The Dead Stay With Us

by Marianne Greenleaf

Harold Hill had always figured that of all the members in his immediate family, he would be the first to go. Instead, he's the one who ends up being left behind...

This story is dedicated to my coworker, who passed away recently after a long illness. She leaves a husband and two twin teenagers.

UPDATE November 2014 – Given that this was one of my earliest stories, it was long overdue for a revision to weave in the new friends and loved ones that Harold and Marian made over the years, including Jane Peabody and Jim Hearst. Also, there was a glaring historical inaccuracy that needed correction – the Hill family most likely would not have gotten Robert's body back for burial until 1947 at the earliest, when the war dead were brought back in "coffin ships" en masse from around the world, so the timelines of when certain people pass away have been adjusted.

XXX

Harold Hill had always figured that of all the members in his immediate family, he would be the first to go. But in July 1944 – a little over a month after the famous D-Day invasion was launched – he received a telegram from the War Department that informed him his son Robert had been killed in battle.

In his sorrow, Harold did not watch his wife as carefully as he should have. After they received the news of Robert's death, they were both reeling from grief, so it came as no surprise to him that Marian ate less and spent most of her time at the library, buried in her books. Whenever his wife was angry or upset, she always sought refuge in her library, so Harold hadn't been alarmed by her behavior. He also took comfort in the fact that the librarian was being watched over by her dear and capable assistant, Jane Hearst, who was still as sprightly and vivacious as ever even though she'd long left youth and maidenhood behind.

But even with the helpful presence of Mrs. Hearst's concerned and watchful eyes, Harold was too preoccupied with his own grief to notice anything was amiss, at least at first. It had been a shock to them all to hear of Robert's death, as they were somehow more optimistic about his likelihood of survival than they had been after Winthrop had slipped away to the front in 1918 at the tender age of sixteen. Like so many other young men eager to serve their country, Winthrop had added a few years to his age so he could enlist. Harold and Marian were furious, but oddly enough, Mrs. Paroo was rather stoic about the matter, chalking it up to Winthrop's great stubbornness. Amaryllis, of course, never wavered in her steadfast belief that her love would come home to her. And in the end, her faith was justified. Winthrop returned, though he walked with a slight limp that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

When the Second World War began, Harold and Marian told their son in no uncertain terms he'd better not pull a Winthrop, or they'd come and fetch him home. Always obedient – at least, more obedient than the twins ever were – Robert dutifully waited until he was eighteen to enlist. That cold, snowy Valentine's Day of '43 was the grimmest and most heart-wrenching holiday the music professor and librarian had ever passed together, though they hid their sorrow behind bright smiles as their son squared his shoulders and marched off to the recruiting office not long after he'd blown out the candles on his cake. Although Robert promised them, with all the brash confidence of youth, that he wouldn't be gone long, Harold couldn't help feeling an ominous sense of foreboding as he watched his only son board the train with the other fresh-faced young soldiers, and he prayed that the same angels who had protected his brother-in-law would watch over his boy.

Yet despite the dread Harold had felt when bidding his son goodbye, Robert's death still came as a surprise – almost as much of a surprise as his birth had been. Harold and Marian had always planned to have only two children, and when Penny and Elly arrived, they declared their family complete. But then Paris happened. Giddy at the prospect of a second honeymoon, Harold and Marian were far less careful than usual and, by the time they returned home, Marian was pregnant.

But neither of them had a single moment of regret. Harold did privately wonder if he was a bit too old to be a father – the last thing he wanted to do was leave his wife a widow with a young child – but when he saw the way Marian's eyes glowed with joy, he couldn't help feeling the same elation. Even if things hadn't happened the way he would have planned them, Harold still held firm to the optimistic belief that everything was as it should be.

When Robert Eli Hill was born, they all fell in love with him. Penny and Elly made him their pet and, when he was old enough, he toddled around after them. Harold had thought the girls would lose patience with Robert after the novelty of a baby brother wore off, but they were always more than happy to accommodate him. Penny took him on several of her adventures, and Elly read to him and showed him how to play the piano. For his part, Robert looked and listened and did not make much noise. Even when he was a toddler, he seemed to have an uncanny sense of awareness, as if he were an old soul in a young body.

Harold was proud to have a boy, especially one who looked just like him. But there was no question that Robert was his mother's son, just as Penny and Elly were their father's daughters. From the beginning, there was a special bond between Marian and Robert. Harold figured it had to do with their similar personalities. Though Robert was the spitting image of his father, he had his mother's disposition. Neither Harold nor Marian worried Robert would grow up to be a charming charlatan, as he proved far too honest and decent for that. In fact, he was almost too good – Harold marveled that a man like himself could have such a saintly son.

He also now fully understood how Marian must have felt when seeing him and their daughters together. Not jealous, exactly, but a sense of being a bit on the edge of things, a bit left out. Of course, Robert loved and esteemed his father. But when he was upset, he always went to Marian – just as Penny and Elly sought Harold out when they were troubled.

And, if truth be told, Harold found it a bit unnerving he had finally met the one person to whom he could not sell anything. Penny, Elly and even Marian could be swayed by his charms, but Robert always had the uncanny knack of seeing right through him. It was really something, the way his own son could knock him off balance! Harold reflected it was a good thing Robert was so good, or he would have been at his wits' end as to how to manage him.

But for the most part, Harold took these things in stride. He and Marian had ended up with daughters like him and a son like her. God certainly had a wicked sense of humor!

XXX

Harold would think that same thought again – this time with nothing but furious bitterness – when he read the telegram that informed him, curtly and dispassionately, of Robert's death. Here he had been worried about leaving his son fatherless at a young age, and now he was going to have to see his boy laid to rest in River City's Madison Cemetery. Because come hell or high water, Harold was determined to bring his boy home. Robert Eli Hill was not going to be consigned to some mass European grave halfway around the world, unmourned and unremembered as the war dimmed in humanity's collective conscience. He'd go all the way to Normandy to fetch his son's body, himself, if it came to that!

But when the war ended and the coffin ships finally started bringing all the war dead home in 1947, Harold got the unpleasant feeling that maybe he shouldn't have been so insistent on disinterring Robert from his grave in Europe, after all. They did not receive his body until the spring of 1948 – by then, nearly a full four years had passed since the Hill family had received that life-shattering telegram from the War Department. But as much as this unhappy news had thrown Harold and Marian into disarray, that slim piece of paper was the only proof that their son was never coming home alive… and maybe, just maybe, there had been a mistake. After all, it was not unheard of for the War Department to make the occasional clerical error, informing a family of death when there had only been injury or missing-in-action, or even informing the wrong family altogether.

While Harold had never seriously entertained such dangerous, pie-in-the-sky notions, it became horribly clear just how desperately Marian had been clinging to the small, foolish hope that her son was still alive somewhere out there in the world. When Robert's broken body was finally delivered to them and the finality of his death could no longer be denied, the librarian dissolved into such alarming hysterics that Harold had to call Dr. Pyne, who rushed over with a sedative. When the medicine wore off, Marian had thankfully recovered both her sanity and poise, but she could not find the strength of will to get out of bed, let alone see to a proper funeral for her beloved and only son.

So everything was left to the music professor to arrange, which he did with Elly and Jane's help. Penny was absent, as she was currently in some African jungle halfway around the world. Harold had sent her a telegraph informing her that they were finally holding a funeral for Robert, but also exhorting her to stay where she was, as their present circumstances required as quick a burial as possible. He did not go so far as to write that he dared not even speak Robert's name in Marian's presence, lest it set her off again, but if Harold knew his daughter, she had read between the lines and was probably making her way home right now to provide what support she could.

Fortunately, the funeral went off without a hitch – at least, as far as funerals go. As Harold gazed at Robert's flag-draped coffin, he reflected he would have gladly changed places with his son. It seemed monstrously unfair that Harold Hill, who had spent a good part of his existence as a charlatan and a crook, was still hale and hearty at seventy-four; while Robert Hill, who had led a blameless and upright life, was being buried at nineteen years old.

A large crowd had turned out for Robert's funeral – he had been a well-liked and popular young man – but somehow, this only made Harold feel even more alone. Marian was still so beside herself with grief she could not bear to attend the funeral, so he did not have the comfort of his wife's soothing presence. But he was touched that nearly all their dearest and closest family and friends were in attendance – Winthrop and Amaryllis Paroo and their daughters Rose and Daisy; Jane and Jim Hearst and their daughters Sophie and Diana; Fred and Lucy Gallup, who had come all the way from Des Moines; and of course, Elly and Teddy Washburn and their large and lively brood. The older kids were suitably somber and even wept a few heartfelt but decorous tears, while the younger ones yawned and fidgeted and whined in boredom and confusion, too innocent to fully grasp the gravity of what was happening.

But even the sight of so much life and love could not cheer Harold, as it only reminded him of the great potential that had been lost. For he now knew without a doubt that Elly was the only one who would ever give him and Marian grandchildren. Penny had inherited her father's wanderlust – though not his penchant for con-artistry – and actively disdained marriage and domesticity, preferring a string of torrid but short-lived affairs. Unlike most fathers, Harold was just fine with that. What mattered most to him was that his daughter was happy, and as she seemed to be supremely content, he had no qualms about her unconventional love life. And though he was well aware that Marian was less than thrilled by her daughter's Bohemian habits, the librarian remained a lady from the ground up and, after Penny had reached the age of majority, she tactfully refrained from prying into such personal affairs.

Robert, on the other hand, had been an unknown quantity. Though there were many pretty young women among the assembled mourners who shed copious tears over the young man's untimely passing, none of them held the sought-after title of sweetheart. He had kept his distance from them all, swearing never to marry after his beloved Amy Molloy had died of tuberculosis at sixteen. While neither Harold nor Marian seriously attempted to talk their distraught son out of making such final decisions, they both privately felt he was far too young to be consigned to eternal bachelorhood, and suspected he would fall in love and marry when the right woman came along. In happier times, the librarian had surreptitiously joked that if Robert did indeed remain steadfast to the memory of his first love for the rest of his life, Elly had already provided more than enough grandchildren on behalf of her siblings to carry on the family line!

But now, the myriad possibilities of what Robert might have achieved, what woman he might have loved, what children he might have had – all were gone forever. Harold smiled bitterly as he gazed from the flag-draped coffin to Elly's progeny, and then back to the brightly patriotic container that held his son's mangled remains. Marian hadn't been the only one clinging to illusions…

And then the music professor had to stop thinking, because his eyes were starting to sting too much for comfort. Though a father would easily be forgiven for weeping at his own son's funeral, he knew his tears would not be silent or decorous if he allowed them to escape, and he refused to cause a scene. So he clenched his hands into fists and took a quiet but deep breath to steady himself. Once he'd fully exhaled, he pressed his lips together and let his hands loosen.

However, although he'd succeeded in calming himself down, that nagging voice still persisted in pestering his beleaguered conscience. Since Robert had died in battle, he was eligible to be buried at Arlington. It would have been the perfect compromise. But when offered that option, Harold had stubbornly insisted on bringing his boy home to River City. As much as he tried to reassure himself he'd done what was best for everyone, he knew he had opened Pandora's Box with this ill-advised funeral.

But for better or worse, Robert Eli Hill was now laid to rest in the family plot in Madison Cemetery, right next to his maternal grandmother and grandfather.

XXX

As spring wore on, Harold's regret at not having had his son buried at Arlington continued to deepen. After the funeral, Marian finally managed to rouse herself from bed, but when she was not at the library – or cloistered in their music room playing somber sonatas on the piano – she was at Robert's grave. At first, Harold convinced himself this was a normal symptom of grieving, but on one balmy, moonlit night in late June, when he experienced one of his frequent bouts of nocturnal restlessness, he was not at all reassured when he discovered upon waking that not only was it three fifteen in the morning, he was alone in their bed. Marian was gone.

And he had the unpleasant hunch he knew exactly where she went. Throwing an overcoat on over his pajamas, Harold hastened to Madison Cemetery. Sure enough, Marian was sitting on the ground, gazing at her son's headstone. She looked at it expectantly, as if she was waiting for something wonderful to happen. It chilled Harold to see her like this.

"Marian, darling," he said gently, laying his hand on her shoulder.

"Oh!" she started. Then she smiled at him. As Marian rarely smiled these days, Harold should have been pleased to see her look happy. But there was something manic about her beaming expression – something almost otherworldly.

Still, he grinned at his wife. "If you wanted to go for a moonlit stroll, why didn't you invite me? You always have, before… "

"Harold, I saw him!" she said excitedly.

His grin disappeared. "Who?" he asked – even though he had the sinking feeling that he knew exactly what she was going to say.

"Our son!" Marian exclaimed. "I couldn't sleep – it was too stuffy in the bedroom. So I opened the window to let some air in, and there he was, standing right in our front yard and looking up at me! So I went outside, and he led me here."

As she spoke, a breeze ruffled the drooping leaves of the weeping willows and the long grasses of the cemetery lawns. Although it was a pleasantly warm late-spring evening, Harold shivered. "Come on, let's get you home and to bed," he said, helping Marian to her feet.

"You don't believe me," she said dejectedly – though she let her husband lead her out of the cemetery.

"Oh, I believe you," he replied. "Dreams can seem awfully real."

"I wasn't dreaming!" she insisted. "I was awake as I am now."

Harold decided it would be best to humor her, for the time being. "Of course you were, darling."

But Marian saw right through his ploy. "Don't take that tone with me, Harold Hill! You're speaking to me like I'm a child – or a halfwit."

"That's not my intention," he said honestly. He stopped and took her hands in his. "I'm speaking to you like you're a mother who's deeply bereft over the loss of her beloved son, as a husband who doesn't want to cause his wife any more pain than she's already feeling."

"Oh, darling," Marian breathed, throwing her arms around him.

Harold held his wife tightly, savoring her closeness. It was the first time since Robert's body was brought home that she had demonstrated such affection. As ever, Marian never outright refused Harold's embraces, but lately, he was always the one to initiate them. Not that things had often gone very far between them when he did. Every so often, when his wife seemed to be in a pleasant-enough mood, he'd test the waters by stealing a kiss or two from those still-kissable lips. But even though Marian always kissed him back, he felt her distinct lack of enthusiasm – she was only acquiescing to him out of habit, or perhaps duty – and more often than not, his desire to make love evaporated. Harold tried not to take too much umbrage at Marian's withdrawal – he figured she just needed time – but he couldn't help thinking it wasn't just a son he had lost.

After awhile, Marian spoke. "I know all this sounds absolutely absurd! You're right to think it was just a dream – it's exactly what I would have said, if the shoe was on the other foot and I had found you at our son's grave at this ungodly hour."

Harold was relieved to hear her say these things – for a moment, he had seriously feared for his wife's sanity. "Well, perhaps it wasn't a dream, exactly. Grief has been known to cause hallucinations. It's remarkably common for people to see their loved ones after they pass away."

Marian laughed softly. "So I'm not crazy, then?"

He planted a kiss on her forehead. "No, I think you're perfectly normal. After my mother died, for a time I would see her in the crowds that gathered around me, or on the platform as I waited for my next train."

Marian looked awed. "You never told me this."

"I hoped I would never have to," Harold said sadly, glancing back at the cemetery plot where his son rested.

Now it was Marian who comforted him as he broke down. But even in his sorrow, Harold was consoled by the librarian's strong, reassuring grip on his hand as she helped him home. After they'd reached the privacy of their bedroom, she lowered all the shades, but kept the door wide open – they were as alone in their house as when they were newlyweds.

And then, without so much as a single word or glance of persuasion from him, as he wasn't about to press his luck, she undressed him as sweetly and eagerly as she had that snowy January night they conceived the twins, and they made love until the sun peeked up over the hills.

Things were going to be okay.

XXX

But things only got worse. After that night, Marian's hallucinations continued. At first, Harold dismissed them as remnants of grief. As long as her episodes only happened at night and in his presence, he felt he could manage things. But when he arrived home from the music emporium one crisp fall day in mid-September, he found Elly and Amaryllis sitting on his front porch.

He immediately knew what must have transpired. "Where's Marian?"

"Winthrop's got her upstairs in bed," Amaryllis explained. "She was pacing back and forth in the town square and ranting to anyone who would listen that she had seen her son. We all thought she'd gone stark-raving mad! Dr. Pyne had to give her a sedative to calm her down."

Harold suppressed a grimace – even when she had gotten older, Amaryllis had never developed a refined sense of tact. "Thank you, Amaryllis. Why don't you let Winthrop know I'm here?"

Once Amaryllis had departed, his daughter surveyed him with pensive expression. "How long has this been going on, Dad?"

"About three months," he admitted. "Was she really raving in the town square, or was Amaryllis exaggerating?"

"Sad to say, Aunt Amaryllis was telling the truth," Elly said grimly. "Fortunately, Uncle Winthrop managed to convince Mother to come home with him before Constable Crocker could cite her for disturbing the peace. Why didn't you tell us things had gotten this bad?"

"It's never been this bad, before," Harold said defensively. "And I was always able to bring her out of it."

Elly patted her father's arm. "Perhaps you still can – when she wasn't talking about Robert, she was asking for you."

XXX

Harold did bring Marian back from the brink again, but this time, he had no illusions that she was cured. The following day, Harold handed over the reins of his music emporium to his trusted second-in-command, Tommy Djilas, and stayed home to look after Marian. He had plenty of assistance – Winthrop, Amaryllis, Elly, Jane or Zaneeta watched Marian when he could not. Even Penny was there to help – as Harold had surmised, she dropped everything and set her destination for River City once she received their telegram.

Under the careful observation of her husband and family, Marian improved a great deal. As the months passed, she regained her appetite and her interest in the activities she had always enjoyed. Miraculously, there were no additional episodes or hallucinations, and Harold began to hope that Marian was finally recovering from her grief. But she carefully kept her distance from Harold and, though it pained him, he let his wife have her space.

XXX

One late-June night, not long after the first anniversary of Robert's funeral, Harold awakened to see Marian gazing wistfully out of their bedroom window and reciting a poem from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Lo! Some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That time and fate of all their vintage prest,
Have drunk their cup a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and – sans end!

When Marian turned, Harold scrutinized her expression. But there was no trace of the eerie glow – he saw a woman who was sorrowful, but sane. When he opened his arms, she came right to him.

"I don't know what I would do if you died, Harold," Marian whispered. "Losing Robert was bad enough, but I could not bear to live without you."

And Harold finally realized something he should have known all along. "Is that why you've been pushing me away, all this time?"

He felt her head nod against his chest. "When Robert was brought home in that awful coffin, it made me realize – really realize – that you wouldn't be around forever. Oh, I had always known what the discrepancy in our ages meant, but when we were younger, it seemed like something that needn't be worried about until the distant future. And now it feels like that distant future is almost upon us! It hurt too much to love you, knowing that each day might be our last together."

Harold pulled away a little so he could look Marian in the eye. "Well, I'm not planning on going anywhere for quite some time. Even if my last day is to come soon, tonight I'm very much alive – and very much in love with my wife." He wanted to kiss her – he ached to kiss her – but still, he held back.

"Well," Marian said impishly, "as the poem said, we must 'make the most of what we yet may spend'… "

That was all Harold needed to hear. He took Marian in his arms, and she enthusiastically welcomed their joyful reunion.

But even though Harold counted that evening as an important milestone in Marian's progress, he had the nagging sense that his time with her was beginning to run out – he could almost see the remaining grains of sand trickling through the hourglass. Whenever he laughed with Marian, or danced with her, or made love to her, he did so with the passionate intensity of a man who expected every day to be his last.

XXX

In the middle of November, Marian came down with a cold. At first, Harold thought it was a run-of-the-mill infection, and was disappointed that she should fall ill at such an inconvenient time – he had been planning to surprise her with a trip to Niagara Falls for their wedding anniversary.

But Marian's cold lingered far longer than it should have, until it finally developed into full-fledged pneumonia. As her health worsened, Harold took the money he saved for their third honeymoon and poured it into Marian's recovery. But even then, Harold knew he was fighting a losing battle. As November gave way to the chilly days of December, Marian's condition deteriorated even further.

And the hallucinations returned with a vengeance. Marian not only saw Robert, she spoke to him as if he were right there in the room with her. Harold's only consolation – and it was a slim one, at that – was that even when the librarian was in the deepest throes of delirium, she always seemed to recognize her husband. Still, Harold was grateful for that much. He didn't think he could stand his own wife not knowing who he was.

No matter how bad things got, Harold staunchly refused to leave her side. He believed – as did Dr. Pyne – that his presence had a calming effect on Marian. Only Penny could convince Harold to take the occasional break, to rest and refresh himself, but he was never away from his wife for long. He even slept next to her, on a sofa that Winthrop had kindly brought up to the bedroom for his comfort.

XXX

When Marian slept, she looked peaceful – so peaceful that Harold could almost pretend she wasn't ill. Even now, so close to the end, he couldn't help but laugh at the predicament in which he found himself: Harold Hill was doomed to outlive yet another member of his immediate family. And with his iron constitution, it would probably be several years before he joined his beloved.

As the clock ticked away their final hours together, Harold gazed fondly at Marian. The years had been awfully generous to her countenance, and her hair, though gray, was not that different in shade from its former honey-blonde hue. But time had not been kind to Harold's locks or visage; he knew he looked every inch the wrinkled old prune. He chuckled at his thoughts. Such vanity, when his wife was on her deathbed!

Marian stirred and awakened. "Harold?" she whispered, sounding more lucid than she had in days.

He was instantly by her side. "Yes, my dear little librarian?" Though she had long ago relinquished her position as River City's librarian, this would always be his favorite endearment for her.

Marian smiled at her husband – and then lapsed into a coughing fit. Alarmed, Harold started to rise from her bed so he could summon the doctor, but she laid a gentle hand on his arm.

"Don't leave me – I'll be dead before you get back." She said this matter-of-factly, as if she had long ago made peace with the idea.

And Harold knew the end of their time together had come. As he kissed his wife for the last time, he recalled that balmy summer night in 1912 when he thought they were about to be parted forever. Now, nearly forty years later, he was facing the same situation – and he was just as much at a loss for words. What should he say to this woman, this wonderful woman who had saved his life and his soul?

As always, Marian seemed to know just what he was thinking. "A simple 'I love you,' would suffice, darling."

He gave her a mischievous grin. "Say hello to Robert for me."

"Always have to do the unexpected, don't you?" Marian said with a weak, gasping laugh.

"If there's one thing I've always prided myself on, it's my unpredictability." Harold took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips. "Oh, my darling – I think I'll miss our banter the most."

Marian's fingers twitched in his hand, as if she was trying to give him a reassuring squeeze but lacked the strength to do so. "Robert and I will be waiting for you." She looked past her husband. "And here he comes, now."

At 3:54 a.m. on December 8, 1949 – eight years and a day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor – Marian Paroo Hill closed her eyes for the last time.

XXX

After his wife passed away, Harold shut down almost completely. For quite some time, he had only the dimmest awareness of his surroundings. Someone else fed him and attended to his needs as he laid in a sluggish stupor. When he finally regained his faculties, it was well into the first year of the new decade. The trees were in bud, the farmers were finishing up their spring planting, and Marian had long been laid to rest in the River City Cemetery.

Even after Harold's recovery, his family and friends still kept an eye on him. They visited him, brought him home-cooked meals, and even sat up with him late at night so he wouldn't have to face his insomnia alone. Once upon a time, Harold would have protested that he didn't need to be clucked over like a newborn chick, but Marian's death had knocked a good deal of energy out of him. And after his loved ones deemed he had sufficiently adapted to his new circumstances, they did ease up on imposing their company so often.

Except for Jane Hearst, that is. About seven months after Marian's death, her husband succumbed to cancer – the same disease that had killed his first wife, Louisa Grace. Though the history teacher's passing did not cause nearly as much of a stir as Robert's had among the River City-ziens, and though Jane put on her usual brave face in public, Harold could easily see from her hollow eyes and brittle grin that the irrepressible vitality that had fuelled her chipper spirit even after the loss of William had died along with Jim. She immediately retired from Madison Public Library and her daughters both lovingly and dutifully looked after her, but she seemed to grow thinner every day – and she had always had a waiflike build in the first place.

Alarmed by this state of affairs, Harold took to inviting Jane over for dinner twice a week, and through both gentle persuasion and outright cajoling, he made sure she ate a decent meal in his presence. Other than that, he did not pester her with prying questions about her health or attempt to fill the cordial but heavy silence with idle conversation. Neither of them had the inclination to talk much and, as they had known each other for several decades, there was no need to pretend they were cheerful. Though the music professor would never stop feeling the keen ache of Marian's loss, he found it soothing to have a kindred spirit in pain, and these sedate but comforting visits quickly became the high-water mark of his week.

But still, Jane grew frailer and more ethereal as the months passed. By the end of the summer, she was all eyes and bones. And one sweltering August evening, as the two of them sat on the front porch after dinner in order to escape the stifling heat of the house, she turned to him with an unsettlingly familiar look of manic glee in those wide, hollow eyes of hers and divulged that she had seen Jim.

Perhaps it was because she looked so much like a ghost, herself. Perhaps it was because he was so desperate for proof of the afterlife. Whatever the reason, Harold did not try to talk her back into rationality. Instead, he took her hands in his and urged her to tell him everything.

The story she related was nothing particularly sensational. Just yesterday afternoon, Jane had walked into her living room and there was Jim – not an elderly and wasted sixty-year-old, but a hale and handsome thirty-five-year-old – sitting in his favorite wingback chair and reading a book. He looked up and smiled at her, looking so vibrant and real that she merely smiled back and took her usual spot on the sofa. If it wasn't for the fact he vanished right after she sat down – not with a magician's melodramatic flash of light or puff of smoke; he was simply there one minute and not there the next – Jane would have forgotten he was supposed to be dead.

The very ordinariness of the encounter made Harold shiver, despite the warmth of the breezes washing over them. When Jane ended her tale by demurring in that sweetly blunt but well-meaning way of hers that she supposed she was now as daft as Marian had once been, he smiled sympathetically and gave her hands a friendly squeeze.

Naturally, the passerby who happened to witness this interlude got the wrong idea. Barely two days later, Elly paid him a visit and, after delicately beating around the bush for a little while, tentatively inquired as to the precise nature of his friendship with Jane Hearst.

Normally, Harold would have laughed off the gossips' torrid assumptions and assured his concerned daughter that there wasn't the smallest romantic spark between the two of them. But after not having gotten more of the barest wink of sleep since that night – and no visions of Marian to ease his loneliness – his nerves were extremely raw. The River City-ziens had such dirty and low minds – couldn't they leave a poor widow and widower in peace? Although he knew his daughter was only trying to look out for both his and Jane's well-being, he launched into a blistering tirade informing her that not only did they continue to love each other merely as uncle and niece, that part of him had died right along with Marian. But if on the off chance it ever did come alive again, it was nobody's goddamn business who he went to bed with – not even hers.

At that, Elly – who was not only the mother of six, but currently expecting her seventh child in less than a month – blushed like a maid and assured her father she would not have presumed to pry into such personal affairs, but given the circumstances… she trailed off decorously.

Harold saw so much of Marian in his youngest daughter's sleek blonde curls, crimson cheeks and tactful demeanor that he softened and, after apologizing for being such a boor and explaining to Elly in more elegant language that there was nothing between him and Jane but the platonic companionship of two lonely souls in the same boat, pulled her into a hug. Far better to save up his anger and unleash it on the clucking hens who'd stirred up the trouble in the first place!

But Harold never got the chance. When the day of their next dinner dawned, Jane was dead, having passed away peacefully in her sleep the night before. Her daughter Sophie had been the one to find her body. Although he was saddened by yet another loss, it did bring him a small modicum of comfort to know that she was no longer separated from Jim, if indeed there was an afterlife. Either way, she was finally at peace.

Harold recalled how a few years back, Fred and Lucy Gallup had also died within a short time of each other, with her going first and him following within a matter of weeks. The last time he'd seen them both was Robert's funeral. It seemed death was taking every blissfully happy couple around him in pairs – every couple but him and Marian, that is.

In his darker moments, Harold contemplated defying death's timetable by hastening the process, but he could never bring himself to take such a final, irreversible step. Like Gilgamesh, he had become unhinged by his own grief, yet still shrank from death. Not because he feared suicide would damn his soul to hell, but because he could not stomach the idea of Elly finding his body and, God forbid, miscarrying from the distress of such a gruesome discovery. And there was a part of him that dreaded what the afterlife might hold for him. After all, loving Marian and developing the Think System for real couldn't cancel out an entire lifetime of philandering and thievery, could it?

In his darkest moments, Harold wondered if perhaps he had already died and was in hell. It would be the most fitting of punishments that his will to survive by any means necessary had been turned against him, dooming him to watch all those he loved slip one by one behind a veil he could never see beyond. Eternal life – or the illusion of it – truly was a curse. Utnapishtim had his beloved wife to share the burden of immortality with. Harold had no one. He didn't even have the slim comfort of seeing his wife's ghost. Even when he had been at his lowest point right after the librarian's passing, he never once had a hallucination – not like Marian had.

Marian had. It always made Harold cringe to think of his wife in the past tense. At first, he thought this was a grief reaction that would eventually fade, but he found his aversion to referring to his wife in the past tense was becoming even more pronounced as more time went by. On the first anniversary of his wife's death, Harold hit upon the perfect solution – he would refer to Marian in the present tense. But even though this made life easier for him, it seemed to make everyone else around him uneasy. So his family and friends started hovering around him again.

And Harold knew they all thought he was going senile. But his sense of pride wouldn't allow him to explain his reasons for this course of action – he couldn't bear any more pitying looks. So he started limiting his social calls and engagements. But this only led to more people visiting him at home, "inquiring after his health," as they put it. Harold might have been a wrinkled old prune, but he still retained every bit of his charm and charisma. And he made sure every one of his guests left with the certainty that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, in terms of his health. After all, he was the great Professor Hill – and still the consummate salesman, as Marian always tells him.

XXX

Harold thought he had them all convinced. But then Penny showed up on his doorstep in March 1951, fresh from a six-month sojourn in India.

"Aha – so you all do think I'm crazy," were his first words to his daughter. "That's why they called you home, I presume?"

Penny gave an exasperated laugh and planted a kiss on Harold's cheek. "You must be crazy – if that's how you greet your daughter after she's been away for several months! Do you treat all your guests with such suspicion?"

Only Penny would have had the audacity to say such a thing, which is why Harold did not deflect her with a joke. Instead, he gave his daughter a hug. "I'm sorry, Penny. As you can probably tell, I don't get out much anymore. I've discovered I prefer peace and quiet over hustle and bustle. I realize it sounds strange for a man who's always prided himself on being at the center of things, but these days, I'm feeling my age in a way I never have before. So I keep busy at home – reading, gardening, cooking, what have you. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a particular favorite of mine."

"Elly said you've been a bit withdrawn, these days," Penny admitted. "But I'm glad to see you're not doing too badly. In fact, I'd say you seem to be doing quite well!"

Harold nodded. "Try telling everyone else that! I've gone to so many lengths trying to convince everyone that I'm not a daft old coot that sometimes I fear I really am turning into one. Sort of a reverse Hamlet, if you will."

Penny laughed again, and Harold brightened to hear it. Even though she had lost both mother and brother, Penny still managed to sound as if she was experiencing life's joys to the fullest. Harold gave his daughter an appraising look. "So where's this Wellington fellow you've been raving about in your recent letters? You could at least have brought him home to meet the family!"

Penny rolled her eyes. "He's old news, Dad. I left him behind in India. I'm sure he didn't even notice – he was too busy mooning over some rajah's daughter."

Harold chuckled. "And she says this without a single note of regret in her voice! So he went the way of all your other boyfriends, I take it?"

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," she said with a devil-may-care shrug. "I will never marry."

"Yeah," Harold said gently. "That's what I thought, too."

Normally, Penny would have fired back a blistering retort. Instead, she regarded her father with sympathetic eyes and put her arms around him. Harold courteously returned her embrace, though he felt even lonelier than he had before Penny came home. Of all people, he had thought his eldest daughter would understand this was the last thing he wanted.

XXX

On the evening of July third, Harold saw Marian as he was sitting on the front porch and enjoying the warm summer breezes. She was walking down the road toward their house, looking as young and beautiful as she had the night he had first met her. She was even wearing the same dress. When Marian reached the gate, she stopped, turned and gave him a slow wink.

Although Harold had been waiting for this moment for a long time, his reaction was that of any rational man – he jumped and blinked in an effort to clear his head. But when he opened his eyes again, his wife was still standing there and gazing at him with an expectant smile.

He chuckled. "Oh no, my dear. I may be crazy, but not enough to follow you. Not yet, anyway."

Marian gave him an understanding nod, as if she expected him to answer thus, and continued on her way.

XXX

Around holidays and anniversaries, everyone watched Harold closely. But because he had always shielded his family from the more unsavory aspects of his past, they were unaware of two crucial dates that held deep significance for him and Marian – July third and July twenty-third. That was why Harold had been alone that night.

For the first time, he wondered if he truly was going insane. Perhaps a visit to Dr. Pyne was in order. But he was loath to mention this little incident to anyone – the last thing he wanted to do was feed the town's already overactive rumor mill. So he dismissed his vision as a hallucination, or an extremely lucid dream. Whatever it was, it could not be insanity. If it was, he would have followed his wife without question!

But somebody must have witnessed him speaking to thin air that night, because the next morning Penny was at his doorstep. Over the last few months, she had found one excuse or another to stick around River City, the latest being an infatuation with some local boy. But Harold knew she was really there to keep an eye on him.

Still, he greeted her with a smile and a kiss. "Darling, what a pleasant surprise! Do you want breakfast? I was just about to put some eggs on."

Harold thought Penny would launch right into the reason why she had come, as she was never one to beat around the bush, but she only smiled at him. "Sounds lovely!"

So Harold led his daughter to the kitchen. While he cooked, she kept up a steady flow of chatter, as if nothing was amiss. But Harold knew this was merely a ploy to get him to broach the subject. Fortunately, he was too experienced in such matters to capitulate so easily, and he kept up the charade just as beautifully as his charming daughter.

When Harold joined her at the table, Penny changed tack. "I'm sure you're wondering why I dropped by so unexpectedly," she said gravely, all traces of lightheartedness gone from her voice.

Most people would have been knocked off balance by this sudden change of tone, but not Harold. He grinned at her. "Should I be? I was too busy enjoying the pleasure of my lovely daughter's company."

Penny shook her head. "Harold Hill – still the consummate salesman!"

Harold chuckled. "Your mother always says that."

When his daughter's eyes widened, he knew he had made a terrible mistake. "Er – said," Harold amended, but it was too late. Penny regarded him with an expression that was a mixture of pity, awe and even a little horror – the exact look Harold imagined one would give to a mad old man who had just demonstrated the depths of his insanity.

"All right, let's hear it, Penny," he said with a sigh. "Why are you here?"

"You know exactly why I'm here, Dad," she said sadly. "Normally, I wouldn't say such things, but everyone's been tiptoeing around you so much, perhaps it will do you good to hear the truth." She paused. "We think that mother's death has started to affect your mind."

Harold laughed. "Is that it? That's the big thing you've come to tell me? I could have told you that, myself! I thought for a moment you were going to say you had all decided to have me carted off to the loony bin."

"Of course not, we would never!" Penny cried, aghast. "Especially as you clearly aren't a danger to yourself or anyone else."

"Ah, so I'm a harmless cuckoo," Harold deadpanned. "And what does one do with harmless cuckoos?"

"Move in with them," she returned. From the swiftness of Penny's answer, it was clear this course of action had been decided during some family conference.

Harold's first inclination was to be furious. How dare they all sit around deciding his fate as if he was a child, or an invalid! But then he remembered the way they had to watch over Marian. For the first time, he saw the grave concern in Penny's eyes – an emotion that never disappeared from her countenance, even when she gave him one of her bright smiles. It seemed the great Professor Hill wasn't the only one who was adept at hiding things.

As he looked ruefully at his daughter, she must have seen something encouraging in his expression, because she ran over and threw her arms around him, just like she used to when she was a little girl. "Dad, we've been so worried about you!"

"I know," Harold said, patting her shoulder. "And I'm sorry for that. I never meant to be such a burden to you all."

"Never, Dad," she said earnestly. He could hear the relief in her voice. "And for the record, I don't think you're a cuckoo. I think you're a man who's been alone too long."

"Sure, you say that now, when I'm still relatively lucid," he teased. "But I will confess one thing – going crazy isn't as much fun as it seems, you know. For one thing, I expected the colors to be a lot brighter."

Penny laughed; like Harold, she was not averse to poking fun at life's misfortunes. "I'm sure they'll grow brighter in time, Dad."

XXX

Harold never would have admitted this to anyone, but he was grateful for Penny's company. And he also liked how his new living arrangement seemed to ease everyone's minds – though he imagined they would be quite horrified if they heard some of the conversations he had with his daughter. Ever since that morning in the kitchen, Harold's "insanity" had become something of a joke between the two of them. As Harold would have said, it helped to keep him sane. And he imagined his mental state must have improved at least a little; his family and friends wouldn't have seemed so relieved, otherwise.

If only he didn't have to go to sleep. When Harold nodded off, visions of Marian haunted his dreams. The only comfort he was able to take was that his wife stayed firmly inside the boundaries his mind – there were no repeats of the July third incident.

But even then, Harold stopped retiring during the evenings. Instead, he took to sitting in the parlor. To pass the time, he'd turn on the Victrola and read. At first, Penny tried leading Harold to bed when began to doze. In his tired daze, he'd follow along behind her, but when he invariably woke up a few hours later, he'd return right to the parlor.

XXX

Harold never told anyone – not even Penny – about July twenty-third. But he knew Penny would notice he was more on edge than usual that day, a sensation that only heightened after sunset. Something was going to happen; he felt it in his gut. Penny did her utmost to distract him, keeping up a constant flow of tea, conversation and card games well into the midnight hour. But the exhaustion of too many late nights eventually overcame her, and she collapsed on the sofa a little after the clock had chimed two.

Harold covered his daughter with a blanket. "My dear Penny," he whispered, brushing aside an errant blonde lock of hair that had tumbled over her forehead. "You've unselfishly put your exciting life on hold to keep your senile old father company, and I'll always be grateful to you for it. How I've enjoyed our time together!"

After putting Handel's Minuet from Berenice in the Victrola, Harold settled himself in a wingback chair with Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and waited.

XXX

Harold wasn't sure how long he had been sitting in that chair. He wasn't even sure if he was awake or asleep. But around four thirty in the morning, he felt a cool hand touch his fevered brow.

His eyes opened. Sure enough, Marian stood before him. And just like when he had last seen her, she was twenty-six again. The only difference was that she was now wearing the pink dress from the night they had first danced the Shipoopi together.

When she beckoned to him – as she had so many times in his dreams – Harold accepted her invitation. But he didn't settle for simply taking her proffered hand. Instead, he caught Marian in his arms and kissed her with the eagerness and delight of a man who knew he was finally home.

As he embraced his wife, Harold felt the years drop away from him. When they parted, he realized he was forty-two again, and clothed in the dapper summer suit he had been wearing the evening he decided to stay in River City for good. "Well, where to, my darling?" he asked, feeling more invigorated than he had in quite some time.

Marian gave him that alluring sideways glance of hers. "I thought we'd take a stroll."

But she didn't lead him to the footbridge. Instead, they ended up at Madison Cemetery, stopping right at Marian's grave. Harold hadn't been here since the first anniversary of her death, but he was still surprised at what quick work the moss and lichen had made of his wife's headstone.

This is the way we were… Harold burst into laughter. "Of course! I thought this was too good to be true."

Marian gave him a curious look. "What do you mean, Harold?"

"I fell asleep reading Our Town. You're Emily, I'm George, and my mind has turned a sad separation into a happy reunion. Obviously, this is a dream." He put his arm around Marian and pulled her close. "But it's a wonderful dream."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you feel like you're dreaming, Harold?"

Harold had to admit he did not. "Actually, I feel more awake than I have in years. It was like I was walking around in a fog, and now I've suddenly stepped into the sunlight."

"It was like that for me, too," Marian replied.

"And the colors are brighter, here!" Harold added. Even though it was night, everything around them seemed to shimmer and thrum with a strange sort of vibrancy. "If I knew insanity would bring me back to you, I would have surrendered to it a whole lot sooner, I can tell you that!"

Marian gave him a pitying smile. "You're not insane, Harold. You're dead."

"Indeed?" Harold asked – though he didn't really care. He was with Marian again, and that was all that mattered.

"Well, you're dying," she said. "Over the past few months, your heart has been weakening. You almost died on July third, which is why you were finally able to see me that night."

Harold grinned. "So I wasn't going crazy, then?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that," she teased.

Out of habit, Harold reached over to tweak one of her curls – but halted as he remembered Marian's hair was back in its original chignon. "So you're telling me that if I took your hand that night – "

" – they would have found your body on the front porch the next morning," she finished.

"I didn't know I had so much choice in the matter!" he marveled.

"Well, your life was bound to end sooner or later," Marian replied in a practical manner. "You would have eventually run out of chances to resist."

"'Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me,'" Harold quoted.

His wife beamed and threw her arms around him. "Oh, how I've missed you, Harold!"

"And I you," he replied, delighting in the feel of her warm body (or was that soul?) against his. "So many new dances have come out since you've been gone – the Twist, the Cha-Cha, the Stroll, the Hand Jive."

"I know," Marian said ruefully. "And we can still dance them together. But how about we start with an old favorite?"

Harold was suddenly aware that Handel's Minuet from Berenice was still playing. "Amazing – we're quite a ways from the parlor! Do the dead get enhanced hearing, as well as sight?" He glanced at the shimmering landscape.

Marian smiled again – oh, how he had missed that smile! "No, Harold. You're still in the parlor – well, a little bit of you is. You're not entirely dead, yet."

"How will I know when I'm entirely dead?" Harold asked as he led his wife through the familiar steps.

She laughed. "Trust me, you'll know."

Not long after she spoke, the music abruptly cut off. They stopped dancing. "Well, I suppose that's it," Harold said.

Marian nodded. "Any regrets, darling?" she asked softly.

He shook his head. "Only for what Penny's going to find when she wakes up."

"Penny will be sad, but not surprised," Marian replied, patting her husband's arm reassuringly. "She's been preparing herself for this event for quite some time, now."

Harold chuckled. "Been keeping tabs on us all, have you?"

"Of course!" Marian said spiritedly. "You don't think I'd let a little thing like death keep me away from the ones I love, do you?"

"Not at all," he replied. "And speaking of family, where's Robert?"

"Oh, he's around," she said coyly. "As are several others who wish to see you. But they're content to wait their turn. You do have eternity, you know."

"With you?" Harold asked, feeling some trepidation. The slight, teasing emphasis she had put on the word several was not lost on him. After all, he could hardy expect forty years of honest living to cancel out forty years of chicanery…

Marian threw her arms around him again. "Now that we're finally reunited, I'm not planning to ever be parted from you again!"

Eternity with his dear librarian – Harold liked the sound of that. "Well, lead on then, my darling. After all, you know the territory a lot better than I do… "