21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

T he rain quickly soaks through my clothes. The trees curl above me, as if they know what I’ve lost and are trying to protect me from the storm, but even they can’t stop the earth from dampening beneath me. It barely registers to me how the ground under my knees is turning to mud, how the cold water is chilling my limbs, how my hair falls in limp clumps down my back.

Henry is gone. He was dead before, but now he is dead and gone and there is nothing left of him, not even his little stone house. Even Spectre has disappeared, as if his animal essence was tied to Henry and now he too has vanished into the unknown.

Not even dust , Henry had said, and it’s true. Mallory had left a trace of her physical form, for however long it had lasted in the house before it too disappeared. Henry was just… gone. It’s like the way he died back in 1929: there one second, gone the next.

And I’m here. My own form might have started to flicker, caught in the veil between worlds, but without it being tied to Henry, I clearly have clung to this mortal one, not far enough gone to get pulled into whatever lies beyond.

And it’s here, in the muddy earth of the forest, that I lay in the footprint of a house that no longer exists and I let myself sob. I feel dead; I feel painfully alive. I want oblivion; I don’t want to be a ghost.

I killed Henry.

He said it wasn’t that, that he was already dead, but that’s how it feels. It was my mouth that formed the words, my lips that pronounced them.

I cry until my throat is raw. I feel sick with the feeling of regret, of loss, of the permanence and untouchable separation of death.

A boom of thunder, particularly loud, draws me back into myself and my body’s pressing, very-human needs. I roll to my side and wretch, but nothing comes up. It’s been a few days since I’ve eaten anything other than the bare minimum my half-ghost body had let me consume, and my stomach cramps up in complaint.

How long have I been out here? I’ve started to shake and my muscles are stiff from cold. I’m on the edge of delirium, wildly out of control of my body, emotions, thoughts. They dart between my fragmented dreams that have become nightmares, between the ecstasy of being in love and the tragedy of losing it forever. I manage to stumble to my feet and stagger out to where the forest breaks into the open farmland. From here, I can see the strange storm tint of the sky, darker than it should be for a late summer’s evening. The wind whips through the fields, pushing my soaking hair into a tangle of disheveled curls and snarls.

Knowing that Caro and Javier are waiting for me at the house moves me forward, but by the time I walk up the driveway, I feel as if I’m on the verge of collapse. The lack of nutrients, the adrenaline and sorrow, the weather, the heartbreak—it’s all too much.

Caro and Javier burst from the house as I approach, and when my legs start to give out, they make it in time to grab my arms.

“Did you do it?” Caro asks as she hauls me up. “You did, didn’t you? You’re living and breathing! You’re not a ghost anymore!”

A sob slips from me. “Yeah, I’m here,” I say. “Henry, though—” I can’t finish my sentence. Javier helps me up the porch stairs while Caroline opens the door, and when we finally make it inside, I let myself slip to the ground again.

“He’s gone.”

“I’m so sorry,” Caroline says, crouching in front of me. “I’m so, so sorry.” She leans forward to wrap me in a hug, and her skin feels hot against the clammy cold of my own. I hear Javier say, “I’ll get a towel,” and the sound of his feet against the ancient floorboards as he moves away.

“I feel like I killed him. I feel like I’m a murderer,” I confess. My voice wades to a whisper. “I feel like a ghost inside.”

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats again, and I know it’s the only thing anyone can say to me. What phrase or platitude could make this better? Time heals all wounds? It’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all? I know, intellectually, that this feeling won’t last a lifetime; it doesn’t make it any better now.

“Dry off a bit, get warm,” Javier says, draping me with bath towels. “You’re soaking wet. And shaking.”

“We need to make a fire,” I tell him. “We—I have to burn the book.”

It’s clutched in my hands. Why should it be the only thing to last the breaking of the curse? Like me, it’s sopping wet. If I opened it, I’m sure the ink would be running and the words indecipherable. Still, I promised to burn it.

And burn it I will.

“Okay,” Javier agrees, concern written all over his features.

“I promised,” I say, as if that explains everything.

“It will take a minute to light. Sit tight, okay?”

I nod, shivering.

“Oh! We made you a PB now, all that’s left is the howl of the wind. It lulls me to sleep, I think, because when there is an abrupt banging against the front door, my eyes flash open and I can’t remember ever closing them.

Caroline and Javier must still be downstairs, because I can hear the door opening, the change in volume from calm to something else. There is another voice—a third.

I’m out of bed, making my way to the stairs on stocking feet before Caroline even yells my name.

Even from a floor away, I know that voice.

“Rency!” Caroline yells, right as my feet slip on the curved edge of a step. My feet fly out from underneath me, but my grip on the railing keeps me from plummeting down the entire flight. Still, I hit my hip and Caroline curses, rushing up to me.

“Are you okay?” she asks, but I can’t pause, can’t stop.

I know that voice.

I blow by her, mumbling something and narrowly avoiding slipping on the stairs again. At first, I can’t see who the visitor is because they’re on the ground, obscured by the same towels I’d been given myself when I first came out of the rain. Javier is bent over the figure, and all I can see is two bare feet and dark, wet hair.

“Henry,” I try to say, but it comes out as a croak, the word stuck in my throat. It feels raw from all of the crying, and saying his name again threatens me again with the shattering of disappointment, of loss.

“ This is Henry?” Javier says, turning to look back at Caroline and me. “I thought you said…”

The movement is enough that I can see the person’s face. And even though his eyes are closed, even though he, impossibly, is even more pale than when he was a ghost, it’s him.

It’s Henry.

“Is he dead?” I gasp, not even wincing when my knees hit the hardwood of the floor. My hands are already at his neck, feeling for a pulse. He feels cold; his skin is clammy and his clothes are soaked. Do his lips look blue? I can’t find a pulse, what—

“No,” Javier reassures me. “He knocked on the door and, when we opened it, collapsed.” Javier slides my hands away from their feverish assessment to check his pulse again. “Pulse is strong.”

“Then why isn’t he awake?” I say, on the edge of hysteria. “If he’s here and he’s alive, then why does he look like he’s dead?”

“Just give him a minute, Rency. Take a deep breath, okay? I’m going to get some blankets for him—he’s even colder than you were. Hold his hand or something.” When I don’t move, Javier physically brings my hands to one of Henry’s, wrapping them around his cold fingers.

My brain is not processing anything, it seems. All I can think of is that this isn’t real, that it’s a nightmare that has replaced the strange time-folding dreams I’d experienced when Henry was still trapped in the veil.

But if this is a dream, why can I feel the cold of his fingers gripped in my hand?

Why is the water from his hair soaking into my leggings?

Why are his eyes flitting open, startlingly beautiful in seafoam green?

Why are his lips forming words, his hand slipping from my own to touch my face?

“Rency,” he says, his own voice raspy. “Why are you crying?”

I sob out an unbelieving laugh. “Because you died , Henry. I saw it with my own eyes. And now—is this even real?”

“It better be,” Henry says, reaching up to wipe away a tear from my cheek.

“It is,” Javier says, returning with Caro and an armload of blankets. “Or else, I’m a ghost too. How do you feel?”

“Like I got hit by lightning and then became a ghost for a century and then flashed back into existence in the middle of a summer thunderstorm,” he says, not taking his eyes off me.

“So, not very good, then?”

“No. I feel amazing. Because I’m alive.” His eyes seem to be looking straight into my soul, and now I know that, I see tears in them. “Alive and in love. I love you, Rency Faber. I’ll say it again and again now, until I die again.”

And that’s when it really hits me. Henry is here, he’s breathing . I practically throw myself on him, wrapping him as well in my arms as I can while he’s lying on the floor of the foyer. “Shhh, it’s okay,” Henry says as I sob. “It’s all going to be okay. I’m here now.”

“Come on, Rency, don’t lose it now,” I hear Javier say. “Let your man get up off the floor before you maul him, okay?”

“Leave her alone, Javi, she thought he was dead,” Caroline tells him. “You’d do the same thing if it was me.”

“He was dead,” I insist. Henry’s hand rubs comforting, firm circles on my back. “He was dead.”

“I was,” Henry agrees. “But now I’m not.”

It’s another minute or two before I can be convinced to peel myself off him. I try to help Javier pull Henry up, but my body must be still recovering from my brief stint of ghosthood because I’m as weak as a kitten and Caro has to step in.

I anxiously trail after the trio as they help Henry wobble up the stairs. He’s notably worse off than me—the moment he has the chance, he sits down on my bed. The quilt creases under him and I nearly start to cry again, remembering how many times before he’d sat in the same spot without any evidence of his existence at all.

“Sit tight, my man. I’ll get you some spare clothes. You’re… well, they’ll sort of fit.” Javier was fit, but Henry had an inch or two on him in height and shoulder breadth.

“Rency and I will get you something to eat,” Caro says, tugging me back towards the stairs. I’m loathe to go—what if I look away and he vanishes—but Caro is insistent.

“I’ll be here when you return,” Henry says, a smile on his face. “I promise.”

Down in the kitchen, Caro sits me down and shoves the second half of my PB& J in front of me. “Eat this before you disappear entirely,” she says. “Seeing Henry like that is freaking me out. You’re probably not much better.”

“He has been a ghost for nearly a hundred years,” I point out. Still, I bite into the sandwich.

“Yeah well, he was dead. You were alive. Eat that and then we’ll make a stack of them.” Caro’s whipping open cabinets, presumably looking for possible sources of protein other than peanuts. She finds my box of granola bars right as I’m finishing my last bite and she holds them up triumphantly .

“Perfect. Now I’m going to make him some tea while you sit there and here—” She places the peanut butter and jelly ingredients in front of me. “You can make your not-a-ghost-husband a sandwich.”

My mind turns over that phrase as I shakily whip peanut butter and preserves all over the slices of white bread. My husband. Would Henry want to be married still, now that he was alive with decades ahead of him to live?

The kettle’s whistle snaps me out of my disjointed daydream wandering: me in a white dress, a ring on Henry’s finger too, Henry and I tangled up in sheets as husband and wife.

“Good, you made three. Let’s go, then,” she says, fingers hooked through two mugs and a jumble of tea and granola boxes tucked under her arm. I nearly fall in my scramble to get back to Henry.

Back in my room, Javi has a pulse oximeter on Henry’s index finger.

“Ugh, just wait until you officially have that ‘Dr.’ in front of your name and we’ll never hear the end of it,” Caro teases, sliding the two mugs of hot water onto the nightstand.

I usually don’t miss a chance to tease Javier about his approaching graduation either, but I’m caught off guard by Henry’s change of wardrobe. In Javier’s tapered soccer pants and white tee shirt, Henry looks positively modern—even his haircut looks updated somehow, like he’s European-tousled and not a 1920s working boy. And while he had been focused on whatever Javier had been saying when we walked in, now his eyes follow me across the room.

“You’ll be happy to know that my expertise is going to come in handy if Henry has any medical issues. You know, since he’s a ghost who has no medical record or insurance.”

“Former ghost,” Caroline interjects. “But you’re right. What’s the verdict, then, Dr. Javi?”

I sit in the same spot on the bed I almost always do—back against the wall, positioned a few feet from Henry’s location. After weeks of keeping our distance, it feels natural to maintain the space.

“Based on the few minutes of assessment I’ve done, he seems fine. Although, he does have some cuts on the bottom of his feet that he or I should clean.”

“Fine enough,” Henry agrees before turning around to grip my ankle, giving it a bit of a tug. “Come closer, Rency,” he murmurs.

I wonder if I am blushing as I follow his directions, because in my periphery I see Caro and Javi exchange glances.

“As much as I want to stay here and hear every single detail of what happened, Javier and I are going to go now,” Caroline says.

“Use this on your cuts. And eat that food,” Javi chimes in, setting some items on the dresser even as Caro is practically shooing him and his little bag of medical tools out the door. “And drink a lot of water!”

The door closes behind them, and then Henry and I are alone .

Together.

We’ve spent a hundred hours together over the summer, almost every single one of them alone, but never like this. Never alive together. Never without something between us, holding us back and keeping us apart.

Henry knows it, too, and doesn’t miss his chance to pull me closer to him. He wraps his arms around me and he’s actually warm now. Solid, breathing . Alive.

“I love you, Rency Faber,” he says, repeating his words from earlier.

“I love you too, Henry Bakker.” I’ve never doubted anything less than that statement. Henry pulls back but doesn’t completely remove himself from my side, instead reaching past me to grab one of the mugs of hot water.

“Caro brought tea bags too,” I say. “Want one?”

“No, this is fine,” he says, sipping the clear liquid. “I just… I feel very strange, being in a body again. There are things about it that I’d forgotten. Well, I cognitively remembered them, just forgot the visceralness of them.”

“Being caught out in the rain can do that to you,” I agree, thinking of my own shaky, soaked trek back to the house. “But Henry—What happened? How are you here?”

Henry shrugs. “We were in the house. And I felt… well, I felt as if every single muscle in my non-existent body was suddenly spasming and seizing and burning, and then I blacked out. When I came too, I was in the exact same spot where I’d died, back in 1929. ”

“In front of the church?” I ask, mentally calculating the distance. “That’s got to be at least five miles away.”

“A little less than that, I think.” He sips from his mug as my jaw drops. “You walked all the way from there in the thunderstorm? Without shoes?”

“Ran part of it, actually, although it hurt like anything.” At my shocked expression, he reaches back over to set down his mug. Holding my face in both hands, we lock eyes. “Rency Faber. I died and came back to life. I lived more lonely lifetimes than any man ever was intended to live. And knowing you, the woman I love, was here, in your grandmother’s house? Thinking I was dead, mourning my death? I wish I could’ve run the whole way. Cuts on my feet are nothing compared to the pain of years of loneliness, to the knowledge that I’d be leaving you, to knowing I couldn’t be with you. And still, I’d live a dozen of those lifetimes over again just to spend this one with you.”

And then, he kisses me.

I thought that the planet ceased to rotate when we kissed for the first time, but how this feels is beyond planetary movement: it’s a whole new world. It’s not just the warmth of his skin or the way his hand reaches up so that my damp hair can fall around my shoulders and he can run his fingers through it. It’s not just feeling his breath on my skin or when he tilts us down and his body presses me into the mattress with firm reality.

No, it’s that now I’m empty of the hopelessness I’d felt before, that desperate sorrow. Now, I’m nothing but hope. Hope and love. Because Henry is alive, and I’m alive, and life isn’t perfect but it’s not about being perfect at all. It’s about taking risks for what you believe in. For being brave when you’re scared. For loving big, even when that love is a risk.

Time seems to fold in on itself. My breathing and Henry’s breathing are synched. I’m lost in him. It takes every ounce of self-control I have to pull away.

“You need to eat something,” I tell him. He groans, kissing up my neck. It’s another few minutes before I have the wherewithal to try to get him to eat again. This time, he reluctantly agrees. We sit up, backs propped against the wall, and I pull the plate of sandwiches over toward us.

“Have you ever had one?” I ask, passing him the plate. I’m loathe to admit it, but it feels heavier than it should, belying my exhaustion.

“No,” he says, taking one from the plate. He bites into it and—“Oh wow. Why is this so delicious?”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” I joke. “Our food might be processed, but it’s also very tasty.” I pass him his water, knowing that he’ll need it.

Henry polishes off one and a half sandwiches before his eyes start to droop. We replace the plates and mugs onto the nightstand and snap the light off before pulling the quilt up to our chins. Henry hooks his ankle around mine, and I feel so at peace that I start to drift off, thinking that Henry, inevitably, is asleep already.

“Rency,” he whispers, pulling me from the edge of sleep. “Are you still my wife? ”

“I thought you were asleep,” I tell him, shifting so I can prop myself up on my arm to see him better.

“I probably should be, but I can’t sleep until I know. Are you still my wife?”

“I don’t think so, technically. I mean, I don’t think we ever technically were. It was just the curse binding us together somehow. What we signed wasn’t exactly a legal document. Well, not without a witness or a judge or an officiant.”

“Do you want it to be official?” Henry is completely still next to me, and for a moment I’m irrationally worried that his lack of breathing means that he’s dead. I wait for the rise and fall of his chest before answering.

“Do you ? I mean, I was the one who signed it without your consent. It’s not like you stood in front of man and God alike and agreed to it.”

“Yes.” He says the word clearly, simply. Now I’m the one who is holding their breath.

“Is this a proposal, then?” I ask, turning so that my body is tucked into his and I can better see his face.

Outside, the storm has passed, the wind blowing away the clouds to reveal a moon-brightened sky outside the pane of my bedroom window. The moonlight pools on the quilt, and even though he’s alive, his eyes still look otherworldly in its midnight glow.

“Yes. I mean, no.”

“No?” It’s not a proposal?

“Yes, I want you to be my wife. No, I don’t want this to be a proposal. I… I want that to be perfect. I want to have a ring for your finger that is actually made just for you. And to get down on one knee and to give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of. But I… I have nothing. Well, nothing but a dubious paper trail that may result in me owning a property with a barn and a burned-out house on it. Degrees that, if I claimed them, would be ludicrous, considering how old I look. Stocks I may or may not be able to access. A hundred years of watching the world churn without actually being a part of it. I—”

“Henry,” I interrupt, shaking my head. “You’re being ridiculous. I wanted you when it would just end in heartbreak. I wanted you when you could offer me even less than you can now. Of course I want you. Those other things don’t matter to me—we have our whole lives to live. To get degrees and make money and buy stocks or whatever . You don’t have to bring anything with you except yourself.” Henry’s eyes have a sheen that suspiciously looks like tears. “So tell me, Henry. Is this a proposal?”

He shifts away from me, pushing himself up so that the quilt falls off his shoulders and he’s on his knees. “Rency Faber,” he says, words raspy, near reverent. I sit up too, and he grips my hands in his own. They’re callused and warm, shaking slightly. “I have never loved anyone as much as I love you. From the moment I saw you, I knew you’d change my life. I just didn’t know how much. You fought for me, you took risks for me, you loved me in spite of knowing that it would all end. It might have been a curse that tied us together before, but now it will be a blessing. Please, please agree to be my wife and make me the most fortunate man who has ever lived and breathed. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” I tell him, pushing up on my knees so we are nearly eye to eye. “Of course I will marry you.”

Henry’s smile is so bright and so real that it fills me with a level of joy I don’t think I’d yet experienced.

And, much later, after we are done kissing and are curled up against each other and I’m about to drift off, he pushes up on one arm to look down at me. “Rency?”

“Mhmm?”

“When should we get married?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him, cracking open an eye to look at him. “When do you want to get married?”

His expression is serious. “As soon as possible.”

I laugh. “Yes, okay. As soon as possible it is.”

He smooths a hand over my hair. “Excellent. Tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow?”

Henry nods. “I don’t want to spend a second longer without you than I have to.”

“Impatient?” I murmur, reaching up to touch his face, his cheekbones, his jaw.

“For you to be mine? For me to be yours?” he asks. I push back the hair that has fallen across his face, loving how it feels to touch him without dread that he’ll be taken from me at any moment. “Yes. Desperately so. ”

“Tomorrow it is, then. I’ll be your wife, you’ll be my husband. For as long as this lifetime lasts.”

He grins. “Who knows. Maybe after then, too. Rumor has it I was a ghost once.”

“For as many lifetimes as we can get, then,” I say, smiling back at him.

Henry presses a kiss to my lips. “For now and forever, then.”

“Yes,” I agree. “For now and forever and ever.”