17. Dead Hour
17
Dead Hour
I CURLED MY fingers around the wrought iron gate to the cemetery. It was already locked—I forgot that it closed most evenings at 6
P.M.
—and I didn’t really want to walk the graveyard tonight, but I didn’t know where else to go. There was a storm rolling in. Lightning lit the bulbous clouds in the distance, and there was a distinct smell in the air.
Damp and fresh, like clean laundry hung out to dry.
Thunder rumbled across the hills of the cemetery.
“A bit early for one of those moonwalks, isn’t it?” asked a familiar voice to my left. I glanced over, and there was Ben, his hands in his pockets, looking a little worse for wear. His tie was a little askew, the top button of his shirt undone, exposing enough of his collar and a necklace hanging there—with a ring on it.
A golden wedding ring.
His? Or someone else’s? I didn’t know why, but I was startled by it. I really knew nothing about him, did I? I didn’t know why it bothered me. I never cared before what kind of jewelry ghosts
wore.
Silly
, I chastised myself, letting go of the gate, and turned to him. “Yeah. Storm’s coming in, anyway.”
He inclined his head toward the clouds. “You can tell?”
“You can smell it in the air. Want to walk me back to the inn?”
“It’d be an honor, Florence.”
Again, he said my name, and again each vowel curled a chill up my spine in a not-too-unpleasant sort of way. It was actually very pleasant. I liked the way he said my name. I liked that he even
said
it. Lee only ever called me
bunny
this and
bunny
that.
But oh, what power there was when Ben said
my name.
A gust of wind scattered a few green leaves. I pushed my hair behind my ear, to keep it out of my face, while it blew right through him. It didn’t ruffle his hair, or his clothes. He was stagnant, forever like this. A portrait now, something never to be changed. Like my dad—forever sixty-four. His experiences ended. His life frozen.
Ben put his hands in his pockets and began, “You know, I’ve been thinking about our conversation in the graveyard.”
“About how to help you move on?”
“Yes, and I was thinking that perhaps the reason I’m here has nothing to do with the manuscript,” he proposed. He turned to me and said, very adamantly, “Maybe I’m here to help
you
.”
I stared at him. Blinked. And then burst out laughing.
He looked indignant. “It’s not that funny.”
“It definitely is!” I howled, clutching my sides. Because if
that
wasn’t the plot of a rom-com, I didn’t know what was. “Oh my god—sorry. I just—that can’t be right. What would I need help with?”
“Love. Help you believe in it again.”
My laughter quickly died in my throat. It suddenly wasn’t funny anymore. It was personal. I pursed my lips. “You’re not the Ghost of Christmas Past, Ben.”
“But what if—”
“That’s not how this works,” I dismissed. “I’ve never heard of a ghost coming back to help someone alive. It’s always me helping you. Them. Whatever.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“I don’t need help with love. I’m perfectly content with my eyes wide open. It’s not me stuck being unalive, it’s you. So,
I
need to help
you
. Make sense?”
“Yeah,” he said, not looking at me, clearly thinking that I was wrong. “I guess.”
“Good. And I will get to the manuscript, I promise. I just—I need time.”
“Well, you have plenty of that now,” he replied wryly, and I winced a bit. He wasn’t wrong.
We passed the ice cream shop, where a kid and her father sat at the table by the window sharing an ice cream sundae. When I was little, and Carver and Alice were littler, Dad used to take me to the parlor and split with me a chocolate bowl with sprinkles on top.
I wished I could ask Dad about how to help Ben. He would’ve known. The only lead I had was the manuscript but . . . I didn’t know how to fix that. And if that
was
why Ben was sticking around, then I was afraid we were both shit out of luck.
And I was annoyed that Ben would even . . . that he would even
propose
that I . . . that he was here to—
Argh
!
I tried love. It didn’t work. The end. There were bigger things in my life that I had to tackle than something so frivolous.
“Did you find what you were looking for at that bar?” he asked after a moment.
“Somehow, yes. Managed to book Elvis for the funeral.”
He gave a start. “Presley? Is he . . . a
ghost
?” he asked in an almost whisper.
Oh, why was that charming? Why was that so
charming
?
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning, because I was still annoyed with him. “No”—I took out a poster from my back pocket and unfolded it to show him exactly which Elvis I was referring to—“but he’s the next best thing.”
He held a hand over his mouth to hide a laugh. “An
impersonator
? For a
funeral
?”
“You didn’t know Dad,” I replied, pocketing the poster again.
“He sounds like a riot.”
I smiled at the thought of Dad going to watch Bruno perform before his Thursday night poker games—and then my smile faded as I remembered that he never would again. I folded my arms over my chest and said curtly, “He
was
.”
“Right—yes. Sorry.”
We walked the next three blocks in silence, passing the bookstore with a poster of
When the Dead Sing
by Lee Marlow, and I lingered only for a moment. Only long enough for Ben to glance back to see why I’d stopped, and then I made myself put one foot in front of the other, and ignore the poster, the release date. Only a few more months before the whole world read my story ruined by his words.
“Oh, look! Annie’s books.”
“What?”
I stared through the window at the stacks of romance novels, with Ann Nichols’s new books at the top. The ones I wrote—
Midnight Matinee, A Rake’s Guide
—all of them. Dad walked by this bookstore every day on his daily lunch breaks to Fudge’s. He must’ve seen this display, these books. I wondered if he ever ducked
into the store and bought one. I wondered if Mom loved the dry humor in Nichols’s new ones. Mom and I never really talked about books after mine failed. I didn’t want to talk about books at all after that.
I turned to keep walking, when Ben backtracked and nodded his head toward the door. “Let’s go in.”
“Why?”
“Because I like bookstores,” he replied, and stepped backward through the closed door.
I had half a mind to not follow him, but a part of me wondered what section he gravitated toward. Literary? Horror? I couldn’t even imagine him in the romance aisle, towering and broody in his pristine button-down shirts and ironed trousers.
The bell above the door rang as I stepped into the cozy bookstore. The woman behind the counter, Mrs. Holly, had been there for twenty-odd years. She looked up from her book with a smile. “Well, I’ll be damned! Florence Day.”
Even my local booksellers back in Jersey didn’t know my name, but it seemed like a decade away couldn’t erase me from small-town memory. Everywhere I went it was “Holy smokes, Florence Day!” like I was Mairmont’s local celebrity. Well, I guess I was.
“Hi, Mrs. Holly,” I greeted.
“What’re you in for?”
Have you seen a ghost float through, by any chance? Six foot sexy, with just the slightest hint of nerd?
I wanted to ask, but instead went with, “Just looking.”
“Could I help?”
“I don’t think so,” I began, before my eyes caught the pop-up on the counter for
When the Dead Sing
by Lee Marlow. PRE-ORDER TODAY! the cardboard stand-up announced, with the picture of
the cover—a run-down Victorian mansion with a Wednesday Addams–looking girl standing in front of it, unsmiling. From one of the windows peered a ghoul of some sort, demonic eyes and sharp teeth.
Riveting.
“The author must’ve never visited a small town before in his
life
,” Mrs. Holly said when she noticed what had grabbed my attention. She shook her head. “One of my booksellers
loved
it, though. I don’t get why.”
“Noted,” I replied.
Of course he couldn’t write small towns. He’d never lived in one—he thought every small town was either Stars Hollow or Silent Hill. There was no in-between.
“You write better than he ever could,” she went on.
I stiffened.
“You know I still sell your book! Not as often these days, but I do. It’s a pity it went out of print already. Barely made it to paperback.”
“I didn’t like the paperback anyway,” I replied with a bit of bitter humor, because the paperback had been so ugly I couldn’t imagine anyone picking it up on their own. You knew a publisher had given up on a book when they let their design intern make a book cover.
I told Mrs. Holly I wanted to browse, and made my way back through the aisles of memoirs and self-help, past sci-fi and fantasy, to the back corner of the store where the paperback romances were. And there was Ben, looking through the used romances with cracked spines and dog-eared pages.
“Weren’t you a horror editor?” I asked as I slid up to him. “Why’d you come to romance?”
“My imprint shuttered.” He attempted to take a book off the
shelf, but his hand fell right through it. He frowned, having forgot, and sighed.
“That can’t be the
only
reason.”
“I read a book once that changed me. And I realized I wanted to help writers write more books like that, and find more books like that, and give them the chance they wouldn’t have otherwise.”
“Must’ve been a great book. Bestseller? Have I heard of it?”
His mouth twisted into a grin, as if I’d said something funny. “If I’ve learned anything as an editor over my last ten years, it’s that you never really hear of the good ones.”
I roamed my gaze across the shelves—the Christina Laurens and the Nora Robertses and the Rebekah Wetherspoons and the Julia Quinns and the Casey McQuistons—until my eyes settled on the most familiar spine. I took it out for him. There were only two on the shelf. I wondered how much longer Mrs. Holly would be able to stock it before she couldn’t find it anymore.
Ardently Yours.
I smoothed my hand across the cover, across the embellished font and the laminated gloss. I remembered how much I loved this book. How every word sounded like a heartbeat, how every turn of phrase was a love song.
“You said you read mine—was it one of those you never hear about?” I asked quietly. “One of the good ones?”
He didn’t answer at first. I glanced up to see if he’d even heard me, and to my surprise he wasn’t even looking at the book. He was looking at—at
me
, with this soft, quiet sadness that made my stomach twist.
“Yes,” he replied, as sure and certain as a sunrise. “It was.”
My eyes burned, and I quickly looked away, and wiped the tears with the back of my hand. They were words I didn’t think I needed to hear. Lee Marlow had never said as much—he said it
was fluffy, it was lighthearted. It was candy, though even candy could be good—sweet and flavorful and exactly what you needed exactly when you needed it. But he never said as much.
Rose never understood why I was so wrapped up in what Lee thought of my books, but didn’t you want someone you loved to respect what you wrote? Lee was supposed to be the closest person I had. He was supposed to tell me it was good, that it was worthy—and that
I
was worthy of that praise.
But instead it came from a stranger I barely knew.
Ben reminded me of Ann in that way. She’d sat down at my table, and with a certainty as if she already knew that my words were worthy, she asked me to write her romances. She gave me a gift I never thought I’d get. And through her I wrote the stories I wanted to read, and it was so powerful—
I took a deep breath, and put my book back on the shelf. “I don’t know how to finish Ann’s manuscript.”
He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t know how. I . . . I don’t think I can. But . . .” I swallowed the knot in my throat, and said with certainty, “I’ll try.”
He was quiet for one heartbeat, then two, then three. And then I saw his shined loafers stop in front of me, and when I looked up he had bent down a little, his hands in his pockets, and he was smiling, “Thank you. Annie would like that. And I’ll help you however I can.”
“Oh? Gonna write the happily ever after for me?”
“I can give you some ideas.”
And I recognized that kind of smile, finally. The kind you didn’t really show to strangers. The kind you kept to yourself because the world had been shit, and your heart had been broken so many times by different people and places and stories. He had
stories, too. The wedding ring on a chain around his neck. The way he fit his hands into his pockets to look as small as possible. The reason he loved romance.
And for the first time since I cried about Lee in Rose’s matchbox-sized apartment with a bottle of wine and a half-eaten pizza, my hair still wet with rain, I wanted to learn a new story. I wanted to read the first chapter in the life of Ben Andor and figure out the words that built his heart and soul. And okay, yeah, maybe also his six-foot-three frame, but honestly even if I
wanted
to climb him, I couldn’t because he was very much a ghost and I would go right through him.
I wasn’t very good at climbing, anyway.
We left the bookstore after I’d bought the new Sarah MacLean historical romance, and Ben walked me home the last two blocks. By then the storm was at the edge of town.
“So, in the spirit of being a mediator,” I began, pausing at the gate to the inn, “I’m obligated to ask if you would like me to pass on a message to anyone.”
He cocked his head. “As in anyone I’ve left behind?”
“Yes. Parents or, um, your grandmother, right? A significant other?” I said that part a bit quieter, thinking about the wedding ring around his neck. It wasn’t like . . . I mean, we weren’t . . . this wasn’t—I wasn’t
fishing
.
“Um.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I . . . well.” Then he took a deep breath and said, “No.”
I gave a start. “No one?”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.”
I forced myself to look away. Down the street. Seaburn was walking the mayor, and I waved to them as they passed.
No one
.
There was a weight to those words. I’d always operated alone, but I knew I had family—Alice and my dad and Rose and Carver. But to be really alone. I’d spent my life with safety nets. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to walk a tightrope without them, and then when you finally fell . . .
No one.
I tried to not flinch away from the thought, but it stayed with me. Because loneliness was the kind of ghost that haunted you long after you were dead. It stood over your plot in the cemetery where a lone name sat carved in marble. It sat with your urn. It was the wind that carried your ashes when no one claimed your body.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, once Seaburn and the mayor were out of earshot. “I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t expect you to, but don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does—”
“No, it doesn’t,” he interrupted, and placed his hands on the wrought iron fence, and leaned against it. “It doesn’t matter, Florence, it really doesn’t. Everything is in my will—I wasn’t a fool. I’m a thirty-six-year-old bachelor whose close relatives are
all
dead, and I share my apartment with a cat named Dolly Purrton.”
“You do
not
.”
“I do. She’s perfect. And my will was pretty straightforward in regard to her,” he added. “I had planned my entire life. How I was going to live it. What I was going to do, and when. Everything had its place. It was neat and orderly.”
“Like your desk.”
He gave a shrug. “I’m not great with surprises. I don’t—
didn’t
—take chances. I didn’t take risks. On anything—or anyone.” He hesitated, and then corrected himself, “
Almost
anyone. And I was fine with that life. I’d even planned on what would happen should
I die before forty, I just . . . didn’t think it’d happen. I would’ve expedited a lot of my long-term plans,” he added, trying to joke.
I didn’t find it funny, for once. “You can’t plan for everything.”
“Trust me, I know that now,” he said, and there was this hardness in his voice that made me think that it was something he regretted a lot recently. “I thought, before I died, I would at least find . . .” He shook his head. “But of course not.”
“Find what?”
He slid his cool brown gaze toward me. “The one thing you don’t believe in, Florence.” Then he shook his head and said, “I guess if everyone found their big love, then the world wouldn’t be such a terrible place most of the time, eh?”
“Ben . . .”
“I don’t need your pity.”
“Pity?” I mock gasped, undoing the latch to the gate. “Whatever gave you that idea, Benji Andor? I was just going to welcome you to the Singles Club, it’s not so bad here. Some people even like it! I envy them.”
He snorted and walked through the gate. “I do, too.”
At the counter inside, Dana was reading a novel by Courtney Milan at the desk, and I waved at them as I passed up toward my room.
“Good night!” I called.
Ben said, “Sweet dreams.”
Dana said, “Night!”
I left up the stairs and went to my room and fell onto my bed.
That night, as the storm blew over Mairmont, I tried to listen to the dead sing through the trees, but as the wind bent the limbs and scraped across the rooftop, all I could hear was the rain. And all I could think about was Ben Andor in the bookstore, bending ever so slightly to me with a lopsided smile, thanking me for trying.
No one had ever thanked me for that before. For trying. Even though I was failing. Even though Ann’s expectations loomed over me like this huge, dark thundercloud. I didn’t want to disappoint her, and I was beginning to realize how much I didn’t want to disappoint
Ben
, either. But more than that, though, I wanted to finish that manuscript so he’d know that he wasn’t some empty Sharpie unable to leave a mark. He left them wherever he went, even if he couldn’t see them.
Even if no one told him, “Thank you for trying.”