Still feeling guilty for disappearing the night before, I decided to hang around the next day to show I meant my promise. 

I thought to clean the house as I used to do for my mother when I was desperately trying to win her praise, but unfortunately there wasn’t much cleaning to do since my grandmother kept an already immaculate home. I tidied up the boxes in my room to make a little more space for myself, then moved my motivation to the rest of the house, dusting off surfaces and sweeping the floors. I cleaned up the kitchen last, putting away dishes and cleaning out the fridge of expired produce. 

As I glided around the room, finishing my tasks, I kept peeking out the bay windows. When I noticed, I forced my attention back to my actions, but they’d return to surveying the front yard once I let my mind wander again.

He wasn’t there today, under the maple trees. The last of their leaves trembled in the wind, like they were alone and cold without his company, scared to fall all the way to the ground and not be collected with their friends by his rake. 

I frowned, a line creasing between my brows as curiousness stuck in my skull. It was strange I never saw him coming or going. Even down by the ocean, I hadn’t heard him approach. He was just there, at the most inopportune time once again. It was unsettling. There was a twist in my stomach about it that wouldn't unwind.

When I was finished in the kitchen, I slipped into my shoes and exited the house with a garbage bag in hand, ready for a stroll down to the main road to discard the trash and collect the mail. I tightened the fabric of my sweater round my neck to shield from the chill of the wind, all the while discreetly searching for a gangly shadow boy. There were no signs of life though, besides my own heartbeat and the call of a crow off in the distance. There weren’t even footprints in the mud at the edge of the road or tracks from a vehicle besides my grandfather’s old truck. Any evidence of the boy’s existence seemed to disappear and reappear as easily as he did. 

I discarded our trash in the bin at the end of the road, then unlocked the mailbox and collected the delivered envelopes. I stood there for a moment, peering out across the lawn, down the road in either direction, and then into the great, gray sky. I could see pretty far. The fog covered my vision before any obstacle did. How had I never seen him approaching the house? How did he even get there without some transportation? If he walked the whole way, wouldn’t I have seen him on the road? 

I scolded myself, shoving the thought aside, annoyed that it still plagued me. It didn’t matter anyway. I didn’t care. There were other things to worry about besides how some creepy kid got around. I turned on my heels and headed back to the house, folding my arms across my chest against the cruel wind and my frustration.

As I approached the estate, I briefly dragged my attention away from my surroundings for the first time since leaving the house, inspecting the letters in my grasp instead. Credit card offers and other spam mostly, but there was one envelope from the bank that felt weighted and important. Suspicion twisted up my stomach.

“Morning.”

I dropped the letters in a startled mess, clutching at my chest to ease the heart attack he’d just induced.

A smile tugged at his lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“Are you sure?” I was skeptical. His sudden appearances seemed intentional. “Where did you come from?” 

He pointed to around the corner of the house. “I’ve been here for an hour now. I’m pulling the ivy off the side of the house. If you let it crawl too high it can work its roots into the chimney cement, and then you have a fire hazard.”

I narrowed my eyes. Why hadn’t I seen him arrive? I sidestepped to follow up on his gesture, noting the ladder propped up against the side of the house and the ivy hanging from the brick chimney. So his story fit, yet somehow it also didn’t. 

I turned back to start picking up the letters, and he followed, helping me.

“I really am sorry.” 

“You’re a little unsettling, you know that?” The comment came out more callous than I intended. 

He didn’t take my words badly though. Instead he just chuckled, as if he knew something I didn’t, the gray of his gaze shining like silver. “I’ve been told.” He handed off his half of the envelopes, then stood with me. A bunch of his black fringe fell out of place and he tucked it aside. I felt my ears grow hot.

“Your feet didn’t fall off from the cold, then?” 

I looked down at my shoes. “No. Neither did yours.”

“Nope.” 

The heat was spreading to my cheeks now. “I should get this to my Nan,” I said, tapping the stack of envelopes against my knuckles. 

He nodded, smiling. “Say hi to Mrs. Holt for me.” 

Desperate for an escape from my embarrassment, I shifted towards the house, trying to smile also but managing only a small, awkward quirk of my mouth. 

He stopped me once more with words. “I’m Jack, by the way. De’Morte.”

I glanced back at him, one foot on the step up to the door, slightly taken aback. For some reason, a name made him feel much more real. Shadows don’t have names, do they? 

Ghosts do, though. “Violet.” 

He nodded again, another easy grin. “Like the flower.” 

***

I found my grandmother in her office at the back of the house, a calculator in hand and her reading glasses perched on her nose again, looking over something that seemed important. Stacks of papers and boxes filled with binders surrounded her. The office used to be cluttered like this when I was younger; my grandfather preferred to keep hard copies of all his expenses. Since then though, the amount of free space had greatly declined. Even with no longer having the expenses of owning animals or paying houseworkers, it was obvious my grandfather’s medical bills added to the piles. I placed my steps carefully to make my way over to my grandmother sitting at the desk. 

“I picked up the mail,” I said, reaching to hand her the stack of envelopes. She flipped through them quick, pausing only briefly on the letter from the bank that I was curious about. If it meant anything to her, she concealed her reaction well.

“Thank you. I completely forgot.” She tried to smile but it was strained.

“Maybe you should take a break, Nan. You’re tired.” 

She chuckled. “I’m always tired. Thank you for the concern. Maybe I’ll take a nap once I’m done here.” 

I nodded, not wanting to fight it. “Do you need anything?” 

She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose, then gave another defeated laugh. “A glass of wine.” 

My answer was coy. “I’d offer to go pick up some from the store but, underaged.” 

A genuine grin replaced the stress on her face, and I turned to leave when she waved away my thought. I lingered at the threshold, adding a last question.

“Nan?” I waited as she peeked over the stacks at me. “Do you have the key to the lock on the garden gate?” 

She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, thinking. “All the keys should be in the top drawer of the cabinet, right by the front door. Why?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t been inside the garden or the stables in a while. I’d like to check them out.” 

She hummed with approval, and I dismissed myself.

I passed by my grandfather’s room quickly and into mine, snatching up my journal. I wrote: Get really drunk on expensive wine, then spent the evening drawing ivy crawling up old, broken brick walls. I wished I was like the ivy, with the instinctual need to dig my roots into everything; clinging to life, solid and stable. Instead, I was more like the leaves, alone and ready to fall away at any moment. 

No. I was a small, lonely violet. Fragile and short lived. The winter would have its way with me, and I would let it. Like the flower.