The Dead Romantics (35)

One, because Ouija boards were mass-market trash made by a toy company to sell the occult to the middle class.

Two, because even though Ouija boards were mass-market trash made by a toy company to sell the occult to the middle class, I still refused to poke the bear.

Adair called me a scaredy-cat. I definitely was. But I also slept perfectly well that night while the rest of the kids had nightmares about old General Bartholomew from the cemetery coming to haunt their dreams.

The house in question was halfway down the lane, far past Adair’s old family home—though I think they moved the year after I’d solved the infamous murder. It was smaller than the others, but very well loved. The front lawn was quaint, with trimmed azaleas around the house and a colorful flower bed, newly planted for spring.

I climbed the brick steps to the front door and rang the doorbell.

It took a moment, but an old lady finally answered. She was hunched over, wrapped in a fluffy pink housecoat and darned slippers, and had the most beautiful wide brown eyes. “Oh,” she said, opening the glass door. “Hello.”

“Mrs.—” I checked the name and address on the card, written in Dad’s sloppy handwriting. “Elizabeth?”

“Yes,” she replied, nodding, “that’s me, dear.”

I offered up the daylilies. “These are for you.”

Her eyes lit up at the arrangement, and she took it gently with gnarled and bruised hands. There was dirt under her long fingernails. She gardened. Alone?

“Florence,” I heard Ben whisper, because he saw the gentleman first.

There was a shimmer in the hall behind her, an older man in an orange sweater and brown trousers, the hair that was left on the sides of his head combed back. He mouthed, “Thank you,” his eyes glistening with tears.

Oh. I understood now.

Mrs. Elizabeth smelled one of the lilies and smiled. “Charlie always gave me lilies on our anniversary. I think that’s today? Oh, my. Time’s always a bit wonky when you get older,” she added with a laugh. “Thank you, dear. You know, I get these every year but I still don’t know who from!”

“A friend,” I replied.

“Well, this friend of mine has very good taste,” she decided, and gave me one of her lemon biscuit cookies before I left.

Sometimes, a spirit’s final business wasn’t talking to someone, or exposing their murderer, or seeing their own dead body—sometimes it was simply a waiting game.

Ben was playing a different sort of waiting game on the sidewalk. He looked paler than he had a few minutes before. “That man—he looked like I do. Shimmery and . . .” With a hard inhale, he sank into a crouch, his hands on the back of his neck. “I really am dead, aren’t I?”

I finished my bite of cookie, and sank down next to him. “Do you really not remember how you died?”

He shook his head. “No. I mean—I—I remember leaving work, and then . . .” He inhaled sharply. Halted. Clenched his jaw. “It was . . . just outside of the building, wasn’t it? My accident?”

Silently, I nodded, but I wasn’t sure he saw me. If he saw anything, really. His eyes had this distant look to them, a thousand-mile stare to a place and time he’d never be again.

“I—I was typing an email on my phone when . . . the van popped the curb and . . .” He blinked, his eyes wet with tears, as he looked up at me. His voice cracked as he said, “How did I forget that?”

“I don’t know,” I replied gently, wishing that I did know something—anything—to help him. I knelt down beside him, curling my arms around my knees. “I’m sorry.”

He bent his head, as if he could hide the fact that he was crying, but his too-big shoulders shaking gave him away. I wanted to reach out for his shoulder, to comfort him in one of those there, there pats, but I couldn’t even touch him. I wasn’t good at other people’s emotions because I didn’t know how to help, usually. When someone was in pain, I wanted to fix it. And I couldn’t.

Which made me frustrated.

And when I was frustrated, I cried. If I was not already mortified enough. This had to stop—now. I tried the only way I knew how. “A-At least you’re still kinda hot,” I sobbed.

He jerked his attention to me. His eyes were red rimmed. “W-What?”

The tears just kept coming. I pushed them away as quickly as I could. “D-Drop-dead g-gorgeous, really.”

“I . . . I don’t—are you—?”

“I b-bet you s-strike a k-k-killer silhouette.”

“You’re crying and trying to hit on me?”

“I’m trying to make you laugh so you stop crying, because then I’ll stop crying,” I lamented, but it sounded more like I’mtryingtomakeyoulaughsoyoustopcryingbecausethenillstopcrying, and it was a miracle he even understood me at all.

But he did—and he laughed. It was soft, and weak, more of a pah than a laugh, but it was there. He rubbed his palms over his eyes. “You’re the weirdest woman I’ve ever met.”

“I know,” I sniffed. “But d-did it work?”

“No,” he said, but he was lying. In the afternoon light, his cheeks were turning a very delicate shade of red despite the tears in his eyes, and it only made the mark above the left side of his lip look that much darker.