by Christina Tudor

My husband suggests we get a ghost to haunt our house because lately silence stretches between us, syrupy and unrelenting, so we both agree a little haunting might give us something to talk about.

“Why wouldn’t you just get a dog?” My mother-in-law asks. We can tell she has us on speaker phone and is yelling from across the room because of the way our voices echo. “Or a fish,” she adds. “Fish are nice. Easy.”

“Because,” I say. “Anyone can just get a pet. We’re giving someone who’s died something to do in the afterlife.” My voice refracts, tinny and pleading, back to me.

We thought it would be difficult to procure a ghost to haunt our house but between the gig economy and delivery apps, you can pretty much find anything on the internet. The ghost girl gets dropped off on the front porch along with my standing Amazon order of bulk supplements, peanuts, and an order of diapers I’d forgotten to cancel. It’s a gut punch but I put on a brave face. Our ghost is a young woman, about 19, with bone-dry auburn hair and her skin pale as a, well, you know. She looks like a succulent abandoned on the windowsill in the sun. Starved. Thirsty. I invite her inside just in case vampire rules apply.

She’s weightless. When she sits at the kitchen table, I wonder if she’ll float away. Instead, she crosses her left ankle over her right knee, hovers. I offer her a snack just to cut through the silence. I pour a handful of peanuts into my palm and hold them out of her.

“You’re not allergic, are you?” I ask, glancing toward my stash in the pantry.

She looks at me like I’m a moron.

“No, I’m dead.” Dead. So finite. A period at the end of a sentence. A locked door.

“I was planning on avoiding the, uh, D word,” my husband whispers. He stands a few feet away from us, leaning up against one of our wedding portraits hanging on the wall. I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about the ghost girl.

“Why?” The ghost girl says. She grabs my hand. The peanuts spiral across the floor like marbles. “See,” she says, pressing my palm to her heart. “No heartbeat.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. Because I really am. She is—was?—so young.

She laughs. One of those half-cough, half-howl laughs that can’t be contained. “It is what it is.”

“Why’s she laughing?” my husband whispers at me like the ghost isn’t even in the room with us.

“Because,” she answers at full volume. “You know that expression you’ll sleep when you’re dead?”

We both nod.”Well, am I sleeping?”

We both apologize for not being able to offer her a better afterlife. 

The ghost girl doesn’t have anything to unpack but I lead her upstairs anyways. I let her take her pick between the attic or the basement or the hallway closet even. Wherever she wants to haunt is fine with us. Make yourself at home, I tell the ghost girl. She shrugs. I open the hatch to the attic for her and wait to see if she’ll climb in but she doesn’t. Instead, she slides down the hallway toward the nursery that should have been my son’s room.

“Wouldn’t you rather haunt the attic? The basement is nice and dingy too.”

She rolls her eyes. I didn’t even know ghosts could roll their eyes.

The ghost girl settles into the spare bedroom that’s mostly boxes at this point, stuff I packed away, can’t look at, but can’t get rid of either. She spins the mobile still dangling from the ceiling. It has moons on the ends and their shadows create waves on the pale blue walls. I’m too afraid to ask her how she died.We get what we paid for. The ghost girl pounds on the walls and tips things over and tears open the cardboard boxes in the guest room so I hear the ripping in the middle of the night, hear it now, hear it always.

“How do you think she died?” I ask my husband while we’re having sex. I’m tracing shapes in the stucco ceiling with my eyes while the ghost runs her fingernails against the adjoining walls for dramatic effect. He loses his erection but I couldn’t really blame him for that. He turns away from me. He’d never admit he regrets getting the ghost girl, that maybe we we’ve had enough hauntings to last a lifetime, that she’s just another wedge between us. 

I find the ghost girl star-fished across the guest room floor. I mirror her even though she gives me a look that says she’d rather be left alone. She inches away from me. I lift a finger in the air and trace the shadow of the mobile. My arm heavy.

“This was my son’s room.” I’m not sure why I’m telling her this. “He was born too soon.” I don’t have to finish the story. Or ask her how she died to know it must have been tragically. I don’t tell her I can’t stand the silence where there should have been a baby which is why my husband found us a ghost to haunt our house. Or tell her that I can’t eat, can’t swallow, can’t fathom any of this so the best I can do is a handful of peanuts and now peanuts taste like grief.

I fan out beside the ghost girl. Our fingers almost intertwine. Both of us reach for something that isn’t there.