Ren had waited like I’d asked. He sat with an arm dangling a cigarette out of the car window, watching the dead excavator get towed from our yard. The crew didn’t seem to have a backup. I wondered how long it would take for them to fix it or get a replacement, if there’d be issues rescheduling, any red tape to help hold us up.
He got out of the car as soon as he laid eyes on me. We both reached out, wrapping our arms around each other, not caring how it might look to anyone watching. But the longer he tried to hold me, the more noticeable it would be to any onlookers how strangely he was posed with his empty arms. I had to let go.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Not exactly. I played dumb, gesturing at my phantom self. “What could they do to me? I’m dead.”
He saw right through it. “This is your home.”
I wasn’t ready to process this. For once, instead of snapping, thinking of the worst thing to say to get him to back off, I came up with the opposite. “I’ve got another one of those.”
At least, I did for now. I’d see him move out of the apartment and into a house of his own long before I’d ever leave the Haunt.
His gaze went soft, even as he let out an exasperated breath. “What about everyone else? They’ll be back. Some asshole is paying them to do this job. So they can build a fucking… parking lot, probably.”
“We can’t keep interfering, or we’ll expose ourselves.”
“I could try cuffing myself to the doors.”
My stomach dropped. “That’s crazy.”
That word choked me. I wished I’d swallowed it back down, regretting it as soon as it left my mouth. But Ren didn’t even flinch.
“I’d do it for you.”
I flung my hands up in exasperation. “Is that supposed to be romantic?”
He gave a single, resolute shake of his head. “I mean for all of you.”
I followed his glance to find the wallflowers heading toward us, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped. I shoved down the urge to raise my voice, since I didn’t particularly want to argue in front of them. Maybe he’d think twice about this plan later, after we’d all calmed down.
“I don’t know about you guys,” I said. “But I could use a drink.”
* * *
Clementine’s had a weird energy that night. All the ghosts, dancers and wallflowers alike, headed there to blow off steam. But our mood must’ve afflicted the drinkers we passed through, bringing them down. So many breathers left that soon enough, there were more of us than them, for a change.
“Did something happen?” one of the servers whispered to another. “Who died?”
It wasn’t a good first introduction to the place for Ren.
“This is your favorite spot?” he asked, phone to his ear. At least in the emptiness he was able to claim a table for himself, surrounded by unseen friends.
“It’s not usually so… well, dead.”
If only it would be this easy to scare off the demolition crew. That would take a lot more than a sudden sense of dread hitting them unexpectedly on a night out.
Danny and Carlos started up a game of “Never Have I Ever,” though we quickly figured out that most of our company had more “nevers” than “evers” under their belts. We had to play the reverse, drinking if we’d also never.
Then we encountered another challenge.
“Oh, no,” said Evie, when everyone turned to her expectantly. She waved her hand bashfully. “I’m just watching.”
“She’s straight edge,” I said.
She flashed me a grateful smile.
“You could do something other than drink,” said Ren. “The whole point is how embarrassing it is getting shitfaced in front of your friends, so…”
Danny piped up. “Spin around until you fall over?”
“How about a dance?” asked Carlos. He folded his arms, tucking his hands to his chest and flapping his elbows.
Evie covered her face with a squeak, so he must’ve been onto something.
Ren used ketchup packets to keep a tally for the number of steps she’d have to do of the chicken dance at the end of the game.
But something distracted me, made me zone out instead of laughing with my friends. I found myself searching all the faces nearby whenever I went to take a sip. I excused myself so I could search upstairs.
Liam wasn’t here. And I hadn’t seen him at all back at the Haunt.
I headed back down to our table. “Have any of you guys seen Liam?”
“I haven’t,” said Evie, who knew him from the band.
Carlos gestured with his hands. “Big guy, right? I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever survey him?” I asked Danny.
“I did,” she said. “But me neither.”
Ren didn’t know him, of course. He just reached for my hand. “Don’t be long?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ll live without me.”
Even so, I bent to kiss him. My nerves eased from his half-drunk old-fashioned and I spirited off.
I found myself in another bar, bigger and slicker, with way less character. It had a built-in stage, where a gorgeous tan woman with short blonde hair crooned to an acoustic guitar. I tried to ignore my pang of envy. I wondered if any of her friends and family were in the crowd standing in front of the stage. Over a man’s shoulder bounced a baby with tiny noise-cancelling headphones.
Liam hunched at a table near the back, with something spilled on it, so he wouldn’t be disturbed until the busy staff were able to make the rounds.
“What’s up?” I said, sitting over a chair, and putting my feet up on the table, since nobody could stop me.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked, barely short of slurring. “You haven’t been dancing.”
“Uh…” I had no idea where to begin. I’d never been the settling down type. That might’ve been stranger to him than dating on the other side.
The crowd cheered at the end of a song, and the singer greeted the audience, her voice strangely familiar.
“Are y’all having a good time tonight?”
“Well, that sucks, ’cause I’m about to bring you down,” she said. That got a few laughs. “So, not to be a bummer, but this is the first time I’m playing solo without my husband.”
My jaw dropped. I hadn’t recognized her with the new haircut and bleach job, not to mention bigger hips. And I wouldn’t have thought he’d be stupid enough to come.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked.
He didn’t react, his eyes fixed on her.
Haley went on. “I wasn’t gonna bring it up till later, after making you like me, but it’s just too weird that he’s not up here. So before we start, I wanted to say he was a good man, a great father, and the best guitarist I’ve ever met. I’m doing my best, but—you should’ve heard him.”
Liam drew a breath, like a dry sob, before I even realized he’d been crying. On instinct, I reached out to him, barely remembering to raise my walls as I rested my hand over his fist.
“All right,” said Haley. “I promise the rest of the night will be bummer-free from here on out.”
That got some relieved laughter and supportive clapping. She quickly gave the name for their next song and launched right into it. I could hardly hear her.
“We should leave,” I said, tugging at Liam’s hand.
He tore out of my grasp. “I should be here.”
“It’ll make you go geist.”
Right on cue, the table wobbled, the glasses on it trembling, making the spill ripple and spread farther.
“I’m tired of being a deadbeat dad,” he said.
“It’s only self-preservation.”
His laugh made me shiver. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
He didn’t usually get like this when he drank. Made sense that he’d been repressing so hard, if this was what happened when the dam broke.
I didn’t know how to make him budge. But he shouldn’t have to face this alone.
I felt bad making this all about me, but I didn’t know how else to distract him. I went ahead and admitted why his words stung so much.
“You’re right,” I said. “I decided to stop checking on my sister, rather than risk going geist. It’s just that every time I see her, all I can think about is how I left. Maybe not on purpose, but… I did want it.”
It worked. He leaned forward, trying to get a better look at me through the tipsy haze. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t just fall off a roof.”
He barely even blinked. “I kind of thought as much, but, you know, how do you go about asking that? So I left you to it. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “I wouldn’t have answered. I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself. In fact, I got so deep in denial, I tried to—”
It might not be such a good idea to tell him I’d found an actual medium. It hadn’t done me much good trying to pierce the veil.
Or maybe I owed it to him.
“What would you say to your wife?” I asked. “If you could talk to her, somehow?”
He didn’t take long answering. “Just that I love her.”
“…That’s it?”
“What am I supposed to tell her—she should stop seeing her second, because it’s only an open marriage if I’m still in it? If he wasn’t around, she’d be so miserable, I couldn’t deal.”
“What about your kid?” I asked. I wondered if she was the baby with the noise-cancelling headphones.
“Same thing, tell her Daddy loves her.”
Once again, I almost protested. It seemed like such a given. Greeting-card shit. Then I wondered how I’d feel if somehow—whether scrawled in a yellowed old letter in an attic, or passed to me through some kind of psychic—my father could tell me, in spite of leaving so soon, he still loved me.
My mouth fell open. “I’m such an idiot.”
Cris and I had never exchanged those exact words. I didn’t know why. Perhaps because our mother never taught us.
She didn’t really want to know if I’d taken my own life. All she wanted to hear was whether or not I’d been thinking of her, up on the ledge. And, truthfully, I hadn’t. But that didn’t mean I didn’t love her.
Thankfully, that should be a much simpler message to pass along.
“I can’t argue with that,” said Liam.
I’d all but forgotten what I’d said before, rolling my eyes as I remembered. “Thanks.”
His grin didn’t last long, falling again when he laid eyes on his wife, taking in her wistful voice.
No point holding back. “What if I told you that you can still talk to them? I, uh… know a guy.”
He didn’t betray the surprise I’d expected. “Oh, you mean the medium?”
So he knew about the deliveries to the Haunt.
“Yeah, no,” he said, laughing as he shook his head. I didn’t expect the sudden warmth in his eyes. “That would never work.”
“Why not?”
“Haley thinks we’re bullshit. You think I haven’t tried getting her attention before? She just replaced the carbon monoxide detector, called an electrician, and put the dog on anxiety meds.”
Funny how he sounded kind of proud of her for it. They might’ve been married, but she’d found a way to play hard to get, even after his death.
It must’ve been a short set, because the audience gave what sounded like a final round of applause, and the band began packing up. I let out a breath like I’d been holding it in. We’d made it.
He got up from his seat in midair. I stumbled up onto my feet, as well.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“We always have an afterparty.”
* * *
It looked like everybody from the show had made it, crammed into the living room, the couch full and everyone else milling, spilling over into the kitchen. Most of them were laughing, but some of them sniffled into their pizza and beer, like an informal wake.
“This is my house,” said Liam.
It looked nice. Not at all like the one we’d shared years ago. Modern and clean, modestly furnished but well arranged, with all the band posters and original art in frames. There were lots of toys stored in bins. That would no doubt change when the baby began to walk.
An Alaskan Malamute barreled toward us. For a second, I forgot why that was so weird.
“Daisy,” said Liam. She might not have been able to feel his hands, but he managed to ruffle her fur all the same. She tried and failed to lick his face, finding nothing but air. It made her whine in distress, then bark. I’d always been more of a cat person, but as far as I could tell, she didn’t sound aggressive—more as if she were trying to alert her humans that something was very, very wrong.
I tried to pat her side, not that it helped. “I feel you. We don’t understand what’s going on, either.”
“What’s up with you?” asked Haley. “She used to be so good at parties. Come on, girl.”
She coaxed the dog away, letting her out in the backyard. When she got back, she allowed herself a much-needed beer, dried mascara tear marks tracking down her face. In the meantime, a good-looking, bearded guy about our age fussed over the baby.
“That’s her second,” said Liam.
I would’ve tried dragging him away again if he hadn’t looked so calm, even with another man holding his child. The baby began to fuss, trying out a huff or two before launching right into a wail. She had her dad’s lungs.
Haley popped right up from her seat. She looked embarrassed, though all the guests kept on talking and laughing, trying their damnedest not to mind. But it did feel weird to hear a baby in the midst of this party, reminding everyone they weren’t so young anymore.
“I’ve got her,” said her second. He got up to go change her.
I nudged Liam. “Are you going to introduce me?”
That got a smile. In life, aside from the last few years, I’d never needed to wait before jumping into conversation with strangers. Here, I could only listen, introduced at a distance. He told me about all his friends as they talked about him in turn, how he’d touched their lives, all the ways he would be missed. I wondered if they would’ve been my friends, as well. If I could have filled my apartment with this much laughter.
Haley didn’t seem to be doing so bad. She had a good support system. Only her eyes didn’t look the same. She’d been death-touched. Her gaze cradled the people around her, fraught with their fragility, how tenuous this moment in time, and their place in her life. Who would be next, gone in a blink? If she tried hard enough, she could keep them alive forever, if only in the memory of this moment.
Through the walls, the baby wailed again.
“I tried everything,” said the second. “Bottle, diaper, goodnight song, she’s not having it.”
Haley went to go check, only to come back and give her diagnosis with a weary wave of her wrist. “She’s overtired. She’ll stop crying and fall asleep any minute.”
“She needs her daddy,” Liam said.
My stomach dropped with dread. But I didn’t say anything. Maybe he needed this. It might do more good than the bad that I feared. I’d be right here.
I followed him into what turned out not to be a nursery, just the master bedroom. I recognized some of the framed posters and dumb little gifts on the dresser. He’d kept all the band stuff.
As the baby screamed from the crib beside the bed, I tried not to cringe. He leaned over her, cooing and fussing, singing. She couldn’t hear him.
Under his breath, as if to himself, he asked, “Where’s my guitar?”
“You can’t.”
“No one will even notice.”
I ended up chasing him all over the house as he looked for it, put someplace he wouldn’t have wanted it after his death. He found it in the living room, like it had been recently borrowed.
“You’re gonna get caught!”
“So be my lookout,” he said, already lifting the damn thing.
There were way too many people. A whole bunch of people, skeptics and believers alike—if they could all confirm what they’d seen—
Somehow, without quite knowing how I did it, or even thinking twice, I blew out the lights. Better they couldn’t see anything.
As usual, everyone seemed more excited than annoyed, all whooping and rationalizing, several people leaping to action, volunteering to look for flashlights and candles, go check the circuit breakers.
Someone offered another distraction. “Let’s play seven minutes in heaven.”
All the rest laughed and shuffled around in excitement, like this was another party game.
With all the commotion, at first, I didn’t hear the muffled guitar through the wall. It twanged with the gentle lilt of a lullaby. Once it came to my ears, it wouldn’t leave. I’d killed the music along with the power, making the house quiet.
The baby had stopped crying. Haley noticed—and she froze.
“Am I the only one hearing that?” she asked.
“It’s just the music,” said another guest.
“There’s nothing playing, power’s out.”
“Is it the neighbors?”
All the volunteers came back with the flashlights and a couple of wavering candles, like they were going to a vigil. Anyone thinking they’d gone off for a secret jam session stood corrected.
“Where’s that coming from?” one of them asked.
“It sounds exactly like—”
“I know that guitar—”
Haley rushed to her feet. “It’s the goodnight song.”
No need to hear any more. I beat them to the bedroom, spiriting straight there. Right on time to see the guitar fall to the floor, beside the crib.
“Liam?”
The baby cooed happily in her sleep. Haley passed through me, throwing her hand over her mouth, muffling her own cry on motherly instinct. Her daughter had finally drifted off.
She bent down, hands shaking as she picked up the guitar. Through the walls, the dog howled as if in pain.
I tried spiriting to Liam. But it only brought me to his grave. He was gone.