July 13, 2026

[Part One]

[Part Two]

[Complete "Ghosted"]

When Nick got into the bathroom, he did find the small high-on-the-wall window he feared. It didn’t take long for him to assess that even if he could somehow figure out how to get up there, the window was going to be too small to navigate. He buried his face in his hands for a minute, then decided he was overreacting. “Take a piss,” he muttered under his breath, “go back out there, and talk this through. You can still be on the road within an hour. You’ll figure out what to say when you call home then.”

As he returned to the table, Lenny and Claire quickly shut down the quiet conversation they were having. Sitting down, Nick held up his hands in the typical “surrender” pose and asked smiling, “Thanks, guys. Now where do we begin?”

Claire forced a half-smile. “How about at the end? How did you even know of Rachel’s death given that she hadn’t heard from you in forty years?”

Nick sipped at his coffee, keeping his eyes on the top as he hesitantly responded, “uh, well, I googled her and saw the obituary.”

“That’s rather fortuitous, buddy,” Lenny mocked, “Rachel was hardly one to show up in Google searches.”

“Hey, I’m just being honest.”

“His point is a good one, Nick. How did you just happen to Google her the week she died?”

Nick felt the color rushing to his face. Sheepishly, he answered, “I have been in the habit of Googling her every couple of weeks the last few years, especially once the GoFundMe page was set up to help with her cancer treatment.”

Lenny and Claire stared at Nick, mouths agape. “Did you contribute?” Lenny asked angrily.

Nick bit his lip. “No. I didn’t want to attract attention to me.”

“You can contribute anonymously, you ass.”

“Lenny, I know that, but there still is a trail with the payment.” Both Lenny and Claire still looked dubious. “I know. I might as well start with the confession. I never really got over Rachel, and especially the last few years, with my kids off to college, I have felt haunted by the ghosts of the past.”

“Interesting,” replied Lenny, “but still inconsistent with Rachel’s past. As a result, you are sitting in a Starbucks with the ghosts of her present.”

“Everyone stop with the damn Dickens,” interjected Claire.  Lenny glared at her. ‘C’mon, Lenny, loosen up a little. All of this is, sadly, a long time ago.”

“Not long enough when it’s your sister,” he pouted.

“Help us out, Nick. What do you mean ‘never really got over Rachel.’”

Nick paused to form an answer. As he did so, two young women came into the coffeeshop, both pushing prams with babies. One pushed her pram to a table adjacent to theirs and headed to the counter. The second woman took a chair next to the pram and placed her pram to her side. All three were directly in Nick’s view. They reminded Nick of something puzzling him.

“I promise to answer that, but can I ask you a question, first? So, Rachel had two kids, eh, with her husband?”

“Yeah, good kids. What’s it to you?” Every time Lenny spoke, he came armed with vitriol. Nick felt Claire, on the other hand, had lightened on the attitude a little. He looked directly at her.

“You remember, Claire, how Rachel said she never wanted children?”

Claire nodded. “Yeah, she was pretty adamant about that. But that was Rachel. Nothing would get in the way of her dreams.”

“Seeing her kid like that at the funeral is just one of many shocks I have had today.”

“People change a lot over 40 years, Nick. You know that. Reginald Mabry was a very good man when Rachel married him, and she happily bore him Maureen and Marlon. You’ll never know how much motherhood gave her a reborn purpose in life, especially after the bastard cheated on her.”

“I know I don’t deserve to ask some of these questions, but here we are.” Nick held up his arms as if to sweep the three of them, this coffee shop, this moment into a bundle. “Reborn from what?”

“Good god, man, Rachel was deeply in love with you. One minute you two are attached like Siamese twins, the next minute you are out of her life.” Lenny stifled a few sobs. "Everything spiraled with her after that summer."

“O.k., so that takes us back to my biggest shock. Rachel loved me? That really is news to me. And before you argue, please understand that I know she loved me as a friend, maybe even as a best friend. But that ultimate relationship, which I dreamed about daily for several years, seemed unlikely. She continually put me off. Or more accurately she put us off.”

“Why did Rachel tell my folks,” Lenny interrupted, “that last Spring you two were together that she expected a proposal?”

Nick fought back a tear. “My God, Lenny, I wish I knew. I would have proposed - as stupid as it might have been then. We already both knew the future would be a problem. I had the job in New York and she had already been accepted to grad school at Ohio State. The uncertainty of those different goals caused intense moments of us being very close and honest followed by her distancing herself from me.”

“You say that suggesting that you were guilt-free.”

“I don’t mean to imply that, but I was willing to broach the subject. She resisted.”

“You realize, don’t you, that Rachel never went to grad school, not that fall, not ever?”

Claire’s question seemed completely innocent, as if she expected Nick to absolutely know. He crushed the napkin in his hand while stammering through a response.  “Uh? What? That can’t be right?”

“It was, Nick,” Claire responded.

“Bullshit,” exclaimed Lenny, hitting the table with his fist. The coffees sloshed, with most of Lenny’s, capless, spilling onto table. “Fuck,” he uttered. The ladies with the prams suddenly stood up ready to go.

“Sorry about that, ladies,” said Claire turning to face them. “Just a friendly argument.” Turning back to Lenny, she spoke, “I really don’t think he knew, Lenny. I don’t think he is that good of an actor.”

“Honestly, I really didn’t know.” Nick started sobbing quietly.

“I’ll go get some more napkins,” Claire said, jumping up, "for both the table and for you, Nick.”

Lenny grumbled while Claire went to the front counter. The prams and mothers were heading out the front door, leaving them as the only customers again. Nick didn’t even care anymore. He was exhausted and not thinking clearly.

Claire came back, Nick thanking her for the napkins to dab at his eyes, Lenny still grumbling as he wiped off the table. Nick leaned back. “This explains a few things from my side, guys. I couldn’t bear to hear Rachel’s voice after I moved to New York, so I never called her. I planned to write her after she got settled in Columbus. I was going to wait until at least Thanksgiving to allow us both time to process, then write her offering her a peace treaty and hoping the best for her.”

“Peace treaty? Why?” Claire had grabbed Lenny’s coffee-sodden napkins and walked to the trashcan by the door, watching Nick and waiting for an answer.

“We had said some pretty nasty things about each other that last time we saw each other before I headed to New York.”

“What kind of nasty things?” grumbled Lenny.

“They don’t really matter now, do they? The thing is once I got to New York, I really got into my job, meeting a lot of people. I ended up with more of a social life than I expected. Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went without me writing Rachel. Finally, right after New Year’s, I decided to write her. Having no address, and still fearing the sound of her voice, I wrote to her care of the department of social sciences at Ohio State University. It came back as a ‘return to sender.’  I assumed she didn’t want the letter; I never thought that maybe she wasn’t even there.” Nick started to sob again, dabbing at his eyes with his napkin.

“Well, she didn’t go. She told everyone she was devastated by losing you and couldn’t face being a stranger in a strange land, so to speak.”

“Did it strike you as odd that she might have said ‘devastated’? Claire, you especially, knew of her personality when we were all out at bars or parties. Did you really think that I was the one holding her together? Especially with the jokes, the flirtations with other guys, the way she talked so optimistically about graduate school. This just doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t, Nick,” blared Lenny, “and the problem is that Rachel isn’t around to tell her side of the story anymore.”

“Lenny’s right, Nick, although the diaries do tell her side of the story. Those are of the instant.  How do you know that you are not seeing the past dimmed and distorted by your memories or at worst reconstructed memories?”

Nick finished his coffee and got up to throw it away. He saw Lenny flinch, but Claire grabbed his arm. Nick had no interest in fleeing anymore, although he was still vaguely aware that every minute he stayed here in the past made the present and the future a greater obstacle at home.

“I don’t even know if I really want to do this,” Nick hesitated as he came back to the table. “But, Claire do you think I could see those diaries? To try and make sense of what I missed at the time?”

“Probably not good, Nick. I have no idea if Rachel wanted you to see them and even in her death those are hers. She asked me to keep most of her keepsakes from her pre-marriage days, things she said she wasn’t sure Maureen and Marlon should see. I have them but don’t plan to do anything with them.”

“So what happened after she decided to not to go to Ohio State?”

“She had a rough few years, Nick. She worked at the Sears at the mall for a few years, but mostly drank herself silly in the evenings. When she was sober, she understood the cycle she was in, but the drinking seemed to help her escape her demons.”

Nick sniffled. “We both too often used alcohol as an escape. In some ways, New York helped me kick that habit.”

‘Well, Rachel never found her New York. So, let me confide one thing from her diaries, Nick, as it might help all of us, especially Lenny here who has taken Rachel’s sickness and death very hard.”

“I really am sorry, Lenny.”

Lenny grunted and stared absently at the front.

“In her diary, Claire says she wrote you for your birthday in 1990, a long letter bearing her heart to you. She too had no address and sent it care of the New York Jets at their corporate headquarters. It too was returned to sender. Did you never get it?

Nick sat stunned. Rachel had tried to reach out to him also, although several years later. “Uh, no, but I had taken a management job with the Nets in 1989.”

The three sat there in an uneasy silence. “Does her diary say what she specifically wrote?”

“No, Nick, in fact, after she noted the day it was returned, her diary is blank for several months.”

“So, this is around May 1990, Claire?” Lenny asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she disappeared for a few weeks. She wouldn’t tell anyone where she was. She came back, started hitting AA meetings fairly religiously, met Reggie Mabry, and within six months had married him.”

“That last part corresponds with the diaries for the most part. Once she met Reggie, the diaries become much more mundane, or at least until Marlon was born. Then once Reggie started cheating on her, she returned to using the diary for much more of a confessional.”

“It sounds like you have read all through the diaries, Claire. Did you do that once Rachel passed?” Nick asked.

“No, about three weeks before she died, Rachel asked me to come visit her. At that time she gave me the diaries, begged me to read them, and to use them however I could to help preserve her past for the future. I just wasn’t supposed to share them with her kids. It was a rather strange request.”

The three sat again in their uneasy silence. Nick glanced at the front counter where the bored baristas were playing chess. “I’m not sure there is much more for us to discuss here. As I said back at the church, I really am very sorry to have ruined this day for both of you. I thought I could slip in, pay my respects for a woman who once meant everything to me, and then get home and leave that past behind me. I doubt the last part is possible anymore, but that’s my burden to bear.”

“If you don’t mind, Nick,” Claire said, cutting off Lenny who appeared ready to say something, probably fiery as his face was turning beet red again, “can I ask you one more question?  Lenny here might not be ready to forgive you and let you go, but I think I am.”

“Of course. I owe at least that to you. To Rachel.”

“You were sleeping with Rachel. I am no prude and certainly not naïve enough to think that sex only happens when two people are clearly in love; however, in this case, hearing what you said about her, wasn’t it even crueler than normal to literally leave her in bed as you deserted her?”

“What are you talking about Claire? We only slept together twice, and both times she later told me that she did it because she felt weak. Especially that last birthday of hers.”

Lenny slammed his fist on the table.  “Wait, are you telling me you slept me with sister again after she had told you the previous time had been a mistake? What kind of an asshole are you?”

“God, Lenny, it’s not that simple. I loved Rachel. Loved, loved, loved her. I was consumed by her every day. Maybe both times we went to bed were precipitated by alcohol, but the feelings seemed entirely mutual in the moment. If she had said, ‘no,’ I would have stopped.”

“Yeah, sure, you lying sack of shit.”

“Wait, Lenny, let’s not lose the narrative here. Rachel wrote in her diaries that the sex with you was wonderful.” Lenny faked a gag upon hearing Claire utter those words. Nick, on the other hand, felt dizzy.

“Really? I’m so confused.”

“Even if you thought she regretted the sex, you two still hung out all the time. I see nothing in this story that justifies you abandoning her.” Claire played with the cardboard sheath around her coffee.

Nick struggled knowing what to think, let alone what to say. Certainly that last summer, they did spend most days together, even if only the two nights seared in his memory. Then he remembered the image of blond Ben Steel, guitarist for The Trust, and that last 4^th of July when Rachel hurt him the most.

“Maybe the sex was part of the problem. What did her diary say about the sex with Ben Steel?”

“Huh?” Lenny looked puzzled.

“Ben?” asked Claire. “You mean that guitar player for the goofy local band in Chaddock.”

“Yes, that Ben! How many fucking Bens were in her life?”

“I’m not even sure he was in her life, Nick. She did love the band and did think Ben was particularly attractive, but then what girl didn’t find him attractive, especially when he wore those red leather pants.  But I doubt it went further. I was with her several times we saw The Trust.”

“Even that July 4^th?”

“That last summer?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, we had a pretty big fight a couple of days before that 4^th. I had promised my parents we would come home for the holiday, but she really wanted to go to Chaddock to see the band play. She seemed completely non-plussed by my disappointment and frustration. I tried calling her repeatedly that night and the next morning and never got her. I figured she stayed the night.”

“With Ben?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know, Nick. She certainly never told me she had any one-night stands with Ben. And she mentions nothing about hooking up with him in the diaries.”

“It wasn’t just Ben. There were a few other musicians, even a damn poet or two. I’m not saying she was a slut, but I am certain she hooked up a few times. None of those are mentioned in the diary?”

“Nick, I am not going to tell you the dark secrets of Rachel’s dairy. I just want to make sure her voice as it spoke about you is still heard through this din of the past. I am confident she wants this broached before you disappear again.”

“Disappear again?” Nick sighed. “My god, I am worse than the local pariah.” He looked at his phone. “It’s getting pretty late and I have 6 hours of driving. Let’s leave it with me apologizing again for spoiling an important day for all of you in Rachel’s life.”

Lenny stood up to block Nick’s path to the door. “What about an apology to Rachel, dipshit?”

 “Let him go, Lenny,” Claire intervened. “We aren’t going to resolve anything here. If nothing else, we may have given Rachel’s spirit freedom to roam through Nick’s life. I do believe you loved her, Nick, but maybe the kind of immaturity most of us have at that age led to poor decisions. In the end, Rachel got over you, found a good man, at least for a little while, and kids.”

Lenny shifted to allow Nick a way to the door. “I suppose,” he mumbled, “but don’t show your face around here again, Nick. There are a few of us, Mom included, who don’t need any of this dredged up again.”

Nick thrust his hand at Lenny. “I understand, Lenny. I really do.” Lenny shook his hand forcibly, using his second arm to pull Nick’s arm so that they were face to face. Claire put hers out, Nick wrestled his hand free, shook hers and headed to the door.

In the car, Nick finally was able to take a deep breath. Looking through the Starbucks’ window, he could see Lenny and Claire still standing at the table like a frozen tableau. He wasn’t sure it was an image he would forget anytime soon. It would take him about ten minutes to get to the turnpike where he figured he could stop for some food and call Victoria. He had no idea what he would exactly say to her. Simon’s Graceland continued to play and his sobbing became unstoppable. As “Crazy Love, Vol. II” started, Nick swung into a strip mall parking lot, and jabbed his finger at the audio display to stop the music. He suddenly didn’t want to hear the lines that Rachel loved to tease him with:

“She says she knows about jokes./ This time the joke is on me./ Well, I have no opinion of that. /And I have no opinion about me.”

Nick pulled out a cigarette and tried to light it with a shaky hand. He closed his eyes, trying to remember those last few days with Rachel that July. They snipped at each other every time they saw each other, which became shorter and shorter periods of time, and plans for a big farewell party fizzled from apathy. He remembered being stressed about his move, especially with pulling a small U-Haul behind his car. With his early morning start, he didn't even make a stop to see Rachel as he left. What might have been different if he had?

Nick stared upwards. Funny how even the most agnostic look to the heavens in moments of crisis. The past was collapsing all around him, and he feared he might suffocate. “Rachel, I am sorry. I don’t know how we lost our way, but I hope you found yours. Peace for eternity, Rach.”

Once he got onto the turnpike, Nicholas looked for the first rest area. After shoving down a couple of pieces of gas station pizza, Nick got back into his Fusion and started the engine. Before backing out of his spot, he grabbed his phone and called home. Victoria answered after four rings.

“Hey, hon, how did it go?” she asked out of breath. Nick pictured her racing to the phone from her art studio in the attic.

“Not bad. I did get stopped by some people and so I am getting a much later start home. I probably won’t get there until 1:00 or 1:30. Don’t wait up.”

“Everything alright? You sound weird.”

Nick hesitated. He knew he had to own up to the day, especially considering the strange culmination. His lengthy pause wasn’t helping.

“Nick, are you still there?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I just . . .”

“Look, Nick, if it helps, I am pretty sure you went to Rachel’s funeral. It’s no big deal. At least, I don’t think it is a big deal. Don’t make it so.”

Nick let out a pronounced breath of air. “How did you know?”

“Good God, Nick, you don’t know anybody back there anymore. You never talk about any old classmates or friends from college. And even though you stopped talking about Rachel about three months into our dating, I know you. I never doubted that something from your shared past still haunted you.”

“I guess you really do know me pretty well.”

“I do. Look, just get on the road and get home. We can talk in the morning. Don’t wake me up to help you shake off the old ghosts. It can wait ‘til morning.”

“O.k. honey. Thanks. Sorry I wasn’t up front about this trip.”

“Stop. I’ll make you pay later. You just need to get home.”

“Love you. See you later.” As Nick disengaged the call, he ended the playing of Graceland through his phone, selecting Chick Corea’s Expressions instead. As he pulled onto the turnpike, the opening of “Lush Life” came on. For now, there was nothing in his rear-view mirror.