I look at Hank, who stares at the picture on the table. It is framed in bronze, and it is beautiful. A tear falls down his cheek and I look closer at the picture. It's me.
"Hank? What's wrong?" I ask my husband. He doesn't answer, which is weird until I remember last night.
Last night, I died.
I remember the woman with a red hair, her flashing knife, her purple coat. I didn't like her in the toy store I had been shopping at. She looked snobby with that snake-skin purse and those sparkly high heels. She looked my age, an old woman with no more potential besides a happy life full of family. She looked suspicious, so I left the toy shop, leaving behind my list of toys that my grandkids had wanted. I didn't hear her follow me to the river, and I couldn't hear her knife sling out of her pocket, but then back in. I assume that she wanted no one to know that it was a murder, so she drowned me in the river, leaving behind my dead body, face in the water, positioned so I look like I had fallen and couldn't get back up.
I shiver at the memory, although only internally. Ghosts can't shiver.
There is a knock on the front door and Hank gets up, wiping the tear from his cheek with the red hankercheif that he had always kept in the left pocket of his jeans, even though he was raight-handed.
I follow him and he opens the door. A woman stands there.
"Jillian!" he cries happily. I do not recognize this woman. Who is she? How does Hank know her? I can only guess.
Until she takes off her hat, revealing bright red hair. The killer!
What is she doing with Hank? I need to save him? Is she going to kill him?
I jump around them, feeling like a little kid with a sugar-rush. Except I can't feel.
They don't see me, although I could swear that Jillian stared at where I stood for a second, befor ewaving off the thought, and talked to Hank. They walked over to the couch and Hank seemed distracted from the fact that I had died. I feel worried. What had Jillian done to him? Had he forgotten about me already?
I move closer to them to hear their conversation. They are talking about exes. Why did they need to talk about that? Hank is only 60! He doesn't need a new girlfriend yet! And with Jillian? Not in a million years.
After half an hour, I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that he hasn't mentioned me or acknowleged my photo at all. They're talking like old friends, but I don't know why. They can't have known each other, because I knew everything about Hank. Had he been keeping secrets from me?
How can I get rid of Jillian? I think about this before realising that Jillian just took out her knife and Hank noticed me again.