Songs of Love & Death

Whirling, I raised the bat, but there was no one standing behind me. I jerked back to the mirror. Sure enough, he was still there, gazing at me from inside the glass. I slowly lowered the bat. What the hell was going on? Was I hallucinating? Overtired? Or is it a ghost? whispered a little voice in my mind.

Ghost. A ghost. I tried the word on my tongue as I gazed into the man’s eyes. And then I recognized him from the photo in the living room. I was staring at May’s son. Galen, who was long, long dead.

NOW THAT HE had her attention, how could he keep her from running scared? He pressed one hand against the glass and smiled softly. The last thing he wanted to do was chase her away. As he watched her struggle to believe, he noticed Circe saunter up to her mistress. The cat casually leaped onto the vanity and stretched up, her front paws leaning against the frame of the mirror. She gazed into the mirror at him, her luminous eyes almond shaped and glowing, and then let out a hiss and lightly leaped into Laurel’s arms.

Laurel stared at him, then at the cat in her arms. She whispered something—he couldn’t fully hear, being stuck in the mirror—but when she looked at him again, her gaze was soft, and a flicker of a smile rested on her lips. She shifted the cat to her left arm and raised her right hand, slowly bringing it up to meet his on the other side of the glass.

A shiver raced through him—a whisper of song on the wind. It was enough for one night. He flashed her a pale smile, then faded from sight.

AT FIRST, I only saw him in the mirror, but as I got used to his presence, Galen began to show up in other places. I’d turn around and he’d be in the corner of the kitchen. I’d be out in the garden and see him watching from the attic window. He never left the house, though, and I had the feeling he was trapped.

Circe didn’t like him, but cats and spirits didn’t mix, so I wasn’t too worried. She followed me around the house, seldom leaving my side at night.

As the weeks went by, I kept meaning to broach the subject with May, but I wasn’t sure how to begin. Hey, I see your dead son rambling around my house… What gives with that? just didn’t cut it. And whenever May came over, Galen made himself scarce.

Meanwhile, I pumped her with questions. If Galen was going to hang around my house, I wanted to know as much as I could about the ghostly man who always had a cheerful smile for me.

“How did Galen die?” I asked one day after we’d been talking about the renovations he’d made on the house.

She pressed her lips together. “The doctor… the doctor said he had a heart attack. But Galen was strong, he was in shape and kept his health up. One day…” Her voice cracked, but she waved away the tissue I offered her. “One day, I came over to see why he hadn’t shown up for breakfast. It was the morning after Halloween. His body was on the floor in the bedroom. He… just died.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, wondering if that was why he’d come back. Maybe he wanted May to know something. “What was he like?”

May sniffed back her tears as she picked up the rolling pin. She was attempting to teach me how to make pie crust. Baking wasn’t one of my strong suits, but with a tree full of apples growing ripe in the side yard, it just seemed wrong to let them go to waste.

“He was a good man,” she finally said. “He was the son every mother dreams of having. Strong, handsome, good hearted, loved animals. He never had a date because all the girls wanted to just be friends. They’d cry on his shoulder about the men who treated them badly, then go right back for more abuse.”

She shook her head. “I’ll never understand,” she added, then stopped abruptly, looking at me. “I’m sorry…”

I stared at the pie crust as she gently flipped it over the rolling pin, then spread it over the deep pie dish. How could I explain? I’d been explaining for months to people… and making excuses for years to myself.

“Sometimes… you believe what you’re told. That nobody else will ever want you. That you’re worthless. You believe it because you grow up hearing it over and over. Jason was a god in my eyes. He acted—he told me—he was doing me a favor by loving me. None of my mother’s string of boyfriends were role models, and I was so shy that nobody else ever asked me out. How could I avoid falling for a man who I thought could actually love me? Who promised to love me forever?”

I busied myself with the teakettle, then gave up and looked at her bleakly. “It ended the day after our honeymoon. And I was so embarrassed, I could never tell anyone just how bad our marriage was.”

May laid a gentle hand on my arm. “I know, child. I know. I understand.”

“Not all of us are strong,” I whispered, dropping several tea bags in the chintz pot. “Not all of us know how to be strong.”