Sorry, Mark. I was planning to come on Thursday.”

I pause.

Does he know what day Thursday was?

“Thursday was my birthday, you know. The people at the office, they threw a small party for me at lunch.”

I let out a small, nervous laugh. It always feels weird in the beginning, talking to him when he can’t say anything back.

“It wasn’t anything fancy. They just bought me a cake.”

A lump forms in my throat.

Mark used to buy me a cake on my birthday. He never failed to remember. He’d do anything to make it special, to make me feel less alone.

In fact, when they found his car, there was a smashed cake on the floor. There was white cream smeared on the black rubber mat. It had been sitting on the passenger seat, they told me.

Tears spring to my eyes and roll down my cheeks. As I take a deep breath, I hear myself sniffle. There’s a certain freedom in just letting it all out.

All year, I suppress this sadness. Try to be strong.

My birthday is the only day of the year I allow myself to just be sad. To be weak, for once.

Mark is the only person who gets to see me like this.

Or should it be “who got to see me like this?” In past tense?

I can never get used to speaking about Mark in the past tense. Even though it’s been five years, it feels like he’s still here. Like he has never left.

And after what I saw earlier this week . . . I’ve been wondering if he truly has never left, after all.

My fingertips caress the rough headstone. The rain splatters dark spots on it and my touch smears them, spreads the darkness.

“I miss you so much.” My voice breaks as I run my hand over the stone the way I used to stroke his hair. “So, so much. I thought it would pass. I mean, we were so young. Everybody told me it would. But . . .”

I let my sentence hang in the air, unfinished. It’s not like Mark would climb out of the grave and ask me what I meant to say.

I stare at the green grass that covers the ground.

Right after the funeral, when I came here every single day, there was a rectangular patch in the soil that was brown. Just earth. No grass.

Even then, I couldn’t imagine Mark lying down there. The Mark I remembered was full of life and laughter. He brightened up every room he entered. He was so warm to everyone.

Now that there’s just a flat stretch of grass on the ground, punctuated by headstones, it’s even harder to picture Mark six feet underneath my feet. Especially after what I saw at the office.

“Where are you, Mark?” I ask.

On my previous visits, I thought about the afterlife when I posed this question. I wondered about the end of my own life, when I would see him again. It always felt like too long of a wait and I’ll admit suicidal thoughts have crossed my mind more than once.

I’ve been managing those thoughts better since I got a job that paid enough for me to see a shrink.

Today, though, those black thoughts have evaporated. And it’s not because of anything my therapist has said.

For the first time in a long time, I wonder if my gut feeling has been right all along. I wonder if Mark is still around.

After all, I never saw his body. His family wouldn’t let me.

They didn’t even pick up when I blew up Mark’s phone with calls and texts that got more desperate as time went by.

I only found out when his friend called to ask me if I needed a lift to the funeral.

I said yes and stood at the back throughout the service while his parents shot daggers at me with their bloodshot eyes.

His friends told me a drunk driver had crashed into Mark’s car and killed him instantly. The cake suggested that he had been on his way to my place.

The roads were slippery that night, and to make things worse, there was a thick fog, too. There was even a blizzard warning. He shouldn’t have been driving.

Mark’s family blamed me for the accident.

Nevertheless, I begged them to give me something. Anything. Tell me more about how it happened, how my beloved had died. I wanted to know his suffering. I needed to make it mine.

But no one from Mark’s family said even one word to me.

Once his friends had told me all they knew, I started hanging out at the police station, asking for any crumbs of information they could give me. But they were always too busy for me.

In my desperation, I followed a dirty cop into a bar, sweet-talked him while he was drunk, and let him fondle my chest in a dark alley to get what I wanted. I’m not proud of what I did, but the guy delivered and gave me a copy of the case files.

I saw everything.

The jagged pieces of metal. The shattered bits of glass scattered on the gray asphalt. The blood—ugh, there was so much blood. And, of course, the cake.

In the midst of it all, I saw Mark. I remember thinking how normal he looked. Like he was just sleeping. Like I could tap him on the shoulder and he’d open his eyes, maybe even smile at me.

“How are you?” a male voice asks.

I gasp when I feel a hand on my back.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man says. He has a sheepish expression on his face when I turn around to look at him.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Dawson,” I greet the elderly caretaker of the cemetery. “Don’t worry about it. I’m good, by the way. And you?”

“Ah, these bones are getting creaky. Soon I’ll be living here full time,” he says, gesturing at the ground.

I smile. Mr. Dawson’s dark sense of humor used to make me uncomfortable, but I’ve grown fond of it over time.

“I didn’t see you on Thursday,” he says, smiling back.

“I had work. I tried to take the day off, but they wouldn’t let me.”

Mr. Dawson shakes his head slowly, his gray, bushy eyebrows knitted in disapproval. He lets out a big sigh. “It’s no good, someone as young as you making this such a priority.”

“It’s only once a year.”

“When my wife passed away, I thought I was just going to wait for my turn. But people helped me live again. My family. The people from my church,” he says, ignoring my flimsy defense. He looks at me straight in the eye. “Your real life is out there. Not in here.”

I guess he has a point. I’ve spent so much time here, he and I are friends now, to the point where he’s comfortable saying these things to me right now.

In fact, if it weren’t for Mr. Dawson, I’d still be living here in the small town of Ashbourne, unemployed and hanging out in the cemetery every day. He was the one who told me I needed a therapist, too.

“I do have a life, Mr. Dawson,” I counter.

“Do you?” He gives me an unconvinced stare. “What did you do last weekend?”

“I did a marathon.” A marathon of the new detective TV series, that is. But he doesn’t need to know that.

“At least you’re keeping yourself healthy. That’s good.” He asks, “Any new boyfriend?”

I shake my head.

“It’s been too long, Harper. Way too long,” he says. “I’m seeing someone. It’s great. Makes me feel young again.”

“Good for you.” I can’t help but smile. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“An old friend. We went on a few dates when we were younger, but the time was never right.” The big smile on Mr. Dawson’s face is contagious.

“Until now.”

“Until now,” he agrees. “It’s time you start seeing someone new, too.”

“I just haven’t met anyone I like.”

My colleagues have tried setting me up with some guys they know. To be honest, they were perfectly nice people, and they’d probably make some women very happy. But, I kept comparing them to Mark and none of them measured up.

In fact, even though I sucked it up for more than three dates with some of those guys, I never felt anything beyond boredom. They were all so dull to me.

That man at the office who looked like Mark, though . . . In just a few seconds, he dominated my mind.

I hesitate before I ask the question. I know it’s a ridiculous one, but I have to ask. It has been bothering me for days, and Mr. Dawson is probably the best expert I know on the subject.

“Can I ask you something? It might be a bit strange . . .” I start.

“I’ve been around much longer than you,” he says. “I’ve heard it all. Try me.”

“Have you ever come across . . . I don’t know, uh, people who are supposed to be dead but they’re actually still alive?” I ask quickly before I change my own mind.

Mr. Dawson’s forehead crumples into a mess of wrinkles. He looks at me with concern in his eyes.

“I don’t mean zombies or anything like that.” I laugh nervously. “I mean, like, maybe someone fakes his own death.”

The man rubs his white beard as drops of rain fall on it and mat the strands together. “You asking me if any of these graves are empty? Or filled with the wrong corpse?”

“Something like that.”

“You referring to this grave in particular?”

I shrug, feeling dumb. But, it’s kind of too late to back down now. “Any grave, really. It’s just something I saw on TV. Got me curious.”

“That’s just fiction. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” Mr. Dawson shakes his head and pulls the hood of his coat up over his head.

“Good to know,” I say as nonchalantly as I can.

“It’s starting to pour. I should go back to the cottage,” he says, pointing at the small building at the edge of the cemetery. In the old days, the caretaker used to live in that yellow wooden building, but now Mr. Dawson has his own place and is only here when it’s his shift.

“It’s really nice to talk to you again.”

“I hope I won’t see you moping here on your birthday next year,” he says. “You should go home, too. You’ll catch a cold, standing there without an umbrella.”

“Yeah. I just need a few more moments.” I give Mr. Dawson a smile, then breathe a stealthy sigh of relief when he turns around and leaves me alone.

I stare at the raindrops clinging to the green grass that grows over what is supposed to be Mark’s grave.

Have I been deluding myself?

Lots of people say they still feel the presence of their loved ones who are dead. Mostly, I see them on those woo-woo paranormal TV shows.

I’m not one of those people. At least, I don’t think I am. I don’t believe Mark’s ghost is watching me or anything.

My shrink tells me when I feel Mark’s presence it just means I’m missing him and remembering him. I agree with her.

What I saw the other day, though . . . That wasn’t a ghost. That man was real. As real any of my co-workers in that office building.

Aside from the dangerous aura he exuded, he looked exactly like Mark would, if he had had the chance to grow older by five years and decided to grow out his hair.

I look up to the sky and let the fat rivulets of cold rain hit my face. Mr. Dawson would disapprove if he saw, but maybe a slap in the face from Mother Nature would drag me back to reality.

I run my fingers through my wet hair and look around the cemetery.

It’s empty, except for a group of mourners in black, standing around a newly dug grave just across the narrow strip of asphalt from where I am.

Fresh grave. Fresh wound.

My heart goes out to those people. The next few days, weeks, even months or years would be hell for some of them.

I shield my eyes from the rain and watch them more closely.

What the . . .?

My heart races as I notice a certain figure standing around the new grave.

I can only see his back from here, and there’s a narrow road separating us, not to mention some trees.

But, the way that leather jacket fits snugly across his back . . . I couldn’t mistake that guy for someone else.

Before I know what I’m doing, I walk across the wet grass, heading straight toward the man like an arrow.

As I cross the road, he looks over his shoulder like he senses me coming. Our eyes lock.

Even though a hood hides his face in the shadows and the rain blurs my vision, I recognize that face. I’d recognize that face anywhere.

It’s Mark’s face.