by Fall, Carly
He wore jeans, a long-sleeved jean shirt, and black work boots. Pushing his hand through his dark hair, then shoved his hands in his pockets. Her heart thumped as she stared at him. God, she wanted him. She wanted him to make love to her the way he had Margaret.
She was in love with a dead person.
Maybe she didn’t belong in today’s world. Judging by what she had just seen, she had been far happier and more secure in herself in her other life than she was in this one.
But that was the thing: she didn’t know if everything she was seeing was real. Perhaps this was all a figment of her imagination. It felt like truth, but most crazy people believed their hallucinations were genuine. Perhaps Doris wasn’t even real.
“Do you want to put down a deposit, honey?” Doris asked.
The woman was trying to get money out of her, so Maggie was going to guess that Doris was indeed authentic . . . and very much alive.
“Not right now,” Maggie said, trying to smile. Joseph continued to stare at her, and Maggie knew she needed to leave. She wanted to move into this old house and live with Joseph, sanity and reality be damned. A panic welled within her, and suddenly, she was desperate to put as much distance between her and Bisbee as possible.
Whatever was going on, this place was making her crazy.
She stumbled out the door, tears clouding her eyes.
“Margaret?” Joseph said, appearing at the bottom of the porch stairs. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to leave!” Maggie practically screamed. Her heart ached for the ghost in front of her that she could never have. The needing and longing only got worse as she stared at him. This ghost . . . was everything she had ever wanted in a man, and it was driving herself crazy being around him.
“That’s fine, honey,” Doris said from behind her. “You don’t need to get upset. Let me give you my card, and if you decide otherwise, give me a call.”
Maggie wheeled around, almost knocking into Doris. She had to act as normal as possible. “Thank you for your time, Doris,” she said, hearing the strain in her voice. “I appreciate it.”
Maggie took Doris’s card and went down the porch stairs. “I’ll be in touch,” she said over her shoulder, hoping her smile looked genuine.
She went around the side of the house and gazed down at the stairs that would take her to street level. Surely going down would be much easier than going up.
“Are you okay, Margaret?” Joseph asked as he appeared next to her.
“Yes. Now go away. You are too perfect; therefore, you must be a figment of my imagination. This is all a daydream, or I’m completely certifiable. So, go away.”
She took off down the stairs in a run, hoping she didn’t lose her footing and go head-over-heels downward.
When she reached the bottom, a feeling of undeniable loss overcame her. What was wrong with her?
“Margaret?” She closed her eyes as Joseph materialized before her. “Please talk to me.”
She took a few deep breaths and looked at him. His hair hung to his collar and instead of feeling like she needed to run, she longed to run her fingers through it. Every fiber in her body told her she needed to stay in Bisbee, but the logical part of her brain screamed she had to get out now.
“I need to go, Joseph,” she whispered, her heart breaking at the thought. A tear trickled down her cheeks. “This . . . this isn’t normal. There’s something wrong with me. You are everything in a man that I could ever imagine, and those men don’t exist except in romance novels and a woman’s imagination. They certainly don’t exist in my life.”
“Margaret—”
“No, Joseph. Please don’t say another word. I know that you’ll only try to convince me to stay, to be with you, and I can’t. I’m alive. I breathe. My heart beats. Even if you are real, I can’t stay here and have a relationship with you. I need . . . I need to get back to reality.”
She headed down the hill to her car. Yes, she would leave Bisbee as fast as possible. Once she got back to Phoenix, she would be able to put all of this behind her and it would be nothing but a memory in a few weeks. She would be able to get back to her real life and leave this nonsense behind.
“Margaret!” Joseph called from behind her. She was determined not to look at him, resolute to reclaim her sanity.
“Margaret!”
She stopped and slowly turned around. It was as if there was an internal pull within her that connected her to Joseph. She couldn’t ignore him.
“I shall wait for you,” he said. “I will wait until you return. I love you, my Margaret.”
With that, he disappeared.
Deep sobs straight from her heart crawled up her throat, and she felt as if she had just lost her other half.
She wanted to run back to the pink and green house on the hill, move in, and never leave. Gazing up at it, she saw Joseph standing in the window, looking down at her.
Maggie thought of her life in Phoenix. There wasn’t much, but there was something. She had her friends who were flesh and blood, her job, and her book club.
Turning, she ran down the hill to her car, hoping that getting back to her old life would also cement her place in reality.
Chapter 14
Maggie ran up the stairs to her hotel room, gathered the rest of her belongings, and stuffed them into the suitcase. She tried to get a grip on her emotions, but they were so profound and overwhelming.
Tears fell at such a fast rate she had trouble seeing what she was doing. Her heart ached with such ferocity, she wondered if she were having an issue with her health. Her hands shook and her head buzzed with the inner conflict she had going on.
She sat down on the bed and put her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands. She needed to get a grip and look at the facts. There were two possible things going on here.
First, say there was such thing as ghosts, and Joseph was a true-to-God spirit who had been walking around Bisbee waiting for her for over one hundred years. She couldn’t live her life with someone she couldn’t touch and nobody else could see. People would think she was crazy.
On the flip side, what if Joseph was a figment of her imagination, a near-perfect man she had conjured up? Again, as wonderful and flawless as he was for her, she couldn’t have a relationship with a hallucination. She supposed some people did that, but they were likely incarcerated in mental hospitals.
She needed to get out of Bisbee and back to her old life. This whole trip had been a huge mistake. Her trouble had started in the mine, so there must have been something in the air. Or maybe her love for history—all of the books she had read and her divorce had crashed together, causing a break in her psyche.
Whatever it was, if she just immersed herself in everything that was the present day, she was certain she would snap out of this . . . thing . . . when she got home.
It was all so logical, and it all sounded sane. What wasn’t reasonable were the feelings. The thought of leaving made her whole body ache, while the idea of staying gave her relief. Why should she want to stay somewhere that was obviously making her crazy?
She shook her head.
“Margaret.”
Hearing his voice sent a shiver down her spine and a wave of warmth through her body.
“Margaret, I hate to see you so upset. I feel I’m responsible, and I want to apologize.”
Maggie took a deep breath and looked over at the doorway. Joseph leaned against the doorframe with his hands jammed in the front pockets of his jeans, his brow etched with concern and worry.
“You aren’t real,” she whispered, wiping her eyes.
He shrugged. “I supposed if being real means having flesh and blood, then no, I’m not real. However, I am a spirit trapped in this realm, and that is very, very real.”
Why hadn’t he gone to his final resting place or been reincarnated or whatever happened after death? She’d been given another life, maybe more than one, so why hadn’t he?
“Why haven’t you moved on?” she asked. �
�Why do you stay here?”
Joseph sighed and looked around the room, as if the answers to her question were written on the walls. Finally, he spoke. “Right before you died, Margaret, I kissed your lips and told you that you and I would be together again. Somehow, those words were a tether to this place. They were binding. After I died, I was just . . . here. I’ve walked Bisbee for almost a hundred years, Margaret, seen by no one. I haven’t had any contact with another. When I realized that you could see me, that you were my Margaret, I was so happy. My wait was over. You were here.”
Maggie shut her eyes, a headache forming behind them.
“When you said you didn’t remember me or our time together, somehow the universe believed it was important for you to see what we had. That surprised me, but I do have to admit I enjoyed our little time traveling. It was beautiful to see us together again. It was just as I remembered.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and took some deep breaths, guilt washing through her as she considered her next words. Finally, she opened her eyes, determined to get through the next few minutes. “Joseph, I can’t stay here. I have a life in Phoenix.”
Sitting down on the bed, Maggie realized she was already exhausted. “Joseph, I’m a living, breathing human. I need to live. I can’t . . .”
The words trailed off as her throat constricted. She didn’t want to say them, but her logical side told her she needed to. “I can’t stay here and be in love with a ghost. I need to move on with my life. Besides that, I’m not sure if I’m even sane. Maybe I’ve just made you up.”
There was a long stretch of silence, and she wondered if Joseph had gone. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him, unmoving as if he were a statue.
“I agree, Margaret,” he murmured. “And I never wanted you to stop your life to live with me. I simply wanted to . . . I guess I just wanted to let you know I was here. What part of our time has made you so upset? To see how we were? Or to know that I exist?”
The tears started again, dammit. But it wasn’t just seeing the past; it was the feelings it evoked. “Yes,” she whispered, shutting her eyes. “It’s everything. Seeing us together was so . . . wonderful, Joseph. You loved me so much. You’re everything I could ever hope for in a man, and you’re either dead or a figment of my imagination.”
There was another long beat of silence, and she opened her eyes to see him kneeling in front of her. His light-blue stare tore into her. “Margaret, I did love you, and I continue to love you, but I would never ask you to stop living your life. Life is too precious. Live it the best you can.”
He was letting her go. He didn’t expect anything from her. It brought her a sense of relief, as well as profound loss.
“I’ve enjoyed our time together more than you can imagine,” he said. “All I ask is that you remember I’m waiting for you.”
Devastation ripped through Maggie and she honest to God thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. Her whole body shook while her heart jackhammered in her chest.
“Go, Margaret. Go back to your life. Just remember that I love you, and I’m here.”
With that, he disappeared as if he never existed.
Chapter 15
Maggie grabbed her suitcase and headed to her car. Her head throbbed, her heart hurt. The tears just wouldn’t stop.
Yes, she needed to get back to her normal life, as pathetic as it might be, and put all this behind her. She couldn’t go back to what she’d witnessed because it didn’t exist anymore, whether it was real or not.
She threw the suitcase in the trunk of the Acura and got behind the wheel. Taking a deep breath, she shoved the key into the ignition and slowly backed out of the parking spot. Driving carefully along the narrow road, she hooked a right down Youngblood Hill Avenue and onto Brewery Gulch. Turning left, she drove slowly, still awed at how well history had been preserved in the town. An old brick wall still stood to her left. A small white-picket-fenced house had been erected on one side, while the other had a small, old bare-wood home, and the two buildings standing side-by-side seemed to be a metaphor for everything the town represented—the past and the present living in harmony.
As she descended further into the town, the houses scattered up the mountainside.
Once in town, she passed St. Elmo’s Bar, the Stock Exchange Saloon, the tattoo parlor and antique shops, trying to commit to memory the old wooden buildings, as well as the grand brick buildings that made up the unique flavor of Bisbee. She tried to not look at the Copper Queen Mine, but failed miserably. The road took her to Highway 80 and she drove away, despite her whole being telling her to stay.
She would look back at Bisbee as a time when she really did get to go back in history, to see what it was really like. The books she loved losing herself in couldn’t compare to what she’d experienced, whether it was real or not.
And then there was Joseph. If he was real . . . there was no doubt in her mind that she belonged with him. The kiss they had shared over a hundred years ago had solidified their bond. If he was part of her imagination . . . well, she couldn’t blame herself for conjuring up someone so perfect for her.
It had been a rough year going through the divorce with Jerry and trying to come to terms with herself. She’d worked hard to try to understand that she was okay just the way she was. It made her so angry to think of everything she had done to try to please Jerry. Her psyche had produced Joseph, a man who loved her for who she was and he didn’t think she needed fixing. Joseph had helped her realize that she was beautiful and desirable just the way she was.
Five minutes later, her body was wracked with sobs as she tried to concentrate on the two-lane highway. The sun was setting. She had to get a grip on herself. Reaching over to the glove compartment, she searched for a pack of tissues.
She didn’t realize her car had veered over the line into an oncoming semi until it was too late.
Chapter 16
Maggie came to consciousness under a bright light. She winced at the pain in her head, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to open them.
A man came into her view, his brown eyes worried, a crease in his brow. “Can you hear me, miss?” he asked.
Maggie nodded, wondering where she was. The last thing she remembered was saying good-bye to Joseph.
The man flashed a light in her eyes, and Maggie shut them. The pain was unbearable.
“Get some gauze over here and clean her up so I can see what we’re dealing with!”
Gauze? Why did she need gauze? What needed to be cleaned up? And where was she?
She forced her eyes open again and tried to turn her head. It was locked in place, and panic surged within her. She tried to sit up, but hands forcefully pushed her shoulders back down. She managed to open her eyes and realized she was in a hospital.
“What happened?” she whispered as she noted her whole body was numb, except for her head.
“You were in a bad accident,” the man said, coming into her line of vision again. “I’m Dr. Taylor, and I need you to stay still and relax.”
Maggie looked around the room as best she could. Nurses stood around her while others rushed around the small space in controlled chaos. One of them stepped back from the bed, and there was Joseph, leaning against the wall.
“Joseph,” she whispered.
He came toward her and stood at the side of the bed by her head, the doctors and nurses rushing through him as if he didn’t exist.
“Margaret,” he said. “What happened?”
“I was in an accident,” she whispered, her throat dry, her tongue thick.
“I can see that,” Joseph said, concern etched in his brow. “How did it happen?”
Maggie tried to remember the details, but she drew a blank. “I don’t know.”
“Who is she talking to?” one of the nurses asked another.
The nurse shrugged. “You know it happens sometimes when they’re about to leave.”
“What happens?” Maggie whispered. “Where am I goi
ng?”
“You aren’t going anywhere, honey,” the nurse said, laying her hand on Maggie’s shoulder, but Maggie couldn’t feel the contact. “Just rest and let us do our jobs, okay?”
Maggie closed her eyes for what seemed like a long time. When she opened them, Joseph was still by her side.
Suddenly, pain ripped through her gut and she tried to scream, but nothing came out.
“Margaret?” Joseph said. She gazed up at him, the pain unbearable as her organs and muscles twisted and clenched.
“She’s coding!” someone yelled.
She saw many sets of hands were on her, but she couldn’t feel them. Maggie shut her eyes and felt a jolt deep within her body.
“Margaret!” Joseph yelled. “Fight! You have the will to live!”
Maggie thought about his words. She believed it was human nature to want to live, to fight to do so. Yet, the pain that ripped through every fiber of her body was so great, she simply couldn’t take it. She opened her mouth to scream again and heard nothing but the cacophony around her as the doctor barked orders to everyone in the room, and they responded their acknowledgement.
“Margaret!” Joseph yelled.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Fear etched his features as he loomed over her, his head inches from hers.
“I love you,” she whispered, and shut her eyes.
Suddenly, there was nothing. There was no pain or yelling. It was blessed silence, a calm, tranquil place. Glancing around, she stood among mist or clouds wearing a white, flowing gown, and a white light shone in the distance. It beckoned her. The air was still and cool against her skin.
As a spiritual person, Maggie had spent some time thinking about heaven and what her beliefs would mean in getting there. She approached each day trying to be the best person she could by being kind, offering a smile to everyone she met, and trying to help others when she could. Apparently, she’d done okay while alive, because the pull to move to the light was strong.