Ghosts.
"Do you believe in ghosts, Alan?" Denny Crane didn't bother to look at his friend, knowing that his voice alone commanded attention.
Alan Shore pucked at his cigar and then watched their expelled smoke circle into the Boston sky, fingers steepled in contemplation. He dreamed of her, often. His wife, that is. His dead wife, he reminded himself nastily, then hated himself for it. All that perfection and love and righteousness he had known but had passed before him. It was so vivid – he could see her right there, on the bed, their favourite nightdress almost floating on her skin. Watching him with that face of pure magnanimity and those eyes that never miss a thing. The lamps were on, the curtains drawn and he stood in the doorway, suit in place and case in hand. It was a scene he knew so well; so often had dreamt it he could recall every detail effortlessly. It was burnt into his brain and it haunted him, but not in the way Denny implied. In that one snapshot, that one little burst of beta waves, his wife – dead wife – cemented every reason he had for existence on this cold, wretched rock.
It always played the same way. She was what compelled him to do the right thing. She knew why his passion made up for his indiscretions, because he simultaneously meant and didn't mean every one of his actions. And yet she beseeched him with those goddamn eyes – 'You weren't always like this.' So he would retort. The past is the past and unless it's spectacular, it's irrelevant. There's no regret, he defended childishly, willing a response from that passive mask. There's no shame. Still she gave no utterance. Just looking, always looking at him and compelling him into impassioned pleas. And every time he tried to resist, and every time she broke him.
But there's memories, he concedes, and finally she looks satisfied. Sad. There's loss. There's her. Something that is missed, sorely, like a wound. A cavern that can't be filled. A hurt so deep it can only be hidden by nonchalance and sarcasm and hedonism and petty humour.
Ghosts are shadows. She was a shadow. A shadow in a nightdress, with ever-watchful eyes. Ghosts, yes, they were shadows. And he lives in superficial light.
"No," he lied, so beautifully that Denny didn't even stir. "I do not believe in ghosts."