Between Seasons

by Aida Brassington

  Deep down, even despite not knowing much of anything, he believed it.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The humidity persisted, as did Sara’s insistence that she needed to monitor her mental health.

  “I’m going back to the therapist,” she announced one morning in August, the hazy sun streaming through the kitchen window to highlight her tea sipping . “It would be too weird to see Roger –it probably wouldn’t make him feel good about me spending time with his wife and daughter when he was working with me on my issues.”

  “I don’t understand what you do at therapy,” Patrick said.

  “Dr. Turnball recommended someone in Lansdowne. My first appointment is in two days. Maybe they’ll go hardcore on me this time –a lobotomy or shock therapy or something.” She smiled and drank from her mug.

  Neither one of those things sounded like a particularly good option. He’d never known anyone who personally went to a therapist, as Sara had referred to it. His mom and dad had spoken about some cousin who was loony toons, but Sara seemed completely normal (other than a penchant for talking out loud) . He supposed he could understand why she thought she needed to visit the nut farm doctor –in her place, he’d doubt his sanity too. After all, there’d been more than one time over the last few decades he’d felt as though one more day alone would turn him into a blithering, drooling idiot.

  “One flew east, one flew west,” he muttered.

  The day of Sara’s appointment, she wandered around the house aimlessly. She was twitchy – she dropped a glass and burnt her wrist on the tea kettle before noon.

  “Oh, great. Now he’s going to think I tried to kill myself or something,” Sara joked, holding her arm under the kitchen faucet.

  For a fleeting moment, he wondered if Sara would become a ghost just like him if she died in the house. He’d thought of it before, but now the idea made him feel physically ill. There was nothing more Patrick wanted than to find a way to be with Sara in every sense of the word, but her dying was something he couldn’t stomach. Even something as small as the burn on her wrist had panicked him enough to make him forget he was trying not to touch her –he’d rushed at her, his fingers sinking t hrough her hand as she shivered.

  His youth group had once discussed the sin of coveting. As far as sins went, Patrick never thought it was all that bad –wanting what others had seemed fairly benign as long as no one stole or lied to get the things they desired. Patrick had no reason to do either of those things anymore, not to mention that he couldn’t steal anything even if he tried unless he took his stuff back from Sara . But he would have – stolen or lied, that is –if it meant finding a way to be human. For a long time he just wanted to move on, or whatever it was he could do as a dead guy. Now his deepest wish was to discover some way to feel –really feel –Sara’s skin.

  He would do anything. Be anyone.

  Outside, the street teemed with activity. The mailman came and went. Mrs. Stout shuffled out to pick up her newspaper. The neighborhood kids pedaled their bikes up and down the sidewalk. Not one of them pr obably knew how lucky they were. He could remember being like them – enjoying the weather before it turned brittle and raw , soaking up the freedom before returning to the drudgery of school . The memory of running down the sidewalk, the concrete solid and abrupt under his feet, rumbled up his legs; he missed it. The house was closed up, but the smell of sun-warmed grass tickled his nose.

  Sara had been gone for an hour, and Patrick had spent the time watching the world from the front window in the living room. Wanting Sara so bad was depressing. He’d been a sad sack for entire years when he’d been alone in the house, but this was different –he simultaneously felt content and right when he was in her presence and hopeless in the face of what could never happen between them.

  He turned and pressed his back against the wall inside the door. The urge to just let himself melt into it and try to leave for the millionth time was strong, but he didn’t want to miss Sara coming back home. He hated losing any time at all with her now that things seemed off with her; he felt like he couldn’t afford the hours he’d miss after attempting to escape. There was a reason he’d been suspicious about how happy he’d been. Something in his head told him this was it –he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  A car door outside pulled his attention back out the window. Sara scurried up the path through the yard, unlocking the front door and throwing herself inside. Her keys hit the floor after she hurled them across the room.

  “Shit!” she seethed.

  Patrick’s hands floated around her, coming as close to patting her as he could without touching her. It was Hell not to be able to comfort her.

  “What’s wrong, Sara?” Patrick asked, orbiting around her – a moon to her planet – while she stalked across the room and up the stairs. “Tell me what’s going on!”

  She sprinted to her bedroom, flinging open the door and sinking onto the comforter on her bed before curling into a ball. Patrick twitched at her side , bewildered and panicked.

  “Christ, Sara, just talk to me. Talk! What the Hell happened?” He knelt next to her bed, forgetting all about his plan to keep his hands off her. His fingertips passed through her hair and traced above the lines of her tear-stained face. Her sobs continued, filling the room with tortured wails. She sucked in a breath, letting out another string of howls and blubbering, and Patrick put his hand on her hip, palms sinking slightly into her body. He hadn’t really thought anything of it, other than to take note of the difference in feeling her and the air around her, but Sara reacted by tensing, the upper half of her body nearly levitating off the bed as she threw herself against the headboard.

  She hiccupped, eyes darting around the room, her tear and snot-stained face shocked. “Just leave me alone,” she whispered in a raw, tremulous voice.

  “Sara?”

  A gasping breath ripped through the room. “What the Hell? Okay, I must really be going off the deep end. Now I can hear my ghost? Dr. Turnball doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I need to be medicated. I need to –”

  Sara continued to ramble, her voice rising with each sentence, while Patrick gaped, shocked into silence by what she’d just said. She… heard his voice? No. There was no way. Even his own mother hadn’t… no, no one could. Nothing he’d wished for in forty years had happened, and the very idea… yeah, it had to be all in her head.

  “Uh, you can… hear me?” he asked, testing … just in case.

  She whimpered and jumped off the bed, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. “Oh my God. I’m completely delusional.”

  He pushed himself to his feet and followed her path. “This is heavy. No one can hear me. You can’t possibly…”

  “No, I’ve finally lost my hold. Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear.” Her voice held an edge of hysteria, and the giggles that bubbled out of her mouth next didn’t help her sound any more sane. “I’m going back to the institute,” she sang breathily.

  This had to be like every other time he thought maybe she really could hear him… just a trick of coincidence and timing.

  “And both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black,” he recited, his hands sinking into her biceps. Sara shook so badly even her hair quivered. “Oh, I kept the first for another day!”

  “Yet knowing how leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back,” she muttered before yelling, “Why are you quoting Robert Frost to me?”

  Patrick’s hands dropped, and his eyes widened. He opened his mouth to say something else, but nothing came out.

  She twisted away and laughed again. “I’m fruit loops! I’m having a conversation with my imaginary friend. Dr. Turnball said I was probably just giving in to the power of suggestion. Why wouldn’t I? I mean, Ginny tells me there’s a dead guy, and now here he ’s talking to me. Yeah, perfectly normal! Not nuts at all. Nah.”

  “This is far out.” Patrick scratched his head and tried to get a grasp
on the situation, which wasn’t easy. He didn’t even know where to start.

  “Yeah, far out,” Sara repeated sarcastically, turning and whipping a pillow through Patrick’s torso. He frowned and took a few steps back as she continued to beat the air. A few moments later her tears came again, but they were silent, dripping down her cheeks. She sank onto the bed.

  “This is… yeah, I don’t know how long this is going to last, so… uh, Sara, my name is Patrick. Patrick Boyle . I died in 1970, but you already know all that.” He recounted exactly what had happened, telling her about his parents leaving and being trapped in the house. He told her everything about his life before she showed up, and she sat quietly, hiccuping occasionally and staring off at the window. He spoke as quick as he could, sure this strange break in routine would snap back to normal any second.

  “Here’s the… thing. I know this is going to sound nuts,” he said. Sara snorted and kept her eyes trained to the glass . “Every day since you’ve been here has been the best time of my whole life… even before I died. I, well… I think I sort of . . . love you.”

  Sara burst out into laughter again, vaulting from the bed to pace furiously along the side of it. Patrick’s eyebrows furrowed –he was seriously concerned she’d really flipped her wig , not that he could blame her. If a ghost had shown up in his bedroom while he was alive, started chatting him up and telling him that it loved him, he was sure he’d question his sanity t oo.

  As it was, he felt like a jerk for laying that on her at all.

  “Don’t cry, angel.” It was strange to call her that, but it had just popped out. Not that it wasn’t true –she really was angel to him. She saved him… saved every bit of him from a life… afterlife… whatever… alone.

  “Don’t cry?” she blurted, arms flailing. “I’ve really lost it this time, Patrick! Or should I call you Pat? Ginny calls you Pat. Casper?”

  “I don’t care. Call me whatever you want. But you’re not going nuts. I can prove it!”

  “Oh?” Her lips turned up before drawing into a pucker. “How are you going to do that?”

  “Uh…” He hadn’t thought that far ahead. How could he prove it? It wasn’t like he had an official ghost license he could show her or something. And then it struck him: he planted a coffee can full of pennies in the yard when he was ten –no one knew about it. “Well, how about this –I buried something a while ago, and it’s probably still there. If you find a can of change under the flower bed to the left of the porch, you’ll know I really exist. I mean, how else would you know it’s there, right?”

  “Yeah, maybe. I guess. Did you, uh, do you know about the sea glass?”

  “Yeah, I left it for you.” He considered grabbing it and floating it in front of her, but hearing his voice was probably enough for one day .

  She seemed to calm slightly as she sagged into the armchair in her room and crossed her legs. “I… can’t do this right now.”

  Patrick nodded and backed toward the door. “Okay. I, uh… won’t try to talk to you. But I’ll be here.”

  Sara snickered. “Right, because where else are you going to go, right?”

  “Yeah. Where else am I going to go?”

  Sara was quiet, silently flitting in and out of the house. Her nervousness thickened the air, and she started to lose weight again, something Patrick could see just by the way her cheekbones stood out. Guilt clung to him –he never should have talked to her that night. He should have known it was a bad idea.

  Her laptop lay shut, unused. Maybe she was writing outside the house, but she definitely wasn’t doing any typing there. He assumed whatever she had to do for work was done elsewhere , too. Sara walked through the rooms, absently feeding herself and going about her day. The sea glass lay right where she’d left it in the bowl on the coffee table, and he caught her staring at it more than a few times. She never touched it, though… never went near it.

  The local news droned on as she sat on the couch and watched the television screen, her face perfectly passive. She almost didn’t react when the doorbell rang, but then she slowly turned her head to look at the door, shoving herself off the couch a second later.

  “Hey, neighbor,” Megan said. “I haven’t seen you. Everything okay?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah. Just been busy.” Sara took a step back. “Want to come in? I was just going to have some tea.” The relief in her voice was obvious even to Patrick –it killed him to know she didn’t want to be in the house alone. Every day had sucked a l ittle more hope out of him.

  He’d told Sara he loved her, and she’d rejected him. He knew it wasn’t the average set of circumstances, but it didn’t sting any less. He wanted her to come around, to go outside and dig up the stupid coffee can. He wanted her to accept the situation and love him back, as ridiculous as it sounded.

  Megan smiled and followed Sara through the living room. “Yeah, definitely. I’ve been worried about you.”

  Patrick wandered after them, propping himself against the counter as Sara poured water into the tea kettle and set it on the stove. The chair Megan pulled out squeaked across the floor while Sara busied herself with tea mugs and sugar.

  “No need to worry. Everything is okay.”

  “Really? You don’t look okay.”

  Sara smiled, although it wasn’t her usual grin. “Just some personal stuff I’m dealing with.”

  “Not your ex, right?”

  “Oh, geez, no. Nothing like that.” Sara chortled and dug out a box of tea bags. “If only it were that uncomplicated.”

  Megan snorted. “Something’s more complicated than all that noise with your ex-husband… the guy who drugged you?”

  Sara shrugged, and the corners of her lips tugged up further. Patrick felt like absolute shit –he was now a problem worse than that jerk she’d been married to. An apology was on the tip of his tongue, but he’d promised not to say a word . For all he knew it had been a one-time thing, her being able to hear him, but he wasn’t willing to find out. Not right now, and especially not with Megan in the room.

  What if this whole thing wasn’t just Sara? What if everyone could hear him now? It seemed unlikely, although what about his situation was likely? He could just imagine the shit hitting the fan if Megan could hear him – Sara wouldn’t have to worry about her mental health anymore; she’d be too busy pulling Megan off the ceiling. She didn’t seem to harbor the same suspicions about demons that Jules did, but it wasn’t something he wanted to deal with.

  “The offer still stands, you know. Roger will be happy to book an appointment with you if you need him.”

  “I… uh, well, I ended up finding my own therapist. I thought talking to Roger would be weird.”

  Megan laughed. “That’s the truth. He tries to head shrink me all the time. Occupational hazard, I suppose. So you’re back in therapy. That’s good, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Sara shrugged again. “I’m not a danger to myself or others, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Huh. Well, considering you’re my next door neighbor, I’ll take that as a good sign,” she teased, but her smile slipped as she watched Sara take the kettle off the stove when it whistled and pour water into the mugs. “Just… I’m here for you, too, you know. Whatever it is, you can talk to me.”

  Sara handed Megan her tea without a word and sat across the table. “Thanks. This is, uh, something I’m not ready to discuss.”

  Megan set her cup down and held both hands out in front of her, her tone agreeable. She looked... apologetic. “Hey, no problem. I’ll back off.”

  They sipped their tea in silence, Sara’s foot bouncing under the table. Patrick’s fingers twitched as the void in the conversation grew uncomfortable, and he released a long, irritated sigh, regretting it immediately when Sara’s head snapped in his direction. Megan seemed oblivious, though .

  “So, how’d you enjoy your first summer on the east coast?” Megan asked, voice cheerful.

  Sara slowly swiveled her head back. “Oh, uh, good,
I guess. I didn’t really do much except hang out around the house. You and Roger took Steph to the beach a few times, right?”

  Megan chattered about their trips down the shore, Patrick grateful to her for filling the space with sound. Sara glanced out the window, nodding and murmuring, “uh huh” and “oh yeah?” at appropriate intervals, all the while sneakily casting glances every few minutes toward the counter where Patrick leaned. It was unsettling –she seemed to stare right at him, but he knew she couldn’t see him .

  At least he didn’t think so.

  “Are you ready for the fall?”

  “Huh?” Sara pursed her lips and drew her eyebrows together, clearly not expecting the question. Patrick had been too caught up in studying the slim lines of her face to pay attention to the conversation, but he ’d heard that.

  Pride goeth before the fall, he thought. He had no idea what that meant, but the words ricocheted around in his head.

  “Well, you know, fall is actually pretty nice around here, but it gets fairly chilly. Do you even have the clothes for that? I mean, it probably never really got that cold in L.A., right? You lived in Portland for a while too?”

  “Yeah, I grew up near Portland. It gets colder there... like, in the forties.”

  “I’ve heard it rains a lot there.”

  “No, not really. I mean, it’s not like it’s Seattle or anything. Do you get a lot of snow here in the winter?”

  “It depends on what you mean by a lot. Last year we got a ridiculous amount – four feet in the span of a week.”

  Sara’s face blanched. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. We were actually trapped in the house for a few days. There was just nothing Roger could do. Media’s pretty small, but it took the city, like, a week to get all the streets plowed.”

  Patrick could see the wheels turning in Sara’s head, and he knew exactly what she was thinking – if it snowed that way again, she’d have nowhere to escape to, no place to get away from him. It was a good sign she was imagining herself still in the house then, though. He’d take whatever part of her he could get, as long as she stayed.