The Last to See Me (The Last Ghost #1) - M Dressler Page 0,17

shell lying on the beach. Or help her catch one of her jars of wet brushes before it shattered on the floor. I kept young and then old Alice company while she painted in the fog and wind, while she called out, lonely, to the lowing seals, creatures she always believed were answering her because she didn’t know they’re really tough, territory-minded things, and bark not in friendship but in warning. How nice it was, at the end of a day, for us to tramp back together, Alice and me, through the sand and wind up the headland, toward the house, side by side. For fifty years, just the two of us—at least until Manoel came along.

Ellen’s gone deeper into the piney lanes, passing the old huts where the opium-smokers used to live. She brings her little car to a stop in front of a house sitting alone. It’s shaped like the letter A, its roof sliding all the way down to touch the ground. A painted FOR RENT sign still leans against its moss-covered flank.

She gets out, taking her satchel with her but leaving behind her keys, in the way of someone who thinks no harm can come to her in an out-of-the-way place like this. Careful, I whisper. Careful. She reaches back in to get them. A good thing, too, because even a ghost can’t always know when an intruder might be nearby.

I follow Ellen up the steps to her door. She smiles, glad it seems with what she’s accomplished today. She hums to herself as she goes in. How sweet. The living wear their hearts on their sleeves when they think no one is looking. Though sometimes they try to hide what they’re up to, even from themselves—I’ve seen it with Manoel. But even then, it doesn’t take much to see right through them, any more than it does to peer through a pair of boardinghouse curtains. I warned Alice about her handyman. Well, if you’re going to keep him around, then at least let him be useful. Tell him to build something. Keep him busy. Tell him you want to see the water and the sky all the way around. Tell him to leave the little balcony upstairs above the dome, floating, floating.

At the very end, when Alice and Manoel had their terrible argument, and she’d fallen to the floor of her bedroom, I’d been there, too, to tell her what to feel. I’d heard her thoughts and her question, and told her that it was all right. It’s only where others have gone before you. She’d lain very still, her eyes wide open and finally seeing me, as they all do at the end, and I’d gone to close the curtains so the sun wouldn’t make her cry, and moved the pillow that had fallen to the floor. To make her more comfortable.

A piece of fear twisted her mouth when I stroked her gray hair. What are you going to do to me? I heard her think.

Yet all we can ever really do for each other, as my Da used to say, is what we hope will be the best.

Inside, Ellen is turning on all her lights. She shivers a little, rubbing her hands together. There are just four little rooms in this pointed house. Downstairs is the kitchen and living room with bright new things placed against the dark walls and floor: a vase here, a comfortable chair there. On the fireplace mantel she’s put a single photograph of a man holding a baby up in his arms. Otherwise, there are no pictures, nothing private at all. A bookshelf full of business books. A door to a small bathroom. Upstairs, a loft with a neatly made bed. Above the bed, the roof is pointed and pitched, like the hull of a ship turned upside down. Everything is tidy. No dirt on the braided rug. Even the empty dish on the floor beside the back door is shining and clean. For her cat, that must be.

I like seeing how Ellen lives and where she sleeps. I wonder what it must be like to live here with her. To be the secret pet who depends on her for comfort and company.

She opens the back door and calls through the screen for her kitten. But no answer comes, no rustle from between the trees. She sighs and pushes the screen door out and together we walk through the light turning gray and cold, to a neglected garden.