Page 9 of Gone for the Ghost (Maplewood Grove #3)

“Cynthia?” Lily’s voice carries breathless excitement. “Please tell me you have good news.”

I watch her face transform as she listens, joy spreading across her features like sunrise. She’s gotten an offer—a real publishing contract for the manuscript we crafted together through countless hours of argument and collaboration.

“I can’t believe it,” she says into the phone, tears streaming down her cheeks. “This is everything I dreamed of. Thank you so much for believing in the story.”

She should be celebrating. This is the validation she moved to Maplewood Grove hoping to find, the professional success that could launch the writing career she’s worked so hard to build. Instead, as soon as she hangs up, she turns toward my usual corner with desperate hope.

“Julian!” she calls, her voice bright with triumph and the need to share it. “Did you hear? They want to publish our book!”

Our book. The phrase hits like a blow to whatever I’m using for a chest these days. She sees our collaboration as partnership, recognizes my contribution to her success in ways that make my withdrawal feel like betrayal rather than protection.

But I remain hidden, using every technique I’ve developed over decades to become imperceptible. Let her believe I’ve moved on, that helping her achieve her dreams was my unfinished business and now I’m free to find whatever peace awaits properly departed spirits.

“Julian?” she tries again, moving through the apartment with growing desperation. “I know you’re here somewhere. This is our success. We did this together.”

The pain in her voice as she searches for me creates its own torture, but I force myself to remain invisible.

Better a clean break now than prolonged suffering for both of us.

Better to let her believe I’ve found resolution than burden her with the knowledge that I’m choosing misery to spare us both the complications of impossible love.

From my position of supernatural concealment, I watch her joy transform into confusion and then growing heartbreak as my absence becomes undeniable.

When Mrs. Whitfield from upstairs appears at the door—apparently summoned by Lily’s increasingly frantic calls—I realize the neighbor possesses some sensitivity to spiritual presences.

“I heard you calling for your gentleman friend,” Mrs. Whitfield says gently, studying the apartment with the expression of someone who sees more than most people. “I thought you should know—I felt him transition about an hour ago.”

“Transition?” Lily’s voice breaks on the word.

“Sometimes spirits remain earthbound because they have unfinished business,” the elderly woman explains with the patience of someone who’s had this conversation before. “A task to complete, someone to help. Once that purpose is fulfilled, they’re free to continue their journey.”

The words arrange themselves into a devastating narrative that makes perfect sense from everyone’s perspective except mine.

Julian’s unfinished business wasn’t solving Victoria’s mystery.

It was helping Lily achieve her dreams. Now that she’s successful, he’s found the peace that eluded him for nearly a century.

I watch Lily’s face crumple as she processes this explanation, seeing her success become secondary to the loss of partnership that made it possible. The celebration she’d wanted to share transforms into solitary grief, and I realize I’ve created exactly the outcome I was trying to prevent.

“How do you know he’s really gone?” Lily asks, clinging to hope that makes my concealment feel like cruelty.

“When they transition, there’s a definitive quality to their departure,” Mrs. Whitfield explains gently. “Like a door closing rather than someone stepping out. I’m sorry, dear. I know you’d grown attached to him.”

Attached . The word is so inadequate it borders on insulting. Lily hasn’t grown attached to me. She’s fallen in love with me. Completely, courageously, with the kind of depth that makes my fear-based retreat look like the cowardice it actually is.

As Mrs. Whitfield leaves and Lily begins the heartbreaking process of packing her belongings, I’m forced to confront an uncomfortable truth.

I haven’t learned anything from ninety-eight years of supernatural existence.

I’m making exactly the same mistake that trapped me in this earthbound state in the first place—running from love because I’m terrified of losing it.

When Victoria disappeared, I convinced myself that if I’d been stronger, smarter, more worthy of her trust, I could have prevented whatever forced her to leave.

That conviction became the anchor that kept me tethered to this world, unable to move forward because moving forward meant accepting loss I felt responsible for creating.

But watching Lily’s careful, heartbroken packing, I see the pattern with crystalline clarity.

My fear of loss has guaranteed the very outcome I was trying to prevent.

By protecting myself from potential heartbreak, I’ve created actual heartbreak for both of us.

By choosing safety over connection, I’ve chosen a form of death that’s more complete than anything physical mortality could accomplish.

Some connections, I realize with the force of revelation, transcend death not because they deny its reality but because they prove love can be stronger than the fear death creates.

Victoria’s disappearance taught me about loss, but Lily’s presence has been teaching me about the courage required to love despite that knowledge.

I’ve been so focused on protecting what we have that I never considered what we might build if I trusted her enough to try.

The thought stops my retreat completely, condensing my scattered consciousness back into something approaching coherent presence.

What we might build. Not what we’re limited to by supernatural circumstances, but what we might create together if I stopped calculating limitations and started embracing possibilities.

For the first time in nearly a century, I’m not planning how to survive losing someone I love. I’m planning how to love them completely enough that losing them becomes irrelevant compared to the joy of having known them at all.

But as I watch Lily fold the last of her clothes, preparing to leave the apartment that became our sanctuary, I realize that understanding my mistake and finding the courage to correct it might be two entirely different forms of resurrection.

The real question isn’t whether I’m brave enough to love her. It’s whether I’m brave enough to fight for the chance to prove that love can transcend every limitation when two people are willing to write their own ending.