A Bride Worth Billions (32 page)

Sometimes he forgot he wasn’t alone in his apartment, and Deirdre would catch him by surprise, leaving a frosty kiss mark on the surface of the bathroom mirror or speaking up in the middle of the crime documentaries he liked to watch. “I think he’s guilty,” she would say. “It’s the husband. It’s always the husband.” More than once, her chilling voice made him spill his cereal, and it took all he had not to yell at her. He’d told her many times, patiently and kindly, not to creep up on him like that especially when she had been quiet for a long time, and he was complacent in his alone-ness. To that she merely said sarcastically, “Sorry if I can’t warn you with my footsteps. It’s pretty difficult to do ever since I died and became non-matter and all.”

Walking around in his boxers was uncomfortable for him at first. It felt like he was flaunting his naked torso to a stranger he couldn’t see but knew was there. Being in the bathroom made him paranoid. Deirdre was mischievous; what if she popped her head right through the shower curtains while he was soapy, vulnerable, and naked as the day he was born? What if she appeared in front of him while he was on the toilet doing his business?

After a while though, he realized that Deirdre respected those boundaries if not anything else. She never showed up in the bathroom unless he was merely brushing his teeth or combing his hair. Even being in his underwear became a non-issue. If she felt like talking, she would look at him just the same as when he was fully-dressed. “What have you got to feel embarrassed about, Joel? I’ve seen you in much less. You just don’t know it.”

It wasn’t long before he started to see her as a very strange roommate who only popped in once in a while.

He liked, most of all, when she appeared before him at breakfast. It was mostly to nag him about eating something other than cornflakes and milk. “I’d fry you some bacon, but cooking is much too complicated a task for someone without a body,” she’d say.

“Do I look okay?” he’d ask her when he was done, standing up to show her what he was wearing to work. He didn’t actually care, but he liked seeing the sparkle in her light blue eyes every time he asked for her opinion. He liked hearing her talk about something she was passionate about. It made her look… alive. She never asked him to buy anything new, but she did teach him a lot about dressing properly.

“Never wear a brown belt with black shoes.”

“Joel-darling, your tie is a little too long in the front.”

“You’re an autumn, did you know that? You can pull off a pastel shirt.”

Eventually, he grew to expect her. She was often there, but strangely enough she would go for days at a time without so much as a cold tingle on the back of his neck. It was even more unsettling because he
knew
she was there with him somewhere in the apartment. He just didn’t know where or why she wasn’t letting him see her.

And then when she “came back,” it would be as though she hadn’t been invisible for the last four days. He learned not to ask after the first time. She had snapped at him, blue eyes blazing something magnificent. “My god, I don’t owe you an explanation. This is
my
apartment. I don’t care what the lease says. Can’t a dead woman have some peace around here?”

Unaccustomed to confrontation he had merely remained silent and turned his attention back to the cold case documentary he was watching until she hovered beside him in the couch and said, “Oh, if the husband is dead, what are they reopening the case for? It’s obvious he did it.”

He was drenched from head-to-toe, and the only thing that saved his portfolio bag and its contents was the large plastic bag he had saved from the take-out he’d bought at lunch. He wasn’t in the best of moods when he got home, his leather shoes pretty much ruined and the socks inside them squishy and uncomfortable.

“Deirdre?” he called, feeling awkward that he sounded like a husband coming home to a home-cooked meal.

There was silence. He knew what that meant; she wanted to be alone. For a while he let her be, but then at dinner the rain started up again, this time louder and more obnoxious than before. Sheets of water poured from the sky, and strong gusts of wind threw wayward drops against his windows so hard that he was afraid the glass would break. That was when he noticed the water stains in the ceiling. Though there weren’t any leaks yet, he needed to know what caused the once-white paint to peel. If a pipe had burst and been mended, then he didn’t need to worry so much about structural damages. If the leak was caused by rain though, that meant that something needed to be repaired or sealed in the building’s structure. He wanted to make sure the seal was strong enough to withstand a storm.

“Deirdre? Deirdre, I need to ask you something.” He walked all over the apartment, calling out her name. “There are water stains on the ceiling over there, near the window. Were those from a pipe or should I expect the rain to be falling indoors any moment now? It’s looking pretty wild out there.”

The only response he got was the intermittent pitter-patter of the storm raging against his windows.

He was getting more frustrated by the second. “Come on, Deirdre! It’s a simple question! You can go back to your ghostly brooding after you answer me!”

A loud crash near his desk made him run to his work corner. He didn’t see her at first, but then the unmistakable indigo of her dress was bleeding right through the hardwood floor under the table. He pulled his office chair away and knelt down in front of her. In the shadows, her skin seemed to glow. She had never looked like a ghost more than she did at that moment.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It was just a pipe.”

“Hey,” he cooed. “Hey, Deirdre, what’s wrong?” He almost reached out to touch her back, but then he remembered that she didn’t actually have one anymore.

Slowly she began to fade from his vision, turning more transparent every time he blinked. “No, no, no, no,” he said, trying to convince her to return. He was beginning see the back legs of the desk, the striped wallpaper, and the hardwood floor through the image of her. “Deirdre, come on. Talk to me. Talk to me!” he yelled finally.

Her image solidified in one instant, and she looked up at him, blue eyes wide and lost. “Can’t you leave me alone?”

“You didn’t show me that same courtesy.”

She chuckled ruefully, the sound echoing hauntingly with the merciless pounding of the storm outside. He saw her lips move, but her laugh seemed to come from everywhere else.

“How is it that I am no longer of flesh and blood, that I don’t even have a heart anymore, and still I feel this?”

“What do you feel?”

“Lost. Afraid. Nervous.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! All these questions!” Thunder roared outside as if to punctuate her upset.

He raised a hand placatingly. “All right, all right, I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to say, he cooed helplessly, “What can I do to help, Deirdre? Tell me what to do.”

The surprise in those exceedingly haunting blue eyes was easy to recognize. It gave Joel some relief. He didn’t know what he had said right, but somehow he had reached. Wherever she had gone, he had reached her.

“That helps. Just asking,” she said in a small voice. The tremors in her fingers calming down somewhat. She moved to slip out from under the desk, and he stood up, following her to the couch. She was floating more noticeably now, her countenance rippling more like water than the lifelike movements he had grown accustomed to. It was unsettling. She had never seemed more like a ghost to him than right now even though he’d seen her quite literally passing through walls, sometimes head first.

He didn’t know what to do with himself. He would offer her something calming, like chamomile tea, but certain modes of propriety just didn’t apply to this woman. For one thing, she didn’t eat, drink, or breathe anymore. So he remained silent, waiting for her to speak.

He didn’t have to wait long. Her talkative nature soon penetrated whatever haze of anxiety she was in.

“Sorry about that. It just happens sometimes.”

“Are you okay now?”

“Yes.”

He watched her facial expressions change as she seemed to argue with herself. “Is that a… a dead person thing? It looked like a panic attack.”

She shook her head, hair settling around her more realistically now. “Even when I was alive, it was there. I don’t know where it comes from, really. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell myself. Then maybe it wouldn’t feel so scary.”

“Did you ever see a shrink about it or talk to anyone?”

“Oh, sure. Having a shrink was so fashionable in those days.” This time, her laughter rang of her familiar brand of sarcasm. It settled the nervousness in his stomach. “I took pills, nothing hardcore. The movies make you think depression looks like one thing—shadows and lying in bed, and lots of rocking back and forth—but the truth is that it’s shapeless and unpredictable and present everywhere. I could be laughing, and it just doesn’t feel quite right. I’m not exactly sad… Just… not right.”

Her eyes were far away, and he thought he detected a bit of dulling in those light blue depths.

“And then one day…” she whispered, unconscious that she was still speaking. After a moment or two she seemed to realize what she had begun to say, and she shook her head as if to clear it.

“One day?” he asked her to continue.

She turned to him, and he saw there an expression he had never seen on her face before, a mixture of shame and vulnerability.

Suddenly he understood. “How did you die, Deirdre?”

She looked down at her clean fingernails, looking more lost than she did when he found her under the desk.

“You did it, didn’t you?” he said gently, trying to tell her that he wasn’t judging her. He couldn’t judge her if he tried. He understood all too well how one could get to that point, when there are things to live for and they just stop mattering.

She nodded, and the rain outside slowed to a light pitter-patter.

People called her the life of the party. Men told her she lit up their lives. Most times, she believed them.

But then there were days when the roaring in her ears could not be silenced by music and compliments. On those days her ribcage felt empty of a beating heart, and nothing existed but the space where it should be. She didn’t see sunlight, or color, or joy.

On the fourth of July, fireworks erupted outside, and the night sky was a kaleidoscope of pink, blue, and golden comets. Her desk was cluttered with invitations to several parties around the city, including a barbecue on the rooftop of her friend’s apartment two blocks down from hers. Her phone had been ringing all day, and she had turned it off mid-afternoon. Even her inbox was flooded with event notifications and congratulations on the magazine spread she had art directed. It had taken her five months in prep work to produce. It was the biggest project of her career, and she hadn’t been able to keep herself from micromanaging. She had fought for eight locations in Greece and overruled the most of the stylist’s decisions about the clothes, right down to the accessories. She had insisted on featuring young, independent designers from all over the world—Italy, Thailand, even Estonia. Just gathering the clothes and accessories itself was expensive and challenging.

It was unorthodox to create such a major spread on unknowns, but she knew what her vision required, and she knew the public was ready for it. And she was right.

None of that mattered in the darkness of her room that night. Her bedroom overlooked the thriving, happy city, and even the distant fireworks seemed to bright for her to process and appreciate. She rested one hand on the cool glass, feeling as though she were touching solid air.

She tried to remember what it was like to be happy. Just yesterday, she was happy and bright and amazing.
What happened?
she asked herself.
What happened between then and now?
There were never any answers to those questions except
Nothing. I slept, and I woke up, and my heart was gone.

She’d been having a series of bad months, and yesterday was one day out of so many. It wasn’t enough to offset everything else.

Where she had gotten the gun was of no importance. The moment she put the barrel in her mouth, there was only relief. When she pulled the trigger, its roar was lost to the fireworks outside.

“It was two days before they found me,” Deirdre finished, floating in a prone position, eyes closed. She was lying on a bed of air, one of the perks of not being tied down by gravity.

Joel didn’t understand why any more than she did. All he knew was what it felt like, and for now empathy seemed enough.

There was a long silence before she spoke again. “What’s
your
drama?”

Even after hearing her story, he was reluctant to tell his, and he shifted awkwardly in the couch.

She floated back down to her seat. “Never you mind. I know your drama.”

“You do, do you?”

“I’m sorry I invaded your privacy.”

He realized then that she wasn’t bluffing. Her blue eyes shone with sincerity. Fury boiled in his stomach, and he had to take a few breaths to calm it. She saw his face instantly shift from calm and compassionate to disbelieving and angry, and she stayed silent, knowing that she deserved it.

“You rifled through my things?”

“I watch you. There’s nothing else to do around here but watch you. I didn’t have to rifle through your things. That little girl whose picture you cry over in the bathroom… Who is she?”

“That is none of your business!” Sometimes he left the shower on so she wouldn’t peek or hear him. Up until then, he thought she was respecting that.

“Joel…”

His body wasn’t accustomed to being enraged, and he was hyperaware that his heart was beating fast. His face felt hot, and there was a ticking near his temple that he couldn’t control.

When he got up to leave, she spoke up again. “It’s just you and me in this world, Joel. We haven’t got anyone else.” Her airy voice trembled with emotion.

He was already sobbing when he sat back down, hands covering his face.

“You must have loved her very much.”

He nodded.

“You’ll see her again, I promise.”

“How do you know? What if she’s stuck somewhere, too? Like you?”

She shook her head. “She was so little. Nobody would have let her miss the bus. Souls like that aren’t weighed down by complicated, grown-up things.”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Her name was Caitlyn. It’s an ordinary name, but she was the most special person in the whole world. And she was mine.”

“Her mother?”

His voice filled with bitterness. “She left us. She was never a mother.” He ran his hand down his face roughly, spreading his tears more than drying them. “My daughter was all I had and all I needed, and now she’s just… gone.”

“All you can do is honor her life, Joel.”

He shook his head quickly, and he sounded scared and defeated when he replied. “I can’t. I can’t. I just want to pretend she never happened to me.”

He felt cold air sliding from his wrists to the back of his shoulders, and when he looked up, Deirdre was hugging him. He shivered, but it was a comforting cold.

“But she did happen. And she was wonderful.”

He woke up the next day, and he was still in the couch. One of the empty picture frames was propped up on the coffee table to greet him a good morning. Something in that little wooden rectangle’s turquoise finish made him want to weep.

With something akin to tenderness he reached for the empty picture frame, remembering what it used to contain. It was a photograph of Caitlyn at two years old, brown-haired and one-eyed as she stared up at the camera. It hadn’t been a very good picture. He had taken it with his phone, and she had laughed at the clicking sound it made. He had the photo printed anyway and let her pick the frame.

He set the picture frame back down on the table and shook his head, getting increasingly agitated at the thought of Deirdre’s mild “suggestion.” The woman was much too intrusive, especially for somebody who wasn’t even alive anymore.

“Don’t be mad,” her airy voice called.

He would’ve turned towards the sound, but her voice never really came from one direction. “What are you trying to do, Deirdre?”

“I want you to be okay.”

“I
am
okay!”

“You know you’re not, Joel.” She appeared before him, hovering above the table, legs folded beneath her thighs. “I’ve been dead fifteen years, and I’m not sure why, but what if… what if I was just waiting for you? What if they left me here, so I could help you?”

He looked up at her, conflicted, hesitant, but… was that hope in his eyes?

“Joel… We’re so little in this universe, so helpless. It… They… God… Whoever… can do anything they want with us. Look at me! I’ve been stuck wearing this outfit for years! I don’t know if I’m going to be this way forever, or if I’m going to get taken away at some point… today, tomorrow, now… So I have to make this count. Me being here for you, it has to count.”

The way she was looking at him did something to his heart. For the first time in very, very long, he felt…

“I love you. Do you know that? I love you,” he said.

Her knitted eyebrows relaxed in surprise. He didn’t wait for her to respond. He merely took the picture frame from the table and headed to his room. It didn’t take him long to find his wallet and take out the photograph buried behind business cards and receipts. It was creased where he had carelessly folded it, and it was soft from being inside his wallet for so long.

But the important thing was that Caitlyn’s smile was still there, as bright as the day he captured it. Her little toddler eyes seemed to tell him,
Daddy, I missed you.

He slid the picture into the frame, and by the time he hung it back up on the wall, he was sobbing softly. Deirdre stood beside him, looking up at the photograph as if it were a painting in a museum. He turned his head to look at her, eyes filling with gratitude as she smiled at him.

There were no words left. The apartment filled with the scent of green tea and aloe vera, and for the first time since he moved in, he felt like he belonged.