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A jack-o’-lantern bloomed into an orange crescent moon on the ledge of the stone wall.
“Mmm. I like that one.” It was a pattern I’d carved in relief using linoleum tools.
He lit the second one. The third. He kept going until all seven of our carved pumpkins were happily flickering. Then he handed me the lighter.
“It’s time.”
He wanted me to light the bonfire.
He’d restacked the logs perfectly. It would be an inferno if it burned. A true Samhain ritual, the perfect ending to a perfect evening.
Granny’s tender, youthful face flashed before me. Her shriveled body in her wheelchair.
I blinked hard, wiping out the memory. I put my wall up. The one I used at work. To keep out the dead. To keep in the joy. If I thought about it, I might hesitate.
I touched the flame to the newspaper in the center, and watched as the fire caught, shriveling the paper until it engulfed the kindling.
It was done.
My first fire since Granny.
Gus had given me a gift tonight: the agency to change things.
Granny wasn’t in this house.
She hadn’t even been here at dinner, and it was given in her honor.
Waylon had made the connection. Maybe no one else had noticed, but I’d felt his sister through him. A small part of me was jealous. I wanted my own kin to show up. But spirit, God, the Universe, or whomever, didn’t work like that, and I’d be a bad witch if I resented Waylon for it.
I tried to be a good witch. I shared. I played nicely with the dead.
Ironically, or maybe not so much, Greek theology took a similar view of the departed. They weren’t truly separate from us. In Orthodoxy, to die was tofall asleep. It’s why they prayed for the dead and asked the dead to pray for us, the same way many people prayed for their neighbors to find the right job or cure their step-nephew’s eczema. Nothing but a gossamer veil distanced us from our deceased. I felt it in my soul.
Conceptually, anyway.
In reality, I was a fraud.
“I don’t feel her.” I said, staring into the fire, telling Gus the secret source of my shame. “Granny. I’ve never felt her presence. That’s why I kept the house the same. Why I hadn’t thrown out her oldTV Guidesand the old pink Oil of Olay bottles she used to hoard. I kept everything the same because I thought that would make me feel her presence, but all I felt in this house was empty. Until you.”
“Tonight, you mean?”
“No.” My eyes moved to him. “Since you moved in.”
Gus’s jaw tightened as he frowned at the kindling in his hand. He snapped the bundle of sticks in half and threw them into the fire.
My stomach sank. I’d lost him. Once again, I opened up too fast, too much, and he withdrew into himself. After he’d given me such a beautiful night, I thought he was ready for at least that much intimacy. For me to let him know how safe and comfortable I felt in his presence, without sounding like some middle-school crush.
I was never going to get my friend back after I married him. I knew that now.
I turned to go back in the house. I had a mess to clean up inside. Might as well start attacking it now, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do in the wee hours before the dawn of All Saints’ Day.
Gus’s hand caught mine from behind, pulling me back and spinning me around to face him.
“I haven’t been a good husband to you.” I smelled the full-bodied cabernet from dinner on his breath. I wanted to taste his mouth, feel his soft beard against my cheek.
“Gus, you don’t have to—” But he didn’t let go of my hand. He wove our fingers together and squeezed, silencing my placations.
“This is what I was trying to say to you... badly... before dinner. I’ve been a shit husband. I’ve actively avoidedyou, not sharing the same bed, escaping when our conversations grew too deep or interesting, always standing miles away from you.”
