Free The Widow's Season by Laura Brodie

through the channels, she passed World Federation wrestling, CNN, the ubiquitous Law & Order rerun, and finally stopped at her nightly destination: the Weather Channel.
    It had become a fascination in the past three months, to mute the sound and stare in silence at the ever-changing maps. She believed in weather as a measure of fate, the meteorologists a priestly caste with their hieroglyphic rain clouds, lightning bolts, and snowflakes. Her life had been irrevocably changed by a storm, and she suspected that she was one among many—not so much the farmers and fishermen, who lived by the skies, or the owners of coastline property who dwelled in the shadow of each hurricane season. Her sect was more select. She counted herself among the landlocked city dwellers and smug suburbanites, with their lightning rods and Tyvek walls and monstrous SUVs, who, in the midst of their well-insulated complacency, had found their lives altered by heatstroke or hailstorm or an ill-timed lightning bolt. They were the recent converts to the cult of weather, for whom each symbol on these maps represented another tragedy.
    Sarah had just switched off the TV when a knock came at the door. The clock read ten-fifteen, too late to indulge any greedy new-comers. She rolled over in bed and closed her eyes, willing the child to vanish. But there it was again, three knocks, slow and heavy. Sighing, she pulled on her robe. She would have to tape up a sign—OUT OF CANDY—to keep the stragglers from knocking until eleven.
    When she opened the door the darkness was startling. She had forgotten that she had turned off the light, and now she wondered what sort of child would stand at a pitch-black porch. Remembering the teenagers down the road, she braced herself for a Halloween prank. Something disgusting would be left on her mat, something squishy or smelly or dead; the children would be watching from the bushes, waiting for her scream. It was best not to disappoint them. With a sigh of resignation, she switched on the porch light and looked down. Nothing was there. Glancing to the right and left, she saw that all of the rocking chairs and potted plants were in their proper places; nothing had been altered, nothing left behind. The floodlight pouring from the eaves revealed no one on the porch, the walkway, or driveway. It seemed to be a case of knock and run, and she was turning to close the door when she saw something move in the shadows.
    It wasn’t a child. That much she could tell as her eyes settled on the black outline. It was a man, hidden underneath her vast magnolia. She was about to run and call the police, when the figure seemed to sense her impulse. He crossed from shadow into light and stood at the foot of her porch stairs.
    She felt as if the air had been sucked out of her body. Her left hand reached out and she grabbed the side of the door, hugging it to her chest as she stared at her husband, standing there with his face glowing like the moon.
    Sarah closed her eyes, guessing that this apparition would disappear as swiftly as all the others. But when she opened them again David was still there. Something about his steadiness helped to overcome her initial wave of shock. He didn’t speak or move, but his body looked so tangible, it seemed to give substance to her own legs. She thought of what Margaret had said, how there must be something unresolved between them, and the thought gave her courage.
    She pulled the door back, shielding herself with it as she opened a path into the house. Then she met David’s eyes, and with a voice barely audible she whispered, “Come in.”

PART TWO

    Flesh

• 9 •
    He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. So David claimed as he sat across from Sarah at their kitchen table, unfolding the long story of the past three months.
    “I planned to see you the next day,” he began. And Sarah listened, all the while asking herself: Could a ghost have such solid flesh? Could his weight creak in a chair?