There are a lot of things Shelly wishes she could say to Joseph’s face. There are a lot of things she wishes she could say to her mother, too. There’s so much she wants to say, wants to know, and now every new thing she’s going to learn about her mom will be from moments like Grandma picking up a cassette and telling Shelly her mom liked The Smiths. She’s glad Grandma shared that, but Shelly still wishes she could have learned it from her mom. Maybe she understands, now, why her mom chose not to come back, but that doesn’t make it easier to accept that she’s gone. Even more unfair than not getting to say goodbye to her mom is that Shelly doesn’t get to share her life with her.

Ghosts are echoes of the person they once were. They fade away, slowly, personalities and memories eroding over time. And they’re invisible to most people. They can’t talk or touch unless something happened to make them exceptionally motivated to try.

Her mom wasn’t afraid of what came after death—she was afraid of being stalled, of being stuck in between the place she came from and where she was going. Her mom was afraid of being an echo of her living self.

Shelly gets that. She hoarded away people she didn’t even know—Shelly pulled Joseph from his grave and brought him home with her because she didn’t want to let go of things and she didn’t want to change. Shelly wanted to be a static, unchanging thing. She wasn’t a ghost, but Shelly let herself become a haunted place, gathering ghosts around herself like a safety net, like maybe they’d let her get closer to her mom, but that was the wrong choice.

Her mother made her promise, that day they’d listened to The Cure in the car, not to get too caught up in the dead. She made Shelly promise that she’d have fun and be a kid, too.

Shelly’s got time to get better at that now. It’ll be a while before her hair grows back.

Grandma squeezes Shelly’s hand and they continue down the path to the newer part of the cemetery, where Shelly’s mother is buried. There’s a plaque here too, shiny and new, and Shelly lets go of Grandma’s hand so she can wipe the snow away from it.

“Hi, Mom.” Shelly opens up the bag of takeout, prying open the containers. It smells sweet and savory and delicious—it reminds her of her mother even more strongly than the smell of her shampoo or the sheets and duvet in her mother’s room. It reminds Shelly of the good memories she had with her—the secrets they had together that are no longer just Shelly’s to keep.