As it turns out, when you solved a murder at thirteen by talking with ghosts, the newspapers printed exactly that.
LOCAL GIRL SOLVES MURDER WITH GHOSTS
You can imagine how that sort of thing could haunt you. I wasn’t exactly the popular kid in high school, and after that I didn’t stand a ghost of a chance of being asked to prom. Carver and Alice couldn’t see them, and neither could Dad’s younger sister Liza, or Mom. It was only the two of us.
We were the only ones who could understand.
Another reason why I was better off alone.
“Please go see Dr. Martin next week—” I began, when he interrupted me.
“Oh, there’s another call coming in. I’ll talk to you soon, okay, buttercup? Don’t forget to call your mother!”
I sighed, more out of resignation than regret. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you more!”
He hung up, and I finally noticed the bookseller glaring at me for sitting on the stool. I popped up and quickly apologized for taking up real estate, and scurried off toward the cash register.
One of the only good things to come out of this writing gig was the fact that I could write books off on taxes. Even if I never read them. Even if I used them to build book thrones and then sit down and cry on them while pouring myself glass after glass of merlot.
It was still worth it.
And the small hit of serotonin did make me feel a little less murderous. Tucking the books into my backpack, I left for the closest station that would take me back to Jersey. It was about a twenty-minute walk up to the Ninth Street station, but the afternoon was sunny and my coat was heavy enough to protect me from the last biting chill of the season. I liked the long walks in New York. It used to help me work through a plot inconvenience or figure out a scene that never quite worked, but all my walks in the last year couldn’t jostle my brain into creating again, no matter how far I went. Not even today, on the eve of everything coming unraveled.
At Ninth Street, I descended into the bowels of the subway. It was much hotter in the station than outside, and I unbuttoned my coat and tugged down my scarf to keep myself cool as I took the steps down two at a time to the platform.
The train pulled up to the platform and the doors dinged. I elbowed my way into the packed car, shoved myself up against the far door, and hunkered down for the long ride. The train began to move again, rocking gently back and forth, and I stared out of the door window as light after light passed.
I didn’t pay attention to the shimmering transparent woman standing a few people away, somehow inhabiting a free space. She kept looking at me, intently, until the train pulled up to the next station, and I sat down in a newly empty seat and pulled out one of the books I’d bought.
My dad would’ve hated what I just did. He would’ve told me to give her a chance. To sit down, to listen to her story.
All they wanted, usually, was for someone to listen.
But I ignored the ghost, as I had done for almost a decade in the city. It was easier when you were surrounded by people. You could just pretend like they were another faceless person in the crowd. So I pretended, and as the PATH train crossed under the Hudson River to Jersey, the ghost flickered—and was gone.
3
Dead Romance
I DRAINED MY glass of wine and poured myself another one.
I used to be good at romance.
Every one of Ann Nichols’s new novels had been praised by fans and critics alike. “A dazzling display of passion and heart,” the New York Times Book Review called Midnight Matinee, and Kirkus Reviews said A Rake’s Guide was “a surprisingly enjoyable romp”—which, hey, I’ll take as positive. “A sensational novel from a well-loved storyteller,” Booklist wrote, and never mind all of the blurbs from Vogue and Entertainment Weekly and a million other media outlets. I had them all posted on my dream board in my room, cut out from magazines and email chains over this last year, hoping that seeing them all together could inspire me to write one last book.