Another streak of lightning crawled across the sky, and I finally stepped out into the night.
The air was heavy and human. Alice said she couldn’t smell the rain, but I never understood how shecouldn’t.It was so distinct, so full, soalive, like I wasn’t only breathing air, but the movement of electrons sparking together, igniting the sky.
As I started back toward the inn, thunder rolled across the town in a booming, house-shaking rattle that left my ears ringing. I hoped that when they eased Dad into the ground, the dirt would part for the thunder. I hoped the sound would rattle his bones still, make them dance, like they did mine. I hoped that, when the wind was high, blown from some far-off shore, I could hear him singing in the storm, as loud and high and alive as all the dead I’d ever heard singing.
“Florence?” I heard Ben, and suddenly he was walking beside me.
“It’s going to rain soon.”
“Shouldn’t you be heading home?”
“I already am.”
I passed the inn and kept walking toward the town square. It was empty with the night and the coming storm. And then the rain came with a soft, low hum. First a droplet, then another, and thenthe air broke and the humidity rushed away to cool, sharp pinpricks of water. I tilted my head back, face toward the thunderous sky.
In Lee’s book, when it rained, Mairmont smelled like mud and pines, but standing in the middle of town, my flats flooding with water, the world smelled sharp from the oaks that lined the greens and the sweetness of the grass. He said that when it rained the town was quiet.
But my ears were full of noise.
I was soaked in a matter of moments. The rain passed right through Ben. He looked as dry as he had been before because he wasn’t real anymore. He was a ghost.
But he washere. Now. In the moment. Nevertheless.
“You’ll catch a cold if you stay out here much longer,” said Ben.
“I know,” I replied.
“And you’re getting wet.”
“I already am.”
“And—”
“I don’t have an umbrella, or a coat, and it’s cold and it’s storming and what if I get struck by lightning?” I finished for him, and tilted my head back, and let the rain wash my face. “Don’t you ever do things you aren’t supposed to?”
He didn’t respond, so I guessed he never did.
My entire life was built on those kinds of things that I wasn’t supposed to do. I wasn’t supposed to move away, and I wasn’t supposed to ghostwrite for a romance author, and I wasn’t supposed to fail in turning the last book in, and I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Lee Marlow, and I wasn’t supposed to come back here.
Not like this. Not for Dad’s funeral.
“It probably worked out better for you,” I said to him. “Thinking everything through, following the rules, being who you’re supposed to.”
To that Ben replied, “Well, I’m dead and I have nothing to show for it. Nothing to exist after me. I was just here and now I’m... I’m gone.” He sounded frustrated and sad. “I had so manyplans—so many. And now I will never be able to do any of them, and I just—I want—”
“You want to scream,” I filled in.
He looked at me in surprise. “Yeah. I do.”
“Then do it.”
He paused. “Do it?” he repeated. And suddenly—Ben screamed. Just a loud, vicious yell that echoed off the storefront windows and the town hall.
I stared at him, startled.
He said, “Like that?”
A smile curved my mouth. I didn’t think he’d actuallydoit, but... “Do you feel any better?”