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“You’re a little young to be a ghost.” “Says who?” I shrug. “I died young.” “And your voice. What’s going on with that?” I arch an eyebrow. “My accent?” She nods. “I died Irish.” Her brows pinch together. “You’re not Irish anymore?” “No, I’m still Irish.” “Why aren’t you haunting a nice gal in Ireland, then?”
“You’re really not doing much to dispel the stalker theory, buddy.” I sigh. “This isn’t stalking. This is haunting.”
“It’s your funeral,” she tells me. I give her a small smile. “Wouldn’t be my first.”
“Haven’t you told me repeatedly to trust my gut?” “You don’t have a gut,” she says, dry as a bone. “You’re dead.”
“Of course I use my magic. Was the trip through time not indication enough?”
For the first time in over a century, I had a dream. And I dreamed of Harriet. “Fuck,” I mutter.
In addition to every person who has ever been even moderately important to me, I’m being ghosted by a literal ghost.
“Would you rather I make you work for it?” A slow smile tugs at one corner of my mouth. “I wouldn’t mind working for it,” I say lightly. She holds eye contact. We’re wading into different territory now. The place where I was in that dream, with her hands in my hair and my face in her neck.
I don’t believe in her theory. There’s nothing she can do to move me forward. But if it makes her happy to try—if it chases some of the sadness off her pretty face—if I can be one person that doesn’t disappoint her or let her down— Then I can endure it.
The only memories I have of my father are faded at best, worn down like a river stone.
“I think you’re bringing me back to life, Harriet.”
Moving on to something different has been the driving force behind my existence for several decades, but it’s hard to consider it when I’m wrapped up in sheets with tiny bears on them. With a pillow that smells like Harriet’s shampoo. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I want to be right here.
She doesn’t even know how well she takes care of me. With her easy smiles and careful touches. Her too-soft heart and that smart mouth. She’s made me feel more alive in a handful of weeks than I have in decades. She’s lit up all of my darkest corners.
The room is filled with swirling snowflakes, drifting lazily from the ceiling and landing against our bare skin. I must have lost control of my magic when I—when I lost control of myself. Golden sparks dance between the snowflakes, my magic buzzing beneath my skin.
“Shall I conjure some hellfire, just for shits and giggles?”
Did you make out with this hot man?” She pauses, shifting incrementally closer. “He has a mustache,” she says, scandalized. Maybe a little enamored.
Maybe she’s the candle, and I’m the idiot drawn to her flame. She’s so damn beautiful.
You make me hope, Harriet. You make me want. I am haunted by you.”
“That’s not what hell is like.” “Oh?” “I’ve been told it resembles a corporate waiting room, complete with fluorescent lighting.” Harriet’s face pinches. “Gross.” “There’s a water cooler that never stops dripping and the air-conditioning is perpetually set to seventy-eight.”
“What’s the likelihood you let this go for the afternoon?” “What? The mysteries of the universe? Not likely, buddy.”
It hits me like a slap. My afterlife. It’s not something I want to think about when I can still see the marks I worked into her skin.
There’s a thunk every now and again from beneath us. I suppose he’s belowdecks, doing … whatever it is fishermen do when they’re down there. Battening down the hatches? Shivering his … timbers?
“Maybe I was always supposed to find you,” I rasp. Maybe, my heart adds, you were always supposed to be mine.
I think of her beneath the water. The look on her face. Her hand, reaching for mine. I didn’t realize I’d already been missing her for more than a hundred years. Now I’m going to miss her for an afterlife more.
Of course I had to fall in love with a ghost. I’ve always loved the broken and forgotten things best.
I keep experiencing bittersweet fragments of what could be. Maybe somewhere in an alternate universe, a different Harriet and Nolan are sitting in front of the fireplace without any ultimatums hanging over their heads. Maybe they’re happy.
I was sent to haunt Harriet, but she ended up haunting me.
“You’ve been waiting for Harriet. To exist in the same time as her. Your souls were together in the beginning, and so they shall be in the end.”
“I’ve lived lifetimes, waiting, without reason or warning. I’ve been miserable. And you call me lucky?”
“And now that you know, how many lifetimes more would you wait? For your Harriet?”
