The sheet collapsed. There was no one under it. The note fluttered to the floor, and the house was finally, truly, empty.

He saw himself—living, breathing, stubborn—moving into the house with M. He saw the moment he had tucked a small scrap of paper into a crack in the doorframe, a secret note she would never find.

He didn't die; ghosts don't have that luxury. Instead, he fell back into the beginning.

He stood in the corner of the living room, watching M eat a chocolate pie. She ate it with a focused, brutal grief, scraping the tin until the sound set his non-existent teeth on edge. He wanted to reach out, to tell her that the house wasn't empty, but his hands were only folds of fabric. When he moved, the world didn't ripple; he was the ripple.