Ghost of my heart

When Eleanor first moved into the old Winslow estate, she wasn’t expecting ghosts. She was expecting silence, isolation, and time to heal. After all, a centuries-old manor perched atop a mist-shrouded cliff wasn’t where people went to chase love. They went there to forget.

It had been three months since Andrew’s accident. Three months of unanswered texts, unopened condolences, and nights she couldn’t even cry. The Winslow estate had come cheap in the wake of tragedy. She took it as a sign.

The townsfolk had whispered, of course. “That place is haunted,” they said. “Strange sounds. Lights flickering. Shadows in the mirrors.” Eleanor had only nodded, because a haunted house was still less terrifying than her own grief.

But the house had been quiet. Peacefully so.

Until the piano played.

It was just after midnight on a Thursday when she first heard it—soft notes drifting down from the music room. Eleanor had forgotten the manor even had a piano. She crept up the stairs, her heart thudding, every step a question. No one was supposed to be there. She lived alone.

The room was empty, of course. A thick layer of dust coated the keys. Yet one ivory note glowed clean. Touched.

“I must be imagining it,” she whispered aloud, brushing her fingers over the keys.

Behind her, a voice answered: “You always said music spoke louder than words.”

She turned so quickly she nearly fell. But there was no one there.

Just the cold.

Just the echo of her own racing heart.

---

The next few nights, it happened again. Music in the silence. A flicker in the mirror. Her favorite book, moved on the shelf. Eleanor tried to convince herself she was losing her mind, that grief was playing tricks. But the house disagreed.

It wasn’t until the seventh night that she saw him.

Andrew.

At least, it looked like him—standing in the doorway of the music room, wearing the same shirt he’d died in, eyes full of sorrow and something deeper.

“Eleanor,” he said.

She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She simply whispered, “How?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m here.”

He stepped forward, and though his form shimmered, she swore she felt warmth brush her cheek.

“I tried to let go,” he said, voice trembling. “But you kept calling me. In your dreams. In your sorrow. I couldn’t leave.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “You’re not real.”

He smiled gently. “Does it matter?”

---

Their nights became a ritual. She’d light a candle in the music room, and he would appear. They’d talk, sometimes for hours—about life, about the afterlife, about the memories that still haunted them both.

She asked him why he came. He answered: “Because love doesn’t die, Eleanor. Not really. Not when it’s real.”

During the day, Eleanor began to change. She painted again. She cooked real meals. She stopped checking her phone for messages that would never come. But the townsfolk noticed. Whispers returned.

“She walks the halls at night, talking to herself.”

“She’s gone mad, poor thing.”

But she didn’t care. Because love had returned—strange, impossible, but real.

---

One night, he didn’t come.

She waited until dawn. Called his name. Lit candle after candle.

Nothing.

The house felt heavier than before. Cold. Empty.

Desperate, she returned to the music room and sat at the piano. Her fingers trembled as she played the notes he had once touched. Music echoed in the room, uncertain and sad.

Then, a hand covered hers.

“I’m still here,” Andrew whispered. “But my time is slipping.”

“No,” she cried. “Not again.”

“You gave me peace, Eleanor. But peace… means letting go.”

She clutched his hand, though it felt more mist than flesh.

“I’m not ready.”

“Neither was I,” he said gently. “But love that holds too tightly becomes a chain.”

They sat together until the candle burned low.

---

In the morning, Eleanor woke alone. The music room was cold. Dust returned to the keys.

But she wasn’t broken.

Because she knew—he had loved her enough to stay, and she had loved him enough to let go.

She opened the manor windows, letting in the light. Picked up her brush. Began a new painting.

And on the canvas, without thinking, she painted a hand reaching through mist toward the sun.

In the stillness, a single note rang out from the piano.

One last goodbye.