The Sound of Her Shoes

He heard them again at 2:14 a.m.

The click. Then the pause. Then the echo.

They started exactly three weeks after Marlene died. Not a day before. Not a minute after. 2:14 a.m. sharp, the time she always got up to check the hallway lights, refill her water, or just pace because sleep never came easy to her.

James sat upright in bed, still holding the book he hadn’t read for days. His eyes didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He just listened.

Click…

Click… click.

They were heels. Hers. The black patent ones with the red sole she swore were too expensive, but still wore every Sunday to church. The ones he used to call her “armor” because she walked straighter and taller in them than she did barefoot.

He told no one about the sounds. The first time it happened, he thought he was dreaming. The second time, he thought he was breaking. By the seventh, he stopped pretending it was anything else.

It was her.

Not a ghost, exactly. Not a spirit, either. Just her—some imprint of Marlene, carried in leather and memory, still following the grooves she had carved into their hallway floor over 31 years of living.

He got up this time, like he hadn’t dared before.

The hallway stretched in front of him, narrow and worn. A runner rug they bought in ‘98 covered most of it, but you could still see the polish scraped in a faint line along the edges—where her heels used to land

Click.

Pause.

Click.

James followed the sound, barefoot, as if louder footsteps might scare it away.

He didn't turn on the lights. She hated that. Said light at night was "a disruption to peace."

He reached the end of the hallway—where the sounds always stopped.

They did again.

Silence. And then that familiar scent of rosewater and cinnamon, the one she used to wear behind her ears, drifted toward him like a whisper.

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

“Marlene,” he whispered into the stillness. “If you’re here… just—don’t leave yet.”

The silence did not reply. But it didn’t feel empty, either.

James tried to move on in daylight. That’s what everyone said to do. “Keep busy,” they told him at the church. “Join a group. Take up painting.”

He joined a grief support group once, but left halfway through the second meeting. Everyone there spoke about closure like it was a door you could just shut if you pulled hard enough.

But Marlene wasn’t a door. She was every wall, every picture frame, every groove in the damn floor.

He didn’t want to close her.

So instead, he started setting out her slippers. Just under the coat hook where she used to kick off her heels. Like an offering. Like he remembered.

He made her tea some nights, too. Chamomile, no sugar. It cooled untouched, but it made the kitchen smell like her.

Some would call it madness. He didn’t care.

On the twenty-third night, he tried something different.

When he heard the click at 2:14, he stepped into the hallway and said, clearly, “Come sit with me.”

The clicks paused.

Then—astonishingly—they moved.

One after another, slow but steady, down the hallway. Not toward him. Past him. Toward the living room.

He followed.

The old green armchair was empty, but the floorboard in front of it creaked like it used to when she sat there cross-legged with a book.

James didn’t sit. He stood still, heart thudding.

“What do you want?” he whispered. “Why are you still here?”

A long, silent moment passed.

Then the record player—silent since her funeral—clicked to life.

Static hummed. Then the needle found its groove.

Ella Fitzgerald. Their wedding song.

James sank to the sofa.

He didn’t cry. Not anymore. He just listened. And imagined her heels, kicked off at the base of the chair, her feet tucked beneath her, humming along with the music.

He stayed like that until morning.

Neighbors began to notice lights flickering at odd hours. One swore they saw James dancing in the living room alone at 3 a.m., slow steps like he was following a partner.

He didn’t explain.

On the 100th night, the sound stopped.

2:14 a.m. came and went. No clicks. No perfume. No creaking chair.

At first, James panicked.

He stood in the hallway, slippers in place, tea steaming gently in the kitchen.

Nothing.

“Marlene?” he called.

Silence.

He stayed up until dawn—still nothing.

That day, he didn’t eat. Just sat by the record player, needle still resting where it had been nights before.

Three days passed.

On the fourth, he found something odd.

Her heels. The black ones with the red sole. The pair he buried with her.

They sat neatly beside the hallway runner. Clean. Slightly worn. Like they had walked 100 nights and knew the path by heart.

He bent down, trembling, and touched the leather.

It was warm.

That night, James didn’t wait in the hallway.

He went to bed. Left the tea. Left the slippers.

And for the first time since her death, he slept through the night.

In his dreams, she was beside him.

Click.

Click.

Whisper.

“I know how to find you now,” she said.

And he believed her.