A Shadow of her Former Self

It all started when my wife died eight months ago.

Susan was everything to me. We had been together since high school, and it had been love at first sight. We married after graduation and had spent eighteen years together in wedded bliss. I worked as a writer, finding jobs in editing or column writing, Susan working as a receptionist for a friend of my mother. We spent a lot of time together, my days spent mostly waiting for her to come home. I lived for the moments when we were sitting in front of the TV together or curled together in bed as we talked about our day. We never had children, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying. I was afraid she would leave me when she discovered I was infertile, I’d been injured when I was small, but she just smiled and said we would just have to be satisfied with each other.

It was never something we struggled with.

Instead of kids, we gave each other our full attention. We traveled as often as we could, ate out often, had date nights at least once a week, and loved each other more than anyone else we knew. Susan was my everything, and I hoped I was hers. She never gave me any doubt that it was so, and those eighteen years were the happiest times of my life.

They weren’t enough, though.

A million years wouldn’t have been enough.

I was writing something for some rag that Susan liked to read when I got the call.

She had looked over my shoulder that morning before she left, cooing appreciatively as I edited a piece from one of her favorite writers, other than me, of course. She wanted to read it when I was done, and I promised I would let her see it when she got home. I had been invited to write a column too, something they might let me do more often if it did well, and I had just started fleshing it out when I decided it was time for a second cup of coffee. The coffee maker was burbling happily, filling my mug with liquid happiness, when my phone rang. I thought it might be Susan, letting me know she had made it to work, and I almost didn’t answer when I saw it was an unknown number. The telemarketers had been particularly bad lately, and the last thing I wanted was another conversation with someone who wanted to sell me solar panels or extend the warranty on my car.

Turned out it was the police.

There had been an accident.

They were sorry, but she had passed very quickly, likely instantly, and hadn’t felt any pain.

My cup smashed as it hit the floor, soaking my feet in hot coffee as I gripped the counter for support.

I would need support for the next few months. I was a wreck, my wife had been my whole world and now, suddenly, I was alone. I couldn’t even go into the bedroom for the first two weeks. It smelled like her, her pictures were everywhere, and I slept on the couch a lot on those days. I didn’t even go in there to get my suit. I just bought a new one off the rack for the funeral. It was small, and neither of us had a lot of friends or family, but the girls from the doctor's office were very supportive and very sorry to lose such a dear friend.

We buried her in Mountain Hills, a cemetery not far from the house, and after they lowered her into the ground, I just sat there, trying to figure out what to do now.

I was still sitting there when the guys from the funeral home came to pick up the chairs, the sun setting behind me as I watched the hole in the ground where my wife now lay.

“Sorry for your loss, Mr, but we’ve gotta pack these up now.”

I got up, drove home, and just sort of sat on the couch.

When the sun came up, I was still sitting there.

This became a pattern.

The next two months are kind of a blur, honestly. I lived my life like that quote from Forest Gump. When I was tired, I slept. When I was hungry, I ate. When I had to go, I went. I really didn’t leave the house unless I had to, and when I did, I walked. I didn’t trust cars after that, and I’m still not comfortable riding in anything with wheels. The walks probably did me good, but I was so lost at this point in my life. She had been my everything, my whole world, and I just didn’t know how to get by without her.

I didn’t work, and my contracts quickly dried up. I wasn’t working on my books either and I had fallen into a deep funk. If something hadn’t pulled me out, I would have probably wasted away right there. Thankfully, something did.

That was when the gifts started showing up.

The first one came on Valentine's Day, though I know now that was no accident. I had stepped out in the evening to check the mail, and there it was on the stoop. I almost stepped on it, and that would have been a shame because someone had left my favorites. Sitting there was a bouquet of wildflowers, a box of those dark chocolate truffles Susan had always bought me, and a card. I was stunned for a moment, not quite believing what I was seeing. This was just the sort of thing she would do, too, and I was expecting her to jump around the corner and surprise me. Susan hadn’t been very large, a wisp of a thing, but she liked to scare people and found it hilarious when she managed to.

As the minutes stretched by and no scare seemed incoming, I picked up the stuff and brought it inside.

I put the flowers in some water, I had never gotten flowers before but I remembered that much, and set the chocolates on the table. I opened the card and found a pretty generic card, flipping it open to see who had sent it. I snorted as I read it, wondering whose bright idea this had been, but feeling a little better nonetheless.

"From your secret admirer." was written inside, the handwriting fine and spidery.

As I ate the chocolates, I felt the tears come on unbidden. The taste, the smell, it all reminded me of Valentine's Days past. We would sit and watch a movie, curled up on the couch together, while she munched at her Ferrero Roches and I on my chocolate truffles. We’d trade sometimes, and I wished now that I could see her eyes light up as I handed her one of my chocolates again.

I passed out on the couch a little later, but my dreams were a little brighter that night.

After that, I started finding other gifts. Food from my favorite Chinese place, candy, and books by writers that I liked. One time someone even delivered a seafood feast from Sir Crabbingtons, and I was halfway through it before I realized it was mine and Susan's wedding anniversary. I waited till after I had finished before crying this time, but the tears were still there.

I never questioned these gifts, but I never looked for them either. I assumed they were from friends or from the girls at the office she had worked at, but their dedication was heartwarming if it was. My wife must have talked about me a lot for them to know my favorite foods and snacks, and I was honestly just happy for a break from the sadness. Each of these gifts made my day a little better, and the pain ebbed away a little bit more with each new package. Suddenly I was writing again. Suddenly I had the energy to reach out to my old contacts and try to work again. I was running in the evenings, I was doing laundry and dishes, and I felt like I might be getting better.

The gifts were nice, but it was the other things that started to make me wonder if the gifts were all that was being given.

Sometimes, I would wake up to find that the clothes were folded or the dishes were done, and I couldn’t remember doing them. Other times it would be simpler things, things easily explained but no less odd. A blanket thrown across me where there hadn’t been before. A pillow under my head when I had slept on the couch and left it on the bed. Sometimes, as I came awake a little in the night, it seemed like I could see shadows moving in my house. I would sit up sometimes, the living room bathed in the light of whatever TV show I had fallen asleep watching, and look around for the source of the movement, finding nothing. It was weird, but I figured it was probably just my imagination. I had been through a lot lately, some mild hallucinations might be expected.

It was on one of my jogs when I finally discovered the identity of my secret admirer.

I was coming up the hallway, huffing a little from a longer walk than usual tonight, when I saw someone leaving something outside my door. I had to grab the wall for a minute when I first saw her because I thought it might be my wife. She was short, a little chubby, with brown hair cut short. She was dressed normally, jeans and a t-shirt, but the hightops were also something my wife had favored. From the back, she looked exactly like my dead wife, except for the hair. My wife had always talked about getting it cut short, but she favored ponytails and braids too much to cut it too short. She was bent at the waist, leaving food or something for me, and when I called her name she jumped.

When she turned around, though, I could see I had been mistaken.

The woman was similar to my wife, but her face was different. They could have still been sisters, but there were definitely subtle differences. Her nose was rounder, her face less angular, and she just seemed less substantial. I began to wonder if she might be a cousin or something, but I couldn’t think of anyone in Susan’s family who looked much like her.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, looking embarrassed, “I guess you caught me. Sorry for being so mysterious, I just didn’t want to mess up your mourning. I was a friend of your wife’s, my name's Anne.” she offered me a hand to shake and I likely looked just as unsure of myself as I took it.

I told her to knock next time, to come in and share a meal with me, and she agreed.

That began our strange friendship.

Anne was just the companion I needed, and we spent two to three nights a week in my living room. Some of you will lift your eyebrows at that, but it was never anything more than talk. Anne cried as often as I did, the two of us reminiscing over Susan and what she had meant to us. Anne, as it turned out, had known Susan far longer than I had. The two had been friends since they were children, and Anne told me about Susan’s early life in a way that made them sound like sisters. The more she told me, the more I wondered why I had never heard of her before? If Susan had known Anne since they were children, why was this the first time we were meeting? Many of her stories were things I had heard before, so they tracked, but any misgivings soon melted away as we spent our evenings remembering.

Sometimes, she held me while I cried, sometimes I held her, but it was nice to have someone there in my grief.

She had just gotten done with a particularly funny story about how Susan had cut her hair too short and given herself something like a mullet before shaving it down into a sloppy pixie cut when she suddenly began to cry. Her despair was deep, the sobs racking her, and when I moved to hold her, she pressed her face against my chest.

“I’m sorry,” she said through blubbers, “but I just miss her so much.”

I held her that night as she wept, and I think that was when I started to fall in love with her.

It made me feel terrible, but I couldn’t help it. She was so much like Susan, even her voice reminded me a little of my dead wife. I didn’t want to move on, I was still trying to process what to do next, but Anne helped a lot and I got the feeling that she didn’t mind being that person for me. Suddenly, she was coming over every night, bringing food or wine, and we spent our evenings together. It didn’t seem to bother her that I never wanted to leave the house, it didn’t make any difference to her that I didn’t cook, but the longer she was in my life, the more that changed. Suddenly, I was paying more attention to my clothes, I was taking on columns for online magazines and selling my short stories again. I was cooking dinners instead of eating takeout, and I felt as if I were getting better.

Anne was a big supporter of this too, pushing me to get better, and that was when I started to notice that something was a little off about her, something I should have noticed before then.

Anne only came by after dark and was unavailable during the day.

Anne had a very demanding job but would change the subject anytime I brought it up.

Anne would always leave before dawn, if not well before.

Anne wouldn’t stay at the house, wanting her own space, which I could respect.

These things, on their own, didn’t seem so strange, but all together, they made me curious. I had also started wondering why Susan had never talked about Anne before. It was something that had always been at the back of my mind, but now it began to linger like a fishbone in my throat. If they were so close, why had I never met her? If they had been friends since childhood, why hadn’t she been at our wedding? Parties, trips, gatherings of people we had drawn around us, and Anne had never been at any of them.

I asked Anne about that one night, but she waved it off, telling me I must have seen her at those things.

“I’ve been to every gathering you guys have thrown. I was at your wedding, I was at the funeral, I’ve been with you guys all the way.”

It made me think I was going crazy, but I couldn’t remember seeing her before that night two months ago. I thought about going through old pictures, but neither of us had ever been picture-taking people. We kept our memories inside, not on our phones, though it made it a little difficult to check now. I was hesitant to bring any of this up in front of her as well because I didn’t want her to feel like I was accusing her of anything. Anne had become very important to me, and I didn’t want to go back to sitting in my depression on the couch every night.

That is until I saw something I shouldn’t have.

We’d been watching a movie on the couch, something Susan and I had seen a thousand times, and I had dozed off towards the end. I had laid my head over onto Anne, and if it bothered her, she gave no indication. I don’t know how long we sat like that, the two of us together on the couch, but when she got up to leave, I came half awake as I mumbled something about seeing her later. She didn’t respond, which I thought meant she hadn’t heard me, but as I opened my eyes a little, I saw something that froze me in my couch divet.

A black shadow was standing in the doorway, it's back to me as it prepared to step out into the dim hallway. The creature looked like tar, its form more of a feminine insinuation than a fact. It must have had its back to me, but when I inhaled harshly and fell off the couch, it turned back to see what had happened. I was on the floor, breathing harshly and trying to find enough breath to scream, when the shadow creature bent down in front of me and spoke in Anne’s voice.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out, but I suppose it was inevitable.”

I couldn’t find my breath. I just looked at the thing that was speaking with Anne’s voice, trying to make sense of all this. What the hell was going on? In my head, I had wondered if Anne was some kind of stalker or a weirdo who was only pretending to know my wife, but this…

This was a little bit beyond anything I had thought about.

“What…what…”

She glanced at the sliding door to our apartment, noticing the sun beginning to peak up and sucking in air.

“I don’t have time now, but please, listen. You have to trust that I would never hurt you, and I will explain what's going on. Some of the answers might not make a lot of sense, but I promise I’ll tell you what's going on. Just wait till tonight, till I get off, and I’ll tell you everything I can. Can you do that?”

I nodded, and she returned it slowly.

She got up and walked towards the door, but turned back just before passing through it.

“I’m still Anne, I’m still the person you’ve known for the past few months. Just keep that in mind.”

Then she walked through the door and left me sitting on the floor of my living room.

I was a mess all that day. I didn’t understand anything. All I knew was that someone I’d grown pretty close to had turned into a featureless monster right before my eyes. I kept trying to convince myself throughout the day that it had all been a dream, that I was still dreaming, but the longer the day went on, the more I had to come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t. That meant that whatever it had been, it was coming back here tonight, and I would have to make a choice when it got here.

Did I let it in, or did I tell it to go away and lose Anne forever?

When the knock finally came, night having crept up on me as I worried the day away, I looked out the peephole to see the same old Anne standing on my doorstep.

As I opened the door, she breathed a sigh of relief and asked if she could come in.

I let her in, figuring that if the creature had wanted to hurt me, it would have done it before now.

“Okay,” she said, not sitting as she paced the living room, “I know you’ve probably got a ton of questions, but just let me tell you my side before you jump to conclusions.”

She took a deep breath, steadying herself as she tried to find a place to begin.

“I didn’t lie, I have been with your wife for a very long time. In fact, I’ve been with her since birth. Susan and I have gone everywhere together, right up until the day they buried her. I,” she paused, clearly not sure how to say it, “I’m Susan’s shadow.”

I squinted at her, not really sure what to make of that.

“When your wife died, I was reassigned to someone else. Someone new, someone very new, but I still remembered you. I wondered how you were and what you were doing. I hoped you were doing okay, and as this little person napped and sat, I knew I had to go make sure you were okay. I had to stay with my new person during the day when shadows are the most noticeable, but at night I was free to roam a bit more. Babys don’t move as much as you might think, and with a seven o’clock bedtime, I was left with a lot of time to kill. I leave at five when the sun is coming up, and come back at night so I can see you.”

She stopped, looking at me in an expectant way, but my mind was altogether unprepared.

“So…you’re Susan’s shadow? How?”

She shrugged, “Shadows are a part of people, but once they're dead, we aren’t really needed. I’ve been with Susan since the start, since the first time she met you, and I fell in love with you right alongside her. I had to know that you were safe, to know that you hadn’t given up, so I started to come back to our old house, and I found you suffering. So, I left you gifts to keep your spirit up, little things to make you realize you were still loved, but I got careless. I let myself get seen, but I guess that worked out in the end. Turned out, I was hurting too. I missed Susan, missed her more than I had any of the people I had been attached to before, and talking with you helped me get over her, just as it helped you. We helped each other, in the end, and that was what we both needed. We became what the other needed, and I’m thankful that you happened along and found me that day.”

I had questions, all kinds of questions, but the one that stuck seemed the most obvious.

“If you have someone new that you’re attached to, does that mean that eventually you’ll have to go?”

She nodded slowly, looking like she hoped I wouldn’t think of that right away.

“Eventually. As the person I’ve been assigned to grows, she will need me more than just during the day. I may have to stay with her more and more often at night, and that will ultimately mean less time with you. I want to be here for you, but I don’t want to stop you from moving on either. You need to get past her, to get past me, and eventually return to life as you knew it. You deserve that, you deserve to be happy.”

I felt the tears leaking down my face, smearing her and turning her into a wavy half-person.

“Will you stay with me as long as you can?” I asked.

She nodded, smiling, “I will. I’d really like that.”

That was six months ago. The little girl she has become the shadow of, Anne, is starting to move around more, and Anne is happy with her progress. She doesn’t think it will be much longer before she’s walking, but she promises that she’ll still come and see me for a while to come.

“One day she may decide that the nights are for going out or working, but for now she’s still tossing in her crib before the sun goes down, and that's just fine with me.”

I don’t know how long I’ll have my Anne for, but I know it would never be long enough.

Even as I write this, I know there will come a time when her visits become less and less, and I know that will be fine too.

I had Susan for eighteen wonderful years, and I’ll take whatever time I have with her shadow as a gift.