Page 71 of Dream Lake

“You told me it was your favorite.”

“It’s beautiful. But it always makes me sad.”

“Why, love?” he’d asked gently. “It’s about finding each other again. About someone coming home.”

Emma had lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him earnestly. “It’s about losing someone, and having to wait until you’re together in heaven.”

“There’s nothing in the lyrics about heaven,” he’d said.

“But that’s what it means. I can’t bear the idea of being separated from you, for a lifetime or a year or even a day. So you mustn’t go to heaven without me.”

“Of course not,” he had whispered. “It wouldn’t be heaven without you.”

What had happened to them? Why hadn’t they married? He couldn’t fathom that he would have left to fight in the war without first having made Emma his wife. He must have proposed to her… in fact, he felt sure that he had. Maybe she had refused him. Maybe her family had stood in the way. But he and Emma had loved each other so much, it seemed impossible that any force on earth could have kept them apart. Something had gone unspeakably wrong, and he had to figure out what it was.

The song finished with a near spectral chorus of voices. Slowly Alex lifted his head and looked down at Emma.

“He used to sing that to me,” she told him.

“I know,” Alex whispered.

She squeezed his fingers until the veins showed on the back of her hand like delicate blue lace.

Zoë came forward to slip an arm around her grandmother’s shoulders, pausing only to tell Alex in a distracted tone, “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

As Zoë guided her to a chair at the dining table, Emma said, “You were right, Zoë. He does have big muscles.”

Zoë darted a mortified glance at Alex. “I didn’t say that,” she protested. “I mean, I did, but—”

His brows lifted into mocking arcs.

“What I mean is,” Zoë said awkwardly, “I don’t sit around discussing the size of your—” She broke off and went crimson.

Alex averted his face to hide a grin. “I’ll get my tools from the truck,” he said.

The ghost followed him outside.

“Thanks,” the ghost said, as Alex hefted a couple of tool buckets from the back of the truck. “For taking care of Emma.”

Alex set the buckets on the ground and faced him. “What happened?”

“She woke up distraught. I don’t know why.”

“You sure she can’t see or hear you?”

“I’m sure. Why did you play that song for her?”

“Because it’s your favorite.”

“How did you know that?”

Alex looked sardonic. “You sing it all the time. Why do you look so pissed off?”

After a long moment, the ghost said morosely, “You got to hold her.”

“Oh.” Alex’s face changed. He gave the ghost a sympathetic glance, as if he understood the torture it was to be so close to the person you loved beyond anything, and yet not be able to touch her. To comprehend that you were only a shadow, an outline, of the physical being you once had been.

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