Page 100 of Ghost Note

Suddenly the greyness of the street drifted away, and all I could see was a life filled with love and happiness, smiling faces and unforgettable memories. A familiar home full of colour, where the echoes of every laugh ever shared here floated through the air.

I hadn’t realised I’d stepped inside before Danny, my eyes wide with wonder and a smile breaking free.

“Your mum was so, so beautiful,” I whispered, reaching up to run my finger over a picture I’d seen of her a hundred times before, but never paid much attention to. Danny and I used to fly down the stairs at dinnertime and run past it, not realising how valuable it would be to us both one day, or understanding how we should have appreciated it while Amie was alive. Her long, blonde hair flowed out against the wind in the picture, and she had her eyes creased to battle off the sunlight as she held a baby Danny in her arms and smiled for the camera.

The next picture was of Tim and Danny working in his garage. Tim held a saw and was halfway through cutting up a long plank of wood, while Danny scratched his head and held up a screwdriver with a frown on his face.

I laughed and moved onto the next, and the next, and the next.

“I don’t think I can do this, Daisy.”

Looking up, I took him in. Danny was standing by the door still, turning a single key over and over in his hands like it burned to hold for too long. He was no famous, unbreakable, cocky superstar then.

He was the unsure Danny who’d run up to me to ask me out.

The guy whose eyes had been unusually sad as he sat on the bonnet of his car and told me he was leaving, and we were done.

He was the guy who’d told me he couldn’t possibly take the guitar I’d bought him.

Danny was shaken as he stood in the doorway of his childhood home, so I went to him. Taking his hand in mine, I guided him down the hallway slowly, until I came to a stop in front of a picture I felt was appropriate.

“See that.” I pointed up at it.

He swallowed and cleared his throat, scratching an eyebrow before he forced himself to look.

In the picture, Danny must have been about eight or nine. He was in the middle of one of his skateboarding competitions, halfway down a skate ramp, his body bent, and his concentration on nothing but the curve ahead. In the background, his father cheered with his arms in the air and his mouth open as he spurred Danny on to victory. His mum was standing by Tim’s side, with her hands clamped to her mouth, and her face creased up with both pride and fear.

“Look how proud of you they are,” I whispered. “And then look at the picture next to it. And the one above that. And the one next to that.”

Our eyes drifted up and across the different photos, each one a brand-new version of the one before, but all of them featuring a mother and father’s love for their son. There was even a picture of Danny and me standing beside Tim and Amie at a summer barbeque. Tim was at the barbeque, Amie was holding a tray of food, while Danny stood behind me with his arms wrapped around my shoulders and his chin resting on one of them. I couldn’t remember who took the picture, but I remembered the day. I remembered every day this home had gifted me with because they’d been some of the happiest moments of my life.

So much happier than those made in my own home.

I loved my mum and dad, but Diane and Malcolm Piper were stricter than Tim and Amie Silver. My parents’ love was different, filled with sensible decisions, cautious advice, a lot of church, and nothing too wild. Tim and Amie weren’t like that. They’d raised Danny to be bold. To live every single moment like it was his last, and to never regret anything that made him smile… not even if it hurt along the way.

It dawned on me then why Danny and I were so different—why we looked at life from angles I couldn’t bend my neck enough to see from—and I realised, as goosebumps trailed over my skin, how much I didn’t want to end up like my own parents, safe and locked away in a house they’d never changed or drifted too far from. Existing, not living. I didn’t want the stiff, orchestrated photos of my family to be produced in a studio where we each fake smiled and tried to appear perfect without a hair out of place.

I wanted what Amie and Tim had created.

I wanted photos of smiling, laughing, crying—of bad hair blowing in the wind and squinting eyes. Of tears of fear rolling down my face while I worried about whether my son or daughter was about to break their neck, even though they were having the time of their lives. I wanted my life to be filled with real memories, not the ones I thought the world wanted me to show off.

“Are you cold?” Danny asked, squeezing our joined fingers together while his free hand roamed over my forearm. “You’ve got goosebumps.”

Looking up at him, I smiled. “Not cold. More… happy.”

“Happy?” He scowled.

“For you and these memories you have. You had the perfect childhood, Danny, and no one, not even death, can take that away from you. They were amazing people.”

Danny’s eyes searched mine. I had no idea if I’d said the right thing or not, but I could only go with what was in my heart.

Bringing his thumb up to my face, he brushed it under my eye just in time to catch a stray happy tear. “See, Daisy? This is why you had to be here with me for this. You’re the only one who can make me look at death like it isn’t dark. You’re the only one who can make me see the good when all I want to see is how much it hurts without them.”

“Danny…”

“And it’s going to hurt like hell on Saturday,” he whispered. Those strong lines in his face were tense again, even if his voice was soft.

I nodded. “Then let’s make Friday so incredible that we’ll be too exhausted on Saturday to care.”

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