The Ghost Bride's Last Contract

Where We Sleep Tonight

Nina hit the fire door with a chair.

The chair broke. The door moved an inch, then pressed back against her. She set her shoulder to it and looked at Mae over the splintered wood.

"Get him through."

Elias was too heavy for Mae to lift. She pulled him by the shoulders while Nina held the narrowing gap. His boots dragged against the stone. Every cough brought out flakes of ash, gray on his lips and black against his teeth.

Maribel reached for her daughter.

"It will fall," she said.

Nina shoved harder. "I know."

"You'll have nowhere."

"I know!"

The shout traveled through the basement. For a second even Elias's coughing stopped.

Mae got him onto the loading-yard step. Outside, the engineer was herding people behind a barrier while someone called for an ambulance. The residents had brought their lives in shopping bags. Mr. Bellamy stood apart, holding the box with his wife's name facing his chest.

Nina still had her shoulder against the door. Mae returned with Elias's cutting tool. The battery had been charged that morning; he had made her try it on scrap metal until she could control the weight. Now her hands shook so badly that the blade scraped sideways.

"Brace it," he called from the step.

She changed her grip. Sparks struck the stone. Above them the lintel split, releasing a fine stream of dust into Nina's hair.

Maribel made a sound that could have been a prayer.

"Don't," Nina said. "You can be frightened with me. You can't shut me in."

The blade went through the weld.

For an instant the door hung motionless. Then the silver stitches withdrew from the wall. They moved into Maribel's dress like roots being pulled from soil. Her collar opened. Elias bent forward and took a ragged breath of ordinary cold air.

The ceiling inside the corridor fell.

Mae caught Nina's coat and pulled. Stone crashed where they had been standing. The iron door swung outward, hit the yard, and lay there under a veil of dust. Its hasp had broken into two pieces. Nothing drew them together again.

Maribel stood beside it in a plain cotton dress. The wedding clothes were gone. Mae saw thick calluses on her hands, a tiny scar above one eyebrow, and the crooked front tooth that her daughter had inherited.

Nina stared at her.

A woman from the second floor brought Nina's bag from behind the barrier. Its handle had finally broken. Dresses and a saucepan had spilled into the dust. Nina knelt to gather them, and her mother knelt too. Maribel's fingers went through the saucepan. She tried again before she remembered.

Mae picked it up. Nobody thanked her. She was glad of that. Gratitude would have made the little task feel like an attempt to settle the much larger debt lying in the yard behind them.

"I forgot your tooth," Nina said.

Maribel laughed, very softly. "Your father wanted me to have it fixed."

Behind them, the engineer shouted for the barrier to be moved farther back. An upper window burst. Dust rolled across the yard and made everyone cough except the dead woman who had spent twenty-seven years burning.

Elias was taken to the ambulance. This time Mae did not go with him immediately. She stayed beside Nina while the housing officer distributed directions to the sports hall. People asked when the building would be safe. The officer would not give them a date.

One of Nina's sons arrived from work on a bicycle. He looked at his mother, then at the flat where he had slept that morning. His face went white with anger.

"You didn't wait for me."

"There wasn't time."

"There was time to call everyone else."

He pushed the bicycle past her and went to help Mr. Bellamy with his bag. Nina watched him go. Maribel watched Nina. Three generations stood in the same yard, and nobody knew where to put the love that had made the next person suffer.

"I thought if you had a home," Maribel began.

"Please don't finish that yet."

Nina sat on the broken chair. Only one side of it had survived. She balanced with both feet planted on the stones and let Mae clean the dust from a cut on her forearm.

Maribel knelt beside her. Her edges were thinning now. She had a few minutes, perhaps less. Mae had not learned to predict this part and would not tell Nina that she had.

"Your father locked the door," Maribel said. "The foreman tried to open it. I heard him. I kept blaming him because it was easier than admitting I'd married the man who did it."

Nina looked up.

"Abel Tern?"

Maribel nodded.

"His daughter lives upstairs. Lived upstairs. Dad told everyone Abel stole from him."

"Tell her I was wrong."

Mae looked toward the crowd. She could fetch the woman. Make one thing whole. Nina caught her wrist before she rose.

"No. This minute is mine."

Mae stayed.

Mother and daughter looked at each other. At last Nina held out her hand. Maribel laid hers over it, and though there was no weight, Nina's fingers curled as if she felt one.

"You don't have to say anything kind," Maribel told her.

"I know."

She said nothing else before her mother disappeared.

That evening Mae brought blankets to the sports hall. Nina's son took them without thanking her. Mr. Bellamy's cot stood behind a folding screen. Mae put a chair beside it and sat until he looked at her.

"What I said was cruel."

He rubbed a polished shoe with his thumb.

"I know she's dead."

"I know you do."

"Then why did you say it?"

Mae had wanted him to move. She had used the sharpest thing available. She told him that, and he turned away. An apology had reached him; it had not obliged him to let her stay. She got up and left the chair.

Elias was waiting outside, wrapped in the hospital blanket again. He had refused to be driven back to an empty workshop. Mae sat beside him on the concrete steps.

"Nina's son hates me," she said.

"He lost his home."

"I know."

"You keep saying that as if it ought to make you feel better."

She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. He smelled of smoke beneath the clean hospital soap. The smell made her want to put her face against his shoulder, a desire so simple and ill-timed that she almost laughed.

Instead she said, "I don't want to make you useful to me."

"Then ask me something useless."

She thought about it.

"What would you put in a chest, if you could only keep one thing?"

"Nothing that needs air."

Her laugh broke halfway through. He waited until it became crying. Then he put his hand on the step between them, palm upward, and she took it.

They sat there until the hall lights dimmed. No ghost interrupted. Nobody called their joined hands destiny.

When Mae finally opened the lamp to check on Lenora, the bride was staring through its glass at the bell tower across the square.

The clock showed three minutes past ten. Its bell had not rung in years.

"Orla knows," Lenora said.

"Knows what?"

"That you've started letting people lose things. She'll want her sister to lose something too."