Chapter 24
Morgan
There is someone in my room when I wake in the middle of the night.
My terror is instinctual and instant. The feeling of being watched grips me, shooting chills up my spine. I search the darkness, hoping I’m half dreaming, or imagining things. Or hey, possibly Sawyer is here for some nocturnal pottery—
No.
I feel my heart seize in my chest when I find a shadowy figure standing at the end of my bed. Not Zach. It’s a woman.
And I…recognize her.
Her dark hair, the shade matching the night outside my window. Her elegant cheekbones, her bow lips. She’s young, and beautiful.
I’ve never met the shadow woman in my life. No, I know her from the photographs in Sawyer’s house. CalArts graduation shots, road-trip pictures. Engagement photos on the Santa Monica Pier.
I’m face to ghostly face with Kennedy.
Unlike Zach, Kennedy is not semitransparent. Her only ghostly feature is her skin glowing in the moonlight, like she was sculpted of some spectral substance. Otherwise, Kennedy looks real. Full of life. I have to remind myself she’s not.
Given Sawyer’s concern over her not manifesting to him recently, I figured Kennedy was weakening, her grasp on the mortal plane insubstantial. I even wondered if the effort of clearing Sawyer’s dead yard had exhausted her.
I guess not. She still has plenty of paranormal strength to scare the living shit out of me.
Kennedy no doubt notices I’m clutching my blanket, wide-eyed like the hunted sea lions in Zach’s goriest Shark Week episodes.
“I’m sorry for frightening you,” she says sincerely.
Similar to her physical manifestation, her voice is unusually normal, with no hint of supernatural distance or echo.
She sounds like we’re chatting. Girl time with my neighbor’s ghost. “I didn’t want to risk Sawyer seeing me through the bedroom window, so I had to wait for him to fall asleep. It took…a long time.”
I pull my covers higher when I sit up in bed. It’s freezing in here.
“You have been avoiding him, then,” I say, choosing not to dwell on Sawyer’s sleeplessness.
Kennedy winces. I didn’t mean to guilt her…except, I guess I sort of did. I was the one holding Sawyer while he wept, only for him to reject my compassion and our moment of connection. Not her.
“Why?” I press Kennedy, whispering. “Why appear to me?”
Kennedy perches on the edge of my comforter. While I feel no weight, I’m surprised watching how she moves. The normalcy of her interactions with the material world is like Zach in my haunting’s first week. Simpler times.
“I’ve been trying to for some time,” she confesses. She sighs. “I thought your connection with Sawyer would let you see me the way Sawyer sees Zach. But it took some time for you to know me.”
Your connection with Sawyer. This part of what Kennedy’s saying clangs loudly in my head. I scour her ghostly tone for judgment or recrimination. Your connection including kissing him. Your very flirty one-way exchange of Coleus scutellarioides connection.
Kennedy, however, remains earnest and focused. Her expression doesn’t change while her eyes search the ways I’ve made the pottery guesthouse home. Undoubtedly, she notices said coleus.
Then I concentrate on the rest of what she said.
Some time for you to know me.
I’ve never met Kennedy until just now. Yet tonight, Kennedy—not to mention the supernatural powers that be—have concluded I know Kennedy like I didn’t before.
Sawyer doesn’t share much of his fiancée’s personality or their life together.
It’s not like I’ve uncovered her hidden past the way we learned of Zach’s, either.
The only thing that happened tonight was…
“I sensed what you wanted tonight,” I say, realizing. “When you cut the lights. I told Sawyer that you wouldn’t want him to hold on to you forever.”
Kennedy smiles. The moon seems to strike her just right, setting her glow to shining. “You know me, Morgan Lane,” she says. “And I know you. You are his opposite in important ways. Ways that have helped you break through to Sawyer like I haven’t been able to for five years.”
I know she means it to be complimentary, but the reminder of the length of Sawyer’s haunting—to say nothing of the length of the relationship, the engagement, that preceded Kennedy’s ethereal limbo—settles on me wrongly, chilling under my covers. I can’t meet Kennedy’s eyes.
How do you talk to the dead fiancée of the man you might have a crush on?
“He loves you,” I croak out.
Now Kennedy looks sad. Not winsome or disappointed. Deeply, wrenchingly sad. If even the smallest part of me wondered whether Sawyer was spending haunted years clinging onto his love for a woman who, when she was alive, didn’t love him as much as he loved her, I know I was wrong.
I feel very small. Very out of place. Like—like maybe, despite the living heart pounding in my chest, I’m the unwelcome intruder haunting Sawyer’s life. Their life.
I should leave, I decide. It’s my natural gift, isn’t it? The Morgan Lane special. Of all the times when I picked up and left everything behind, now makes the most sense.
Yet somehow, I know deep down I…can’t. I can’t leave Sawyer in his misery. It feels impossible. As impossible as walking through walls or vanishing like Zach or Kennedy.
“I will always love him,” Kennedy explains, “and I know part of him will always love me, but what we had is over. Only the ghost of it remains.” She smiles sadly, hearing the pun. “Sawyer knows. For years, I’ve told him what we had is only a memory.”
I meet her eyes now. She looks sad but determined. Her glow has diminished, but not her opacity. She looks no less human.
“I want him to be happy. With love like ours…I want him to be happy,” she repeats.
“It’s time for him to move on. Honestly, it was time long ago, though I confess I put it off longer than I should have.
For a while, I thought we could live in this half existence, but as the years drew on and his life remained the same, I knew I was stealing his life the way the world stole mine.
” She frowns. “It wasn’t fair to me. It’s not fair to him, either. ”
I remember what I said to Sawyer tonight. You have to live your life again.
Yes—yes, I suppose I do know Kennedy.
“So, you just stopped appearing to him?” I reply. “Why not explain this to him?”
Emotion crosses Kennedy’s face. Her glow sharpens. The leaves of my coleus waver. I’d just unconsciously let go of the last flickers of fear in my chest, but they return when I see the impatience that flashes on the ghost’s face.
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” she snaps. “He won’t listen to me. You know him. How is he supposed to respond to me telling him to let me go?”
Sympathy passes over me—I understand Kennedy’s frustration, I do. Her connection to the mortal world is fragile, yet impossible to fight. It must be exhausting.
But…she’s had five years to work this out maturely with Sawyer.
“When he met you, I thought…” She trails off.
“You want me to do it?” I say, incredulous. “Just forget your dead fiancée, Sawyer,” I pantomime. “Trust me, it’s what she wants. Come on. I can’t say that to him. Not when I want—” I swallow, stopping sharply.
I don’t need to finish the sentence. Kennedy eyes me, understanding perfectly. She does know me. She knows my feelings for Sawyer, too. She was there tonight, manipulating the music, killing the lights. She knows everything.
“You don’t need to tell him anything,” Kennedy says, softer now.
Peaceful, even. “Having you in his life is enough. Already, he is starting to live again. He returned to pottery. He’s fixing up the house.
He’s…starting to move on. It’s for the best.” The ghost chokes out her final words.
But the emotion in her voice is undeniable. She really means them.
He’s starting to move on. It’s for the best.
My indignation vanishes. Despite the lack of judgment or jealousy in Kennedy’s words, shame suddenly roars in me. Who the hell am I to be impatient with someone who has literally nothing left to do on earth except watch the man she loves move on without her? “I’m sorry,” I blurt.
Kennedy’s smile is sharp and painful. The leaves of my coleus don’t move, however. “It’s not your fault,” she replies evenly. “Do I love the thought of him…being with someone else? Of course not. But five years of watching him be with no one has shown me there are much worse things.”
I say nothing. The fact is, if Kennedy hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be here. I would never have met Sawyer. Sawyer would never have met me. He would be happy with his wife, his life—the life they were building with every paint stroke and piece of drywall they put into this home.
Suddenly, I feel very sad that this woman is dead. Kennedy wasn’t just a piece of Sawyer’s now shattered life. She isn’t just grief in ghost form. She was herself. She was every part of her own life.
Now she’s…just this.
Kennedy sighs and smooths her expression.
“It’s why I’ve stopped appearing to him since he met you.
I don’t want to hold him back from what’s in front of him.
But when I’m not here, I’m…nowhere,” she explains.
I don’t miss the new undercurrent in her voice.
“I’m afraid eventually I’ll forget myself completely,” she confesses.
“Why don’t you…” I start gently.
Then everything comes together. Kennedy’s power over the garden, employed only five years after her death. Her conspicuous disappearance while Sawyer, reinvigorated, picked up his renovations where he left off. I don’t want to hold him back from what’s in front of him.
“You’re not waiting for Sawyer to finish the house,” I say.
Kennedy’s stare bores into mine. She shakes her head.
Everything makes sense. Supernatural, grief-stricken sense. I sit up straighter, letting the blanket fall. “You need Sawyer to move on. That’s the real reason you’ve been stuck in limbo for five years,” I say. “That’s your unfinished business.”
The words threaten to close my throat with emotion, because Kennedy’s final wish is proof of just how deep the couple’s love is.
Kennedy has clung onto the mortal plane for five years just to ensure the man she loves moves on and continues to live his life?
It’s the ultimate veil-crossing selflessness. It’s heartbreakingly romantic.
“There have been two ghosts living in this house for too long,” Kennedy replies. “Soon, I hope there will be none.”
She smiles, and for the first time, her moonlit face looks hopeful.
I wipe my eyes, feeling overwhelmed.
But when I’ve blinked past my tears—Kennedy is gone. My room is dark. The moonlight through my window paints only serene shapes on the floor. My plant’s purple leaves remain motionless in the empty night.
I stay sitting up. What Kennedy’s told me is deeply moving, undeniably right…and impossible.
I can’t just tell Sawyer his unfinished business is moving on from Kennedy.
Moving on doesn’t work that way. I remember when I frantically looked up haunting remedies early in my supernatural situation with Zach—finding online counsel recommending I simply tell the ghost to go away.
This is no different. Grief, I’m learning, is nothing but the cleverest of ghosts.
Sawyer wouldn’t listen, either, like Kennedy said.
He doesn’t hear reason or even compassion when it comes to letting go of Kennedy.
He resists and guilts himself. He could barely talk about kissing anyone else tonight.
If I shared with him my conversation with Kennedy, I’d probably ruin the progress he has made.
He would cling harder to Kennedy, consciously or not.
And then there’s the whole conflict-of-interest issue. It’s even obvious to the dead that I have feelings for Sawyer. No doubt Sawyer knows. How selfish and manipulative would I sound trying to convince him the late love of his life wants him to move on with me?
No. I can’t.
Not yet.
With the questions haunting me, I know I won’t sleep. Instead, I settle for staring into the darkness.