Page 13 of Gone for the Ghost
But I remain hidden, using every technique I’ve developed over decades to become imperceptible.Let her believe I’ve moved on, that helping her achieve her dreams was my unfinished business and now I’m free to find whatever peace awaits properly departed spirits.
“Julian?”she tries again, moving through the apartment with growing desperation.“I know you’re here somewhere.This is our success.We did this together.”
The pain in her voice as she searches for me creates its own torture, but I force myself to remain invisible.Better a clean break now than prolonged suffering for both of us.Better to let her believe I’ve found resolution than burden her with the knowledge that I’m choosing misery to spare us both the complications of impossible love.
From my position of supernatural concealment, I watch her joy transform into confusion and then growing heartbreak as my absence becomes undeniable.When Mrs.Whitfield from upstairs appears at the door—apparently summoned by Lily’s increasingly frantic calls—I realize the neighbor possesses some sensitivity to spiritual presences.
“I heard you calling for your gentleman friend,” Mrs.Whitfield says gently, studying the apartment with the expression of someone who sees more than most people.“I thought you should know—I felt him transition about an hour ago.”
“Transition?”Lily’s voice breaks on the word.
“Sometimes spirits remain earthbound because they have unfinished business,” the elderly woman explains with the patience of someone who’s had this conversation before.“A task to complete, someone to help.Once that purpose is fulfilled, they’re free to continue their journey.”
The words arrange themselves into a devastating narrative that makes perfect sense from everyone’s perspective except mine.Julian’s unfinished business wasn’t solving Victoria’s mystery.It was helping Lily achieve her dreams.Now that she’s successful, he’s found the peace that eluded him for nearly a century.
I watch Lily’s face crumple as she processes this explanation, seeing her success become secondary to the loss of partnership that made it possible.The celebration she’d wanted to share transforms into solitary grief, and I realize I’ve created exactly the outcome I was trying to prevent.
“How do you know he’s really gone?”Lily asks, clinging to hope that makes my concealment feel like cruelty.
“When they transition, there’s a definitive quality to their departure,” Mrs.Whitfield explains gently.“Like a door closing rather than someone stepping out.I’m sorry, dear.I know you’d grown attached to him.”
Attached.The word is so inadequate it borders on insulting.Lily hasn’t grown attached to me.She’s fallen in love with me.Completely, courageously, with the kind of depth that makes my fear-based retreat look like the cowardice it actually is.
As Mrs.Whitfield leaves and Lily begins the heartbreaking process of packing her belongings, I’m forced to confront an uncomfortable truth.I haven’t learned anything from ninety-eight years of supernatural existence.I’m making exactly the same mistake that trapped me in this earthbound state in the first place—running from love because I’m terrified of losing it.
When Victoria disappeared, I convinced myself that if I’d been stronger, smarter, more worthy of her trust, I could have prevented whatever forced her to leave.That conviction became the anchor that kept me tethered to this world, unable to move forward because moving forward meant accepting loss I felt responsible for creating.
But watching Lily’s careful, heartbroken packing, I see the pattern with crystalline clarity.My fear of loss has guaranteed the very outcome I was trying to prevent.By protecting myself from potential heartbreak, I’ve created actual heartbreak for both of us.By choosing safety over connection, I’ve chosen a form of death that’s more complete than anything physical mortality could accomplish.
Some connections, I realize with the force of revelation, transcend death not because they deny its reality but because they prove love can be stronger than the fear death creates.Victoria’s disappearance taught me about loss, but Lily’s presence has been teaching me about the courage required to love despite that knowledge.
I’ve been so focused on protecting what we have that I never considered what we might build if I trusted her enough to try.
The thought stops my retreat completely, condensing my scattered consciousness back into something approaching coherent presence.What we might build.Not what we’re limited to by supernatural circumstances, but what we might create together if I stopped calculating limitations and started embracing possibilities.
For the first time in nearly a century, I’m not planning how to survive losing someone I love.I’m planning how to love them completely enough that losing them becomes irrelevant compared to the joy of having known them at all.
But as I watch Lily fold the last of her clothes, preparing to leave the apartment that became our sanctuary, I realize that understanding my mistake and finding the courage to correct it might be two entirely different forms of resurrection.
The real question isn’t whether I’m brave enough to love her.It’s whether I’m brave enough to fight for the chance to prove that love can transcend every limitation when two people are willing to write their own ending.
Chapter 7
Lily
Organizingshouldbemechanical:fold, stack, seal, repeat until a life becomes manageable.Instead, every item I touch carries the weight of shared memory, each piece of clothing or book or random household object transformed into evidence of the partnership I thought I was building with someone who apparently saw me as a temporary assignment rather than a permanent fixture.
The coffee mug Julian always criticized sits on the counter, still bearing traces of this morning’s too-sweet brew.The notebooks filled with story ideas we developed together stack beside my laptop like archaeological evidence of collaboration that felt significant but was apparently just marking time until he could complete whatever cosmic task I represented.My romance novels—the ones he initially dismissed as literary dreck before grudgingly admitting they understood something about hope he’d forgotten—wait in neat piles, no longer needing to share shelf space with his invisible presence.
Everything looks smaller without the possibility of his commentary, as if Julian’s opinions had been expanding the very dimensions of domestic life.
I’ve been avoiding the closet for three hours, finding increasingly creative reasons to organize other spaces first.The kitchen cabinets have been thoroughly reorganized.My desk drawers now contain the kind of precision arrangement that would make Julian’s control-freak heart proud, if he possessed either heart or pride in my accomplishments anymore.But eventually, procrastination runs out of territory to occupy, and I’m left standing before the space we shared with supernatural civility and growing emotional investment.
The closet feels different without Julian’s presence.Not empty exactly, but diminished, like a stage after the performance has ended and the lights have dimmed.My clothes hang beside invisible spaces where his formal attire once materialized, creating gaps that speak to absence more eloquently than any direct accusation could manage.
I’m reaching for a dress I wore to our first farmers market expedition when my fingers encounter something unexpected behind the back panel—paper, aged and fragile, tucked into a space that predates my occupancy by nearly a century.The hiding place is so carefully concealed, I might never have discovered it if Julian’s departure hadn’t made me desperate to find any remaining trace of his existence.
The paper unfolds with the delicate resistance of something that’s been waiting decades for attention, revealing handwriting that makes my heart lurch with recognition.Julian’s penmanship, but different from the quick annotations he scrawled across my manuscripts when he deigned to materialize long enough to do so—this is formal, careful, the kind of script reserved for documents that matter.
