His voice had held such gentleness. She desperately wanted him to be real. Well, as real as a ghost could be. She ran her hands through her hair. Why couldn’t he have been someone she met at school? Someone who was actually alive.
Frustrated, she wondered if life could get any worse.
Chapter 4
Mia hurled the yellow tennis ball into the backyard, watching it skip along the ground as it spun farther and farther away. Achilles raced after it, his four legs gracefully working in unison as he caught up with the ball and scooped it into his mouth without stopping, then changed direction effortlessly and raced back to Mia. He dropped the ball at her feet and sat on his haunches, panting as he waited patiently for her to toss it again.
The July heat was unforgiving. Sweat trickled down Mia’s brow as she bent down to retrieve the ball and hurled it once again, sending Achilles into another frenzy as he sprinted the length of the yard. It had been a month since she and Jennie had last been to Chickamauga Park. Neither of them had spoken of Benjamin since that day. Mia’s time had been filled with excursions with Jennie and Kaylie, and of course, she spent time with her mother when she could. Her mother had been picking up extra shifts at the café, but she always spent Fridays with Mia. Their Friday morning breakfast conversations at the diner no longer included talk of boys. Mia, not wanting to lead Josh on, had told him the day after their second kiss that she just wanted to be friends. While Josh seemed genuinely disappointed, she knew it was better to tell him early on than to let him develop any real feelings for her.
Mia had long since forgotten Matt, and while she tried desperately to bury the image of Benjamin deep into the recesses of her mind, his memory refused to cooperate. He was constantly there. When she closed her eyes, she could see him. His eyes, an illuminated blue, beckoned to her. His hair, the color of a moonlit night, curled along the collar of his war worn uniform. She could hear his voice, its gentleness touching her soul like a healing balm. She was drawn to Benjamin. It was inexplicable. Her analytical nature was baffled by Private Benjamin Alexander Richards. Perhaps that was why she had become infatuated with him. To say he existed went against the grain of everything she knew. And yet she could not convince herself to dismiss him from her mind.
Ever since the day in the battlefield park when she had assured Jennie that he would be there, and yet he was not, she could not bring herself to mention him again for fear that her best friend would think she had become irrational. She had considered talking to her mom, but her mother already had too many burdens. Mia could not bear to add another one, and she knew if she started talking about ghosts, her mother would worry and probably want to have her seen by a psychiatrist, which she knew her mother couldn’t afford. What scared her even more was the thought that maybe she did need a psychiatrist. Maybe Benjamin was of her own making.
Snapping out of her thoughts, Mia noticed that Achilles had dropped the ball at her feet and was watching her eagerly. She scratched him behind the ears and filled his water bowl. Then, she went inside to complete her chores before her mother came home from work.
Thirty minutes later, her mother arrived home in a coffee-stained uniform, reeking of fried foods.
“Hey, honey,” her mother greeted her. “How was your day?”
“A little boring,” Mia confessed. “But I caught up the laundry and spent some time with Achilles, so all and all, it was good. How was work?”
“Tips weren’t bad, but my feet are aching,” her mother responded.
“I heated up some spaghetti for you,” Mia said, motioning toward the kitchen.
“Thank you. I’m starving. I think I’ll eat, take a hot bath, and lie down for a while.” Her mother untied her apron and walked to the kitchen, laying it on the table. “Have you already eaten?”
“I’m not really hungry right now,” Mia answered, playing with a strand of hair between her thumb and forefinger as she followed her mother to the kitchen. They both sat at the round, light oak table. She chewed on her lower lip. “Mom?”
“Yes?” She took a bite of spaghetti and looked at Mia expectantly.
“Could I borrow the car?”
“Sure, honey. Where are you going?”
“I thought I might ride around a little bit. You know, just to get out of the house a while.”
“Well, don’t ride too far. It only has about a half tank of gas, and I want that to last us for a few days.”
“I won’t go far.”
“Okay, be careful.”
“I will, Mom.” Mia picked up the keys from the coffee table and exited the house. As she drove down the road, she knew exactly where she was going. What she didn’t know was why.
Twenty minutes later, she was standing by Wilder Tower, staring up at it in awe as she always did. She hoped to hear Benjamin’s voice from somewhere behind her, but after staring at the tower for what seemed like an eternity, she knew it would not be coming. She sat on the stone bench nearby and looked over the park. Even though it was almost six o’clock in the evening, the heat was still excruciating. Unlike the early morning hours when Mia had come here in June, people milled around the park. Families were riding bikes. A few people had parked their horse trailers nearby and were entering the trails on horseback. One couple was having a picnic in the shade of an ancient oak.
Mia loved the peacefulness here. A sparrow hopped along the stone walkway in front of her, hoping for a piece of bread crust or a dropped potato chip. In the distance, she could see two hawks circling a field. Laughter drifted through the still air, and the sweet smell of honeysuckle caused her to breathe in a little deeper than normal.
Other than the heat, it was a perfect day, and though the beauty did lift her spirits a bit, it could not eliminate the sadness that seemed to settle in her bones. With each passing minute, she became more and more convinced that Benjamin did not exist. At least she knew now. Maybe now the logical side of her could take control once again and remove the ridiculous notion that the soul of some random Civil War ghost was calling to her. Maybe now she could forget the emotions that Benjamin’s voice stirred within her. Maybe now she could forget the way he looked at her, like she was something fragile to be cherished.
Was it so wrong to want someone who awakened those emotions within her? No, she scoffed to herself. It wasn’t wrong to want those things. It was wrong to create someone within one’s own mind to give one those things.
She must listen to logic. Otherwise, reality would drift further and further from her grasp. She rubbed her palms across her face, took a deep breath, and resolved to let the foolishness of Private Benjamin Alexander Richards vanish into thin air.
She stood up, feeling a little better now that her logical side had insisted that ghost stories were just that, stories made up by people’s imaginations for the purpose of entertainment. She had created Benjamin within her own mind at a time when she was in emotional turmoil. Benjamin had been a healing salve for her ailing mental state, much like victims of abuse blocked bad memories from their consciousness. The brain was an amazing organ when it came to self-preservation.
Logic was reassuring, comfortable.
Now that she had come to terms with her temporary bout of insanity, there was no reason that she couldn’t enjoy the beauty of the park. She walked to the path that she and Jennie had taken in June to further prove to herself that the sane Mia was back.
Once she was surrounded by trees, the cooler temperature refreshed her from the heat of the scorching July afternoon. She loved to look into the foliage above her and see rays of sunlight filtering through the boughs. She stopped along the path to admire a blooming wildflower and a cooling breeze swept over her. A tingle shivered at the nape of her neck and shot down her back. Voices alerted her to a couple of horseback riders headed up the path toward her. To give them plenty of room to pass, she headed off the beaten path and walked into the woods, stepping over a thick patch of underbrush. She watched a squirrel scamper deeper into the forest and followed
it, pausing to sit on a fallen tree trunk and soak in the peacefulness of nature that surrounded her. The couple on horseback had now passed her, their voices inaudible.
Enjoying her solitude, she closed her eyes, cherishing the simple pleasure of the day.
“I have missed you, Mia Randall.”
Mia’s eyes flew open. Standing before her leaning against the sturdy trunk of a hickory tree was Private Benjamin Alexander Richards, his face every bit as alluring as she remembered.
“Benjamin?”
He walked toward her and knelt at her feet. “I feared that I would never see you again.”
Mia closed her eyes. “You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real,” she chanted over and over again, willing her sanity to come back.
She opened her eyes. He was still there, gazing at her with a crooked grin on his face.
Mia covered her face with her palms. “This is not happening. He’s not real. He’s not real,” she mumbled.
She slid her palms away, and Benjamin remained visible. He was still grinning, but his amusement had been replaced with a hint of sadness.
“I wish you no harm, Mia. If you prefer that I leave and never return, then I will do so. You have my word as a gentleman.”
“Yes, leave me alone. Go away,” she urged frantically.
He vanished.
Mia blinked. She stood and turned, looking around her in all directions. She should feel relieved, but sadness trickled its way through her veins. She couldn’t deny that she had been happy to see him. A thrill had sparked in her heart and shot throughout her body, making her feel things she had never felt before. But she didn’t want to be crazy. She didn’t want her friends to think that she had lost her last strand of sanity. It was better this way, wasn’t it?
She had longed to see him every day over the last month. And now she had demanded that he leave? She shook her head, trying to clear the confusion. Was he a figment of her imagination? Even if he wasn’t, he was still a ghost. Not exactly someone that she could bring home to meet her mother.
“Benjamin?” she whispered, knowing that she shouldn’t be calling him back. “Benjamin, please come back. I’m sorry.”
Nothing.
She sat back down on the fallen tree trunk. “Benjamin, please come back. I’m afraid,” she whispered into the air. “Not of you,” she quickly added. “I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid that I have lost my sanity. I’m afraid of what my mother will think when she finds out that I’ve been talking to a ghost. But most of all, I’m afraid that if you don’t come back now, I will never see you again. I’m afraid that you aren’t real, and I desperately want you to be.”
“I can assure you that I am real,” his voice answered her.
Mia glanced around her, but could see nothing.
Benjamin appeared in his transparent state, kneeling before her on one knee. “Perhaps in body I am not quite as real as you,” he said, then looked alive, making him once again seem real, even though she knew that if she tried to touch him, she could not. “But my thoughts and emotions are as real as yours. My soul, Mia Randall, is as real as yours.”
Gladness filled her. “I came to see you with Jennie,” Mia whispered. “But you weren’t here.”
“I was here just as I promised,” he said. “I was with you. Could you not feel my presence?” Benjamin reached his hand around her and touched the back of her neck.
Mia felt a tingling sensation at her nape, and it quickly traveled down her spine. “That was you?”
“Yes, Mia. It was me. I was with you.”
“Then why didn’t you show yourself?”
Benjamin smiled that slow, sad grin that was beginning to be familiar to her. “It’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“I am bound by certain rules, so to speak,” he said to her in a low voice, barely above a whisper. “Let’s just say that the fewer people I show myself to, the better. I should not have shown myself to you. But your beauty captivated me, and I can feel the kindness of your soul. And the day that you fell, I feared that you were hurt, and even worse, I knew that I could have prevented it had I not allowed your beauty to dull my wits.”
Shrouded in silence, they looked into each other’s eyes. Mia quivered at the intensity of his gaze.
“Do you believe in soul mates?” Benjamin asked as he studied her face intently.
“I don’t know,” Mia answered. “I suppose that I never thought much about it.”
“You are my soul mate, Mia Randall. I knew it the first time that I looked into your eyes.”
“Me?”
“Don’t you feel it?” he asked. “When I’m with you, it’s as if nothing else in the world matters. I want nothing more than to be with you.”
Mia’s heart warmed. “But you don’t even know me.”
“We can remedy that. Tell me…who is Mia Randall?”
“I’m just an ordinary girl,” Mia responded.
“Nonsense,” Benjamin disagreed. “There’s nothing ordinary about you.”
Mia blushed and lowered her lashes.
“What’s your favorite color?” Benjamin asked.
“Pink.”
“Your favorite food?”
“Crème filled doughnuts with chocolate on the top. I love pancakes, too.”
“What’s the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to you?”
Mia didn’t immediately answer. She thought about the last seventeen years of her life. The answer was an easy one, but this wasn’t information that she normally shared with anyone. She didn’t typically open up to her true feelings, but then again, no one had ever asked her that question before. She took a deep breath. “Growing up without a father. He died when I was a baby, and even though I never really knew him, I have missed him terribly. I remember one day in the second grade, it was bring-your-father-to-school day. Everyone’s father had come, except for mine and Timothy Blake’s. Timothy’s father had to work. Some of the kids had stepfathers who came. I was the only kid who didn’t have a father at all. Every year, while everyone else celebrates Father’s Day by spending the day with their dad, my mother and I celebrate it by putting flowers on my Daddy’s grave. I know I’m not the first person who grew up without a father and I won’t be the last, but it still hurts.”
“I know the pain of which you speak,” Benjamin said, moving to sit beside Mia on the tree trunk.
“You grew up without a father?” Mia asked.
“No. I was blessed with a wonderful father. He was still alive the day that I died. It was my mother who died when I was young.”
“How did she die?”
“Childbirth. I was only five at the time, but I remember it like it was yesterday. She had a long, hard labor. I can still hear her screams. In the end, it took her life and the babe’s, too.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
He smiled. “A girl. My father named her after our mother. Elizabeth Anne Richards.”
“Did you have any other brothers or sisters?” Mia asked.
“I have a sister who is two years older than I. After the death of my mother, my father hired a nanny, but my sister still looked after me quite often. You would like her. Her name is Abby, and she has a kind soul, like you.
“Enough about me, though,” Benjamin said. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No,” Mia answered. “It’s just my mother and me. Both sets of my grandparents are dead and neither of my parents had siblings. My mother has some cousins, but they live in Montana and we never see them.”
“And your mother never remarried?”
“No,” Mia replied. “She dates every once in a while, but never anything serious.”
The evening sun slipped beyond the horizon and darkness engulfed them. An owl hooted nearby. “You should go,” Benjamin stated. “It’s late.”
Mia checked her cell phone. It was nearly ten o’clock. “My mother isn’t expecting me home until eleven,” Mia countered.
“I have thirty more minutes before I need to leave…unless you want me to go.”
“Have you listened to nothing I’ve told you? It’s not that I want you to go. It’s that I want you to be safe, Mia.” She couldn’t see Benjamin’s face clearly, but his eyes shone brightly as if illuminated from within. She could see the concern in his eyes.
“But I don’t want to go, Benjamin,” she whispered. “I have been waiting to talk to you. I’ll stay thirty more minutes, then I’ll leave and go straight home. Agreed?”
He gazed behind her and scanned the forest. It was eerily quiet. “It appears you are safe for now.”
“Why did you join the war?” Mia asked him, eager to get to know him.
He was silent for a moment, his eyes closed. “All my friends were joining,” he stated simply. “A few of them had died in battle. It was difficult to stand by and do nothing. My father begged me not to. He said that he had seen too much pain in his life. He could not bear to lose his son, as well. But I was arrogant and selfish. I thought myself invincible.”
“I don’t think risking one’s life could ever be considered selfish,” Mia said softly.
“Perhaps,” Benjamin conceded. “My father was against the war. He didn’t think brother should be raising arms against brother. But once it had come to that, there wasn’t much that could be done, but fight it out. Neither side was willing to compromise.
“All I can think about as I lay dying is that I am letting my father down. He needs me. He needs my help with the family business. He needs to be at peace. But instead I continue to snuff out his hopes and dreams for the future. With my mother and the babe gone, Abby and I are all he has.”
“Why do you say it like that?” Mia asked, rearranging her position on the tree trunk.
“Like what?”
“In the present tense, instead of the past. Why do you say that all you can think about as you lay dying, like you’re dying at this very moment, instead of many, many years ago?”
Ghostly Encounter (Ghostly #1) (Ghostly Series) Page 5