Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
I push away from the window and come closer. “I know you mean well, Mrs. Shaheen, and I know you are concerned about me. But Westley has done nothing bad to me since I met him. He gave me confidence. He was a shoulder or an ear when I needed it. He … got on my nerves a few times, of course,” I add, breaking a smile, “but what roommate doesn’t? I care about him. I know there’s a reason he’s still here. Maybe if he finds his happiness with this Nina girl, he’ll finally ‘move on’ the way a spirit is supposed to.”
“The question is, do you really want him to?”
I meet her eyes. She only stares back, blank-faced and waiting for my response. Somehow, I feel like her question was rhetorical; we both suspect the answer.
Indeed, if West gets what he wants, he very well may disappear from my life forever.
Do I really want that?
I drop onto the chair next to her, my gaze cast to the floor. “I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.”
Mrs. Shaheen puts a hand to my chest, right on top of the talisman. All of the usual drama I hear in her voice is gone when she says, “I’m going to tell you something. I have never told anyone this before.” She meets my eyes importantly. “My brother Haasim and I haven’t spoken in thirteen long years. That is a fact I may have failed to mention before when I told you he is a marine biologist and loves all there is to know of the ocean and its myriad of dark, well-kept secrets. Aren’t each of us just an ocean with a myriad of dark, well-kept secrets?” She smiles wistfully. “I wish I had the strength to simply pick up a phone and call him. I miss the sound of his voice—even when he reprimands me.”
“Why haven’t you spoken to him in so long?”
“You may find the reason amusing.” She drops her hand from my chest, then smirks to herself. “Haasim, like you, had made contact with a spirit.”
I lift my eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”
“It was the spirit of a woman. He encountered her at the gravesite where our mother rests. The spirit gave him peace and comfort when he needed it the most. The only thing the spirit asked for in return was to visit her once a week. To my knowledge, he still does.” She puts her hands on a nearby book on the table, her fingers gently gliding over its cover in thought. “I didn’t believe my brother. Assumed he’d lost his mind to grief. After one terrible, terrible argument—mm, I can still hear the shouts in the corners of my mind—we parted ways and haven’t spoken since. I wonder if he still sees her.” Her hands slide off of the book as she retracts them to her lap with a sigh. “I think I’m starting to realize that I, in fact, know less about ghosts than I think. Perhaps I was the one who was wrong about Westley Harmeyer all along. I was the one, after all, who spread the worst of rumors about him—that he was vengeful and cruel, that he thirsted for blood on the full moon, that he tormented every soul who moved into that apartment … I should be ashamed of myself.”
I take hold of her hand suddenly. She looks up, as if startled by my touch. Or maybe my hand is cold. “Don’t be ashamed. You were only looking out for me in the best way you knew. You had no reason to trust spirits.” I bite my lip. “Maybe if I had been more cautious, West wouldn’t have torn my soul in half. Hell, for all I know, he knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Hmm. You think?”
“Sure, why not? He knew I was in a strange state of mind after leaving your Madame Seazall place. Not to mention I had just had an alarmingly close call with a bus that nearly took my life …”
Her eyes grow wide. “A bus? How do you mean?”
“I was distracted, talking to my mom on the phone, and then wham, a bus whizzed right past my face. Had I been just a millimeter further into the street, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now. I’d be dead.”
Her eyes drop. Her mouth won’t close. “Goodness, what a terrifying notion,” she finally breathes.
“I know. West is the only one I told. I didn’t even mention it to my parents or Byron. I didn’t want to scare them all or anything, y’know?”
After a moment of thought, she looks at me. “Child, it may not be your fault that this happened at all.”
“Of course it isn’t,” I say with a light chuckle. “The bus came out of nowhere. I couldn’t have—”