Page 67 of Ghostly

Gabriel was right. She continued to learn and grow.

And if she could do that, was it possible to fall in love, too?

“Has it changed?” Gabriel asked.

“Huh?”

“The comet. Is it any different from the other times you’ve seen it?”

His matter-of-fact question felt so jarring against her thoughts. Couldn’t he, how did they say, read the room? One would think a lawyer would be perceptive.

Maybe he could sense her way of thinking, and decided to steer the conversation away. Ida swallowed.Don’t forget: space dust—reality, thinking ofGabriel as Armando—fantasy.

“Uh, no. It wouldn’t. Smaller comets might diminish into rocks as the sun strips away their tail, but not this one. It always stays the same. At least to our eye. It’s possible it breaks apart, but eventually, the pieces get suckedback together. Reformed. And when it comes back around everything appears as it always did.”

“Space dust is weird.”

“We’re all space dust.”

At the edge of her vision, Gabriel’s hand stirred. He stretched it out on the blanket, halfway between them.

“I like that it stays the same,” she said. “It comforts me. People come into the house, age, and leave, and the furniture changes and TV shows end and trends die, but the comet always comes back. Sometimes, I’m all alone, watching it. Or I have a tenant, but he’s inside, glued to the TV. Or it’s cloudy, and I wait all night for a sliver of sky to show, thinking this time, it may come and go without saying hi to me.”

“Sometimes, you have companionship.”

“That was nice of you.”

“Well, I’ve nowhere to be tomorrow, either.”

Still, he had to be freezing, and judging by his lack of interest in space up to this point, comet-watching surely wasn’t that exciting.

“Next time, you’ll have companionship, too.”

“What?” Did he mean it? That he’d stay? But the comet’s orbit was fourteen years—that would mean—

“You’ll find friends. Meet people,” Gabriel said. “When we bring you back to life. Maybe you’ll even find an astronomy society, and you can have midnight barbecues with comet watching, or whatever it is they do…”

Oh. Yes, she supposed she would meet people. Why had she thought Gabriel would stick around?

“Perry hasn’t said yes yet. We don’t know if I will come back to life.”

“We’ll get Perry on our team. I promise.” Gabriel drew in a raspy breath. “Ida, I—”

“You should go back inside. You must be cold.” It had been a beautiful night so far, but she was clinging to the last strands of her fantasy, and Gabriel was surely preparing for another session of listing off facts that would reassure her in the resurrection plan.

Life might be very different by the time Wright-Maxwell rolled around again. Or everything could fail, and she’d remain the same, only gazing at the stars alone.

Gabriel rose to a sitting position. “Are you going to be fine?”

“I’m a ghost. What could happen to me?” Besides pieces of her soul being stripped off by the sun—or a particular man, in this case—and rearranged again, and now feeling all alien and right and wrong at the same time.

Gabriel nodded and collected the mugs, but left the blanket. Once he was gone, Ida stretched her hand to his side of the blanket, imagining she felt the lingering warmth. “Good night, Armando.”

Chapter 17

With Gabriel gone to town again, Ida was alone in the house when someone knocked on the door.

“Hello? Mr. Buren?”