I understand why after I hear June explain how it turned on by itself in the middle of the night. June walks them over to a window and points outside to where she apparently saw someone run off into the woods.

The police ask her some standard questions about the doors being locked, and apparently she’d checked them before bed and they were. They seem to think the record player and stranger are an unrelated coincidence.

The male police officer speaks the most. He’s about ten years older than June and maybe twenty years older than the female police officer. He has that condescending tone that older men in positions of power so often have, mostly directed at women, as though he’s talking to imbecilic children. You can tell he used to be quite good-looking, which never helps in the attitude department. He wears a wedding ring, the skin puffy around it, so you can imagine him taking it off at night and massaging the blood flow back to the area.

Taking in all of these details, I realize I haven’t seen anyone other than June and Ezra since I died. I’m a recluse even in death. Just for fun I move right up close to the female police officer. She shivers and glances over her shoulder, then puts a hand on her utility belt. She’s pretty in a plain kind of way, her blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, no makeup, her body a well-worked-out machine.

The longing to feel the softness of skin, the press of lips, the cushion of breasts suddenly floods my space. How is a dead person supposed to deal with the longing for love? It makes me wish I’d spent more time on it while alive, gotten over the shame and just lived in my truth.

I had several girlfriends over the years, but my inability to go public with them always eroded away at the relationship, leaving me single in the end. The one-night stands I collected were brief encounters and left me feeling only shame. June always encouraged me to come out, to force my mother to accept it, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to give her more ammunition.

June is saying something about chasing the person into the woods and them getting away in a boat. The female police officer asks June to take them there, then glances over at the male police officer to make sure she’s made the right request. I move up close to her again and say right into her ear, Don’t let the asshole intimidate you. He doesn’t know any more than you do. She turns her head in my direction and frowns before lifting a hand to her ear to brush my words away.