Chapter Twelve
Twelve
I’ve jammed half a sandwich into my mouth, Margot and Paige on the other side of the table, each with some tub of leftovers, when Finn pops into the kitchen. My sandwich tumbles out of my hands, deconstructing on the way down, and I cough up the scrap of turkey threatening to take me out.
Finn, standing behind my sister and aunt, cracks a grin. He inclines his head and asks, “All good, sweetheart?”
My cheeks flame and I cough again, fumbling for my water bottle.
Paige and Margot give me inquisitive looks. I fight to keep my gaze off Finn.
“Need the Heimlich?” Margot asks.
“Like you know how to do that,” I choke out. Finn snorts.
I abandon the remains of my sandwich, dumping it into the trash.
When Margot and Paige turn their eyes away, I jerk a thumb at Finn, gesturing for him to follow.
He trails behind me up the stairs, all the way to the bedroom.
He skips ahead once we reach the second floor, and I practically chase after him.
“Don’t do that,” I say, swatting at him as he jogs into my room, and though none of my punches gain purchase, he jumps out of the way anyway. “You could have killed me.”
“Someone’s dramatic,” Finn says. He drops onto the end of my bed, leaning back onto his palms. He’s effortlessly comfortable, like it’s his bedroom, complete with fuzzy pillows and string lights.
“This is funny to you,” I say.
He shrugs. “Not much as far as entertainment goes around here.”
“My family already thinks I’ve lost it.” After a beat of hesitation, I make my way to the digital piano and its thin bench.
He’s entirely non-corporeal, but the thought of sitting down next to him makes my stomach coil and snap.
“I don’t even know how to explain to them that the ghosts they joke about are real and only I can see them.
” I clear my throat. “I don’t know why I can see you either. And why now?” I frown.
“I saw you the first day you and your family moved in, but me and Sloane and Aisha tried to keep a low profile. We didn’t know if any of you could see us,” he says, words coming out in a rush.
“None of us had ever met someone who could, but I guess a while back, there was a handyman who kept going on about seeing some missing kid in the yard, and it was a whole thing, so we usually try to stay out of sight in case.”
The anxiety and intrusive thoughts still batter around my skull, but the more Finn talks, the less I’m thinking of anything but what I’m hearing.
“And then one morning, your aunt and your mom took Margot and Jasper to the store, and you stayed back. You guys had only been here for like a week. The movers came with some of the big boxes, and they brought in the piano and the guitars, and they set it all up, and you sat down at the bench for ages. I didn’t really think much of it.
“Sloane and Aisha were living it up, going through all of the new stuff in the house, but I don’t know, there was something about the way you looked at the instruments. I sat back on the stairs waiting for you to do something.”
I remember that morning. I couldn’t explain the urge that came over me after the movers left. As if my feet and hands weren’t my own. The pull to be close to the music, even if I couldn’t make any.
“And did I do something?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
I flick a glance in Finn’s direction. He tosses me a soft smile.
“You played a song,” he says, “and for a second there, I felt like I was alive again.”
Silence hangs thick in the air long enough to make even me squirm.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” I almost say ghost. “I swear I’ve heard another girl.”
He’s listening now. Every inch rigid, putting too much effort into appearing unbothered.
“It’s Aisha or Sloane,” he says, a second too late to be believable. Finn hops onto the ground, wandering over to the window like something has caught his attention.
Heat rises to my cheeks. “It’s not Aisha or Sloane. I know what they sound like. This is…someone else,” I say.
“There’s no one else in the house.” Finn turns, folding his arms over his chest. His tone is condescending, but too much so. Can’t meet my eyes, fidgeting more than he already does—which is a lot, but this is a new level.
He’s a bad liar.
I turn the name over on my tongue before letting it loose. “What about Ingrid?”
Finn stiffens, face paling. He looks like—well, like he’s seen a ghost. “Am I supposed to recognize that name?” he asks, and it’s clear that he does.
Ingrid disappeared the year before he did. Even if he hasn’t gotten acquainted with her ghost, he must have heard about her. Her disappearance got more airtime than anyone’s.
“You really don’t?”
He holds my gaze for a long second, like he’s daring me to call his bluff. But I’m too much of a coward to do it.
“I really don’t,” he says, falling back into casualness in a blink. He jams his hands into his pockets and rocks on his heels.
“Did what happen to you… I mean, is what happened to you the same as what happened to Aisha and Sloane?” And Ingrid.
“I think so,” Finn says. “We don’t really know what happened to us.”
It seems unlikely, but his presence itself is unlikely, and I don’t know how to push the subject without coming across as cruel. Digging into things he clearly wants to keep buried.
Eventually, Finn clears his throat and says, “Got any plans tonight?”
I frown. In the month or so I’ve been here, the only thing that has gotten me out the door is work, the grocery store, or the urge to simply get away for a bit. Which consists of walking up and down the block.
Finn shrugs, suddenly sheepish. “I was thinking, maybe you could show me…” He jerks a chin toward the piano beside me, the one practically collecting dust. “If you want to. If you’re not busy. I always wanted to learn to play something other than guitar but never got around to it.”
My irritation softens. It’s easy to forget that he isn’t supposed to be here, like this. That if anyone understands loss the way I do, it’s him.
Which is precisely why he’s so dangerous. That and the fact he’s dead.
I can’t help the sly grin on my lips. “Does it look like I’m busy?”
“No, but it’s not like you go out much—” Finn stops at my scoff, his cheeks flaming.
I glower at him.
“I mean, I’m always here, and you’re—” He stops again.
“Do you really want to finish that sentence?” I ask.
Finn frowns. Decides to finish digging his own metaphorical grave. “You’re always here,” he says.
I snatch a discarded sneaker and chuck it in his direction. It passes through him like mist, falling to the floor.
Finn grins, lopsided and bright, so dazzling it makes my silly heart skip a beat.
“You sound like my mother,” I say.
“Great minds think alike,” Finn says. “So?”
“You realize you don’t have fingers, right?”
Finn is quiet for a second and then he laughs. It’s a hearty sound, not quite what I expected from him. I hate that it’s endearing.
“Thanks for the reminder,” he says. “But in their defense”—he waggles his fingers—“they work sometimes. The radio is proof of that.”
I want to say no. To push and push until he backs away, leaves me to my cave, but a part of me is even more afraid that it’ll work. That he’ll truly disappear.
It’s what I should want. For all of them to leave me alone. It isn’t what I want, though, and that scares the hell out of me.
“It’d be better on the Steinway downstairs, but my mom should be home soon. She and Paige are still arguing about whatever, and it’s a bit of a minefield when those two go at it. They have one big blowout a year, and we’re in the thick of it.”
Finn wrinkles his nose. “Trust me, I know. I caught the end of a leftovers argument last night. Paige ate the last of the carrot cake. It was getting pretty brutal.”
I snort a laugh. “You should have seen it last year. I thought a turkey was going to go flying.”
Finn grins. He joins me at the piano bench, and I scooch to the side. The bench is small, small enough it barely fits one person, let alone two. It shouldn’t matter, considering he’s made of air, but it makes my skin itch.
I hold my breath as he sits beside me.
“Your sister plays, too,” Finn says. “And I’ve seen Jasper messing around on the instruments around the house. But not your mom or Paige.”
The question is unspoken.
I nod. “My dad.”
Finn watches me expectantly, and I avert my gaze before continuing.
“He grew up in my grandparents’ dive bar,” I say.
“Learned to play from all the musicians that came through. By the time he met my mom, he was playing gigs all over the city. He started teaching music at school when I came along.” A smile pulls on my lips.
“I can’t remember a time someone in the house wasn’t playing.
We’d spend hours on the piano or with our guitars. ”
“He taught you,” Finn says.
“Margot too.” I reach out to flip the keyboard on, fingers drifting over the plastic keys. Nothing beats the piano downstairs. The open top and bottom let the tone ring through the entire room—the entire house. Like the music becomes air for a few minutes, and I’m breathing in notes.
I push off the bench and make my way to my closet, popping open the door and bending down to find the box of sheet music I’ve left untouched since we moved in. I peel the tape off the box and crack it open.
The smell of our old house—of the music room, my dad’s music room—wafts into my nose, triggering memories of nights in that room, an instrument in my, Margot’s, and my dad’s hands, my mother holding Jasper and bouncing him to the beat.
I sift through the papers for a specific song and pull it out, returning to Finn at the bench. I settle beside him, and I can’t be sure, but I think he shifts my way. I think I might shift his way, too.
“If you start playing ‘Hot Cross Buns,’ I swear to god…” Finn says.
I lean over to bump my shoulder with his. I nearly fall off the bench, which makes him laugh.
“Being nonmaterial has its pros, you know,” Finn says.
I roll my eyes and spread the sheet music open atop the piano. “The Beatles. That good for you?”
Finn nods.
“I’m guessing you can read this?” I ask.
Finn gives me an offended look, and I lift my hands in surrender.
“Hey, I’m just checking,” I say. “Otherwise, you’d be shit out of luck.”
“Hilarious.”
I turn my attention back to the music. I can feel Finn’s gaze burning into the side of my face, and I clear my throat. “The melody is up here,” I say.
“Is it?” Finn asks, in a way that makes every nerve ending spark to life.
“All right, Casper, focus.” I tap the music. “We’re starting with a C.” I make a slow show of the chord and then repeat it.
For all his informality, the moment I begin to play, Finn watches my hands with an intensity that pokes at something deep inside me. Not a love for the music but an obsession. Like an essential nutrient you’ve gone without for years.
Finn tries next, his hands hovering over the keys. On his first attempt, his fingers pass through the plastic, and he curses softly. I wait, and he tries again, managing to make noise this time. It is far from a C, but with a few more attempts and constant concentration on his part, he finds it.
We repeat this cycle through the first verse.
I don’t notice the passing of time, the darkening of the sky outside the window.
All that exists is me, Finn, and the melody we’re tossing back and forth.
This is not a place where ability matters.
Whatever musicality Finn carried through the world with him is gone, and whatever success he’s finding is through sheer will.
He’s trying. Trying so hard it hurts to watch when his fingers refuse to gain purchase on a key, and it feels like my own victory when they do.
As we play, memories rise and shuffle through my skull. Each twitch of my finger, each instruction, each pulse of a note brings back a piece of my childhood. Things I thought were long gone, like the smell of my dad’s cologne and our laughter dancing along with the music.
Memories are not permanent things. They slip away, rewrite themselves, hide away until they decide to slide back into the light.