Old Ghosts in the Living Room
987 Words
The living room smelled faintly of paper and dusted carpet, the muted hum of rain outside threading through the silence. A single lamp burned in the corner, pooling light across the low table where Ethan sat hunched over a sprawl of folders. Crime scene photos stared up in glossy fragments: sheets soaked dark, faces blurred by death, the small glass figurines gleaming like sinister trophies.
The papers were a map of violence—notes scribbled by Bennett’s hand, autopsy summaries, timelines crosshatched with red ink. And yet no pattern felt complete. No thread pulled tight enough to strangle the questions clawing at his mind.
He turned another photo, chewing absently on the back of a pencil. The taste of graphite spread bitter across his tongue. He didn’t notice the footsteps behind him until a voice cut through the silence.
“Ethan.”
He didn’t look up. Just murmured, “Mm?”
“Are you even listening?” Helena’s tone carried that brittle lilt he’d come to recognize as her warning shot.
He made a sound—a hum that might have passed for acknowledgment—and flipped another page.
Helena stood in the doorway, her coat already on, one hand clutching a slim leather bag. For the fifth night in a row, she’d been halfway out before remembering to say goodbye. Tonight, though, something in his stillness—his absolute absence—caught her like a hook.
“God,” she said, stepping forward, “what is all this?”
Ethan didn’t answer. Didn’t even hear her, not fully. His eyes tracked the curve of an autopsy photo, the angle of the knife wound. Clean. Precise. No hesitation.
Helena moved closer, heels muted on the rug, until she stood behind him. The lamplight threw his shadow long across the table, bisecting the mess of files. She leaned in, peering over his shoulder.
And froze.
“What the hell…” The whisper escaped before she could stop it. Rows of photos, all men. Each with that obscene finality in their faces, each captioned with cold details. And there, under his fingers, a glass fox caught in a camera’s flash.
“Ethan.” Her voice sharpened. “Are you—are you working on this case?”
Finally, he looked up. His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, but there was something else there too—something lit from within, like a man leaning over the edge of obsession.
“Helping,” he said simply. The pencil shifted from his teeth to his fingers, rolling with nervous precision.
“Helping?” She stared. “With murders?”
“It’s just consultation,” Ethan said, calm as if explaining a crossword puzzle. “Bennett wanted a psychological angle. But honestly…” He exhaled, raking a hand through his hair. “The profile’s weak so far. Nothing holds.”
Helena’s gaze swept over him—and for a strange, suspended moment, the weight in her chest shifted.
Because this wasn’t the man who barely looked up from his phone when she walked into a room. This wasn’t the stranger she’d been trading polite silences with for years. This was someone else—someone younger. The boy she met in college study halls, sleeves shoved to his elbows, a pencil biting into his lip while his mind raced ahead of the world.
The lamplight brushed across him: messy hair, soft gray T-shirt worn thin at the collar, flannel pants slung low on his hips. Domestic and disarmed in a way that yanked at something she’d buried so deep she almost forgot where.
Helena set her bag down. Slowly.
She crossed the space between them, pulse quickening with every step. Her eyes fixed on the line of his jaw, the slope of his shoulders, the tension stringing his hands. And somewhere between impulse and memory, a thought bloomed wild and sudden: I could touch him. I could have this back.
Her fingers hovered near his arm when his voice cut through, dry and sharp as a paper edge.
“Where’s this coming from?”
She blinked. “What?”
“This,” he said, not looking at her, his pencil still tracing lazy circles on the edge of a file. “The nostalgia. The sudden interest.”
Her jaw tightened. “Ethan, I—”
“You’ve had plenty of nights,” he went on, voice quiet but honed to a blade. “Nights when I was here, free, waiting. You didn’t even try. Just said you had plans and vanished. Drinks with friends. Dinners. Pilates. Whatever name you put on it.”
Helena’s mouth parted, heat flaring in her chest. “That’s not fair.”
“No?” His gaze flicked up now, pinning her. Cold and clear. “And tonight, when I’m finally buried in something—when I’m not yours to claim—you remember I exist?”
Her breath hitched like a tripwire snapping. She stepped back, the room tilting from warmth to ice in a heartbeat.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, pencil balanced against his knuckles like a gavel about to fall. “If you’ve got friends waiting,” he said softly, almost kindly, “don’t keep them.”
The words hit harder than a shout.
Helena’s throat burned as she snatched her bag from the chair. Her heels struck the floor like gunfire as she stormed toward the hall—only to stop, pivot sharp, and slam a door.
Not the front.
The bedroom.
The sound ricocheted through the house, leaving Ethan alone with the echo and the hum of rain.
He exhaled, slow and deliberate, then bent back over the files. The pencil returned to his teeth. Photos stared up like silent accusations. And yet, for all their violence, they didn’t rattle him half as much as the flicker of memory from ten minutes ago: Helena’s eyes lit by something that almost looked like want.
Almost.
- Writer
