Page 29

“Meaning what? They just appear?”

“Not in front of a crowd with flashing lights, if that is what you are imagining.”

“I wasn’t, but now I kinda am.”

She ignored that. “They will reenter the physical world in a location where their discovery will make sense. Your mother will receive confirmation of your death. From there, she can have a funeral and bury or cremate you according to her wishes. Your girlfriend will no longer have to wonder whether you chose to disappear, and the police will finally have physical proof that you are deceased.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

Mama could finally stop waiting on me. She wouldn’t have to walk into my house talking about me like her son might pull into the driveway any minute.

Lakelyn could finally know I had never willingly left her without having to wonder if some man she caught from the corner of her eye in a grocery store or parking lot might turn around and somehow be me.

Nobody would have to keep answering unknown numbers hoping it was some detective calling with a lead.

They would know… even if the truth hurt, at least it would finally be the truth.

Then something else hit me.

“Hold the fuck up.” I turned toward Miss Veda. “You keep saying my son and girlfriend gotta be here on Halloween.”

“They do.”

“What if they ain’t?”

She didn’t answer immediately.

I hated that already.

“Veda.”

“If they are not here, then those conditions are not met.”

“Nah, I heard that part. I’m asking what happens if they never come back.” I stepped closer. “Hell, her ass just dipped town. What if she builds a whole life somewhere else? What if she raises my son there, finds another house, another routine, or whatever the fuck people do when they finally get tired of waiting on somebody who ain’t coming back? What if ten Halloweens pass and neither one of them steps foot in this city?”

Miss Veda's expression softened again. “Then you wait.”

My jaw clenched. “For how fucking long?”

“I cannot give you a date for something that depends on choices made by the living.”

“So I could still be bound to this damn house twenty years from now?”

“You could,” she answered honestly.

I dragged a hand down my face and turned toward the windows. “Man, this dead shit just keep finding new ways to piss me off.”

“There may eventually be other ways for a spirit’s circumstances to change,” she said behind me, “but I will not promise you an easier path simply because this one is difficult to hear.”

I turned back around. “I ain’t scared.”

“Not of death, perhaps. But you sound afraid of your girlfriend learning to live without you, and your son growing up without ever knowing you. And now that they have left Hallowridge, you are afraid they may become happy enough somewhere else that they never feel a reason to return.”

That shut me the fuck up.

Miss Veda didn’t smile or press the point.

I looked away, thinking about Lakelyn somewhere hours away, raising my son while I stood in a house neither one of them had any reason to come back to.