Free Second Chance by Audra North

I didn’t realize…I should have stayed and enjoyed what little time we had left together.”
    Oh, no. Marnie already had an idea of how this was going to end, but she kept listening, already bracing herself for the pain.
    “By the time I realized I’d made a mistake, a couple of years had gone by. It took me that long because I was that stupid. And I hadn’t heard a word from her in all that time. I’d given her my forwarding address, of course, and I’d written her a letter as soon as I got settled in Atlanta, but I never got anything back. I stomped around in my stupidity and told myself she was too proud for me. It never occurred to me that there might have been something else wrong.”
    Bill turned and looked at her then, his ghost eyes uncannily alive-looking, and Marnie wanted to shrink from the pain in them, but she held her ground. She’d been through worse, even though right now it felt like her heart was breaking along with Bill’s.
    “My first letter probably would have reached her right around the time she first took ill. From the time the first symptoms showed up until she died was about sixteen months. She died on Halloween night, 1925. I came back to Wilford to spend Christmas with my mother that year and to beg Etta to take me back. I had planned to kneel before her and offer her my ring, and instead I found myself kneeling in the snow, crying over her headstone.”
    She couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. What must it have been like for Bill, to struggle through youth as an outcast, to finally find someone who loved him for who he was, and then miss his chance to be with her because he had to get over his pain first? Because that’s what it was. No matter how much he wanted to call himself stupid, he probably needed to feel he was worthy of her love before he could return to her.
    And when he had, it had been too late.
    She sniffled and looked at him in pity. “Is that why you died, then? Of a broken heart?” she whispered.
    Bill recoiled as though she’d slapped him. “What? Hell , no, woman. You read too many romance novels.”
    She blinked, her tears drying a bit. “Oh.”
    “I didn’t die until ’48. Worked myself to death and had a hard attack when right before my forty-sixth birthday, woke up trapped in this place. Surrounded by memories of Etta. And regret,” he added wrly. “Plenty of regret. Though I hope I’ll see her again someday.”
    After a second of silence, he sighed and smacked his hands on his knees, a surprisingly loud sound for someone who wasn’t supposed to have a corporeal form. “In the meantime, young lady, you’d be a damned fool to make the same mistake I did and let your fella go.”
    “ I didn’t let him go! I—”
    “He kissed you and you ran him off! Same thing!”
    Well. Bill had a point, there. But it’s not like Collin had really wanted her, anyway. If he’d wanted her, he would have stayed despite her awkwardness.
    Oh, dear. That sounded ridiculous, even to her ears.
    Bill made a sound of frustration. “I’ve done everything I could to teach you both the lessons you need to learn. I mean, damn. These new cars are a lot easier to break, but a lot harder to get into . All those electrical things in them, you know. Not to mention that leaving the library just to go to the damned parking lot pretty much destroys me. Takes every ounce of spectral energy that I’ve got.”
    “Wait a second. You broke Collin’s car?”
    Bill pffed. “He can afford to get it fixed. But you two only had one chance to realize that you’re both idiots! And you’re a fool for letting him go!”
    “What are you implying? Are you saying it’s my fault that he left? It’s my fault that he went away? That he didn’t love me enough to stick around, that I’m not good enough for him to even acknowledge now?”
    She stopped, letting out a little squeak of despair.
    Bill came closer, and she felt a strange pressure surround her. Almost like a hug