Chapter 4

Days turn into a week. My body is gone, disposed of by Tori's discreet "cleaners." The root cellar is scrubbed, but a faint, sweet, rotten smell still clings to the air. A ghost of a ghost.

Tori complains about it constantly.

"Arthur, did you use the industrial bleach I told you to? It still smells foul down there."

The old butler, his face etched with a permanent expression of horror, just nods. "Yes, ma'am. I'll have the team go over it again."

He knows what that smell is. He knows the truth. But he also knows his place. He has a family, a pension. Tori owns his silence.

Julian is her shadow, always at her side, his hand on her arm, his face a mask of concern.

"You're so strong, Tori," he murmurs as she looks over the fake reports from the private investigators. "Dealing with all this. With his betrayal."

"He won't get away with it," she says, her jaw tight. "He wanted to hurt me, to humiliate me. But I'm a Davenport. We don't get humiliated."

I watch them together, and my ghostly form trembles with a rage I can no longer express. Her delusion is perfect, a self-contained world where she is the victim and I am the villain.

The head of her security detail, a man named Peters, tries to break through. He was one of the men who dragged me to the cellar. He has a conscience, or at least a fear of prosecution.

He finds Tori in the library.

"Mrs. Davenport," he starts, his voice low. "About your husband... the evidence in the cellar was conclusive. There's no way he walked out of there. We need to consider..."

Tori looks up from her papers, her eyes like chips of ice.

"Consider what, Mr. Peters? That I'm a liar? That I'm a fool?"

"No, ma'am. Just that... perhaps you didn't see what you thought you saw. Perhaps in the heat of the moment..."

"I saw my husband run away like a coward after he caused my dearest friend to have a life-threatening seizure," she says, her voice dangerously calm. "That is the story. That is the truth. Are you suggesting a different one?"

Peters swallows hard. He understands the threat.

"No, Mrs. Davenport. Of course not. We'll redouble our efforts to find him."

"Good," she says, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. "See that you do."

He leaves, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Another person bought and paid for.

Tori continues her charade. She has her lawyers draft a public statement, offering a one-million-dollar reward for any information leading to my "safe return." She goes on a morning news show, her face a perfect portrait of sorrow and strength.

I am a ghost story she tells to the world, and she is the only one who doesn't know it's real.