Page 66 of Ghostly
She laughed. “It comes by every fourteen years. Tonight is the first night it reappears.”
“Astronomy book?”
“Actually, a tenant. A family that lived here in the forties. Their young daughter was an astronomy enthusiast.” Ida lay down on the blanket, and Gabriel followed suit, placing the mug on his stomach. “She’d lie like this, night after night, watching the stars. During the day, she’d compare what she’d seen to the books. She liked talking to herself as she pointed outvarious constellations, as if she were practicing for a test. I never needed to haunt her books. She told me everything.”
Gabriel turned his head to Ida, but she was busy staring at the sky. “That’s sweet.”
“I wonder what happened to her after they moved out. If she ever went on to defy the expectations of the time and became a famous astronomer. Maybe discovered a space object of her own.”
He wanted to suggest a web search, but kept his mouth shut. Perhaps the girl followed her dreams, or perhaps not. It was easy to get misled or discouraged in life, and the harsh reality had no place here, tonight.
“Task five of being human,” he said instead. “We never stop learning. Neither did you.”
Ida nodded, lips pursed in approval. “How many people can say they picked up astronomy after death?”
“How many people can say they learned astronomy from a ghost?”
“You haven’t learned anything yet. Do you remember which star is Sirius?”
Gabriel made a vague motion toward the sky. “The bright one, obviously.”
Ida’s chest lifted off the blanket as she shook with laughter.
Warmth, nothing to do with the tea he’d sipped, spread to the tips of his toes. He should be looking at the sky—that was the point of him freezing out here, and the millions of blinking lights were like nothing he’d seen before, or at least not in a long time. Yet, Gabriel couldn’t pull his gaze away from Ida.
He couldn’t believe months ago, he only wanted peace from her so he could focus on regaining his life. Somehow, from a distraction, she’d turned into the solution. She filled the holes left by anger, dissatisfaction,self-pity. Another one of her supernatural abilities? He didn’t think so. It was just her. Who she always had been. She’d once told him the little things were what made her human. She used every opportunity she got to cling to that humanity and somewhere along the way, she made him enjoy those things again. When he’d offered to do the renovations, he did it because it would make her happy—and honestly, because he was looking forward to it. It had nothing to do with needing work to distract or prove himself.
Stargazing may have made Ida feel human—but Ida madehimfeel human again.
Ida turned her head, and their eyes met. Her wide, playful smile lingered for a moment before turning to a half-open mouth that sent the strangest shivers all over his body.
He’d been wrong. Whatever he felt for her—lust, attraction—it hadn’t been prompted by him missing his old life, and one person in particular. Ida didn’t bring those memories to the surface; she replaced them.
When he wanted to kiss her—such as, right now—it was only because ofher.
***
He was looking at her that way again.
In the near-darkness, the green of his eyes changed to that of the deepest sea—or space, perhaps. The two could be eerily similar. But what mattered more was the emotion behind it. Not soft, but intense; not friendly, but heated. It was the gaze from the morning she came out of the statue, following her outburst. The gaze…
The nibbling memory fell into place.
He was looking at her the way Armando had looked at Jane.
Ida blinked, and again, and again.
Gabriel’s eyebrows drew together. “Are you okay?”
Most definitely not. She was daydreaming during the night.
She forced her attention to the sky instead, to something that existed outside of her imagination. And just out from behind the tree— “It’s here!”
A bright point of light, on par with the biggest stars, appeared low on the horizon, a short, white tail announcing it as a comet.
“Wright-Maxwell,” Gabriel said. “See, I learned.”
Entranced, Ida kept her eyes on the comet. Who’d have thought simple space dust, blown away by the sun, could look so magical? And she probably would’ve never known or cared about it if she hadn’t been stuck in this house, in her condition. Perhaps she hadn’t made the best use of her time while she was still alive, but she hadn’t wasted all of it afterward.
