Free Silence and the Word by MaryAnne Mohanraj

it
wasn’t working, that he needed to be alone, to have space. She’d
been furious for a little while, but the emotion had dissolved into
grief, and then numbness. The anger was back now, warming her
chest, clenching her hands into fists. How many years had this poor
girl been walking in this cemetery, these mountains, the
sanctimonious city, suffering for a single mistake? “For that, your
God would condemn you to be a ghost forever?” Could people really
love a god that cruel?
    Jessica shook her head, wrapping her arms
tightly around her body. “No—no, you don’t understand. I could
leave here anytime; I could be resurrected, and my spirit united
with my body. You mustn’t blame God for my sin.” She was earnest,
pleading. After all these years, she maintained her faith.
    “So why don’t you go?” Anjali felt
bewildered. If you were married in the Mormon church, you were
supposed to be married forever. Why hadn’t Jessica flown to rejoin
her beloved husband?
    Jessica hesitated a long moment, her eyes
wide and haunted. Then she said, quickly and quietly—”I did such a
terrible thing. What if he doesn’t love me anymore?” And she’d gone
again, dissolved, leaving emptiness behind her, and a faint
chill.
    Anjali wondered if she’d ever see her ghost
again.
     
     
    When she came home, the phone was ringing.
She let it ring, and ring, until finally it stopped. Anjali made
herself some dinner, chicken curry over rice, and forced herself to
eat it. She’d always loved food, but ever since the breakup, it had
tasted like dust to her. She drank a big glass of water, put the
leftovers away, washed the dishes. And then, when there was nothing
else to do, she picked up the phone, called voicemail, listened to
the message. Maybe all her recent contact with a ghost had given
her some ESP—although he hadn’t called for weeks, she knew who it
had to be, and knew what he would say.
    Neil wanted to see her. He thought he might
have made a big mistake.
    No, really? Anjali could almost laugh,
listening to that message.
    She listened to the message over and over,
just pressing the number one on the phone, not letting it get to
the end. She knew that if she stopped listening, she’d have to
decide what to do next. But there was only so long you could hold a
phone to your ear before your hand started to go numb, especially
if you were gripping it too tightly. Anjali deleted the message and
hung up—then picked the phone up again and called him.
    She didn’t know what she was going to say
until Neil answered, but as soon as she heard his voice, she knew.
Maybe she always had, and was just waiting for him to figure it
out. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d hurt her, that it had taken
him a year to figure out what he wanted. It didn’t matter that her
friends would think she was nuts, and his probably would too—it
didn’t even matter that Neil was still scared, and unsure, just
like she was. They had no guarantees; there weren’t any. Jessica
was nineteen, too young to know that it didn’t matter if you were
scared. You just tried, and kept trying, even when anyone with any
sense would have given up and walked away.
    Anjali told him to come, to take the next
flight in. She’d be waiting upstairs, and he should just let
himself in.
     
     
    Anjali never did see Jessica again. Sometimes
she and Neil would take walks in the cemetery, in the evening, and
she’d look, under the pines—but there was nothing. Maybe Jessica
just didn’t want to talk to her, but Anjali hoped that there was
another explanation. That once the girl had said the words out
loud, had said what she was so afraid of, that she might have found
the courage to face her fears, to go on and find out what awaited.
To find the man who made the sun rise in her sky, and learn if he
still loved her.
    Even after all those years, that would be
worth waiting for.
     
     
Spinning Down
     
     
    It’s dark again, and we have searched for
quite
    some