Pen Pal(84)

Aidan’s head snaps back.

The forward motion of his body stops abruptly, as if he’s been slammed against a wall.

A small red hole appears in the center of his forehead.

Blood and chunks of brain matter splatter the window behind him.

He falls back, his eyes open and his mouth slack.

Collapsing onto the sofa, he lies still and silent, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling as a dark stain creeps across the beige cushion under his head.

In the night sky above us, fireworks burst into sprays of color with a crackle and boom.

My scream is a living thing. A creature of horror, disbelief, and heartbreak, clawing its way up my throat. I fly across the space between us with that scream surrounding me everywhere, vibrating in my ears and in my head, inside all the hidden sacred places in my soul that only he has ever touched.

I fall on top of Aidan’s lifeless body, screaming and screaming the same thing over and over, the thing every cell in my body screams along with me.

No. No. No. No. No.

He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t respond to any of my desperate pleas or the kisses I rain over his cheeks and lips.

He can’t.

He’s gone.

Sobbing hysterically, I cling to him until something hard and heavy bashes me in the back of the head.

Pain shoots through my skull. I see stars. For a moment, my vision goes black.

When light fills my eyes again, I’m on my back and Michael is dragging me by my wrists across the wood deck toward the swim step at the back of the boat.

My words come out slurred. “Michael. What are you doing?”

I can’t make out what he mumbles to himself. It’s incoherent, babbling nonsensical words spoken between labored breaths as he drags me away from Aidan’s body. I try to pull my wrists from his grip, but don’t have the strength.

Hot liquid trickles down my neck. Blood. He must’ve hit me with something heavy.

The gun. He pistol whipped me with the gun.

More fireworks explode overhead. I see them above us, starbursts of color painting the midnight sky like the domed roof of a cathedral. Smoke drifts over the water. Somewhere far away, a dog barks.

Michael drags me to the edge of the stern and rolls me off.

The water is a cold black shock, cutting through my stupor like a blade. I go under for a moment before starting to kick and flail. I break the surface, sputtering and gasping, disoriented and panicking, fear as sharp as a knife shoved between my ribs.

I cough and scream. The boat’s engines hum and rumble. Michael looms over me on the step, laughing maniacally now, his lips peeled back from his teeth.

I flail at the step, missing it by inches. Michael drops to his knees and reaches out. I grasp his hand, thinking he’s offering help, but quickly discover he’s not.

He grabs me by the throat and squeezes.

He pushes me down and holds me under.

Even underwater, I can hear his crazy laugh.

Something slips out of his shirt pocket. It splashes into the water and tumbles past my face, small and round, silver and glinting.

It’s his lucky 1937 buffalo nickel, the one he never left home without.

I kick and struggle. My heart hammers against my ribcage. Salt water stings my eyes and burns my lungs. Fireworks illuminate the surface of the water in a shimmering kaleidoscope of colors.

I can’t get his fingers off my neck. I claw at his hands, thrashing and coughing, smelling diesel fuel and gunpowder, smoke and sea and blood.

Aidan.

Aidan.

Aidan, I love you. I love you.

My body is heavy. The churning water above me stills. I drift, my hair floating around my head, my eyes turned toward the surface, my hand outstretched for help that doesn’t come.

A brilliant bloom of color suffuses the sea above me in shades of red, green, and gold, then the fireworks fade, and everything goes black.

My heart throbs one final time before stopping for good.





III





Paradiso





Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

~ Rabindranath Tagore





41





Kayla





What we call memory is the intersection between imagination and fact. Memories are the stories we tell ourselves about the important events in our lives. In the telling, some details get lost, others embellished, until truth is closer to fiction.

It’s like Fiona said. Each of us make our own truths, even ghosts.

I suppose I should’ve figured it out the day she came in the house and disarmed the security alarm without me having told her the code. That was the same day she said she thought something was troubling me and that ghosts need closure. By that time, she’d been working for the Wainwrights for more than a month. They kept her on when they bought the house, never knowing just how helpful she’d turn out to be.

She isn’t quite as gifted as her sister, Claire, but the gift does run in the family.

It took months of me sifting through memories and reliving my past to understand what happened. I lived two parallel lives, one past and one present, removed from reality but believing myself in it, utterly blind to the truth.

Everything that happened with Aidan was real. So was everything that happened after New Year’s. But it got all jumbled together and mixed up, because being dead and not realizing it is very fucking confusing.