.

The house was perfect. Perfect for me, anyway; I don’t need a lot of space. The single bedroom and full bath were upstairs; The downstairs held only a small kitchen, a half bath and an all-purpose room. The old guy who had owned it before — Richard Kelly, according to the tax records — had allowed trees and shrubs to grow between the house and its nearest neighbor, so it had the privacy I craved.

What really sold the house was the view. The back of the house faced the Atlantic, and a narrow path wound through massive slabs of lichen-encumbered granite to a narrow and rocky beach, some fifty yards below the ridge where the house was located.

The day I went to see the house was perfect, too. Brilliant white clouds scattered across a cobalt blue sky; crispness in the air that would not last long into the summer morning. From the ridge, I could see whitecaps stretching far out into the Gulf of Maine.

“You won’t find many places like this,” the guy from Century 21 said. Bill Davis. That was his name. For some reason I had trouble remembering it. Or him, really. Might have something to do with his penchant for stating the obvious, the completely obvious, and nothing but the obvious.

Blah, blah, blah. It was just a conversation about value, about offer and acceptance. I understood those. How they worked; the rhythm of them. The dynamics. “It’s a tear-down,” I countered without having to give it any thought. I had no intention of taking a wrecking ball to the house, of course, but any other buyer almost certainly would. In an age of McMansions, a modest structure would not long survive on such a perfect piece of property.

“Location, location,” chided Bill. “You can’t beat it — or even match it.”

I was eager to be rid of Boring Bill. “Look. You said the family wants a quick sale, no fuss no muss. Fine. Four seventy-five, cash, no Hubbard, no inspection, if we close by the end of the month. They can take whatever’s inside, or leave it. I don’t care which.”

“That’s way below what they’re asking,” he warned, precisely as if I was unaware of that fact despite having looked at the listing online.

“That’s my offer. Tell them it’s a last best, too.”

“I don’t know how well that’ll go down, Phil.”

I was annoyed at his use of my first name. I hadn’t asked him to call me that, and it irked me that he just presumed. Everyone just assumes you’re good with it, and I’m not. I’m afraid my response was a bit sharper than usual. “Then why don’t you find out for me?”

* * * * *
Ten years, I’d lived in New York. Ten years. And I was able to take all my worldly possessions with me in a rented SUV. My rented furniture went back to the company.

There were no tearful goodbyes. No stops at a favorite watering hole, buying one last round for my buds. I didn’t have any of that — watering holes, friends, whatever. I was a workaholic, completely useless in any environment that required skills that were social rather than technical. I’d done well, financially, but when I was offered the big step up on the ladder, I decided it was time to walk away instead.

My life sucked, and I couldn’t even say why. I just needed to figure myself out, and a tiny, secluded house on the rocky New England coast seemed like as good a place as any, and better than most.

After three days, it was almost habitable. The family that I’d bought it from lived down in Georgia; near as I could tell, they had no use for old man Kelly and even less for his stuff. No one came up to sort through it. So I’d taken a lot of trips to the local dump, clearing out his oddities. He’d died at home, in his own bed, so I did feel compelled to get a new mattress. The rest of his furniture was fine, though. Worn and dated, but I didn’t care about that.

I thought the old man must have been a lot like me. He hadn’t had a lot of things. Not even a lot of clothes; the closet and bureau were almost empty, and what was there wasn’t even worth giving to the Goodwill. The kitchen was spartan, and I didn’t need much more than what he had. It was fine.

But he’d passed away half a year ago or so, and everything needed a thorough cleaning. It felt good, really. Simple tasks that I could perform, that gave immediate results. And I was making a running list of the things I would need to take care of. Electric outlets that didn’t work; a bit of a leak in the toilet; a few warped boards on the stairs that creaked excessively. That sort of thing.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the doorbell jangled. I hadn’t expected any visitors and honestly didn’t want any. Probably some salesman. I made my way to the front door from the kitchen, drying my hands.

The door was solid, with no peephole, so I had to open it to find out who rang the bell. Something to add to my “fixit list,” I thought. With a sigh, I school my features not to scowl — no use getting off on the wrong foot — and swung the door inward.

A middle-aged woman with a plump figure and a pleasant smile stood on the stoop holding some sort of baking dish. “Good afternoon!” she said. “I’m Sue Gallagher, from next door. Welcome to the neighborhood!”

“Uh, thank you.” I was about to extend a hand in greeting, but realized she didn’t have a free one. My mind momentarily froze. What am I supposed to say to strangers who show up unexpectedly, being friendly? “I’m, uh, Philip Beauchamp.” Something more, right? “Won’t you come in?”

The pleasant smile never left her face; if anything, it got deeper. “Maybe just for a minute. Pa’s sleeping, but I don’t like to leave him alone very long. Alzheimer’s, you know.”

I stepped aside to let her in, thinking of what she had said. “No, I didn’t know. I’m . . . sorry?” I should be sorry about something like that, right?

“That’s all right,” she said. “We get on. Here, I baked you a pie — my apple’s the best in the whole county. People say it’s to die for!”

I took the pie from her, uncertain whether I was supposed to offer her some. The whole “neighbors dropping by” thing was not part of my experience, and I was feeling tense. “Well, thank you again,” I said, figuring that was always safe. “I’m afraid I haven’t really gotten settled yet, or I’d, ah, offer you something.”

“Don’t you fuss about that. I’m just glad to have someone living here again— and it’s a big plus that it’s someone closer to my age.”

She looked like she was in her mid forties, give or take. “I’m thirty-two,” I said, maybe a bit abruptly.

The smile never wavered. “That’s great,” she said cheerfully. “Though you might find it’s a bit dull in this neck of the woods! Now listen. You need anything — cup of sugar, whatever — I’m just next door, and I’m home most of the time.” She looked around. “Nice cleaning job you’re doing!”

Something about the way she said it made me ask, “You’ve been over before?”

“Me? No. Old man Kelly, he kept to himself.”

“Okay. Well . . . thanks again,” I said, unsure where to go with the conversation. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Right. Philip, then? See you around.”

Philip! But . . . neighbors, right? Neighbors call each other by their first names. Be stupid for her to call me “Mr. Beauchamp,” wouldn’t it? I saw her to the door and breathed a sigh of relief when I’d closed it behind her.

I brought the pie into the kitchen, set it on the counter top and stared at it. Do you keep pies in the refrigerator? On the counter? Do you cover them? There were easily six slices in the pie. I could push it to eight. What would I do with all that pie?

I googled it. Pie dome? Yeah, no. Didn’t have anything like that. Who am I, Martha Stewart? Fridge, then. Fine. Plenty of room there.

I’d gotten some supplies at the Wal-Mart in Portland when I passed through and it was just about dinner time. A can of Manhattan Clam Chowder and some saltines. Afterward, I hemmed and hawed, but figured I ought to have a slice of pie, too. It was just sitting there.

By 9:00 pm I was tired enough from the day that I decided I could go to bed a bit early. I went upstairs and brushed my teeth, making sure that my electric toothbrush ran the full four minutes, and I hit each quadrant front and back. “Keep good habits,” Mom used to say to me, when I was small. “You keep them, they’ll keep you.” That’s me, a kept man.

When I turned to go back to the bedroom, I noticed something hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. I examined it closely, but there was no doubt at all what it was, and a very expensive specimen of the type: a woman’s nightgown. Ivory, plain except for lace at the bust and the hem, long, narrow shoulder straps like that pasta dish I liked at Olive Garden. Linguine, I thought. How had I missed it before?

I ran my finger down the fabric. It was smooth, silky smooth, cool to the touch. I couldn’t imagine what it was doing here. The old guy had lived alone, and everything about the place had screamed “bachelor.” My apartment in New York had the same feel to it. Sue Gallagher said he kept to himself.

Well . . . Nothing I needed to figure out. I would just have to toss it, along with his clothes, when I made the next dump run. To ensure that I didn’t forget about it — or forget again, since this wasn’t the first time I’d used the bathroom — I took it off the hook, folded it over, and set it on top of the narrow desk with the weird mirror that faced the big picture window in the bedroom. I was surprised at how heavy the fabric was, especially since it had looked so insubstantial.

The moon was low on the horizon, but bright enough to cast shadows in the room when I shut off the lights. In the quiet, I could hear the Atlantic thrusting against the boulders, down on the strand below the house. It was a soothing sound, and I floated down into a deep sleep.

My eyes fluttered open sometime later; I could tell because the moon was now higher in the sky, seemingly smaller and much, much brighter. Its silver light illuminated the room, allowing me to see everything clear and sharp.

I was not alone in the room!

A woman was sitting at the desk, her back to me, rhythmically brushing her long, black hair. I could only see the back of her head and her shoulders, pale and white in the moonlight, a very recognizable set of linguine-shaped straps bisecting each shoulder blade.

“What are you doing here!” I intended it as a bark, but it came out more like a frightened squeak.

She ignored me. The rise and fall of her hand as she guided the brush through her thick mane was hypnotic. I stared at it for twenty strokes, then thirty, my heart pounding, trying to work up the courage to confront her again. To say something— anything— to break the spell.

My eyelids felt heavy and I fought to keep my eyes open. Despite my best efforts, I blinked, and blinked again. It was harder to get them open the second time, and harder still the third. But with a supreme effort of will, I managed it.

The morning sunlight was streaming into the room, and I was alone. I had always been alone. I lay still for a moment, shaking off the strange dream. Then I checked my phone and found it was already 7:45.

Time to be up and doing. I got dressed, grabbed the inexplicable nightgown from the back of the chair by the desk, went downstairs and put it with the rest of the old man’s clothes.

To be continued

.

The weeks passed. I didn’t really have anything to do, for the first time that I could remember. No work to fret over, no need to study. But strangely or not, I didn’t miss it and felt no need to be doing. If I wanted to tackle one of the items on my “fixit” list, I did it, but often I was more than content to let it be. I got myself a used car down in Portland. Out in the middle of nowhere, Ubers are as scarce as subways. Mostly it sat in the garage.

There was a path along the top of the ridge; Sue Gallagher told me all the residents used it, and no-one fussed about the trespassing so long as people kept to the path. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But my house was at the end of the path anyway and few people came all the way out. I was more than happy to use the walk myself, though. Heading west and south, I was able to take it all the way to a state park, some five miles away.

I had lived in New York a long time. It was strange to take the walk and see no people, or very few. To hear no traffic. No noise at all, really, except the cry of seagulls, the occasional crash of wave on granite, and that deep sound, like breathing, as the ocean advances and retreats, advances and retreats.

Equally unfamiliar were the smells. The ocean smell and the smell of pine. The smell of wood fires in the early morning, when smoke would curl up from fireplaces, sharp against the crystal air.

So I walked, and wandered. I got up the energy to sand and restain the Adirondack chairs on the blue slate patio off the back door of the house, and the small trestle table between them. After the job was finished I would spend hours there, just watching the ocean and feeling what little warmth the sun could still provide as the calendar moved deep into October.

Sue and I had gotten better acquainted. I was still awkward; I’m always that way, though, when I have to deal with people in an unstructured situation. But it no longer bothered me when she called me Philip, and I didn’t stutter when I called her Sue.

So it wasn’t too strange, in my new existence, that I helped her bag up all the leaves from the big red maple in the front of her yard. She invited me in afterwards for some breakfast, just the two of us.

“Pa doesn’t come downstairs anymore,” she told me. “I bring everything up to him.” She dished pancakes with fresh blueberries, sausage and two eggs onto an enormous plate and passed it to me. “There you go.”

I thanked her and brought the plate to the farm table in the kitchen, which had a view out the back. She made herself a more modestly portioned plate and joined me, plopping a small pitcher of warm maple syrup between us, an area of the table that was dark with rings from decades of meals — coffee rings and syrup rings and who knows what all. I had a strangely whimsical thought — strange for me, anyhow — that the table would probably have a lot of stories to tell, if it could talk.

“This is more food than I usually eat before dinner time,” I observed.

“I can tell,” she laughed. “Why, you’ve got no flesh on your bones at all!”

She was smiling and laughing, so I was pretty sure that was not intended to be a criticism. I probably still sounded a bit defensive, though, when I explained that food had just never been a big priority for me. “My dad used to tell me that food was fuel. I guess that’s how I’ve always thought about it.”

“Did your Mom feel that way, too?” She was smiling, still. The tone of her voice was, what? Teasing? But, not a mean sort of teasing. I didn’t think it was mean, anyway.

I shook my head. “No. Mom would spend some time on it. Like you, I guess. You kind of remind me of her, some.”

Her expression changed briefly. Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say?

I plunged on, hoping to recover. “I think it bothered her, that Dad and I would just gulp it down, then do the clean-up.”

Her smile was back. “Well, I can certainly understand that! Where do they live, your parents?”

“They’re both dead.” The phone call had come when I was in my dorm room, studying for my finance exam. The woman from the police department, telling me about the jackknifed tractor-trailer that hit their car. The following week had been a nightmare that never seemed to end. Identifying the bodies. Trying to figure out what to even do with them. Doctors and lawyers and accountants and the people from the funeral home . . . .

People from here, people from there. People, people, and more people. But the only people I’d ever been able to talk to, the only people who’d ever given a good goddamn about me, were gone and I was all alone and always would be. Always and always and always . . . .

“Philip? Philip?” A touch on my wrist jolted me out of my daymare.

“I’m sorry,” I said abruptly, starting to stand. “I should – ”

“No, you shouldn’t,” she said, overriding me. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pried. Please . . . finish your breakfast.” She rose quickly. “Do you like coffee, or tea?”

I sank back into the chair, feeling lost and a bit confused. “Tea?”

“You just sit still and eat a bit more, then. I’ll get you a cup.”

She fussed about the kitchen without saying anything, for which I was grateful. After a minute, I started picking at the food, figuring that I should be polite. It was fine, I suppose. I really didn’t think much about food. Maybe if I ate more of it, I’d be set until dinner time.

By the time she returned to the table with a tea pot and a couple of cups, I had myself back under control. We talked about the weather, which even I knew to be a safe topic. I talked about some of the projects on my fixit list and asked if she could recommend a handyman for a couple that were a bit much for me.

“Hmmm? No,” she said. “I don’t know anyone like that. Pa might have had a guy, but of course he wouldn’t remember now.”

We talked long enough to be polite, and I made a point of washing up all the dishes. Just like old times, when Mom used to cook. But I was still feeling unsettled when I went back to my place, and I didn’t get much done the rest of the day. I made it to my normal bedtime by force of habit and will alone.

After several weeks of living in the house, I had its sounds committed to subconscious memory. The sound that the wind made when it came up from the south and sliced against the loose shutter on the side window. The sound of the ocean when it was rough, and when it was calm. The normal creaks the house made, settling and shifting. The rattle of the water pipes when I used the shower. The sound of the fourth step in the staircase, when you hit the tread in the middle.

It was the fourth stair’s distinctive creak that roused me from my trouble sleep, my eyes popping open with a start. They darted toward the doorway, panicked, but then darted right back again, opening to their widest aperture.

The dark-haired woman had been sitting at the desk again, but she was rising and moving toward the door, towards the sound that had broken my sleep. The ivory nightgown clung to her lean body, the lace at the hem of the skirt swirling around her bare ankles.

Before I could say a word, a man appeared at the open door to the bedroom. Tall – very tall – with hair as dark as the woman’s. Coal-black and thick and curling, framing a strong face with dark, smoldering eyes under heavy, bushy brows.

The woman flung herself at him, clutching him as if he were about to disappear. Her head barely came up to his chin. Strong arms encircled her, powerful hands on her back, and the man bent to plant a kiss on top of her head.

There were no words. No sound. I wanted to jump up. To demand answers. But I felt unable to move, or to speak. My eyelids felt heavy – felt heavy again?
No!!! Not this time! I pushed myself to try to get up, to try to scream. All that came out was a croak. “How . . . ?”

They were gone.

Gone as suddenly as a light flees a room when you shut off the lamp at night time. Slowly, carefully, I sat up and got out of bed. There was no one there. No one at all. The desk was empty. I walked down the stairs and turned on the light. No one was below, either.

I felt a terrible headache coming on, so I took a couple Advil then grudgingly went back upstairs. The fourth stair creaked, as it always did. The same noise that had gotten me out of bed. Exactly the same, the only sound I had heard the entire time. But I had no answers and no better idea than to return to bed and try to go back to sleep. I didn’t hold out much hope that sleep would come, but I surprised myself. I was out almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

With the coming of daylight, I had to dismiss the whole thing as just another bad dream. A bizarre one, certainly, but my sleeping brain had been serving up some doozies from time to time as far back as I could remember. And I’d been unsettled all day yesterday. A shrink would probably say there was a connection. Not that I would ever go see one.

I felt much better after a good hot shower – thank goodness the old man had installed a decent-sized water heater, and the regulator on the shower provided lots and lots of pressure. Good enough that I might even tackle something else on my fixit list today. I started going over it in my head, deciding on a project for the day.

I froze. The ivory nightgown was hanging on the hook behind the door. The same nightgown I had put in a plastic bag with Dick Kelly’s old jeans and flannel shirts, and taken to the dump.

The same one the woman had worn, just last night.

~o~O~o~
It was Tuesday, and the dump wasn’t open on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. I didn’t have enough stuff in the house to justify a dump run anyway. But I grabbed the nightgown off the hook, feeling something like a jolt of electricity, of energy, when my hand encountered the unfamiliar fabric. Stomping downstairs, I found a garbage bag and buried the thing in it and took it out to the small one-car garage that was attached to the house.

I knew I’d gotten rid of that nightgown. Knew it. I had a distinct memory of taking it off the hook weeks before; of putting it in a plastic bag. To say that I was shaken by its reappearance was putting it mildly. Either my mind was playing tricks on me and I wasn’t remembering things I had done . . . or my mind was playing different sorts of tricks on me.

Neither alternative was working for me, I decided.

I got dressed in some work clothes, and had a go at silencing that damned fourth stair. First I tried hammering some more nails in, along the sides. That did nothing. I decided to try screws instead, on the theory that they would grip better than nails.

No luck. The stair still squeaked. Maybe the tone was just a little sharper, but nothing more than that. I pulled out my phone and did a search on YouTube. That’s when I moved “fix the stair” to that part of the list that was going to require outside help. It was apparently a very involved job. Who knew? Well, not this city boy, that’s for sure.

One thing I could do today, and damned well would, was to put some extra locks on the doors, front and back. Before I went off to the hardware store, I made a list of what I needed from the grocery store as well. No need to make two trips. Then I locked up the house as best I could, got in the car and drove into town.

The hardware store was an intimidating place. It was old, for starters. The kind of place that has bins of nails and bolts, where the floorboards are broad old pine planks, polished and blackened over decades and decades of use, and old men in checkered shirts and suspenders are the only ones who know where anything can be found.

I’d been in several times already. The old guys were helpful, and they’d guided me to good options as I started to purchase basic tools for the first time in my life. As an apartment dweller in New York City, I hadn’t needed them much. A good hammer; a set of screwdrivers; a rake, a shovel, clippers. They told me I’d want a chainsaw sooner or later; I decided “later” sounded better. I hadn’t needed one yet, and I was A-okay with that.

“Good morning, Mr. Beauchamp.” The guy behind the counter smiled toothily. Cartwright, his name was, and he was from a generation that did not take liberties with first names unless invited. “What brings you in today? Time for the chainsaw?”

I smiled back, but I feared it was a nervous and distracted smile. “No, thank you, Mr. Cartwright. Just need to get something for the doors. Chains, bolts, something.”

His face assumed an expression which seemed consistent with concern. “Everything alright out there? No break-in or anything?” Of course, Mr. Cartwright knew where I lived. It was a small town; the fact that there was a new resident in “the Kelly house” out on Ridge Road was a matter of communal knowledge almost instantly. Another thing it had taken a while for me to get used to.

“Ah . . . no. No. Nothing like that,” I said. “Just, you know. Old habits die hard, I guess.”

“That’s right,” he said, nodding knowingly. “You came from New York CIty.” I could hear the capital letters in his voice. “I expect you’re used to locks and deadbolts and all that. ‘Course, out here, you have to worry about the animals that go on four feet, if you take my meaning.”

“Well, maybe,” I said, happy to use the explanation that seemed natural to the old guy, though I’d felt a lot less safe since I left the city. “I just feel happier knowing I’ve got something solid on the doors.”

“Right, right,” he said. “Better safe than sorry. Now, your best bet would be a genuine deadbolt. You’ll need some more advanced tools for those, though. Got to drill through the doors, if you follow me. Straight through, no wobbles, or it won’t line up proper, like.”

“Ah . . . do you have anything a bit more, basic, maybe?”

“Sure. Let’s see what we’ve got.” He walked me back to an aisle that was indistinguishable from any other area in the store, which would have taken me half an hour to find on my own. He talked as we walked. “If you’re just looking for something that you use when you’re home, there are lots of easy to install choices. Chain bolts, barrel bolt latches, that sort of thing. They’re easy, because you don’t need to be able to open them from the outside. So you don’t need to drill through the door.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s really all I’m looking for, I think. I don’t much care if someone breaks in when I’m not around. I don’t have a lot to steal.”

“Premises protected by poverty? Yeah, I get that, Mr. Beauchamp. I surely do.”

It wasn’t really what I’d meant, but I didn’t see any reason to argue the point. Plenty of poverty in rural Maine; I didn’t need to make trouble by telling people I was well off.

We arrived in the designated area, and he helped me pick out a couple of latches that could be installed with just a screwdriver. “Be a lot easier if you bought a proper drill, Mr. Beauchamp. Make a pilot hole first. The cordless ones are real easy, like.”

The screws didn’t look all that big to me, so I figured I could do without the drill for now. Like the chainsaw, I found them all a bit intimidating. While he was ringing me up, I asked if he knew someone who could do odd jobs – plumbing, carpentry, basic electrical.

“Oh, sure,” he said easily. “Everyone ‘round here calls Dave Micklewaithe. He’s my son-in-law, so you know, but he’s good and reliable and don’t gouge no-one. He’s alright. Even if he did go and steal my favorite daughter!” His eyes twinkled at the memory.

I got the number for his reliable, but thieving, son-in-law, went off to the grocery to restock the larder, and returned home. Once there, I popped my hatchback, grabbed the groceries first, and carried them to the door to the kitchen.

But I was overcome by a completely irrational urge. Cursing myself for an idiot, I put down the groceries, and opened up the black garbage bag, just to make sure that the nightgown was still where I had placed it. The creamy silk shimmered in the low light. Almost without volition, I reached a finger down and stroked it gently, again feeling a jolt of electricity.

Shaking my head to clear it, I closed up the garbage bag, brought in the groceries and put them away. Then I started my project. It quickly became apparent why Mr. Cartwright had tried to sell me a drill, as it proved far harder than I had thought to push the screws into the very solid front door. By the time I was finished, my hands were red and sore and I was sweating despite the autumn chill in the air.

Lunch, certainly, before I tried to do the back door! Anything to give my poor aching hands a break. PBJ on white, some water to wash it down. Nothing exciting; exciting is overrated anyway. I lingered over the icewater, my eyes turned to the sea. A gull was riding the ridge thermal, doing a lazy 180 as it hit the outcropping just north of my house and heading back the way it came.

I got up to clear my plate and hesitated, then slipped out the garage door. The bag was where I had left it. The nightgown was still in the bag . . . still silky smooth, charged with electricity. Slowly, gently, I pulled it from the bag and lifted it to my cheek, feeling the cool of the fabric, breathing in a faint, elusive scent. I stood for a moment, mesmerized, my eyes closed, just somehow soaking in the experience of the garment, before shaking my head, thrusting it back into the bag, and getting back to work.

Once I had new locks on the doors, I kept myself busy by taking a long walk, striding quickly along the ridge path, watching the whitecaps as the wind picked up from the south, allowing the sounds of the sea to soothe my troubled spirit. I hadn’t felt right since remembering my parent’s death yesterday. It had been twelve years. Surely I should be over all of that after twelve years!

At the end of the day, I added to my night time ritual by going around and locking each of the new locks that I had installed. I washed, brushed my teeth, and made sure that the nightgown was not hanging on the door. Once I was satisfied, I stripped down to my T-shirt and boxers and slipped into bed.

I felt like I was barely asleep when a loud “thump” got my attention – the south wind had pulled a shutter loose and it whacked loud against the clapboard. Something else I would need to deal with . . . later. I turned my attention back to the mirror to finish removing my makeup, when the “thump” sounded again.

I sighed and rose, smoothing my nightgown against my thighs as I moved toward the window. But movement outside caught my eye. A man stood on my patio, looking up at me, and our eyes met. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a look that could burn the frost off of any heart.

A man? No. My man.

I walked to the closet and slipped a long, fleece robe over my thin nightie, belting it tightly, then slid my bare feet into my warmest pair of slippers. Then I was down the stairs and at the back door. It took me a moment to figure out why the door refused to open, but once I did I slipped the new bolt back and walked down the two steps to where he waited for me.

I crossed to where he stood and put my head against his broad chest, waiting until I felt the warmth of his encircling arms. The feeling of one-ness that happened whenever he touched me. The feeling that I was whole and complete, loved, understood, and cherished.

We spoke no words. None even occurred to me. It was enough that he was here, with me. I felt his kiss on the top of my head, then he turned to stand by my side, one arm holding me tight against him at the waist. He walked me down toward the ridge and when we reached it we stood, arm in arm, watching the waves crash in the light of the moon, as the south wind lifted my long black hair.

I don’t know how long we stood there, he and I, content to be together, enjoying the closeness we always felt in each others’ company. Hours, maybe. I should have been cold, chilled to the bone, but I was warm instead. Warm and content.

At the first hint of pale light in the east, he pulled me around and escorted me back to the house . . . my house. By the back steps, he took me in his arms again and kissed me deeply, sweetly, and I returned the kiss in a way that left no doubt as to my own feelings. He stepped back, holding both my hands. Then he lifted them, kissing first one, then the other, before letting me go, and walking away down to the path.

I stayed where I was, watching my love until he was gone from sight. Finally feeling the cold, I went inside and back to my bedroom. After finishing my toilette and returning to bed, I fell at once into a deep and dreamless sleep, a smile on my lips.

~o~O~o~
Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz. My phone alarm woke me, which it almost never does. I keep regular hours, and am typically awake ten minutes before the alarm is set to go off at 8:00 a.m. I don’t need an alarm in Maine, of course. I’m not working any more; I have no need to don my suit, catch the subway and head to the financial district with all the rest of the drowsy commuters. There is nothing at all that I absolutely have to do. But keeping a regular schedule has always helped me cope with a chaotic world, so I do it even without any particular need to drive me.

I felt unusually refreshed. Maybe I had slept better, deeper than usual. I sat up and popped out of bed to get the alarm, but tumbled to the ground an instant later with my legs all tangled, confused and off-balance. Glaring at the treacherous sheets, only to discover their complete innocence.

My legs were tangled up in the nightgown!

To be continued

.

My dream came back to me as I lay on the floor, trying to make sense of my suddenly crazy world. I remembered every detail. Every feeling. I didn’t know the man from Adam. Didn’t know his name; hadn’t seen him before as far as I could recall. But I had known him. I had . . . loved him. And he loved me. The feeling, when he held me, had been indescribably beautiful and perfect.

And completely, totally foreign to me. No one had ever loved me, other than my parents. And their love had been nothing like what I had felt last night. Felt in a dream. The unfairness of it hit me like a freight train and I found myself doing something I hadn’t done in over a decade. I wasn’t crying, I was sobbing. Lying on the floor of my bedroom in a nightgown, bawling my heart out.

The need to stop my stupid phone’s noise finally galvanized me to get off the floor. My phone was on the desk. It hadn’t occurred to me before that the purpose of the weird mirror behind the desk was to allow it to be used as . . . what was the term? A vanity? A place where a woman would do her makeup. I had a sudden recollection of the desktop covered with tubes and pots and atomizers, none of which meant anything to me at all.

My image in the mirror stopped me cold. I should have looked ridiculous, but somehow I didn’t. For once, I didn’t look “skinny” or “scrawny” or any of those other terms people had used over the years. I looked slender. My narrow shoulders looked attractive rather than absurd; my long neck was graceful rather than geeky.

What?

My face was still very much my face, and my sandy brown hair was short and unkempt. But even so, dressed as I was, I looked more like a woman than a man. I’d never seen myself that way before; now, I wasn’t sure how I’d missed it. I noticed a bulge where one did not belong and felt a crazy desire to tuck it away, to hide it, so that the long, silky nightgown hung properly.

Okay, Philip. Get a goddamned grip! I stopped the phone alarm and turned purposefully away from the mirror. I had a dream. It was vivid. And I . . . what? Sleepwalked? Downstairs to retrieve the nightgown from the trash bag. All of which was . . . just super weird. Freaking, super, weird.

I slipped the straps of the nightie off my shoulders, and the fabric slid down my body, causing me to shiver, before it pooled at my feet. Why do I feel such regret?

I took refuge in habit. Routine. I marched into the bathroom, took my five-minute shower, brushed my teeth and got dressed. Leaving the nightie in its liquid state on the floor of the bedroom – I was afraid to touch it – I went downstairs and had my bran flakes and skim milk.

Mentally, I pulled up my fixit list and thought about what needed doing, resolving to keep myself fully occupied. I gave a call to the number Mr. Cartwright provided for his son-in-law.

“This is Dave,” the man answered after a single ring.

“Good morning, Mr. Micklewaithe,” I responded. My name is Beauchamp. Philip Beauchamp. Mr. Cartwright at Donegal’s Hardware said you did some handyman work?”

“Pays to marry right,” he responded, sounding jovial. “I sure do. You're the guy that bought the Kelly place, right?”

I sighed. Small towns. “Yes, that’s me. I’ve got some creaking stairs – really just one that’s bad, but a couple could use some help. And it looks harder than I’m comfortable trying.”

“Yeah, that job’s a lot harder’n most people think, for sure. I can come by, have a look and give you a price. That suit?”

“Yes. Absolutely. What time works for you?

“I might be able to stop by the end of the day, or maybe tomorrow morning. Either of those work for you?”

“Either would be fine,” I replied. “I can be here whenever.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll shoot you a text if I can make it today, maybe a half hour in advance. You let me know then whether it works.”

We agreed on that and ended the call. I sat for a bit longer, trying to settle my nerves and figure out how to spend the rest of the day. It was pleasant out, so I decided to clear some of the deadwood and brambles from the wild area between my house and Sue’s.

I put on work gloves, thick canvass things that I hoped would provide some protection from brambles and thorns, and plunged into the task. It was hot work, and occasionally nasty. There were plenty of things growing up there that looked ratty, not to mention deadfall from some of the trees. I had to watch for poison ivy while I was at it, checking my phone to make sure I had identified it properly. I had bought some special pesticide to kill the harmless looking vines.

Sometime in the early afternoon, I heard Sue calling my name from next door. “Hey, neighbor!” she said, walking over. “A fine day’s work you’ve been putting in. I brought you a Gatorade.”

She couldn’t have picked a better time, or a better present. “Thank you, you’re a life saver,” I said. I took down the entire bottle of Gatorade in one go, and I don’t think I’d ever tasted anything so good before.

“If food’s fuel, that there must be rocket propellant,” she joked.

“That’s the truth,” I replied. A smile seemed appropriate, so I did that. “Thanks so much. I, ah . . . .” I stopped, embarrassed. “I was just about to invite you to come over for some lunch, but I realized that I only have the makings for PBJs.”

She returned my smile. I expect hers looked more natural; I could never trust my own not to look gruesome. She said, “That’s so sweet of you. But listen, I actually made up some meatloaf just this morning. Why don’t you come over to my place instead, and we can share it?”

“I don’t want to impose, really!” I was still embarrassed; I should be able to entertain people, I guess. Pick up some stuff at the store, just in case. It was a foreign concept, but I could suddenly see the utility of it.

“No imposition. Pa doesn’t eat much, and I don’t need half of what I made. Besides, it’ll be nice to have this area cleaned up like you’re doing. I didn’t want to say anything, your being new and all, but Mr. Kelly kind of let it grow wild.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” I said hesitantly. When she nodded with apparent enthusiasm, I said, “Let me just tidy up. I’ll be over in maybe twenty minutes?”

I brought the tools and the yard waste back to my garage, dropped off my gloves, and went upstairs to get cleaned up. It took a lot of scrubbing to get the dirt off of my hands, and I felt so gritty that I popped into the shower for a minute afterwards. As I toweled off, I noticed the nightgown on the door peg.

I had not moved it. I had very deliberately left it on the floor of the bedroom when I went downstairs. If I moved it after that, I had zero recollection of doing so. Either my mind was going, or it moved itself. I snorted. Or else someone snuck into the house while I was gardening to tidy up my lingerie.

My lingerie? Seriously?

But I said I would join Sue, and I do what I say I’ll do. Cursing at my crazy brain, I stormed into the bedroom and grabbed some clean things from my nearly bare closet and bureau. Shorts. Socks. Jeans. Hoodie. Sneakers. I ran a comb through my short hair as I tore down the stairs and out the front door.

Sue noticed my flustered state right away. “Philip? Is everything all right?”

“It’s fine. I mean, I’m fine. Just, well . . . .” I couldn’t think of a way to end the sentence without sounding like a dangerous lunatic. Lamely, I added. “Fine. Just fine.”

She had a peculiar expression on her face. A searching look, maybe? I couldn’t be certain. But she reached out, touched my arm lightly, and said, “Well, that’s great then. Come on in, let’s eat.”

I managed to restrain my impulse to flinch when she touched me. I’m really not good with touching; never had been. But as I followed her back to the kitchen table, I thought, I didn’t have any trouble when HE touched me, did I? But, was that me?

The meatloaf was fine. I liked the fact that it was easy to chew. Mostly I don’t have meat very often because it takes so long to get it to a state where I’m comfortable swallowing. Which isn’t very efficient, and I’ve always thought food shouldn’t be complicated.

She pressed me to take a second portion and I did, mostly to be polite. She was still working on her first slice.

“Sue,” I asked, feeling a bit reckless, “do you believe in ghosts?”

She laughed. “No. I figure all that’s for the tourists.” I must have given her a blank look; she patted my hand.

I flinched.

“You know, they organize “haunted happenings” tours all over the place. Especially this time of year.” She shook her head at my still-blank expression. “You know, Halloween? Anyway, they get old timers to take the tourists around graveyards and big ol’ houses, and tell tall tales. Down in the city, they charge ten, maybe twenty bucks a head. A good hustle, you ask me.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that sort of thing,” I said uncomfortably.

“You mean, like, for real?” Her tone was registering as incredulous. Unbelieving. Maybe even . . . scornful? Maybe? I seriously wasn’t sure.

“It’s nothing,” I assured her. “Just saw . . . um . . . a light out towards the water, late at night.” It was the first thing that came into my head, and I immediately flushed, both at the lie and at the clumsiness of it. Lights . . . that would be UFO’s, right? Not ghosts.

She didn’t seem to notice. “Prob’ly just a neighbor on the path after dark. Mostly folks stay in at night, but some people don’t have the brains of a newborn kitten.”

“I’m sure you're right,” I assured her. “Some things are really strange to me, coming from the city.”

“I’d think you would be used to lights at all hours!” She smiled in a way that seemed kind of friendly. Inviting? Something nice, anyway.

“Lights? Absolutely. It’s the dark that surprises me. I had no idea that anyplace could be as dark as this place, when there’s no moon. So when I saw lights — like back home — they spooked me.”

“Literally!” she snorted.

“Yeah,” I said, embarrassed. I started to get up. “Let me take care of clean up.”

She was about to answer when there was a loud “thump” from upstairs. She jumped up, her face suddenly white. “I’ll get that later. Don’t you worry none. Let . . . let me go look after Pa.”

I should do something, right? Say something? “Can I help?”

“No!!! No! Pa — Pa’s not good with strangers now. I’ll see you later, okay?” She started herding me to the front door, an expression on her face I had not seen before. I couldn’t place it.

Before I knew it, I was back outside, feeling more than a bit unsettled. I couldn’t say that Sue’s behavior had been strange, exactly. It didn’t seem to fit with what I had experienced of her to date, though. I decided it wasn’t unreasonable to describe that as odd.

But I’d never had to deal with an aging parent, and never would. Never had any personal experience with dementia of any kind. What little I did know suggested that it was hard – very hard – for the people who took on the job of caregivers.

I made my way back to the house, changed back into my work clothes, and went back into the garden, having no desire to sit with my thoughts. For similar reasons, I stayed out of the bathroom, not wanting to encounter the confounding nightgown.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t think about it.

Sue did not re-emerge. I kept working until around 4:30, when I got a text from Dave Micklewaithe asking if this was still a good time for him to come around. I responded affirmatively and he said he’d be by around five.

I tidied up my work area, put the tools back in the garage, and bagged up all of the yard waste. I had to figure out what to do with all the deadfall branches – since I didn’t have a chainsaw – but for now I just made a neatish pile on the far side of the house from Sue’s place. No reason she should have to look at them while I worked out disposal options.

At 5:00 on the button (which button? I’ve always wondered), a big, beat-up F-350 bounced up the driveway. It probably was red, once upon a time, but between the sun bleaching, the effects of winter road salt and a liberal amount of mud, it was hard to be sure. It seemed to me like the suspension had seen better days, but it wasn’t my truck.

The driver bounced as well. At least, he kind of bounced out of the truck, then bounced up to the garage door where I was standing. “You must be . . . .” he checked himself, then finished, “Mr. Beauchamp. I’m Dave Micklewaithe.”

I looked him in the eye and met his hand firmly. I always did that when I met someone. Always.

Good habits, Philip. My mother’s voice.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Micklewaithe,” I responded. I guess I sounded kind of formal. I wasn’t sure how to do this without sounding formal. “Thanks for coming out so late.”

“No worries, no worries at all!” He was standing still – perfectly still – but managed, somehow, to give the impression that he was still bouncing. “Been a while since I was here last. Do you like my patio?”

“You did the slate patio out back?”

He smiled, big, happy and almost dog-like. “Yup. Sure did. Hot work, hauling that rock!”

“You did a great job,” I said, meaning every word. “I spend a lot of time out there.”

His smile just got bigger. “Wonderful! Well, I won’t take much of your time, Mr. Beauchamp. Let me see what you’ve got.”

“Of course.” I brought him in through the front door, which was just steps from the base of the staircase. I walked up to the fourth stair and tread on the center of the step, eliciting the usual loud creak. “That’s the bad one.” I walked up the rest of the way, noting the other three that made some noise.

Dave bounced up the stairs, taking a closer look at the problem areas, and chuckling a bit at my efforts with nails and screws. “Ayup, that seems logical, but it don’t always work.” He stood on the step, shifting his weight back and forth and side to side. “Loose at the front riser, not the stringers,” he concluded. “Is it open underneath?”

“Uh . . . yeah. There’s a closet under the stairs. Kind of tight in there.”

“Oh, like Harry Potter, right? Let me see.” He popped down the stairs and into the closet. It didn’t have a light, and I had to confess that I hadn’t acquired a flashlight. He gave me a look. “No worries, I got my phone. But . . . you should get a real flashlight, you know? We get some monster storms boiling up from the south, knock out power four, five times a year. Safety first, know what I mean?”

He spent a bit of time in the closet before emerging and dusting himself off. “Yeah, I can do it. Couple hour job, tops. Maybe the end of next week? How’s ninety-five dollars sound? The work’s guaranteed.”

“That would be fine.” Truth is, I thought it would be more. In Manhattan, it would have been a lot more, and the estimate probably wouldn’t have been free. But I wasn’t going to say anything about that. In fact . . . . “You know, if you have a day open, there are a few other projects I could use some help with. I could pay you for the day, and we could get as much done as time permits?”

“Yeah, I can make that work. Get it done before winter, whatever it is.” He looked around with curious eyes. “Looks like you haven’t made many changes. Any chance I can have a look at that patio? I’d like to see if it settled okay.”

“Sure,” I said, and led him out through the kitchen.

He looked closely at the patio, bending down to run his hands over a few of the rocks, getting a feel for how even it all was. “I like the moss that’s grown up between the slabs. Makes it look like it’s been here forever.”

“When did you install it?”

He thought for a minute. “Must be fourteen, fifteen years back. It was after Carson was born, but before Stacy, I think.” He suddenly smiled, a funny kind of smile. Maybe . . . mischievous? “Tell you a story? Probably shouldn’t, but the old man’s gone now, so no harm, right?”

Normally I had no patience for anything that smacks of gossip. It’s . . . unproductive. But after the weird experiences I’d had in this house, I was uncharacteristically curious about its prior owner. “Of course.”

“Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “I finished the job up on a Wednesday, and Dick — that’s Mr. Kelly, you understand — he paid me straight off. Cash, like always; he knew what’s what. Anyhow, I’m off at a job Friday morning, and I realize that I left my four-foot level here. Seeing as how I was close, I figured I’d just drop by and grab it — no need to bother Dick again. So I park the truck and walk around the side. I hear them talking just as I come ‘round the corner here, and there they are sitting in these same Adirondacks — Big Bill Gallagher and Dick. But — here’s the funny part — Dick’s all dressed up like a girl!”

Somehow, I knew what he was about to say before he said it. I could picture it, too, just like I was standing where Micklewaithe had been. Gallagher, in a work shirt with an open collar; Kelly in a pale yellow sundress with a scooping neckline, covered in a floral pattern of greens, pinks and roses.

“Dick now, he just stopped talking and blushed deep, like my little girl does when I catch her out. But Bill! You’d have to have known him to really get the picture. He lowered those big ol’ bushy brows of his, and fixed me with them fiery black eyes. And he growls out, “boy, you want to go on living’ you just forget you were ever here today. You got that straight?”

I could picture that, too. And something about the image gave me a warm feeling inside. A feeling I couldn’t quite place.

“Anyhow . . . I’d done plenty of work for Bill — been in and out of his place a dozen times, fixing this and that around that big house of his. He paid well and on time, and besides, Gallaghers go way back ‘round here. I knew if he said my name was mud I could kiss off half my business. So I hides my smile an’ I apologize like crazy, and never say a word to nobody. But it was something to see, I’ll tell you that. Dick — he didn’t actually look half bad.”

“You’re not worried about Gallagher anymore?”

He shrugged. “You know how it is. He’s got dementia now, I hear. Been a couple years since I seen him, about the time Susan came back from Boston. She’d been gone so long, she wanted to pay with a credit card!” He shook his head, bemused. “I mean, I took it, right? But I charged her more, acting all like an outsider or something. Local girl like Susan? Went to high school with my older sister Becky! Shoulda known better.” He remembered who he was talking to, quirked a smile, and added, “No offense.”

“That’s alright,” I assured him, though my mind was far from his concerns. “I’ll stop by the bank next week before you come.”

“Ah, you’re alright for a New Yorker, Mr. Beauchamp!” He gave me a smile that showed lots of even teeth.

He took off, but I stayed on the patio, the fine stone patio he had built. I had a lot to think about, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, watching the last rays of the setting sun turn the undersides of the clouds a boiling blood red.

To be continued

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

I was still sitting on the patio an hour or so later, watching a harvest moon creep above the surging Atlantic, when I was startled by a rare mechanical noise. The crump of a car door shutting, the sound of the engine turning over, the crunch of tires on packed gravel. I went to the side of the house and saw Sue’s car turn onto the road and head toward town.

The cold had seeped into my bones as I sat motionless. I decided I would try to make a fire tonight. I lived in Maine; it’s what Mainers do when it’s cold. YouTube, as usual, had some good tips. Make a tipi out of small twigs — lots and lots of them — and once that gets going, start adding more.

Well, I had plenty of small stuff from my gardening endeavors, so I gave it a go. Twigs. Tipi. Small sticks. But I couldn’t get anything to catch; even the twigs just smoldered. And the flywheel on the lighter got really warm while I held it sideways to get to the twigs, and I dropped it because my fingers were getting burned. Then I noticed that the smoke from the smoldering twigs wasn’t going up the chimney like it was supposed to; it was curling lazily into the house.

My eyes were stinging, my thumb was sore, and I was still cold. “Fuck this boy scout shit,” I growled. I got a full cup of water from the kitchen and doused the whole stupid thing. Once I was sure it wasn’t going to do anything else to annoy me, I shoveled the mess into a plastic pail and put it outside.

The weather was definitely worsening, and a cold wind sliced through my too-thin shirt. I got myself back inside in a hurry, closed the door tight and cranked the temperature on the thermostat. I’m thrifty by nature, but I needed to warm up.

Hot soup seemed like a good choice for dinner. I had a couple cans left, and chicken noodle called to me. Mom sometimes made chicken noodle soup with leftovers, back when I lived with my parents. Back when I had people I could talk to, who didn’t make me feel awkward or embarrassed. Did the canned soup taste like what Mom used to make?

I couldn’t remember.

The soup did help to warm me up, and the furnace was definitely starting to make its presence felt, but it was slow. There was an old soaker tub in the bathroom; I’d never used it. I had grown up taking showers, and that’s all I’d had in my New York apartment. I didn’t really trust baths, I guess, which was silly. Maybe I’d have better luck with it than I’d had with the stupid fire.

I went upstairs, put the plug in the tub, and started running the water before returning to the bedroom to strip off my clothes. That only took a few seconds, and the tub was a quarter full at best. I felt stupid standing there, bare-assed naked, watching the water inch up the enameled surface of the tub.

The nightgown was still there, on the peg by the door, hanging by those thin shoulder straps. In the soft light, it almost seemed to glow, like . . . like . . . abalone in the surf, on a moonlit night. I shook my head. Where had that image come from?

I was standing in front of the nightgown, though I didn’t recall moving. Remembering how it had felt this morning, when I was wearing it. Remembering how I had felt. I reached up and stroked the silky fabric, feeling that electric charge once again. Knowing, suddenly, that I would most certainly wear it again.

Right now, in fact.

Slowly, carefully, I raised it from the hook. I wasn’t sure how to do it, but pulling it over my head, bottom hem first, seemed right somehow. It settled over my body, and I was overcome by a feeling of peace. How could such a small thing matter so much? I looked in the mirror over the sink, and smiled at what I saw. It was a soft smile . . . a gentle and welcoming smile. I had no difficulty interpreting it. No difficulty at all.

I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, like I was getting acquainted, until the bath was ready. The smile never left my face. I lowered one delicate shoulder strap, then the other, stepped out of my nightie and hung it back on its peg. Then I sank down into the blissfully warm water, feeling warmth seep into my bones.

Baths, I thought lazily after maybe fifteen minutes had passed, are truly wonderful things. I pulled my right leg from the water, lathered it up, and started to work with the razor. Careless of me, to let the grass grow like that! Long, straight rows, slicing through the foam. I paused when I was finished, checked my work with both eyes and hands, and shaved again where I saw or felt any sign of remaining hair. Then I switched to my left leg.

By the time I’d gotten the hair off of my legs, arms, chest, and pits, I’d had to drain some cool water out and renew it with the hot twice. I felt a thousand times better. Ready to face what the night would bring. Or nearly ready, anyhow.

I got out of the wonderful, beautiful, blessed tub and patted myself dry. The skin moisturizer was in the big drawer under the sink, of course, and I used it liberally all over. After wrapping the towel around my body and tucking it at the chest, I shaved my face extra close, plucked a few wayward eyebrow hairs, and applied my moisturizing cream.

I wandered back to the bedroom, considering carefully what I should wear. Slender as I’d always been, I still needed a corset to give me any real shape. The ivory one would be best, I decided, and pulled it from the upper right-hand drawer of my bureau. After settling it in place, I wrestled with the laces until I was satisfied. My silicone breast forms filled the corsets’ cups perfectly, and I spent some time hiding the seams with makeup.

Stockings were next. Real silk stockings, that attached to the corset with garter straps. I shivered at the feel of the sheer material against my freshly shaved legs. Once that pleasant step was complete, I tucked into a gaff and covered with high-cut panties that matched the corset.

My wig sat proudly on the edge of the vanity. With practiced ease, I put it in place, checked it carefully, then gave it a few strokes with the brush, more because I loved the feeling than from any need. The long, full, black tresses looked as good as the day I had bought it at that delightful shop in Portland, from the woman who had been so very helpful. Once I was confident that it was perfect, I sat and did my makeup. I knew he was coming, and I wanted to look my very best.

Stepping into the closet, I flipped through dress after dress, shaking my head as I considered each. Too summery. Too formal. Too frumpy. The calf-length, long-sleeved wool dress caught my eye, and I considered it carefully. It was warm, certainly, and the tight sleeves and bodice would emphasize my assets — both natural and artificial — while the full skirt would add some flare. Paired with my black leather boots, it would do nicely.

I was all ready, just trying to decide: hat, or no hat. I did love a cute hat. I was still going back and forth on that question when I heard his step on the creaky stair and smiled.

He had dressed more formally today. Gray wool pants, a dark blue dress shirt, his black blazer that just drew attention to his height, to the breadth of his shoulders, the coal black of his hair, and his dark, smoldering eyes. Damn, he looked fine!

We kissed, we embraced, and I was, once again, whole and complete. But we had things to do tonight, I knew, so I made no protest when he led me downstairs and out the back door. Crossing the patio where we had spent so many lovely evenings, we made our way down to the path along the ridge. A cold wind was gathering the storm clouds, herding them like cattle, but the sky around the moon was clear and the path was bathed in silver sheen.

We walked arm-in-arm, my head as always nestled to his shoulder. There were stones, of course. No place on the Maine coast is free of them. But the path was old, old, smoothed by time and the passage of many feet. People lived here when the land belonged to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the glory days of the Wabanabi, the People of the Dawnland, there were people living here. We walked in their footsteps, safe and silent.

We left the path, and the ridge, the coast and the song of the pounding surf, and made our way across the gentle slope that led up to Bill’s house. The Gallagher place, that had been in his family for three generations before it passed to him. The blink of an eye, really.

We were halfway across the field when I felt it, a stabbing pain, a throbbing, cascading wave of grief. I cried out — the first sound I had made — and almost fell. A patch of barren earth, nearly indistinguishable from any other in the pale silver light. But the grief, the pain, the shocking wrongness, came from there.

He held me upright, and the warmth of his body and the force of his love poured into me, giving me strength to go on. Gently, carefully, he led me forward, up to the back of his house, softly lit by moonlight alone. The night was silent; even the ocean seemed to pause as he pulled a worn keychain from his pocket, unlocked the back door, and led me inside.

The Gallagher house is older and much larger than mine. The farm kitchen with its big old table dominates the rear of the structure, but there is also a formal dining room, a study, and a parlor on the first floor. We passed these to go to the base of the stairs, and there he left me, giving me a kiss and a look of such love and longing that my heart wanted to stop.

I climbed the stairs alone, knowing somehow that this was what I had to do. Strangely, as I ascended, the light began to change. Silver moonlight gave way to watery sun while the temperature dropped, then dropped still more. From the window off the landing at the top of the stairs, I looked out on patchy snow and a cold, gray, heavy ocean. Late afternoon, I thought. Maybe March.

I should have been filled with confusion, and a part of my mind was gibbering at this bizarre turn of events. But I had come here — I had been brought here — for some purpose. I needed to find out what it was.

I knew where the master bedroom was located. How could I not know? I smiled at the memories of waking in that enormous bed, four feet off the floor, a tall canopy framed in curly maple above our heads.

When I opened the door my heartbeat skipped. It was the same room, but it wasn’t Bill’s. The heavy leather chair was gone, and the dark mahogany table and the burnt orange wool rug. They had all been replaced by lighter things, softer things in spring and summer colors. The massive wardrobe still stood against the wall, its doors open, revealing clothes for someone younger, shorter . . . and female. It was her room now.

A sound reached me and I spun around. It was unmistakable, unforgettable once you’ve heard it. The sound of retching.

I was less familiar with the rest of the second floor, but I followed the sound, racing across the landing and down a short hallway. Before I reached the end, a door opened and a man staggered out. Iron-gray hair, long and unkempt, framed a face grown thin, and eyes that were wild with pain.

I tried to move. I tried to cry out. But I couldn’t. Literally couldn’t. It was, I realized, something that had already happened. A different day in a different year. A memory that could not be changed, could not be fixed. I could do nothing but watch, powerless.

Watch as Bill Gallagher died.

He staggered against the door across from the bathroom. Unlatched, the door spun open, leaving him unbalanced. He fell, hitting the wooden floor like a sandbag dropped from a height. The sound was heavy, hard, and very final.

It was, I realized, the exact same sound I had heard earlier in the day. The sound that had caused Sue to turn white. I hadn’t been able to interpret her expression then, but I understood it now: Fear. Terror. The face of someone who has lived too long with ghosts.

Bill lay on the floor, his face frozen in a rictus of pain, dark eyes screwed tightly shut, never to light a room again. His once-large frame was shrunken, diminished, and the room where he had died — the room where he had ended his days — was mean and small. A twin bed on a metal trestle. A folding chair, unpadded, by the narrow window. His half-eaten dinner — his last supper, I suppose — was on a tray on the floorboards; the room had no table to set them on. A chunk of bread, a bowl of stew, barely touched. The remains of a slice of pie.

It’s to die for. Sue’s words came back to me like a thunderclap, and I knew. I didn’t guess, I knew.

I stood there, frozen by horror, and the seasons swirled around me. The room was bare, baking in summer heat, unrelieved by so much as an open window; Bill’s body, and the bed, and the chair, were gone. Long gone. Autumn’s crispness, winter’s cold, day and night, night and day, spun and tumbled, one into another, as I stood still, shaking.

It was night again, and late winter’s chill hung in the air. My breath would frost, I thought, if I could find it in me to breathe. I heard heavy steps on the stairs and found I was able to move again. Retreating into the bedroom where Bill had died, I moved to the window and turned to face the open door, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

The heavy steps continued to approach, and whoever it was must be out of shape. Lots of huffing and puffing.

Sue appeared in the doorway, carrying two enormous plastic bags. I opened my mouth. Maybe to scream . . . or shout . . . or possibly plead. I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. I made no sound.

She ignored me, tossing one bag down, followed by the other. The second bag landed on the first, toppled, and spilled its contents right at my feet. Sue cursed, made a half-hearted move to pick it up, then just shook her head in disgust and left, to all appearances oblivious to my presence in the room.

In the moonlight, the colors appeared subdued, like old photos seen in sepia. With daylight, I’m sure, they would have been positively riotous. Emerald green, royal blue, pale yellow with floral green, pink and rose. Rich wool, the color of claret. Dresses, skirts, tops . . . .

The contents of my closet.

Time spun again. Spring came, and summer. The bags vanished and a fine, almost imperceptible layer of dust lay on the surfaces, the floor and the windowsill. The chill of autumn returned, and the silver sheen of a harvest moon bathed the front yard and the black ribbon of the road beyond.

A pair of headlights slewed and aimed themselves at the house. I was barely able to move before I heard a car door slam, and unsteady feet sound on the walkway outside.

I moved as quickly as I could, but I was only halfway down the stairs when the front door burst open and a figure staggered into the foyer, swaying unsteadily. I stood stock still, hoping I would once again be invisible to her.

But this was no memory. It was here, and now. Sue closed the door behind her and sagged against it, looking a bit green. She shut her eyes for a moment, but when she reopened them, she was looking straight up the staircase. Straight at me. She screamed.

But as soon as the instant of surprise passed, she began to shout. “No! Fucking No!!! Got that, you tranny bitch? You can’t have it! It’s mine!”

She pulled herself erect and began to advance on the foot of the stairs, moving deliberately. It was apparent to me that she was drunk as a skunk, and trying desperately to hold herself together. “I don’t fucking believe in ghosts, and it wouldn’t fucking matter if I did, ‘cuz I’m not scared of you. Hear that, you pervert!”

She put her first foot on the stair, then the other, advancing right into my own long shadow, the full moon shining bright through the window directly behind me at the top of the stairs.

“You can’t hurt me! You’re nothing!” She was panting, her face contorted by exertion and alcohol and fear-fueled rage. “Your sicko body is feeding worms — and it’s probably killing them, too, with all the arsenic I gave you! You’re nothing but moonbeams, bitch!” She got up another step, then another.

I thought of Bill. This was his daughter, this dangerous, crazy woman. She’d shut him up in a room that was little more than a closet, let him waste away to nothing, then poisoned him. That wonderful, magnificent man. A cold fury was building within me, a rage so powerful, so demanding, that it blotted out every other thought, every human feeling, every consideration.

She pulled herself up one more step. “Beat it, you hear me? You got no business here. It’s my house now, all mine, and you’re fucking dead!”

My boot took her hard, right in the solar plexus.

She flew back down the stairs and landed in a heap by the front door. “Maybe you don’t know everything about ghosts after all,” I said cattily as I came down the stairs. “Whoever would have guessed?”

I wondered if I’d killed her, and was relieved — mildly relieved, but relieved — to see that I hadn’t. She was still breathing. I gave it a bit of thought as I stood looking over her, and a plan began to form. Something better than my primal instinct to beat her head in with the nearest blunt instrument.

I went back to the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel from the drying rack. Returning to the front of the house, I wrapped the towel over her left forearm, then dragged her into the parlor. Still using the towel to keep from leaving any prints, I unhooked the long strap from her purse and used it to tie her upper arms together, with a loop going around a leg of one of Bill’s ridiculously heavy chairs.

She was groaning by this point, so I decided to have a seat in the same chair and wait her out.

The groans started to morph into words. “Help . . . help me!”

She had clearly believed I was the ghost of Dick Kelly, which . . . seemed to be both true and not true, since I was also, at the same time, Philip Beauchamp. It was complicated. But her belief was an asset, and she didn’t need to sweat the details, anyway. I was more than willing to work with her existing belief structure. “How could I possibly? I’m dead, remember? Oh, and seeing as how you’re the one who killed me, why would I?”

Her eyes began to flutter open, so I crossed my legs, blocking her view of my face.

“I’m hurt,” she whimpered.

“Cry me a river,” I said drily.

“I’m gonna be sick.”

“Face right, then, or you’ll have to lick your vomit off my boot. I’m fond of it.”

She somehow managed to hold it in. “Go away, you bitch.”

I use the toe of my boot to give a gentle tap to the side of her head. “Manners, Miss Susan. Manners. I'll leave, but I've got things to do first. Like avenge myself . . . and my lover!”

“Don’t call him that, you —”

Another, slightly firmer rap from my boot.

“Stop it! Stop it! You did it! You! Turned my father into some kind of fairy, chasing after a guy in a skirt! My father! Big Bill Gallagher!”

“Whereas you turned him into a wreck, before you turned him into a corpse. Somehow that seems worse, don’t you think?”

“Fuck you! Fuck you!”

“As arguments go, not very persuasive. Besides, you’re not my type.”

She was sobbing now. “I just wanted my daddy back. Someone who was a real man. Everyone respected him. Everyone respected us! We were Gallaghers, and that meant something!”

“Oh I assure you, your father was very much a real man!” I practically purred that sentence, knowing it would burn her diseased soul like battery acid.

“Noooo! Stop it! Stop it!”

“Tell me,” I asked, “Did your father turn you away? Deny you his love?”

“What? No! I don’t want his love! Not once . . . not after . . . .” She shuddered. “Not after you!”

Something wasn’t adding up. “Why kill him, then? You had your life. Why not let him have his?”

“I wouldn't have any life anymore! Not here. Not where I belong. People guessed. I’m sure they guessed. That smarmy handyman, for one, with his sly smiles. Our name would be ruined! And besides . . . .” She stopped, cold, perhaps thinking she’d said too much.

“Oh, don’t stop now, pet. The night’s young. Long as you keep talking, you might see it get older.”

“Fuck! What do you want!”

“I told you. Vengeance, for a preference.” I kept my voice conversational. “I have a bottle of pills that could give you the same quietus you gave me and Bill. You are in no position to resist. Seems only fair, don’t you think?”

She whimpered. It was a piteous enough sound, truth be known, but all I had to do was remember her father’s face, frozen in the extreme pain he suffered at the moment of his death. The rage which had seized me left no room for pity. Not for her. “I’ll give you an alternative, though, if you really want one. I want the truth. All of it. When, where, why, with what. I know it, but I want to hear you say it. All of it.”

She whined, and she pleaded, and she swore, but eventually I got it all. Everything I wanted, and a whole lot I didn’t. I kept her at it for two solid hours, coming back at her with question after question, pushing past each half-truth, each attempted justification. She broke down in the end, babbling details and pleading — pleading just to be allowed to sleep. That mercy, finally, I gave her. Not for her sake, but for mine.

I found her phone in her purse, and she hadn’t even put a passcode on it. I drafted a lengthy email, confessing everything and providing all of the confirmatory details. When she had done it. Which poison she had used, and where she stored it (yep, it was still under the kitchen sink). Most critically, the exact location in the back yard where she had buried her father’s body, that April night an hour after the moon had set.

I wrote out the motive as well; Bill hadn’t been ashamed of his love. Indeed, he’d kind of proclaimed it, when he’d written a superseding will that left the big house to his “tranny bitch,” to use Sue’s charming expression. When she found the copy in his safe and figured out that the house wouldn’t pass to her, she’d decided to pretend Bill was still living.

But of course, I — that part of me that was Dick Kelly — hadn’t forgotten him, and my increasingly strident demands to see him eventually drove her to bake another one of her “special” pies. She knew there would be no inquest. Just an old man, dying alone in his bed as the winter finally began to release its grip. Nothing to see there.

I sent the email off to the police, then carefully wiped the phone of all prints using soap and water before dropping it in the toilet. It’s probably the first thing she’d see when she woke up.

She was snoring loudly, as people do sometimes when they are sleeping it off. I untied her, put the strap back on her purse, then went out the back door, taking my handy dish towel with me and using it to avoid leaving any prints.

The night was getting on, and the moon was gone — either set, or wholly obscured by cloud. I decided to take the longer route, using the winding brick path rather than risk walking on the uneven ground we crossed earlier. I hadn’t gone ten feet when the first heavy raindrop hit, and the wind swirled. The darkness made it harder to stick to the path — but even more essential. More drops fell, a staccato patter on the hard brick.

A gust of wind struck suddenly, viciously, and I lost my footing, stumbling, spinning, and going down on one knee. I was blind — the night was inky, and the rain came fast and furious, pelting me hard. For the first time since the anger had overwhelmed me and I kicked Sue down the stairs, I was frightened.

I had to get up. I had to get home. But . . . I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. The lightning flashed, so close it raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck, and the thunder came just seconds behind, a wall of sound. A sob escaped my throat.

“Kelly.”

I heard his voice. It must have been in my head, for the thunder and screaming wind would have blocked anything but the loudest shout, and his voice had been steady and calm.

He was standing in front of me, hand outstretched, looking as dapper as he had when he picked me up hours earlier, wholly unaffected by the storm that was finally unleashing its wild demons on us. His smile was warm, and there was love in his eyes. “Come on, Kelly. Let me walk you home.”

I seized his hand and stood, buffeted by wind and rain. Then his arm was around my waist, and I felt safe once more.

The lightning came again and I saw the Gallagher house, fifty yards away. I must have gotten turned around when I fell. The flash of light illuminated the kitchen windows, an open door, and a figure on the stoop, a pale, crazed face glaring out into the night. Her shriek made it to us above the storm, or through it. ““Damn you! Damn you both to hell!”

The darkness came again, and Bill took me in hand, guiding me down the path as surely as if it were still broad daylight. The brick path ended at the ridge walk, and we turned left to head for my place. Though the storm raged around us, though the surf came in so hard that splashes of salt water spun all the way up the ridge, in Bill’s arms I was calm and safe.

We had no more words. I guess we didn’t need them. I had seen what had to be seen, and done what had to be done. At my back door, we kissed goodnight like teenagers after their first date. It wasn’t goodbye, not at all. Everything that had ever been between us, the hopes and joys and heartaches and desperate loss, were only prologue, after all. We were bound together by love.

Against that, death itself is only a speed bump.

~o~O~o~

Spring had come early this year. As always, it started tentatively — a few crocuses daring to flash some color; light green buds beginning to show on the maples; new growth appearing on the forsythia — growth that would turn into yellow flame in maybe another week.

I wouldn’t be here to see it. I had been happy to sell the house to the same family that had purchased the Gallagher place. Miguel and Anita Hermosa had a large, sprawling family — six kids, aged twenty-two down to nine — and the eldest, improbably named Washington, would be moving into my house with his new bride, a raven-haired, doe-eyed beauty named Theresa. Miguel and Anita wanted to keep them close.

As I thought of the couple who would be living here in a few days’ time, I smiled to myself. They would bring love back into this house, as Miguel and Anita and their boisterous offspring would restore it to Bill’s place. The strong, deep, wondrous love that would wash away the sins of the past, and heal the old wounds of fear and anger . . . and wrath. Wrath that had, at least in part, been mine.

The police had found Sue the morning after the storm, clammy, cold, and incoherent, sprawled in the middle of the field behind her house. In the fury of the storm, the confusion of rain and wind and lightning, she appeared to have fallen on her father’s unmarked grave. Investigation had confirmed the facts that had been in her email, but she might never go to trial. Unless and until her wits returned, she would be closely held in a mental institution.

It was enough. The rage that had seared my heart that night passed with the coming of the storm, and I was human once again. I had no need to hear a judge or jury proclaim her guilt and render judgment. She had lost her freedom, her good name, and the house of which she had been so sinfully proud. I had the satisfaction of knowing that the proceeds from the sale went to Kelly’s heirs down in Georgia. No doubt they had been stunned at the windfall.

Kelly. That was how I thought of her, now. Bill had said her name in the heart of the storm, and I had known it to be right. I had woken the next morning once again caressed by her beautiful nightgown, but nothing else of hers remained.

Nothing physical, at any rate. My vivid sense of her presence was gone and I hadn’t had any more visitations. Yet the memories we had shared stayed with me, and my intimate experience of her open and passionate heart affected me deeply, in ways I was only just beginning to process. I knew, now, what life could be.

What it should be.

I had sought out this remote place like a rabbit seeking the safety of the deepest burrow. After twelve years completely on my own, I was running from a world that seemed to offer nothing but work, money, and canned soup in a cold apartment at the end of a long day. What I had discovered, instead, was that the solitude I had sought could only provide a respite. Life needs more, demands more, and, ultimately, gives more. Kelly and Bill had understood that.

I had visited both their graves, of course, and felt nothing there but peace. Bill’s remains had been exhumed, and once the Medical Examiner had completed an exhaustive investigation that confirmed the cause of death, his body was reinterred in the family plot. The last of the Gallaghers, save one. But Kelly wasn’t far away, really. It was a small town, after all, and even with the passage of years, the cemetery wasn’t all that large.

A straight path led between their respective resting places, and roughly at the midway point there was a granite bench under a tall, gnarled oak, a hoary veteran of two hundred winters. I liked to think of the two of them sitting there together, sharing their wordless communion. The warmth, the love, the sense of completeness I had felt, when Kelly was within me, and Bill was at my side. I imagined her head resting on his broad shoulder as he bent to kiss the long, dark hair that was, at last, all her own.

It was time to go. The car was packed and the gas tank full. I had brought little with me when I came, and would leave with even less. But I was ready to return to my own world, eager to start life anew. I checked my makeup, grabbed my purse, and walked out the door, shutting it softly behind me.

The end.

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