In Baltimore Abigail scrounges scraps of food when she can but mostly she wanders, feeling light as air and hollow, thin. She finds a couple of dollars on the sidewalk and buys a burger that sits heavy in her gut for an hour and then leaves her hungrier than before.
Prevaricating only wastes days, though and she hitches the last leg of her journey, her knife always tucked into her ragged sleeve, the smile on her face small and for the most part turned demurely downward.
The sky is vast in the Virginia countryside. Stars shining hard and clear as crystal set in velvet. The moon is veiled with shadow.
Abigail hasn't seen Will's house before, but she's imagined it. Golden morning light and the warmth of dogs pressing against her shins. Good, fresh coffee and simple meals. Meadows and streams that run for miles.
But she steps through his gate and walks down the long, curving drive and the place is swathed with darkness, a low rolling mist and snow on the ground reflecting the starlight, the light from the farmhouse makes it look like a ship at sea, or a beacon. A signal calling her home.
Somehow it feels familiar.
Snowflakes cling to her hair and her eyelashes, her boots are soaked through, toes numb by the time she stands on the porch, raises her hand to knock. She doesn't quite manage to do it, standing there, one hand raised, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
There is a clamour from inside, barking and whining, and nails clicking over hardwood.
Abigail can't move. She can't knock, can't shift her weight or turn to walk away. She can barely even breathe.
Dogs can sense ghosts. She'd heard that somewhere, a long time ago. Dogs can see and sense a world that people aren't privy to and when they bark at nothing they aren't barking only at empty air.
She hears the door click and bright light makes her eyes smart. When Abigail can focus again she sees Will, surrounded by light, shotgun cradled in his hands. She knows who he is waiting for.
He's staring, his eyes glassy with unshed tears, lips parted and Abigail knows; she's felt the same way these past weeks, adrift, lost, every time she's caught her reflection, as though she is seeing her own ghost.
Slowly, so he won't startle, so aware of the gun in his hands, she pulls her hair aside so that he can see the piece of her that's missing.
He closes the space between them in a heart beat, his hands lifted as though in supplication, reaching to cradle her face, barely touching and even so his palms burn against her cheeks. He's talking, a frantic babble of Abigail, Abigail, she feels tears falling from her eyes and he pulls her inside, through the press of furry bodies and wet, inquisitive noses.
The fire is built high, and Abigail's hands and feet ache as the warmth returns to them. She can feel it in her whole body, the pervasive, hollowing chill being broken, chased away.
Abigail can feel herself returning to the realm of the living.
And Will, standing there in front of her with his heart torn wide open, tears standing in his eyes and a tremor in his gentle hands.
She can hear him talking but she can't make sense of his words. She wonders, what would he say if he knew what she had done while she was dead, if he knew of the blood and the cold.
But right at this moment, with the fire roaring and the dogs milling around them both and whining it doesn't matter. Abigail closes the space between them this time, reaches out to take his face between her palms, feels his skin burn against her fingertips and shivers.
The kiss is soft and fleeting, over far too soon. Will tastes like whiskey and heat, and he clutches at her shoulders when she moves back -- to steady her or to steady himself?
"Abigail, you -- we ... you're like ... like a daughter to me, we can't--"
She curls her fingers into the ragged sleeves of her sweater and shakes her head minutely, eyes wide and clear and for once she is calm, for once she understands in a way that he can't. My dad's been sick she'd said the whole way here, but had she meant it? Really? Maybe not until right this minute, maybe she hadn't really understood herself.
"I know," she tells him, "I know, but it's okay, Will," she looks at him, at this man with a ghost inside him and she knows. Maybe it really will be okay, maybe now Abigail can have something of the way things ought to have been.
