“Hello?” I called hesitantly.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for a six-foot-three romance editor in oxford leather loafers, argyle socks, a crumpled white shirt, and neatly pressed trousers. But there was no one in my hotel room.
“I’m losing it,” I muttered, and finished putting up my toiletries.
My dad was dead, and I didn’t need ghosts to complicate that. I didn’t need anyone to complicate that. My family was already complicated enough—never mind my history with Mairmont. If I started talking with ghosts again, I was sure to land in the Mairmont gossip circles within the week: “Did you hear, Florence is back and talking to herself again?”
Poor Florence and her imaginary friends.
Florence and her ghosts—
I swallowed the knot in my throat, and without saying another word, I turned off the lights and fell onto my bed and pulled the covers over my head.
All I could think of was how quiet the inn was, and how my thoughts were so loud against it, and how in New York I never had to hear silence. I never had to think about Mairmont, or the people here, or why I left.
For ten years, I hopped from one apartment to the next, chasing after a love story that wasn’t mine, trying to force myself to be the exception instead of the rule, and over and over again all I found was heartbreak and loneliness, and never once did I see a murder of crows in a dead oak tree, or a ghost on my front steps, because I was like everyone else, normal and lost, and my dad was still alive.
And just for a second—one second longer—I wanted to be that Florence, and live in that pocket of time again.
But it was gone, and so was my dad.
11
Past Tense
I SLEPT FOR almost three hours.
Almost.
I knew how ghosts worked. They always popped up in the most unexpected places, and I wasn’t sure when Benji Andor would show up again. If he showed up again. A very small, very unreliable part of me well and truly hoped I’d imagined him. But tell that to my anxiety, which was dead set on not letting me get a full REM cycle of sleep. Every groan and crack of the old house startled me awake, until my phone finally went off at 9:30 a.m.
And I felt like a truck had run me over, backed up, and hit me again.
At least I had packed my heavy-duty concealer—the good stuff. I slathered it under my eyes and hoped I looked at least a little alive as I traipsed down the steps to the foyer, where a larger redheaded man sat on the stool Dana occupied last night. He had on an anime T-shirt and about half a dozen piercings in his face, and it took me a moment to recognize him.
“John?”
He looked up from his magazine at the sound of his name, and put on a smile. “Flo-town! Dana said you were staying here!” He stood and quickly hurried around the desk to give me a bear hug. Approximately three of my ribs cracked and I died. He set me down with a laugh. “It’s been—how long, ten years?”
“About,” I conceded. “I barely recognized you!”
He blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. He had on a hat with a pizza design on it, and a loud floral button-down. Miles from the guy I dated in high school—polo shirts and short buzzed hair and a football scholarship to Notre Dame. “Ah, yeah, a lot’s happened.”
“You’re telling me. Congrats on you and Dana!”
“Yeah, can’t believe my luck. How’s New York been treating you?”
“Good. Well—not bad,” I amended.
He laughed. “That’s good to hear. And how’s your wr—” The old rotary phone at the desk began to ring, and he apologetically excused himself to go take the call. “Mairmont Bed-and-Breakfast, John speaking . . .” Then he put his hand over the receiver and whispered to me, “It’s good to see you, though I’m sorry about your dad. He was a real good guy.”