The woman believes in ghosts.

She believes in ghosts because, each night around two in the morning, she sees them. They enter her bedroom, and, in the dim light from the streetlamp halfway down the block, she makes out their familiar features:

Her mother, pinched and sour, eyes heavy-lidded with age, arthritic hand raised before her to make her point. She never speaks, but the woman knows the point she makes: whatever the woman has done, it's not enough; whatever effort she's making, she must make more; if she washed her hands, she missed the backs; if she washed the fronts and the backs, there's still dirt under her fingernails. Never enough.

Her father, tall, stern, scowling, aloof. Why does he even come? He never cared in life, why in death? He also does not speak, but his silence is different; he speaks not, because he does not believe she's worth speaking to. Each night, he gives her only the briefest glance, then turns toward the window, fades into the white of the curtains.

Her husband, gently round, with thinning hair and half-glasses, a look of concern on his face. When he appears, he steps to the bed. He sits, and she imagines she feels the bed yield to his weight as it once did. With a wave of his hand he dismisses the mother's raised finger and the father's scowl. His hand comes to rest over his chest, where once his heart beat. She knows, even in death, even in stillness, his heart is still hers.

She smiles. She closes her eyes. She sleeps.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.