Emily's Bones by Sarah Arceneaux

Leo spends years searching for the remains of his murdered sister, with help from beyond the grave.

Image generated with OpenAI

When they dug up the bones on his property, Leo was out of town.

He got the call while he was walking a wide street, looking for the white-lettered glass door of the specialist's office. The deputy on the phone told him that someone had called up an anonymous tip; that he wasn't in any trouble, but he should probably get home as soon as possible.

After his appointment, he called the train office and switched his ticket. It cost him an extra seven dollars, but he would have paid anything.

When he arrived home, he'd expected the place to be crawling with sheriff's deputies, but it was silent. He dropped his bag inside the door and went back out with a lit lantern, walking the property all over, until he stood at the edge of a shallow pit. The toes of his boots dug into the soft soil.

They'd left their tools scattered about. At the bottom of the pit was a depression with hard edges, like something had taken up that space for a long time before being removed, and the earth had gotten too used to itself that way.

The walk out here had stolen the air from his lungs, and he fought to get it back, his heavy breaths blooming white puffs in front of his face. Only September, but in the high country, the warmth left with the sun.

He didn't hear her come up behind him. He never did. But he could feel her - the dampness of her presence, cold as the night itself, the waves of forlornness that washed over her and lapped at him.

"They found them," she said. Her voice was thin: a layer of ice over the duck pond on a late October morning. Cold. Easily broken.

"So they did."

"All this time searching, and someone else found them for you."

He didn't say anything, only placed the lantern on the ground at his feet and eased his old body down to sit on the edge of the pit. It was shallow enough that his feet reached the bottom.

"What's going to happen?" she asked.

"I don't know, Emily." He turned and looked at her. Through her translucence, he could see the distant porch light on the ranch house, a cheese-wedge of white moon peeking out from behind the barn, and, on the far side of the valley, a faint glow from the streetlights in town.

She was stronger here, so close to the bones. He could see the lines of her face clearly, the deep set of her eyes, the dark circles beneath them. He wished he could reach out and take her hand, but he resisted the urge to try. It would only make him sad.

"If they bury them in the cemetery, do you think I'll have to start haunting the church?" She glided forward and lowered herself to sit beside him, though the ground beneath her remained undisturbed. "I hope not. Presbyterians are so boring."

He laughed despite himself. Then, "Where would you want to be buried?"

There was pain in her eyes as they flicked to his. Away. "You know where."

"I guess I do."

Here. Right where she had always been. Where he was.

"Are they going to try and say it's your fault? This is your land."

"I don't see how they could," he said. "I only bought the property last year. This land was all timber, then."

"If they bury me in the cemetery, will you come visit me?"

He heard the quiet desperation, and felt an urge to comfort it away. "Of course I will." He reached for her, foolishly. His hand passed through her hand, and a chill took it. He'd used to hate the cold.

Her fingers clutched at his, but he felt no pressure from them. "I'd be so lonely, there by myself."

"Would you? There's other bones there."

"Bones, maybe. Spirits? Who knows?"

A question occurred to him. "If there are other spirits, would you be able to touch them?" He hoped so. He'd like for her to have that.

She lifted the coolness of her hand to his face, and smiled. Then the smile fell as she considered. "I don't know. I've never met another spirit. I've always been here."

"Well. Not always."

They were silent, then. He stayed out there, feet dangling over her grave, until clouds slid across the moon and she disappeared.

---

"Morning, Deputy." Leo finished buttoning his shirt and stepped back from the doorway. "Come on in. Coffee?"

"Tha'd be great, Mr. Ingram."

"Leo."

"All right, Leo." The man followed him through the living room, his eye casting across the red plaid slipcover on the couch, the layer of dust that covered every surface except one edge of a coffee table that Leo's elbow had wiped clean. A shotgun and two rifles hung on the walls, but Leo wasn't worried; he'd bought them legally, and none were loaded.

In the kitchen, he pulled the curtains to let the sunlight in, ignored the airful of dust motes it revealed. He had to wash a mug to pour fresh coffee in, but the man seemed grateful when he handed it to him.

"So, Deputy...?"

"It's Forsythe."

"Deputy Forsythe. How can I help you?" He leaned back against the counter and wrapped his hands around his own mug.

"You seen what they found out back?"

"I did. Walked out there last night. Had to change my ticket to come back early."

"We appreciate that you were willing to do that."

Leo shrugged, one shoulder.

The deputy continued, getting straight to the point. "Did you know those bones was out there?"

Leo hadn't slept much the night before. He'd stayed up late, wondering how he was going to answer this question. It was only a matter of time 'til he got it, he knew, and it was better to be prepared.

He could say that no, sir, he hadn't known, and what a shame. Suppose a previous owner had buried some flu-killed family member, rather than pay the costs of a proper burial.

Or he could say that you were always finding things like that, in out-of-the-way places like this. Hell, the last ranch he'd lived on had had a little roped-off pet graveyard. Headstones and everything. Place spooked the hell out of him.

In the end, he'd decided to go with the truth. "I had a hunch."

The man's eyebrow quirked, but mostly he took it in stride. "A hunch?" He pulled a little notebook out of the chest pocket of his coat and began to pat himself down, looking for a pen.

Leo took one out of a drawer and handed it over. "Yessir."

"And why'd you have a hunch there'd be bones out there?"

"I've been following some leads, trying to locate a woman that disappeared from my town. They led me here."

"Is that right." The deputy scribbled furiously, and Leo topped off both their coffees. "And who is this woman, that you'd go looking for her?"

If he was going to be honest, this was the moment. "She was my sister."

The scratching of the pen slowed, then stopped. The deputy looked up. "Your sister? Your sister disappeared?" To his credit, the man tucked his notepad away, his eyes settling on Leo.

"Well. 'Disappeared' isn't exactly right, but... yessir."

"I'm going to need you to walk me through this. Start at the beginning."

---

Her hair was the thing everyone noticed first. She kept it long and fought their mother about cutting it - the riot of dark curls and wild loops that reached to her waist.

But what Leo remembered best was her smile. A Julia Roberts smile, Dad said. Wide and toothy and irrepressible - like her hair. Like her laugh.

She liked rom-coms and gel pens and cucumber melon body spray, and the fall she turned eighteen, she got an offer for a volleyball scholarship at a Division II school.

Mama wanted her to take it. "You won't have to pay a cent, and you'll come out the other side college-educated just the same." But Emily wasn't sure. She loved playing volleyball, but was worried it wouldn't leave any time for her studies.

She wanted to be a social worker.

With her test scores and school record, her volunteer hours and meticulous detail, she could have been anything she wanted - doctor, lawyer, accountant, financial advisor. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. But from the time she was little, she only ever wanted to help people.

Like the time she convinced her middle school softball team to organize a food drive for the homeless shelter. Or when she went over to Mrs. Macadou's house every day after school for a week, because the poor woman had had a tooth extracted and her own children lived two states away. It was why she volunteered at the food pantry every month and always said yes when someone approached her at a gas station asking for spare change.

And it was why she stopped to ask Alvin Gabriel Thorne if he needed a ride, on the side of a lonely dark road on her way home from practice. It was why she agreed to follow him into his hotel room when he said he couldn't get his TV to work.

And why she'd begged Leo, that first astonishing time she'd appeared to him after her murder, wispy as steam and pale as paper, not to let the prosecutor push for the death penalty.

His parents had given up already: his mother turned gray, his father broken-voiced and always holding her. They wept together.

Leo had no one to weep with.

Not then. Not when the DA told him that Thorne had refused to reveal where her body was. Not when he had to sit in a courtroom and look at a red-chapped neck and a head of dishwater-brown hair, nor when the jury said there was only enough evidence for a conviction of second-degree murder. And not when, just four years later, Thorne was released early because of "exemplary behavior" and "good citizenship."

Having Emily appear when the moon was full and the sky clear was a comfort. She didn't bear a grudge ("He needs help, Leo; he's not well"), and her empathy for the man who had assaulted and killed her and buried her bones in another state had eased Leo's own need for revenge. It drove their parents away, when he told them he could see her, could talk to her. They thought he was losing his mind to the grief. As if they had any room to talk.

Emily didn't know where Thorne had taken her. She could only describe the glimpses she'd gotten when she'd woken for a few minutes at a time in the backseat of his car, before being sedated again. She appeared more strongly the closer Leo came to her bones, so for years now they'd been playing a game of Hot and Cold. Leo didn't come from money, and he didn't come into it, either. So he'd pick up and move to another state, get a job on a ranch or a construction crew, and make forays into the surrounding area on his days off.

---

"Hold on a second," said the deputy. "How long you been doin' this?"

"Close to ten years." She should have been twenty-eight. Twenty-eight and frazzled and hard to find behind a stack of manila folders on a cluttered desk, crayon drawings on her office walls that all showed her with a horseshoe smile.

"And this Thorne guy - he's out now?"

"Last I heard, he still was."

The deputy rubbed his chin, a sandpaper sound. He was silent so long that Leo began to think about sitting down, taking the weight off his ankles. They were swelling worse than they used to. Then the man spoke. "That's a hell of a story, Leo."

"I know it."

"How long you been seeing... things?"

"You mean my sister?" He straightened. "I told you. Couple months after she died."

"And you can only see her during a full moon?" He tried to hide the doubt in his voice - folks always did; they were mostly kind - but it dripped like melting wax from his lips.

"I can't explain it." Leo began making another pot of coffee, to give his hands something to do. "I didn't ask to see her." He turned abruptly. "You ever lose anyone close to you, Deputy?"

The man's eyes filled with something Leo thought he recognized. "I have."

"But you never seen 'em again."

He shook his head.

"It's a blessing to do so." He sighed and turned back to the sink. Filled the carafe, poured it into the back of the machine. "And a curse. Hard to move on, when your dead come back to you."

"Mmhm."

"You don't believe me." He clicked the power button and stood there, hands on the counter, looking out the kitchen window at the manzanita thicket that topped the hill.

"I want to. You seem like a good man, Mr. In... Leo. I don't think you want to lie to me."

"I ain't lying."

"Just the same. If I go to the sheriff with this story, he's as likely to cuff me as send me back out here to get the truth."

"I gave you the truth." He turned from the window.

"All I'm saying is, even if I did believe you - and I'm not afraid to admit that I'm not sure I do - no one else is going to."

They watched each other across the kitchen. The coffee maker burbled as it filled the carafe, the rich scent filling the kitchen.

"So what can I do?" Leo's voice was quiet.

"You only been here a year. But you may have noticed that we don't get a lot of murders here, or piles of bones. We ain't exactly set up for this. They may ask for a DNA sample. You willing to give that?"

"I am."

"All right then." Forsythe scribbled something on his notepad, then tore the page off and handed it to Leo. "You think of any other details, or want to tell me anything else, you call me."

"You mean if I decide to change my story."

The deputy shrugged. Waggled the paper at him.

Leo took it.

---

The first place he'd gone had been a dude ranch. The Ingrams weren't farmers - Dad was a teacher, and Mom ran a daycare out of their living room - but Leo took lessons at the Ozark Mountain Stable, and he knew his way around a barn, so that's the work he sought. Besides, he figured Thorne had probably dumped the body (he hated that phrase) somewhere rural, somewhere out of the way.

The first full moon while he was there, he was out in the spring pasture - "night fishing," he'd told the ranch boss, and ignored the sidelong glance he got in return - when Emily appeared. She was stronger than she'd been before, which was encouraging. They walked for miles, but he never felt her grip on his hand, her coolness didn't change at all. They must still be a long ways from where her bones were buried.

He stayed there a few months. Every twenty-nine days, he drove through the dark in a different direction and waited for her. When it got to where he was driving two, then three, then five hours in one night, he'd give his notice, collect his last paycheck, and move on.

Bit by bit, year by year, he honed in on her location. They wasted two years moving east, but after that they moved steadily west.

Then they had a string of bad luck. For months in a row, the night of the full moon was stormy. Even if he went out, sat in the rain and the moonless dark like a lost puppy, she couldn't come. He didn't know why, and neither did she. But he felt the time slipping away from them: water down a river.

Those were the only nights he drank. When the moon was covered and the witching hour rolled up, he'd be out on a porch or a rooftop or a tailgate, bottle dangled between his knees, staring at the sky, his face its own kind of storm. It got him in fights, and once, got him fired from a beef operation in Montana.

He'd had to take work in town. Months wasted, working nights and weekends and not out looking for her. She'd come to him while he was wiping a table or carrying boxes and just watch from the corner. The sorrow in her face wasn't for herself, for the bones they couldn't find. It was for him.

"Why are you searching so hard?" she'd asked him once. He was on break, standing outside and glowering at the moon.

He broke his gaze and turned to her, incredulous. "Don't you want me to find you? Didn't you ask me to?" Under the streetlamp, she was a sickly yellow instead of her usual clean, ghostly white.

"Sure I did. I do." Her arm twitched, like she wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder. But she didn't. "But I worry about you. You should have a family by now. A house of your own."

"No woman would want a life like this."

"Exactly."

He shook his head and paced away, then back. "You saying you want me to give up?"

"No." She shook her head, and her curls, wild as the day she had stopped her car on that highway, bounced back and forth, for all the world as if they were real. "But maybe it would be better for you."

"The man murdered you, Emily. He should be dead now himself!" A couple stopped on the sidewalk, stared at him. They couldn't see her ghost; could only see a man alone in a parking lot, screaming about murder. He lowered his voice. "But you wouldn't let that happen. You said all you wanted was to be reunited with your bones, to find peace. And I promised you -" His voice cracked, and he turned away. He could keep the sobs in, like a throatful of rocks, but he couldn't keep his shoulders from heaving.

Her cold presence stood at his back. "It's okay, Leo," she said. "It's all right."

"It's not all right." He coughed to clear his voice, wiped his face with the back of his hand. Turned to her. "It ain't all right. I promised I'd keep you safe, and I didn't."

"You couldn't have -"

"It was my job." Steel in his voice. He would take no argument. "I'm your brother. I was supposed to protect you, and I didn't."

"So this is what? Your penance?" Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. "Well, you know what? I don't care anymore. I'm fine this way."

"What way? As a ghost? Who gets to see your family once a month, if the weather's good?"

She nodded. "We can just leave it like this. Let's just leave it like this, Leo."

But he was shaking his head. "And what about when I die, Emily?"

She didn't have an answer for that.

---

It had always been a ticking clock. He'd known his heart was sick since he was nineteen years old - no surprise; Dad's brother had had a bad ticker, too - but the worsening symptoms were a candle wick, burning ever lower. How hard it was to breathe when he was lying down. A cough he could never quite get rid of. How easily he became exhausted, just from walking, and eventually just from sitting.

They gave him meds, and he took them diligently, but it was only a matter of time.

Hoping for a shortcut, he went to a medium. The woman, Penelope, had a studio that she called the Sanctuary, which was lit by candles and covered in soft blankets.

It smelled of incense and old cigarettes. She shut all the curtains and took his money up front.

Then she sat across from him at a little round table, took his hands, and closed her eyes.

"What is your sister's name?" she asked.

"Emily." Why did it still taste tannic on his tongue, all these years later?

"Emily, I have Leo here. Come and join us. I'm laying a pathway for you, Emily. All you have to do is walk down it."

The wind shifted the curtains. It shouldn't have - the windows were closed - but the cloth swayed gently, rasping against the brick wall like whispers.

Penelope shuddered - not horrified, but thrilled.

"She's here," she murmured.

Leo looked behind him, around the room, even under the table - but he didn't see her.

He should have come on a full moon night.

"She's here and she's so happy to see you." There was wistfulness in her voice, a crack. "She says to tell you 'hello.'"

"Hi, Emily," Leo said, already ready to go. He should have known better. He pulled at the neck of his plaid shirt, feeling suffocated. "Can you turn the heat down?"

Ignoring his question, she said, "Emily wants you to know she's happy on the other side, and she's safe now."

He knew that for a falsehood. She wasn't on the other side; that was the whole point. "Is that right? What's it like there?"

"Take care," Penelope said, and her voice had dropped in register, lowered to a murmur. "You may ask three questions. Is that your first?"

"Sure." He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

She whispered to herself, waited a moment, then said loudly enough for him to hear, "She says it's warm. It's warm, and she can see a calm lake, and pine trees, and soft clouds, and a wide blue sky. And..." She cocked her head, frowning. "And a... tanning salon?"

"A tanning salon." He frowned across the table at her, but Penelope's eyes were squeezed shut.

"Ask your second question."

He cast about. "Um... are Mom and Dad there? With her?"

A slight squeeze of his fingers, and then the woman murmured to herself again. When she spoke, it was with sorrow. "No. They are not."

He knew it was a load of crap, and yet it hurt anyway.

"Ask your third question."

He almost left, then. He longed for the coolness of the night air outside.

But he had already paid her, and he still hadn't asked The Question. "Where are her bones?"

Penelope's eyes opened and stared into his; the pupils had widened, and the paleness of her iris was a thin ring around them. He almost flinched, but made himself return her gaze.

"You're asking me? Not Emily?"

"Emily doesn't know. Maybe you can... I don't know. Sense it?"

"I can try. For another twenty dollars."

He sighed and opened his wallet, peeled off a twenty, and dropped it on the table.

Her eyes slid shut again, and she re-took his hands. This time, instead of murmuring to herself, she took several long, deep breaths, letting them out with a long sigh. It reminded him, suddenly and uncomfortably, of Mom taking her bra off under her shirt at the end of the day.

She shook her head. "I don't..." Then her eyebrows rose and she drew in a sharp breath. "Oregon."

He made a harsh sound. "I've been to Oregon. They're not there."

Penelope dropped his hands, opened her eyes, and lit a cigarette. Leaning back, she said through the smoke, "That's all I've got for you. You can pay for another session."

Leo shook his head. "Thanks anyway."

---

"A tanning salon?"

"Come on, it was funny!" She grinned at him, her teeth almost blinding white in the moonlight.

"I thought she was full of shit."

Emily's remnant shrugged. "Nope. Just looking for a buck. Mediums need to make rent, too."

"And cigarette money."

---

Leo opened the door to the Sheriff's Office, his shirt sticking to his back. It was a twenty-minute drive from his property just outside Oregon City, California, and the air conditioner in his truck hadn't worked in years.

He walked up to the desk, but before he could answer the woman's "How can I help you?" Deputy Forsythe saw him from across the room and hurriedly hung up his phone.

"Mr. Ingram!" he called as he approached, hiking his pants up. "Leo. How you doing?"

"Doing all right." He shook the man's hand.

"I appreciate you coming in."

"No trouble at all, Deputy."

He had to sign a form, then sit in a white room while a woman in a blue deputy's uniform swabbed the inside of his cheek as Forsythe watched.

"You mind waiting here a few minutes?" she asked.

"No problem."

"You want a coffee?" Forsythe asked.

"Water?"

"Sure."

He brought it back, took a seat, and sipped from his own styrofoam cup as Leo drained half the bottle of water in one go. After a minute or so, Forsythe tapped his fingers on the table and sighed. "Leo, I have a... piece of news for you." He was a man who didn't speak unless he had something to say. Leo liked that about him.

"What kind of news?" He didn't have anyone left. What news would Forysthe think could matter to someone like him?

"The Sheriff cleared me to tell you who called in the tip. About the bones."

"I thought it was anonymous?"

"It was. To you." His half-grin made a tree branch of his mouth.

"Who was it?"

Forsythe leaned forward. "It was Alvin Gabriel Thorne."

It didn't land at first. That name was associated with every evil he'd known - the lake of his grief, awkward looks from strangers, roadside flat tires, boozy blackouts. The endless empty, moonless nights spent alone.

"Thorne?"

The deputy nodded, but stayed silent, giving him time.

All his work, all his time, the abrasive scraping away of his own life for the sake of finding the bones that Thorne had discarded like so much trash - and the man had just decided to tell. Like he could have done ten years ago.

"Where is he? Where did he call from?"

"That's actually the news." Forsythe scratched his chin. "He's dead. He -"

"He killed himself, didn't he." Not a question.

He nodded. "Yeah. Right after he called. They found him strung up in a hotel room. Hung himself with his belt."

Better than he deserved. But he immediately regretted the thought, knew Emily would take pain from it.

He didn't realize he'd been staring in silence at the wall until Forsythe asked, "You all right?"

"I will be."

The door opened, and the lady deputy poked her head back in. "All right," she said, "you're free to go."

"Appreciate it, ma'am," Leo said. He shook Forsythe's hand and left the way he'd come in.

In the empty, sweltering truck, he turned onto a dirt road and asked, "What do you think, Emily?"

She didn't answer, of course.

She wasn't there.

---

A little over a year ago. It had been twilight in early August - "the dog days," Dad would have said - when he'd arrived at Oregon City, passing under a covered bridge that reminded him of what he'd seen of New England.

There wasn't much to it. A few clapboard houses, some rust-eaten and sagging trucks parked in chest-high grass or laid to rest on cinder block lifts. Roads of gravel and packed dirt. And woods for miles.

It was ugly, and old, and silent. Yellowish gray in the wavering heat and dying light.

He loved it.

There was something here, something that felt like home. The trees weren't right (ponderosas and gray pine instead of sugar maples and black walnut) and the ground curved up and away from him with every turn, but he could swear he caught a whiff of cucumber melon and lake water. It was going to be a full moon night. He wondered if Emily would feel it, too.

He pulled onto the dirt shoulder where the road split in two. Turned the truck off and stepped out into the twilight. He heard crickets and a nearby chorus of pond frogs, smelled the early evening richness of chaparral and sun-warmed earth. The air was sand-dry, and he breathed it deeply, remembering why he loved the high desert.

The first glimmer of hope he'd felt in years tickled at him, made him twitchy - an excitement that thrummed through his arms, his chest. He felt his eye twitch, and his heart pick up speed.

A pain in his chest.

Something was wrong.

This wasn't hope. It had been a long time, but - That's not what hope feels like, was the last thought that rose through him before his vision blurred, wobbled, and went dark.

---

"Somebody help!" Her voice couldn't go any louder, it couldn't, and oh god, he was dead. Leo was dead and she'd never -

No. She could hear his heartbeat, could feel the whip-thin cord that bound them heart to heart still pulsing. Flickering like a candle, but it was there. He wasn't dead; he was dying.

She fell on him, pounded powerlessly on his chest, wanting to shake him, for her screams to awake him - "Leo, get up! Leo!" - but her useless pale hands passed through him and his eyes remained closed.

She took off running for the nearest house. If her body were real, she'd have tripped over a pail and an overturned canoe, but she ran straight through them, through the wooden door of the house.

It was empty. Empty except for mouse droppings, newspapers, rusted nails, leaves. No one lived here. No one to call an ambulance or give CPR.

Despair. But then - a car coming up the road.

She ran through the walls and out into the street, waving her arms.

The pickup, newish and as brown as the darkening countryside, blew right through her; the wind of its passing even lifted the ends of her hair, just a touch. It never even slowed down.

Her knees buckled, and she nearly sank to the ground. But no - if he was going to die, she would be with him, hold his hand, even if he couldn't feel it.

She heard the truck slam on its brakes behind her.

Spinning, she saw that the driver had hopped out. He stared for a few seconds, his eyes probably adjusting to the low light, before he could recognize what he saw - a parked truck, engine still running, and a man collapsed on the ground by the driver's side door.

---

When he opened his eyes in the hospital room, she was there so strongly, the image of her so sharp and detailed, that he forgot, for a moment, she was dead.

"Emily." Tears burned his eyes. He closed them so she wouldn't see.

She touched his hand, the cold of her so piercing that he gasped. Then started coughing.

She snatched her hand back. "I'm sorry."

"No." He wheezed for breath, but reached for her. He almost thought he could feel her skin beneath the icy touch of death, and took comfort in that. "No, don't be. It's good."

She nodded. A line of silver streamed from each of her eyes. Was she crying, too? Could she cry?

"Hey." He squeezed, and though it felt like nothing, he knew she would notice. "They must be close, hey? Look at you. You haven't aged a day."

Her chuckle seemed to surprise her, and she shook her head at him. "You idiot."

He tried to sit up, but his arms wobbled, and he fell back down. "Where am I?"

"Hospital. You had a 'cardiac event,' the doctors said."

It was bound to happen. Would probably happen again. "Figured."

They gave over to a silence interrupted only by the beeping of the heart monitor and the oxygen tank's soft hissing. Such clean, indifferent sounds. Had it been like this for Dad, at the end?

It hadn't been, he knew. Mom had died a year before him. So he'd been alone.

"I heard the doctor talking to a nurse," Emily said. "He thinks... well. They don't have your medical history or anything, but it's pretty obvious."

He studied her diaphanous face, the weight of her sorrow pulling her mouth down, her eyes so lost. "How long?"

"Months, maybe." Her eyes met his, and she shook her head. "A year, if we're lucky."

He nodded. "Not surprised."

"I guess not."

"Are you worried?" He made himself lean forward then, to look up into her face. "I promised you I'd find them, Emily, and look - we're so close, they must -"

"I'm not worried about that," she cut him off.

"Then what?"

"What do you think?" She sat down on his bed. There was no change in the covers, not even an indentation. "You."

"Me?" He didn't understand. "Why me?"

"You're going to die, stupid." The note of younger-sister irritation with him was so out of place, brimming with such nostalgia, that he wanted to laugh. He didn't; her face was too serious.

"But you're dead." It didn't hurt to say like it used to. "I only ever had one thing to do, and it's almost done. Then we'll be... well. Something. Together. I don't know." He leaned his head back. He was so tired.

"What if we aren't?" He couldn't feel the grasping of her hand, but he heard the grasping in her voice. "What if it's nothing, after this? What if I never see you again?"

"Then that's how it was always going to be, Emily. And look how much extra time we've had."

---

When Deputy Forsythe came back to the property, the dust plume was visible from so far off that the coffee pot was full by the time he knocked.

"Appreciate this," he told Leo, gesturing with his filled mug as he took a seat at the table.

Leo took his own chair, more gingerly than he used to. The swelling in his ankles and feet wasn't just annoying, now; it was painful. "Anytime." His breath was coming shorter and shorter every day. He took his time catching it before sipping from his own cup. Tea, not coffee, and he wasn't pleased about it. Doctor's orders. "How can I help?"

Forsythe shook his head and leaned back. "I just wanted to let you know - in person, all things considered - that those test results came back. The remains are... just whose you said they were."

Leo was grateful for the careful phrasing. "No surprise there."

"No." He looked around him, at the garbage can full of paper plates, the sink empty except for dirty mugs. "You're out here all alone, aren't you?"

He wanted to laugh, but kept it in; it'd only start him coughing, and he felt frail enough as it was without this man seeing him weaker. "More or less."

Forsythe chuckled. "Except for the ghost, you mean."

He shrugged.

"My daughter has a little side project, she cleans houses for the elderly who can't do it themselves." When Leo started to speak, he held up a hand. "I'm not saying you're elderly, and you've clearly been doing for yourself for a long time. I just thought some help might suit you."

"That's kind," Leo said, "but I'm on a fixed income these days. Besides, I won't be here much longer."

"No? Where are you...?" He trailed off as he seemed to catch Leo's meaning. "I see. Well anyway, I wasn't marketing her business, I was offering it. As a gift. No charge."

"Why?"

Forsythe leaned forward, his arms resting on the table. The muscles there were hard if not large, and thick with dark hair. He was so hare, so healthy, that Leo felt a twinge of envy. "I know you haven't been here too long. And you pretty much keep to yourself." He waited for Leo's nod, then went on. "But we take care of folks, here. When someone needs help, we help them." He said it so simply.

Just take it, Emily's voice said, and Leo started so sharply that Forsythe looked concerned.

"All right," he said. "I don't see why the girl couldn't come by. If she needs something to do."

Forsythe grinned at him. "Good. I'll let her know. Is there anything else you need?"

"There is, actually."

"Shoot."

"The bones. Can I have them? I'd like to lay her to rest. I promised I would."

Forsythe studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Of course. They'll be returned to you. Usually takes a couple weeks."

"Any chance of a rush job? I'm on a bit of a... deadline." A twitch of his eyebrow.

The deputy half-grinned. "I'll see what I can do."

---

It wasn't a funeral so much as it was one man standing alone in a graveyard in the middle of the night.

Well. One man and one ghost.

"Sorry about the Presbyterians," he said. "There's laws about these things. Couldn't do it at home."

"That's all right," she said. "I think I'll enjoy the peace and quiet."

"Compared to what?" he asked.

"Your wheezy ass," she said with a grin.

He laughed, and it turned to coughing, then the aforementioned wheezing. He had to lean on his cane to keep his balance, and ignored her concerned look, focused instead on clenching his jaw so his teeth wouldn't chatter from the cold.

"You look so strong here," he said. "Clearer than you've ever been." It was true. He couldn't even see the church door through her. She could have been the moon herself in human form, full and pale as she was.

"I feel strong." Hopeful, she took his hand - but still, nothing.

They stood like that, quietly, until the moon, already at the horizon, wavered behind a film of cloud, and Emily's image fluttered.

"Leo. We'd better say goodbye."

"I guess we oughta."

She turned to him then. "What will you do?" She could cry, he saw.

"Don't ask me that, Emily. You know what I'll do. Any day now."

She nodded. He wanted to brush the tears from her eyes. "I guess I'll see you soon, then."

"I sure hope so."

She hugged him, and the cold wracked his dying body, but he stood still and he let her.

He wanted to say he was sorry, and thank you, and not to worry about him. But the clouds came up and covered the moon, and she was gone.

---

The hospice worker was in the next room when the time came. The window was open; he'd asked for that. He wanted to smell the chaparral, feel the changing leaves in the breeze that snuck in.

He knew it was time because one moment he was alone, tucked in tight as a baby, an oxygen tube puffing into his nostrils - and the next, he felt the weight of someone sitting down beside him.

When his eyes creaked open, he saw her.

Radiant as her last day. Wild, dark curls and wide, toothy smile. Skin flushed and healthy, as if real blood moved beneath it. A scent of cucumber melon body spray tickled his nose so he almost sneezed.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'll protect you."

She took his hand in her own, and it was warm.