21.
 “How can that be?”
“You’ll find out one day, but take your time. And don’t let any djinn or clocks fool you into making foolish decisions.”
“Gretchen ,” he said urgently, taking her hands.
She wrapped warm hands around his. “Honey, you were always so smart with legal stuff and money. I always had to buy the children’s clothes, send them to school, pick the paint colors and the wallpaper, order a washer and dryer, get the fridge fixed, and all the other things that make a house a home.”
“You planted all those tomatoes and cabbages in the garden,” he said, squeezing her hands. “I never understood.”
“The tomatoes were juicy, weren’t they?” She squeezed back.
“They were the best. When you packed my lunches, I’d pick my sandwiches apart, just so I could eat the tomatoes separately.”
“You did?” She looked pleased. “You never told me.”
“I never told you a lot of things.”
“I told her for you,” Katie chimed in. “I told her she was beautiful and the tomatoes were good, and her cakes and pies were the best.”
Gretchen patted his hand. “You’ll be okay, Artie. You’ll make the right decision about this. But let me ask you, darling. Did you make the right decision when you kept putting Katie down and bad-mouthing the love of her life? I know Tim Woodpond isn’t your idea of a successful man. In fact, he has had to work two jobs to make ends meet. They have two little children now, did you know that?”
He shook his head. “Honestly, Gretchen, I’m lost without you. I make such dumb decisions. What does this Woodpond fellow do for a living these days?”
Her gaze grew cold, as he had never seen it. The ice in her look was that of a total stranger. “It’s bad if you have to ask the dead what your children are doing. Work has been scarce. He is going to night school and working on his college degree to make something of himself, while he works full-time all week as a cook in a little restaurant. He earns very little money, but he has a second job now on weekends, collecting parking fees at a lot downtown.”
Arthur felt as though a light were going on. “As much as I love Katie, I think Tim loves her more. Why didn’t I see that, Gretchen ? Why didn’t I see how important that is? All I saw was this pimply, skinny boy who kept coming around, and Katie would climb out the window to run away and go see movies with him. The more I was against that lout, the more she was for him, and the more she was for him, the more I was against him.” Seeing Gretchen’s knowing gaze, her silent show of sarcasm, her coldly twinkling and dramatic blue eyes, he said: “I guess I just answered my own question, huh?”
Gretchen nodded slowly.
“Daddy,” Katie said, “will you walk to the park with me so I can go on the swing?”
How many times had he told her he didn’t have time?
Gretchen suddenly looked at her wristwatch. At the same time, Arthur could hear a Big Ben going doink-doink in a clock shop nearby. It was a phony little dee-dah-dee sort of midi sound, but it told him that another hour had rung through. As the chime struck six, Gretchen and Katie faded. He tried to reach out and grab his little daughter. “Stop! If Katie’s not dead, how can she be in this ghost world with you?” But Gretchen and Katie walked away, hand in hand, without looking back. Katie fell back to look at something on the ground—just a dirty old picture of a pink bunny that people had stepped on—and Gretchen turned. She held out her hand for Katie, who ran to catch up. They faded away into the crowd of thousands of strangers.
Arthur stood staring after them. They ignored him as if he didn’t exist. Or as if he were dead to them, rather than the other way around. Sure, if he vanished from their lives, he was the dead one, in this life. And he had not yet begun his new life. He had no warmth or good feelings about it, just a coldness more terrible than that of the grave. So he had no recourse—he let go of it, let go of the pain, and resolved to move on with his new life.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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