer worried that she’d hear me, obviously. The cat was out of the bag, now I just needed for her to see it. Or at least believe me.
“Let me think,” he said.
“He’s thinking,” I told her.
“Good.” She nodded. “Okay.” She was clearly trying to stay calm and was barely keeping her grip on it. “Shit fuck damn it, I don’t know what to do in this situation.”
The way she looked at me was as if we weren’t friends but I was a lost child she suddenly had responsibility for. Frankly, I could imagine how she felt; earlier she’d been joking around with her friend, equals, comrades, and now she thought I—a grown adult with my own ideas—had lost my grip and she alone had to figure out what to do.
“Kristin, you’ve got to believe me,” I said, emotion strangling my voice.
“Maybe I should call Phillip.”
“Please don’t get everyone worked up about this.” I wanted to cry, to scream, to throw things. This wasn’t fair. Hadn’t I been through enough? I’d gone out on a limb telling her the whole truth. What if she continued to not believe me? What would she do? Would she stay anyway? Leave Jamie? Take both kids and leave?
This was a mess.
“Phillip,” Ben said.
“Her husband, you know, Phillip.”
“Of course I know Phillip.” His voice remained calm and easy. “I might know Phillip a little too well.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“What’s going on?” Kristin asked, her voice tight, her body still in its fight-or-flight stance.
“He’s saying he knows Phillip,” I told her.
“That proves he’s here, then,” she said. “What was I worried about?” I was glad to see her sarcasm coming back.
Ben held up his hand. “There’s something I know that you don’t.”
“About Phillip?”
“What about Phillip?” Kristin wanted to know. Now she sounded curious. Alarmed still, but al
so curious. That was progress.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, ask him?”
“Oh, now you believe he’s here?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “A minute ago you were ready to have me committed.”
“I’m still ready to have you committed,” she said. “But what is he, or you, saying about Phillip?”
“He says he knows something I don’t know.” I looked at Ben. “But Kristin does? So it would prove you’re here? Is that it?”
He nodded. “I don’t know that we want to go there, though.”
“Honey, we’re already halfway there. If you don’t take me all the way, I’m going to have to cash in frequent flyer miles that I don’t have, so please just say it.”
“Phillip has a child with another woman,” Ben said. “Someone he knew when he first started dating Kristin.”
“What?”
“What?” Kristin echoed. “What? What did he say?”
“Are you sure?” I focused on Ben. This wasn’t possible. Kristin and I were best friends. Why wouldn’t she have told me about this before?
“Kyle. I think his name is Kyle.”
“Kyle,” I repeated.
I heard Kristin gasp.
I looked at her, the enormity of this information settling over me. “Phillip has a son named Kyle?”
She raised shaking hands to her face. “How do you know that?”
It was proof. Proof to her and proof to me, if I’d needed it. I couldn’t have conjured this apparently accurate information by myself. “Ben just told me. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I felt Ben come closer, his presence soothing and exciting simultaneously.
“Phillip doesn’t talk about it,” she said, her voice quavering. “He doesn’t want anyone to know because the woman took the child away and wouldn’t let him see him. She even denied in court that Phillip was the father, and that was before DNA was routinely used.”
“So where is Kyle?” It felt weird to suddenly be talking about this person who, moments before, hadn’t existed to me but who was apparently the grown son of my best friend’s husband.
“His mother took him out of the country. Phillip lost track a long time ago.” She shrugged. “It’s not that he’s ashamed of having fathered Kyle, but he feels like he let him down by losing him.”
“He just doesn’t like to talk about it,” Ben added softly. “He only told me because he’d had a lot of bourbon and it was heavy on his mind.”
“I didn’t know he’d told Ben,” Kristin said.
“Me neither.” I glanced at Ben, feeling a selfish little pang of betrayal because he had known something so monumental and never told me. Of course he hadn’t—he was a good friend who could keep a secret, and for whatever reason Phillip had not wanted me or anyone else to know. That was his right.
It’s just that I’d thought Ben and I had no secrets between us and suddenly I was learning that we did.
What else might I find out?
“I’m sorry I never told you,” Kristin said, articulating a thought that hadn’t even occurred to me. “It was Phillip’s truth and not mine to give out.”
“I understand.” And I did. Both her and Ben. This wasn’t about me, but it was a good reminder to me that people have levels that go on and on.
“So,” Kristin said, slapping her hands down on her thighs and taking a deep breath. “Where is he?”
Kyle? Phillip? “Who?”
She gave a little smile and said, “Ben.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Willa
I glanced at Ben. “Okay?”
He gave a bow.
I rolled my eyes at him, then took a steadying breath. This wasn’t going to be an easy admission, even to my best friend. It was so outrageous, and so lacking in proof (besides the Kyle thing, which wasn’t necessarily that solidly posthumous) that it risked making me look legitimately crazy. “He’s right here. Next to me.”
“Here?” She reached out and ran her hand right through him. The minute she did, she drew it back. “No way.”
“Yup.”
She looked alarmed. “It’s cold.”
“Oh.” I nodded, glancing a little apologetically at Ben. He’d been such a warm person; it must suck to constantly have people recoiling at his coldness now. “Yeah. That seems to go with the program.”
He shrugged, but he looked uncomfortable. I knew he understood this to be kind of creepy. “I don’t get it,” he said, in answer to my unasked question.
Kristin took a short breath, held it for a second, then let it out. “Willa, I don’t know. I can’t really … I mean, how can I believe this? It’s not possible.”
I shrugged. “I know. That’s how I felt.”
“This must have been so hard for you.” Realization came into her eyes. “Oooh, is this what was going on when you made up that story about the workout partner with Jamie the last week?”
I nodded.
“Man.” She gave a low whistle. “I had no idea. Okay, so if he’s here…” she said. “Since he’s here, what is he doing here? Is he … stuck?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I looked at him for clarification and he shook his head. “No.”
“Then, what?” she asked, her frown deepening. “Most of the time when people die they just move on, whatever that means. We don’t constantly see the ghosts of our lost loved ones or we’d go crazy. Or we’d be so used to it that there would be nothing strange or surprising about it. In other words, it would be really different than this.” She wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry, I just don’t get it.”
“I came to help you. You were too sad. Too stuck. But now … now you’re going to be all right.”
“He knew I was sad,” I said to her. “Too sad.”
“Well, you haven’t really been happy…”
“No, definitely not,” I agreed. I turned to face him. “I needed you. I need you. And”—tears came upon me suddenly—“and you’re gone.”
Just like that, I realized it. He was gone. I mean, I’d realized it for three years, but I had lived as if in limbo, day-to-day, waiting for the days to pass until … what? Until I was old and beyond the place where anyone would suggest I should move on? Maybe.
Certainly the days had turned to weeks, had turned to months, had turned to years, and it had all passed in the blink of an eye without me ever stopping to think about how to do anything but eventually die.
I never thought about how to live.
But he’d come to tell me it was okay to be happy without him. Suddenly it all made sense.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said softly.
“I’m going to be all right,” I repeated, then looked at Kristin. “I am going to be all right.”
Confusion was still evident in her expression, but she still managed a smile. “Well, yeah, you’re going to be all right. You’re going to be better than all right, you’re going to be great!”
“There it is,” Ben said. “Believe it.” Once again, he began to fade. There was no rhyme or reason to it, he just disappeared arbitrarily.
“Don’t.” I reached for him, as if that could do anything. It couldn’t and it didn’t. He disappeared into the ether once again. I looked after him, feeling bereft.
“Don’t what?” Kristin asked, pressing her hands together, ready to spring forward. “What did he do?”
“He’s gone,” I said to her. “He disappeared.”
“What, he just…” She snapped her fingers. “Like that?”
I nodded. “That’s how it goes. We don’t have any control over it.”
I heard my own words and felt irritated at the adoptation of we that I’d taken on. We don’t have any control … While the statement was true, it implied a togetherness that we no longer had or could have. We can’t join you for dinner that night. We will try to get a babysitter for Jamie. We just bought a beach house, come visit …
Whatever we once did we would never do again, so that one sma
ll word had become something kind of sad and silly both at the same time.
If she noticed my use of the word and thought it was strange, she didn’t show it. “Well, now that he’s gone, start over at the beginning. Tell me everything.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Willa
Weeks passed without me seeing Ben. Ever since I’d told Kristin the truth, it was like the winds had shifted. There was something different in the quality of the air. It was somehow lighter. And even though I still missed Ben terribly, an unexpected peace had settled deep inside of me. I couldn’t even say what it was, whether it was because of the fact that I knew now—I truly believed—that there was more to everything than met the eye, or if it was simply a matter of having “exorcised” my sadness with him, I don’t know.
I still looked for him, of course. I watched Dolly for sudden alertness or interest in something I couldn’t see, but she was back to her normal old self, begging in the kitchen, sleeping on the sofa, snoring on my bed at night. Yes, she’d leap up and bark when the mailman pushed mail through the door slot, but it was a different bark. Threatening, but not curious.
Kristin and I talked about it a lot at first. She was constantly asking if I saw him recently. And also what it was like to hear his voice. Did he sound the same? Was it like he was literally standing in the room as real as she was? Could I touch him or feel his form?
And it was funny because, until she started asking those questions, it hadn’t occurred to me how much of a veil there had been when he showed up, even when he was talking to me or teasing me. I never had the sense that I could touch him or in any way be with him.
“But that would have been enough for you?” Kristin asked, as we were sitting on the beach one evening, having wine from water bottles. We’d gotten a ride to the boardwalk with the kids on their way to work and had decided to relax on the beach until we wanted to amble over to a restaurant, drink our fill of wine, and then take an Uber home.
The sun was setting slowly over the bay to the west and the entire shoreline was cast in an amber golden light. The breeze lifted my hair and the light felt healing on my face. “I thought it would be enough,” I told her. “Some Ben is better than no Ben. But he made it clear from the beginning that he couldn’t stay.” I took a sip of wine. “Actually, his death made it pretty clear he couldn’t stay.”
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