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The problem is: ghosts aren’t in charge of the terms of miracles. Lily leaves him at the threshold, Daniel chooses to stay, and then he vanishes. The problem is: Kate wakes up, walks out the door into the sun glinting off crystal white snow, and there is no one who comes to meet her. She heads back inside, her hand lingers on the brass doorknob for a few moments before getting her suitcase. And the real problem is: as she grips the handle, ready to say goodbye, she feels a weight on her shoulder, for just a moment.
“Daniel?” She asks, looking around, trying to find him in the wallpaper, the picture frames, the spindles of the stairway. She freezes as she feels something like a dandelion brushed across her cheek, “Daniel.” She breaths, the sound of her slow exhale of cold air mixes with the settling of the house.
She spends weekends at the Inn. Walter keeps her room reserved. He greets her warmly and offers her updates. “He slammed a door yesterday,” he says as he makes her coffee, “Nearly scared Molly half to death.”
“Daniel,” she addresses the air, “after all you did to get them together?” She says it in a fake shocked tone, putting a hand to her heart.
The spoon rattles in her cup.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” she scolds lightly.
She talks and laughs with Walter but the spoon doesn’t move again, no matter how much she wishes it would.
The problem is: she can’t be sure if he really understands her all the time. He told her being a true, movie-type ghost was like living in a nightmare. Walter tells her in hushed voices that there are sometimes full days when she’s gone where he doesn’t make a sound. She appreciates how honest he is with her. It’s hard for her to conceive how it must feel to be both nothing and something at once. What if he is wandering around unaware? Maybe he needs something to anchor him. She finds herself leaving her palm up when she sits in chairs. Sometimes she feels tips of fingers graze her palm.
She stays up at night and talks to him, quietly so as not to wake the visitors of the inn. She sits on her bed with her arms wrapped around her knees pulled up to her chin, the comforter gathered around her. It’s like she’s a kid again, whispering to Santa at night, promising she’s been good. “The next client wanted her estate split between her, get this, thirty grandchildren. And her estate? A massive collection of antique glassware,” here is where she assumes he would be laughing if he could, “We had to get 4 different experts to price the whole collection. And all thirty of her grandchildren were fighting over what portion they’d get. You can’t pull a Solomon and split antique plates thirty ways, no matter how many times I considered it.” Silence. “Daniel,” she calls gently, “are you there?” Not even a small breeze or even a strange feeling, other than her heart dropping further down her throat.
She settles down in bed gripping the edge of the blanket until her fingers turn white then shuts her eyes. She has to leave again tomorrow. A lock of her hair falls into her eyes, she’s too tired to even shake it away. She feels the light touch of it being tucked back behind her ears and her body finally relaxes and she falls asleep.
It’s initially strange to see the Inn surrounded by green fields. The last clump of snow greying by the driveway melted weeks ago. She tries not to let it bother her. It doesn’t mean she is moving away from him, it means she’s getting closer.
“Hello dear,” Molly gets up from where she was kneeling in the dirt planting bright orange and yellow flowers, “I’d hug you, but,” she holds her dirt covered hands in front of her like they’d burn her.
“Good to see you Molly,” she puts her suitcase aside and rolls up her sleeves, “but I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”
“Do you know much about gardening?” Molly asks.
“No,” she admits; she’d always lived in the city and it wasn’t like she had ever had time for something like plants before. Plants were a lot like boyfriends: you could ignore them, but that’s only going to make them leave faster.
“No worries dear, I’ll show you the ropes.” Molly guides Kate in digging the right sized hole before letting her plop the veiny clump of dirt connected to the flower into the ground.
“Where’s Walter?” Kate asks.
“Oh, he was complaining about his back,” she twiddles her fingers toward the general direction of the kitchen, “he’s inside doing the real work,” she leans in conspiratorially, “making lemonade.”
The laugh comes to Kate easily, it was never this easy before.
“Which reminds me,” Molly says as she liberally pours water on the newly planted marigolds, “You’ve been down here nearly every weekend,” Kate nods, “but I haven’t seen your boyfriend since Christmas.”
Kate inhale is so sharp she thinks she breathed in bits of dirt. She spends a moment trying to stifle coughs as Molly looks on with a sort of maternal concern, something Kate hasn’t seen in a long time. When she recovers she says, “Sorry. He. Uh. He lives in Canada.”
“What does he do there?” Molly asks.
“He works at a brewery,” she lies smoothly, “he wants to come up and visit more but he’s been having visa trouble,” she shrugs, looking down at the flowers, “I wish I could see him more.”
“Dirty hands be damned,” Molly mutters and puts her arm around Kate’s shoulders, “It must be very difficult for the two of you.”
“Yeah,” Kate voice is heavy, tears slip past her eyes.
“But you love him,” Molly says gently.
Kate shakes her head, too choked up for words.
“And I saw the two of you dancing at that party, he loves you too,” Molly smiles at her, warm and gentle, “And when you see him again, think how excited you both will be.”
"Thank you Molly,” Kate whispers.
Molly looks over at the Inn doors, Walter stepping out with a pitcher, “Some things are worth waiting for dear.”
She holds the book close to her chest as she heads into the back garden of the Inn. There are a few guests sitting at the patio, so she moves further away to a small bench amid the taller grass Walter sometimes missed while mowing. She pulls her sun hat up and opens the book on her lap. She then pats the spot next to her expectantly. “Give me a sign here.” The pages flip open in a breeze she hadn’t felt before. “Good. We haven’t been on a proper date in, well, ever. So we are going to have one.” She began reading in her lawyer voice: each word given its due importance. She pauses occasionally to muse on it. It wasn’t one from Daniel’s library, so he can’t have read it before. “I think the lawyer did it,” she speculates, “we are crafty.”
She feels a genuine nudge on her shoulder. What he could do varied from day to day, today he seems instant she keeps going.
“Okay, okay,” she smiles and continues.
It’s halfway through July. Soon Christmas will be half a year away. And in this moment, as she moves onto a new chapter and she feels vaguely like someone is resting their head on her shoulder, she decides she can live like this.
Walter and Molly close the Inn for the holiday. Tradition, Walter tells visitors who try to complain. He leaves the keys with Kate and takes Molly out for a vacation of their own before the Christmas Eve party.
Kate finds herself wandering the empty halls of the Inn, like she’s the one who’s the ghost. Unsettled and anxious, she starts reading several different books aloud then stops to walk around again before picking a different book. None of the worlds draw her in and her heart pounds too loud for her to hear her own words.
She sits on the last step in front of the door five minutes till midnight. Her hands clasped together and her foot thrumming against the floor. Each click of the clocks scattered in the home echo so loud she would cover her ears if she didn’t want to hear the chime when midnight came. The twelve steady beats chime from nearly every room. She bolts upward and grips the door handle, rests her head against the glass, squeezes her eyes shut.
There’s a knock. Solid. Real.
She throws the door open and wraps her arms around Daniel, also solid, and so very real. She pulls him in the Inn and pushes herself as close to him as she can. His skin is cold from the weather but it quickly melts to warmth.
“Kate,” he breathes into her hair and she pushes her face into his shoulder.
She moves away and her teary eyes look into his, “Kiss me already,” and he does. They break away for breaths but move back in just as quickly.
“I’ve waited a year,” he says, his voice cracking around the words.
“Some things are worth waiting for,” she says into his lips.
The problem with that is: they hadn’t waited a year, they were together the entire time.
He takes her hands and rubs circles into her palms, sensation exhilarating and new again, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she says and finally moves away to pull him to the stairs, “Come on, we’ve got a year of catching up to do.”