Love Never Dies Read Free Page A

the tree bark. Yet here and there, the crocus and daffodils poked their heads out of the soil.
    Perhaps at last the long dark would be over.
    Areila walked like she had somewhere to go. I stood by the fountain and watched her pass, but I didn't speak. It was the lady's prerogative to pretend she didn't see me. She got to the edge of the park; I swear her foot hovered right over the line, when she turned with military precision and marched back. She stopped in front of me and said, "Hello."
    "Hello."
    "My name is Areila Leon."
    She had given me her name freely. Which made it possible for me to return the favor. "It's good to meet you. My name is Frank Vincent Montgomery."
    "Huh!" She sounded surprised. "My grandfather's name was Frank Vincent. Not Montgomery, of course. . ."
    "Neither Frank nor Vincent are unusual names." I was suddenly and wryly aware of the passage of time. "At least they weren't in my day."
    "No, but to pair them — that is unusual." She gestured toward the bench. "Can you sit?"
    I had the ability to move quickly from place to place, but I had found that disconcerting to most people, so I took my time, went to the bench, seated myself.
    She joined me. "I've never understood the technicalities of how a ghost can sit on a corporeal object."
    I wasn't really sitting, but that wasn't something I could explain. "I can do almost anything I used to do when alive. Except grasp, touch — or cross the park boundary." I looked out at the street where I had never been and wished I were gone from this place which had imprisoned me for so long.
    "So you know you're a ghost?"
    I looked at my hands; they were transparent and glowed faintly. "Can you think of another explanation?"
    "No, but I've been reading up on ghosts and the mythology claims that much of the time, they're confused about where they are."
    "I'm in Virtue Falls, Washington. This" — I waved my transparent glowing hand around at the towering old trees, concrete fountain, and neglected grass — "used to be a cemetery."
    "In town, they told me they believed your grave was not moved when the city officials made this a park."
    A little surprised, I nodded. "Makes sense."
    "Did you not know?"
    "No. Not that."
    "You don't know where your grave is?"
    "Not my grave."
    At that, she viewed me oddly.
    But bound by whatever rules there were, I couldn't say more.
    "So, Frank Vincent, what is your story? Why isn't your spirit at rest?"
    "I made too many mistakes, left too much unfinished, failed too often."
    "Who did you fail?"
Not, "How did you fail" but "Who?" Areila was an acute young woman, seeing through the rhetoric to the heart of a matter. Again Areila reminded me of Sofia, intelligent and discerning. Did I dare remember those days gone by when all of life was warm sunshine and new feelings? I missed Sofia every moment of eternity. Surely talking about her would help . . . somehow . . . "I loved a woman," I said.
    Areila pulled her knit hat off her head and fluffed her dark hair. "Here in Virtue Falls?"
    "Not at all. She lived in Port Angeles. I was from Seattle. We met one summer when my family took a house on the coast. I met her on the beach. We got to know each other and she was unlike any girl I knew." I found myself smiling at the memories of Sofia dancing barefoot on the sand. "She was earthy. Funny. Ethereal. Loving. But we . . . our families disapproved. My family looked down on her. And — so much worse! — her family looked down on me." I mocked myself, but my pride, a young man's pride, had truly been stung. "The conflict in Europe was steadily growing more deadly. To me, it seemed inevitable that the United States would go to war. So I took my patriotism and my stung pride and joined the Army. When I told my love, she cried. I comforted her." In the way of lovers . . . "But I didn't tell her what was in my heart."
    "How sad," Areila whispered.
    Again, I thought she understood more than I had said. "But, of course, my duty called and I left